Not Just Mrs Doctor

Switching the Site

2011-01-11T20:40:00.000-05:00

Just because I like it better (more features, etc), I'm switching the blog to http://www.notjustmrsdr.wordpress.com/. See you there!

The Return

2010-10-01T22:38:00.000-04:00

By now, I have probably lost every one who "followed" my meager posts to begin with. Ah, well, having a new baby will do that to a person, I suppose. And then, because life wasn't crazy enough, I took on some small contracts and wrote a whole lot of grant proposals in hopes I get some arts funding in the spring. All those are done now, except for the ones that come back in the mail because clearly I haven't mailed an 8X10 envelope for a while and they require more stamps than they used to.

All in all, there is much to write. Where to begin? How about birth?

For those of you who don't know, Aksel (Norse for Man of Peace) was born on June 4 after 5 hours of labour, which itself was induced by the midwives when they finally consented to break my water after checking me and finding I was 4 cm dilated, fully effaced and not in labour. My midwife said she envisioned breaking my water, going home, washing her car, and waiting for labour to begin. Big problem, though, when meconium appeared in the water (now there's a treat - endless pooey amniotic fluid gushing out). So, the midwife drove me immediately to the hospital and Kirk cycled furiously home from work to get the car and meet us there. Contractions started immediately (I KNEW my water just needed breaking because he was trying and trying to be born). I made a very dramatic arrival - Wendy drove me straight to the front entrance, got a wheelchair and a volunteer to wheel me up while she parked her car, so there I was, the big fat pregnant woman in a wheelchair (realizing, as I exited her car, that I stained her car seat with poo-filled amniotic fluid.)

I was jovial and unbelieving that this was really it (everyone assured me it was not going to go backwards). Kirk and his laptop joined us shortly (I'm not joking when I say he brings it everywhere). The room at the hospital was lovely and bright, and we all had a lovely time, and then I fell down the rabbit hole into labour land. I even remember explicitly saying "I'm drifting off to labour land now." Holy Moses, things went quickly from there.

With Anja, I needed to be in the bath the entire labour, but with Aksel, you couldn't have dragged me in there. I was so very, very hot, so spent a good deal of time sitting on an exercise ball with my head in Kirk's lap. Apparently, at one point, I threw my glasses across the room and Kirk says I swore like a sailor, but I would never do that. After throwing up an Ice Cap, I moved to the bed and shortly thereafter said "Baby wants to come." Wendy said "really?" in disbelief, "Let me check." At which point she said I was six centimeters and at which point I said in a very matter-of-fact, don't-fuck-with-me tone "Then I Want The Epidural." "Well," she says "Let's just see what happens with you're next contraction," to which I replied "I Want The Epidural" and promptly went from 6-10 centimeters in one contraction and again reiterated my desire for the epidural, but was told by all and sundry that it was too late, that they wouldn't even have time to get the line in. I remember the rattling of the nitrous cart a short time later, and began sucking it back like it was air. "I feel like I'm going to pass out," I said, to which Kirk answered, "Well don't suck back so much." Afterward, I said I was not sure how effective it was, to which again Kirk answered, "Well, it gave you something to do and muffled your screams." I was very convinced that the lack of epidural was just a forced-hand into a natural birth.

In any case, at this point I was petrified because Anja took three hours to push out and I kept asking Wendy "how long? how long?" - but Aksel began, with his 36 cm head, barreling his way out and with 20 minutes of, I must say, very mighty pushing, all 8 lbs, 15 ounces of him was born (I kept expecting warm compresses and remember thinking "where are my warm compresses?" but apparently Wendy and Grace (the student midwife) "helped" things along a little because they didn't like the way his head was looking...) They did say "reach down reach down" to feel his head, and after Anja, I swore I would, but really, I don't think I physically could have. And I saw him and said "there you are," and he cried once and then...he stopped breathing right and became flaccid.

There are many moments when I grow very weary of Kirk's profession, but this was not one of these moments. I was so, so glad he was there and able to watch as they tried to get Aksel's right lung inflating, and also very glad for his calm demeanour because he understood things were not one hundred percent, but also not terrible either, and that the neonatologist knew him and was staying around on the floor until Aksel was born because she took over care from the respiratory therapist and other midwife shortly thereafter. I was also grateful Kirk could go with Aksel as they took him to the special care nursery and took x-rays, etc, etc. It is a very alien, surreal feeling not to be able to even touch or hold your baby when he is born and have him whisked away, and to still be in that after-birth shock (you know, all of you mamas, the trembling, the chills, the weakness, the gushing blood loss) and thinking "where is my baby?" This was definitely not in the birth plan. In fact, I didn't see him until 2 hours later when I was all stitched up and able to get out of bed.

After Kirk rushing around to CHEO with x-rays and consults with whosits and whatsits, it was determined Aksel had meconium aspiration, which is like a chemical burn to his lungs, and was thus breathing way too fast, so was started on antibiotics on the possibility there would be infection, which meant a 3 day automatic hospital stay. It is very surreal to have a baby not come home with you - and there was no real place for me to stay at this particular hospital except to grab the occasional nap in the early labour lounge. It is very weird to see your baby in an isolette and still weirder to have him hooked up to all sorts of gizmos. It is weird to try to begin breastfeeding when there is no place for you to sleep and they have to give formula. It is weird to have your ankles swell even more after birth so that you truly now have elephant legs and your feet don't even fit in your flip-flops any more.

It's both a very vivid time and a very hazy time in memory right now. Lots of tears and uncertainty and just wanting him to come home. Then, finally getting him discharged, having been told he was no longer breathing fast, then getting him home and realizing he was still breathing very, very fast (in the 100's when it should have maxed at 60 respirations per minute.) At ten pm on the day we brought him home, I woke Kirk up and said "This is not right" and Kirk hummed and hawed and looked up studies, and got out his stethoscope and thermometer and counted his breathing and counted his breathing and counted his breathing until I said "If you are looking up studies and doing all this, shouldn't we just take him in?" So, we made a call to a friend at 1 am who came to be with Anja, then off the Emerg we went. What's even weirder than a sick baby is a pediatric resident taking his own baby into the emergency.

Long, long story short, Aksel went to the NICU, we were treated very, very well, my ankles swelled more, I cried lots and lots, was exhausted from having given birth, trudging through hospitals post birth, staying up in the emergency all night. I broke down swollen, puffy, pale, post-birthy chubby in front of Kirk's colleagues multiple times, felt nurses knew my baby better than I did, watched nurses shave Aksel's little head to get a line in (and not getting the line after all), losing IV's after IV's (puncture marks all over his little hands and feet, shrieking, shrieking), get catheterized, more antibiotics, trying to arrange care for Anja and the dog, Kirk having to arrange his own shifts covered while his child was in hospital, Aksel came home for good at 8 days old. Here he is at 4 days, on his first foray home, and then at 4 months old:

And, so Anja gets her due, here is the cutest video EVER. This is taken as a friend is bringing her to the hospital right after Aksel was born:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3353641/IMG_0106.MOV

And, as a side note, here is a picture of her waiting for the bus at her first day of school.

This is an extraordinarily long post, but four months have transpired! Much to write.

Will I Be Pregnant Forever?

2010-05-24T20:18:00.000-04:00

Type this into Google and it will finish your phrase for you - who knew? I only found out due to one of those lonely Kirk's on call nights when I realized I really would, truly, be the first woman in history to, in fact, be pregnant forever.

Last week, I was much more hopeful, having seen the midwives and been told I was four cm dilated and baby was fully engaged then experiencing two days of regular, painful contractions that stopped me in my tracks and resulted in a 10 pm visit from the midwives who then told me baby was no longer engaged (apparently second babies can move up and down at will.) The contractions subsequently stopped by Saturday, which was disappointing and relieving at the same time. We are visiting the midwives again tomorrow, so maybe some more mojo after membrane sweeping will kick in. According to the internet, some obsetricians and gynecologists make it a regular practice to do this without telling the mother what they are doing. Very horrible.

In the meantime, it reached 36 degrees here with the humidex today, a term I, as a west coaster did not know existed before moving here. Needless to say, it was hot, hot, hot and my feet and ankles are three times their regular size. I have been so pleased this whole pregnancy that I have not gained to fluid I did with Anja. However, now my toes are disappearing and I have only one pair of shoes to wear - flip flops that themselves barely fit anymore. I am grateful I had the foresight two days ago to buy a wading pool for our backyard - Anja spent 4 hours in it today. I am also grateful to an impossible degree for air conditioning.

Randomly, I am terrified of developing salmonella, as tonight I discovered half way through eating my chicken that it was undercooked right in the middle. I hope I caught it before actually eating any of it. Kirk then ATE the undercooked piece to check to see if it was really undercooked. I have recently seen a book called "The Male Brain." Perhaps it would explain this bit of clear insanity.

Hoping for babe tomorrow before the food poisining kicks in.....

The Waiting Game

2010-05-15T10:01:00.000-04:00

As you all have probably noted, I have not written lately, namely because of the numb inertia-turned-restlessness-turned-inertia that is called Waiting for Baby. I was very convinced I would go into labour at 37 weeks exactly (today). This hope and expectation was further encouraged by a Monday visit to meet the second midwife, who said I was 70% effaced and 2 cm dilated. Yesterday I saw my normal midwife, who said I was not effaced, was 1-2 cm dilated, but that my cervix was nice and stretchy. So she did a membrane sweep, but apart from making me feel crampy and desolate all day, this did nothing (so far). This morning Kirk and Anja are at the spring church clean up (I didn't feel I'd be terribly useful, and I am tired of explaining I am three weeks away from my due date to old ladies who think I should be squired away at home), so I am going to go for an hour and a half walk with the dog and hopefully will exhaust myself into labour. My midwife assures me this baby will not be bigger than Anja, however, at 37 weeks I am measuring 39.5. I don't believe her.

This month, I gained 10 lbs from a nasty licorice habit. I have surpassed the "normal" weight gain. I know I have no one to blame but myself. I could have only gained 25.

Things strangers have said to me over the last week:

On getting out of the car: "Wow."
On Anja running down the sidewalk ahead of me: "Why don't you chase her?"
On seeing me walking in the park with Anja: "Aren't you taking a big risk?" - to which I replied "What?" "Well, aren't you about the go into labour?" This kind soul than proceeded to say she remembered everyone stopping to talk to her about how big she was, to which I replied "Yes, and I can't wait for it to stop," to which she kept talking. Meanwhile, I was treading very lightly to the car as I had to pee very badly and there was not washroom at the park, and I was convinced I was about to pee my pants.
One very nice lady: "You look beautiful." If they could only all be like that.

I have not been sleeping lately, between going to the bathroom once an hour and not being able to fall back asleep, only to finally fall asleep and have crazy dreams, like some crazy scientist injecting thalidomide into the baby, or having the baby and not being able to find him because the midwives had put him into an woodfired oven (I saw Yann Martel read and speak this week, which is probably where that came from).

Speaking of Yann Martel, I have been further considering the PhD route. The University of Ottawa has crazy funding for graduate students, so it could work, and over the past 6 months I've realized I am a very goal oriented person, and have been floundering with the meaning of my life for 5 years. So, I am going to apply in February for the following September. It is actually strangely flexible with having children, and, my god, do I miss thinking. Yann Martel because I think his writing might be a cornerstone of any dissertation question I would choose. Also, I am tired of being the "supporter to Kirk's medical career."

I have a friend who is a female colleague of Kirk's, and she says that all the other women are in awe that Kirk wants to take 6 months off with babe in hero-like status, and that his wife is "so lucky." To which I say, I am very grateful Kirk is an excellent, truly smitten father, but his taking time off was not really my choice, and now I have to go back and teach the blessings of a comma for four months in order to accomodate, and pump, and leave a 6 month old baby.

As you can tell, I am full of wildflowers and happy sunshine today. Off to walk and get this baby out.

Recent photos:

A Vet, A Big Baby, and a PhD

2010-04-28T17:18:00.000-04:00

Indie the dog is ill again - not ill enough that she is prostrate on the floor or anything, but ill enough to poop in the house even though Kirk is sitting right by the outside door and warrant another trip to the vet for $400 for what is likely giardia. Kirk wonders why they just don't treat for probables like this instead of running all of the expensive diagnostic tests. True. Then again, I would rather know what it is before babe arrives in two weeks. Today, we went out for the afternoon, and when we came home Indie the dog was on the other side of dog gate. Casualties: one very destroyed roll of paper towel, one wooden toy, one stuffed kitten, possibly one live kitten (we see fur, but no Alice), one stuffed mouse and a pee smell we cannot find the source of. I haven't yet ventured up to the top floor of the house for fear of poo.

I visited the midwife yesterday and I am measuring 36.5 weeks though I was only 34.3. This accounts for the strong possiblity that this baby is already 6.5 pounds, and perhaps explains why I get comments every time I go out about how I look "ready to pop" or questioned "how many babies do you have in there?" This could also explain the immense discomfort I feel right now and the heaving about I have to do to get myself out of bed and up our 5 flights of stairs. Kirk has showed me the trick of checking for pitting edema in my legs, which I now have and do obsessively. Also, I have called for the dog twice in the last couple of days, only to have her peek out from beneath my belly wagging her tail saying "I'm right here!".

I have (approx.) 15.2 days until my midwife has agreed to do the infamous stretch and sweep. I don't know what I'll do if it fails to induce, although she has assured me it's just as easy to birth an 11 pound baby as it is a 9.10 ounce one.

Then again, what to do with a new baby??? Ack. Yikes. Eek.

I do feel it may be closer rather than later, however, because I am getting the restless "what do I want to do with my life" big manic dreams like doing a cross-disciplinary Phd in English and Religious Studies AND working AND having a newborn AND determining to run another marathon in May (it justifies the double Chariot purchase).

I have finished Yann Martel's new novel "Beatrice and Virgil." It left an icky feelin,g as I think it was supposed to. I think I will have to reread it. Any one else have thoughts?

A Vet, A Fever and Another Book

2010-04-20T17:54:00.000-04:00

Indie the dog will not drink water. On Friday and Saturday she was ill to her tummy due to a parasite, a virus or, as the vet calls it "a dietary indiscretion." $321 and 2 hours in pet emergency later (am I wrong to think if I am paying $321, I shouldn't have to wait 2 hours with a vomiting dog and a preschooler? Why do I feel like waiting in a human emergency is more acceptable? Money? Hmmmm), she is on antibiotics , had a gallon of subcutaneous fluid injected under her skin, is eating "gastro" food and seems energetic enough, but she will not drink, so I am reduced to feeding her ice cubes by hand. I even put chicken broth down for her this morning, but to no avail. Is it the antibiotics?

Yesterday, Anja developed a sudden onset headache followed by fever and, when we dropped Kirk off at work, vomited all over the car, and I do mean all over. This is not a good combination. I don't think it's a gastro, because she is keeping most things down and does not have "the runs", but naturally I Googled it and came up with the diagnosis of meningitis, especially when Tylenol did not treat the fever (Advil subsequently did). Luckily I have someone to page to keep me calm, otherwise I would have been in yet another emergency room last night (and yet not short $300.). Still, what if he is too casual about his own kids? Although if he got really worried about something, I would faint in fright. Anyway, it was a very long night of giving her fluids and fever relief, and she woke up chipper, but the fever resumed this afternoon.

I do get very squirelly when I feel cooped up in the house, particularly because it is so beautiful out the last few days.

Of course, too, if baby complies with a 37 week birth, I have just over three weeks to get organized, but can't seem to organize my brain or the various sick creatures in the house. I have a list. A list is a good place to start, but as our routine is now changing, I find it hard to know at what point to do what during the day, which brings me to my next rambling about "How to Raise Your Spirited Child" - another parenting book that I am reading and wishing I had read 4 years ago.

One thing I related to was the book's discussion on extroverts and introverts, as I learned Anja is an extrovert and thrives on knowing where we are going next, and being around lots of people on the move, and being in the same room with me regardless of if I would like to keep sleeping or not. I, on the other hand, tend to like seeing a few people at a time, not going to hugely crowded places (I used to get full blown panic attacks even going to a coffee shop), and then going home for quiet time. She likes to chatter alot, and tell me all about her day many different ways until I repeat it back to her exactly right, whereas I like a fair amount of silence. All of this to say that once I realized this, it is easier to realize that she is not trying purposely to bug me, but just approaches the day differently. For a long time, this made me feel non-fun, non-spontaneous and generally a bore, but now I can look at ways that both of our needs are met. The book also talks about how for spirited kids (the definition of which is just more kid - more sensitive, perceptive, kinestetic), time outs don't work because they need you to help calm their bodies down. I've tried this with Anja and am surprised how much it works. I've told her to say when she gets really upset about something "I need you to help me calm down, and I need a hug" and it works. Huh. The book also says that spirited kids will act out through their actions whatever tension is going on in the house, which has always been hugely accurate of Anja. It also says that most kids go through behaviour difficulties around their birthdays and half-birthdays as their perceptions and way of seeing the world changes as the age. Another eye opener.

Back to routine. I think I am a "spirited adult" - i.e. am an acutely sensitive and need routine to keep ME balanced. This is hard, because neither Anja or Kirk seem to need order as much as I do - they seem to be freer spirits (though Anja does benefit from some structure, I think too much, as was the case in her preschool, tends to drive her nuts). So, as work winds down and Anja is home with me, I'm just finding it hard to dive into what needs doing, and feeling fairly discombobulated and under self-imposed (and deadline driven) pressure, which renders me restless and immobile at the same time. One way I realize I waste time quite a bit is on the computer, so I am going to experiment with computer time once every three days. Is it doable? Any success stories out there or different interpretations of time wasting? How do you waste time? Does it drive you nuts or fortify you?

One last thing: I am starting to get "the comments." Last night in the grocery store it was "My, aren't you about to go." Today, walking by the park and talking to some of the day-home providers, one of them said "We all watched you go by and thought "She must be due at any minute." Indeed, no. Sigh. I should make a shirt I can change: "6 weeks to go, 5 weeks to go," etc.

2010-04-14T19:56:00.000-04:00

The past week and a half have been, well, complicated for a number of reasons. Pregnancy wise, it may be that I have a bit of anemia as I started getting SO tired even just doing silly stuff like walking up the stairs (and we have 5 sets of stairs in our house), and walking the dog made me want to pass out for the rest of the day. I had stopped taking my iron supplements because I didn't get to the store to buy a new bottle, and my haemoglobin was not the best - indeed borderline - when I had blood taken at 24 weeks. Now, I'm 32.4. Anyway, my midwife suggested I double up on the iron for a few weeks, and then I'll get it rechecked.

The other surprising and slightly worrying thing is that at my visit yesterday, I had +2 protein in my urine. She gave me some strips to take home, and this morning I had +1. My blood pressure appears fine (110/70), but combined with the utter fatigue, the new back pain, and that wierd month where I gained 9 lbs etc, I don't quite know what's up. I have also had some wierd occasional vision things where I see what appear to be little firefly specks. My weight gain has been normal since then, as has my fluid retention, though I had to buy a pair of size 7 summer shoes this week while I am usually a size 6. I am probably worrying for nothing, but you know me by now, I worry. Lots. It's a good thing Kirk has a blood pressure cuff at home, and I will recall my midwife tomorrow if things are still looking funny. I know my blood pressure is usually far BELOW normal ranges, so the question is, is it possible to have "normal" blood pressure but have it be high for me?

So, last night I was up worrying about that. I also stayed up a bit to watch the first half of Glee, but couldn't get through it - anybody else ever think that once a show knows it's successful, it ends up losing a lot of its, well, good writing in order to make it live up to the hype?

Anyway, I don't really want to write about Glee, but I am avoiding the bigger subject. Along with feeling like hibernating for four months every time I go for a walk, I have been crying three or four times a day about various things and finally figured out why. We made the decision to pull Anja out of preschool at the end of this week. She does not like "work" time there, and has struggled with going for some time, despite all the things she has learned. I don't know that Montessorri is quite the right learning environment for her - there is not a lot of true creative time, and I think she needs that and, gosh darn it, just to play. Anyway, it's been quite a ride trying to communicate our concerns with the director, who has opened another school and is hardly there. First, she took more than 24 hours to respond to a serious concern. I teach business communication. Bad, bad, bad. Also bad is when you can't construct a proper sentence and you teach children. When I wrote about how Anja was so unhappy, my concerns about the lack of natural, outdoor playtime (which is included in their school philosophy, and we were told the children would be going to the amazing lake-fronting park across the street lots when we registered - they haven't been there once), the director wrote back said "maybe it's just a drop off issue, she's (note the comma splice) fine the rest of the day" and "you will have to keep paying the fees according to school policy." This has happened before with nutrition issues - she is just a hard person to talk to in person and to communicate with via email. I also know from the actual teachers that Anja does struggle.

So. Why is this such a big decision, beyond the fact is is silly financially? It took days of weeping to figure it out. First, I realized that Anja has been sending us messages for a very long time through her behaviour and words that something was up, and because it wasn't necessarily convenient for us at the time, I didn't act on these signs quite as effectively as I could have. I am also afraid at the prospect of being hugely pregnant and then tired with a newborn was more than I could cope with. Then I realized the bigger reason: I was afraid of being alone with her for all that time.

I've been increasingly afraid to spend time alone with Anja for the past year, and not because of her, but because of the person I become when I am around her. I truly appreciate my good friends for saying "but look at all that's on your plate - of course you are going to lose your patiences sometimes." Still, I know and knew that it was deeper than that. I just couldn't articulate what was going on.

So, I hit the parenting books. I've also always known that it is not about Anja's behaviour, but it is about what her behaviour is trying to tell me. She is the little kid, and I, supposedly, am the adult. I found a fabulous book called "When Your Kids Push Your Buttons and What to Do About It." Now, I may need more actual techniques about how to handle sticky situations (I also bought "How to Raise a Spirited Child," but haven't read it yet), but I know that starting with me is the best approach. It is hard to communicate all the major points of the book, but what I have realized is that I react a lot out of anxiety, withdrawal and reseentment. This, of course, all stems from how I was raised. I KNEW I was doing the same things my parents did (not letting me have real emotions about things, making me responsible for their emotions at the same time communicating that if I withdrew from them, I was the most horrid person alive, etc, etc), but I could not figure out why I was doing this. I realized that my biggest "weapon" in all my relationships is withdrawal, because it was the only thing I could do for a long time. Every time there is a crisis - whether it be about getting dressed or what have you, I don't know do what else to besides withdraw, even though I develop major guilt associations around withdrawal. This same withdrawal is the power tool I've been using against Anja since toddlerhood.
Also, as you know, I tend to be a highly anxious person. I rush and nag her a lot, which seems to stem from my fear of life spiralling out of control. Everything must happen according to plan and schedule or the world will fall apart.

Finally, I have been afraid that she will suck the life out of me and drain everything I want for myself (time to write, etc) as have other mother relationships in my life, and so I resent that she, being four, cannot take care of herself and is irrational often and has her own ideas about the way time works. But she, actually, is not responsible for any of that.

None of this is particularly rocket science, but it feels half decent to know about my triggers so I can step back in a situation and understand why I'm reacting the way I am and to know that she is not really doing it on purpose, but has learned to react to my reactions.

Here I had thought that I had "dealt" with all the family of origin stuff in my twenties, but those damn families of origins keep popping up again and again.

So, it does appear that I am currently on "best behaviour" - and I'm trying to make it a habit to realize she walks to the beat of her own drummer, and I to mine, and sometimes those will conflict without the sky falling. More, I don't have to be stuck feeling the way I do about myself and her for the rest of my life. Maybe I can be good at this after all.

Rankled

2010-04-04T23:24:00.000-04:00

It is 10:18 at night, and I am very tired but cannot sleep, a little due to active baby, but primarily because I have felt rankled ever since we drove home from a very pleasant dinner at a friends' house. The male in this very egalitarian couple is also a resident, and Kirk made some passing comment when we were leaving about how he and other residents were joking that it would be great if wives (even though the majority of residents in the program are female...) could shadow the residents to see how hard their work really is.

Of course, Kirk is snoring blissfully away, and I know he really was up all night long last night and that he works very long hours and often does not sleep at all 1 out of every 4 nights and is coming up on a two week stretch in which he is up every second night.

The thing is, I know this. I know he works hard and is tired. I hear enough to know it is often very stressful and that awful things happen regulary. Trust me, I know he is not around a lot.

I also know, from a conversation we had the other day, that if he had a chance to change careers at this point, he would not do it because he loves what he does.

I know that if he doesn't sleep all night, he gets to come home and nap.

I know that he gets to learn and think critically every day.

I know that he gets told if he does a good job.

I know patients and parents appreciate him.

I know that he gets to have "Dr." in front of his name.

I know that I do his laundry, his grocery shopping, his dishes, his endless tidying, his bill paying (even though I forgot to pay the hydro bill last month and almost got our power cut off, which caused a sobbing fit on my part, which no one acknowledged but the dog), his worrying and squirrelling away for increased interest rates, most of his cooking, make sure extra-curriculars, childcare, birthday parties and presents and the Easter Bunny are arranged for Anja, walk the dog, deal with endless errands, do not get to be the "hero-daddy-fun-guy" everytime I swoop home, and hey, have to work (don't get me wrong, I am grateful I have a job that works so well with children and above chores) but as no-one wants to take English, no-one appreciates it, and I certainly don't get any prestige, and why not balance that out with trying endlessly to get the goddamn dog pee smell out of the carpets, only to be told I am not housetraining her right, and I need to get the steamcleaner fixed and the carpets done, and by the way I yell at Anja too much. And if we are both sick and barfing, even though I am pregnant, I'm the one who does not get to nap and moan all day and by the way, if I have a miscarriage, I cannot expect a phone call to check to see I am not hemmoraging because the ICU is too busy, and oh, and when he finally starts practicing, it is a lot of pressure on him if I decide not to work and actually want help with the 4 children required for a busy, bustling household.

Hmmm. I seem quite bitter, don't I? And clearly I can't seem to rid myself of past resentments. Well maybe it's time to admit that I AM bitter and jealous, and I have no idea how not to be. And he really is a decent person. I know this too. I guess I'm just upset at the implication that it is all gravy for me, and that I don't appreciate what he does.

And people say "it will all be worth it in the end," but can't they see that all of his rewards are not necessarily my rewards? So what if one day in 4 or 5 years we have money and expensive kitchen appliances? Where have I gone in this process? I seem to remember about five years ago I was in graduate school and was accepted into the Banff Writers Studio and had a book accepted for publication. I seem to recall completing 4 university degrees, and being invited to apply to graduate programs. I seem to recall once having goals beyond getting the towels folded (which I failed to do today).

It is a wierd place to be - knowing I have a strong and healthy daughter, a new baby on the way, a house over my head and food on the table - and for these I am truly grateful. Most days, I wake up in the morning and remind myself to try to enjoy it. I truly WANT to give in to being totally engrossed in and satisfied by this. Why can't I just do all this for the love in my heart, beyond the fact that I seem naturally to be a grinchy person?

But always are the other thoughts: who am I now, and how will this end? I've heard lots of couples get divorced throughout this med school/residency process, and these are the kinds of days I certainly know why. And a huge part of me thinks we should go to some kind of counselling, but, stubbornly and idiotically, I refuse to do it because that means another thing I'd have to be invested in all by myself and organize it, of course, around his all-important, ever-changing schedule to boot.

And so, stuck in the mud. Or, to use a visual reference, imagine me as Holly Hunter in The Piano (the musical score I played endlessly when pregnant with Anja) with one foot tied to the sinking piano, her skirts billowing up around her. Will She Struggle Herself Free?

PS. Any one know any good books about four-year-olds out there?

No Good Very Bad Horrible Mother Day

2010-03-24T19:33:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday and Thursday mornings, Anja and I need to leave the house by 8:20 in order for me to be at work on time. One would think that starting to get Anja dressed after breakfast at 7:40 would be ample time to accomplish the leaving-the-house goal. However, for some unknown reason this morning, Anja decided not to get dressed, not to listen, and to scream and cry copiously until 8:15 at which point I basically forced her into her clothes, lost my own temper and told her we were definitely not taking cupcakes to school for her birthday tommorrow if she continued that behaviour. More crying and screaming ensued to the point I thought I might hit or shake her, which is a very scary place to be in. Finally, we got in the car and started driving, though she wouldn't stop screaming. At that point, I pulled over to the side of our road and told her to shut up (yikes) and not say a word the whole way to school or we would sit there the whole day and again, there would be no cupcakes tommorrow. Thankfully she was finally quiet. When we got to school, I apologized and said we would make cupcakes if we both had better behaviour when I picked her up.

However, I'm afraid I set the tone for the whole day, as her teachers said she screamed and refused to co-operatethe whole morning at school, which is unheard of behaviour for her Mid cupcake making this afternoon, her friend Kate was playing outside. Kate is 7 and Anja LOVES to play with her, but it was just before dinner, we were making cupcakes, then it would be bed time, so I said no. Which set off another screaming fit in which she had to be "sequestered" for her own safety. I threw the dog in there too, who was stealing socks again and running away in frenzied-you-can't-catch-me fashion. After a cooling off period, Anja returned and commenced screaming about something else - to which I actually said "You are behaving so badly, I don't think you deserve birthday presents tommorrow. Now sit down and finish the stupid cupcakes."

Why do such awful, stupid and atrocious things come out of my mouth? Why am I not better at remaining calm? Why do things never seem to escalate like this with Kirk? Why can't I remember to count to ten? Where is all the latent rage coming from? I know since being pregnant it's been a lot worse, but sometimes I think we need to go to family counselling to get things back on track, as I always feel like I'm the heavy who can't keep her temper, and I get so exhausted with this role. Maybe I should stop thinking about it and just do it. Arg. Anybody else been there?

2010-03-18T22:08:00.000-04:00

It has been a very crazy week, which started with Kirk getting up on Monday morning and saying "I don't feel very well." The day then progressed to both of us barfing, Kirk reclining and moaning in a chair all day, and me up and about servicing the child's and dog's needs. Of course, I put in a teary call to my midwife asking if this meant I would miscarry. She very calmly assured me that I wouldn't, and to try to stay hydrated.

Tuesday I took my first sick day ever at this job, and though my tummy got better, I developed a very sore throat that seems to require Tylenol extra strength (how I mourn the loss of Advil) at two in the morning so I can sleep. Now, nasal congestion and ear pain sinks in. On Tuesday, I also got a tax reassessment which states I now owe another $1000 dollars, which I cannot see as being possible, as I still have left over tuition credits and geez, I didn't make hardly anything last year. I don't understand how CRA caculates things. I also spent the day bleaching the entire house sans carpets, though I spent my fair share of time scrubbing out pee stains from a certain new puppy who does not seem to understand that she can pee on things outside other than snow, which is now almost gone.

On Wednesday after work and taking child and dog to park, I opened our freezer to take out one of the meals I spent a whole weekend cooking and took a moment to process the smell and water dripping. Apparently, the freezer, which contained at least two weeks (read $200) worth of meals and berries from the summer, had been unplugged by a certain name-starts-with-K someone by accident. I also spent $100 on a portable carpet cleaner for said pet stains.

This morning, I had had enough of the "I'm tired" and "College is too hard" comments by students and basically told one of them that I registered his disapproval with an assignment but was not going to argue further about it at 9:00 in the morning. Also, I lived with someone who worked 100 hour weeks and never complained (I do all the complaining in that department, though I didn't say that) and we all have to work hard to get where we are at, and he's had three weeks to sort out his particular issue. I also told one student that since we had covered professional email standards, I would appreciate it if he would use these standards in his communication with me, to which he replied via email:

Dear Brenda,

Ouch.

Cheers,
W*******

I also had to tell two other students that while I was glad they were sorry they had missed their in-class assignments worth 10%, not waking up to your alarm was not a good excuse and yes, I was absolutely certain they could not make it up.

Upon going into the kitchen this evening to prepare dinner, I noticed a wierd engine burnt out smell. It seems our microwave had imploded at some point during the day while I was away. Did you know it is possible to spend $1000 on a new microwave (not that I'm going to).

A week perhaps worth forgetting, though the one positive to a gastro is that it seems to have rid my newly swollen ankles and fingers of excess fluid accumulation that was making it hard to wear my shoes and rings. I'm hoping this was a part of the 9, yes 9, pounds I gained last month. I have been trying much harder to watch my diet and sugar consumption since then. Another positive is that I realized that when I get gastros, as bad as it is, I never actually feel nauseous. This doesn't mean I'm comfortable because my stomach has stabbing pain, but it doesn't make me want to die. What makes me want to die is when I eat avocado, mango or non-organic banana. Anybody else have a sensitivity to that combination? It's something about the latex compound... I was also wierdly releived that Kirk and I both got the bug at the same time so that I didn't have to live in mortal fear of his touching things and the possibility of germ transmission for days on end.

Also on the plus side as been absolutely glorious, early, early spring weather. We have been going outside without jackets - shock! awe! glee! Anja has also had a blast this week because her preschool has had a March break, and she has had a 16 year old over to babysit. They have gone to the park, bicycled, gone to story time, bought some new crafts, and of course, with the weather, spent lots of time outside, so Anja has been tuckered at night. She has also managed to avoid all my germiness.

Wednesday night Anja and I were in the store buying dinner after said freezer episode and we were wandering up the cereal aisle and she pointed at some of the more colourful boxes (i.e. Lucky Charms) and said "look at those Mummy." I said "I know, but they aren't very healthy. They are full of too much sugar." Anja thought for a few moments and then said "But why do stores sell things that aren't healthy?" Smart kid.

She has taken to uttering threats on occasion. Her favourite and most diabolically uttered is "Then I'm going to put mud on you." Tonight, it was "then I'm going to take ketchup and mustard and SPRAY IT ALL OVER THE HOUSE." Kirk managed to keep a straight face, but I couldn't.

I do wonder if kindergarten will be challenging enough for her, though I'm trying not to be one of those yuppie helicopter mothers about it. It's just that I went to her kindergarten orientation meeting and the biggest things the teachers stressed were that the child should know how to hold a crayon and how to cut things, with a little bit of letter recognition thrown in. Can I just say Anja can write the entire alphabet, is learning sounds to letters, can write to 20, is learning French grammar, etc? Now, I know every parent thinks their child is smart, and she will probably enjoy the play atmosphere, the bus and the new friends, but she is way past learning how to hold a crayon (to this I offer all credit to her preschool). I don't know quite how she will fit into the public school system. Kirk skipped a grade because of his brains, but it wasn't terribly the best for him in terms of social development - as he says "try being the youngest and smallest kid in class. And the only Protestant in a Catholic school, too." I guess we'll see how it goes and keep our eyes and ears open. Indeed, I guess in Sunday School at church she asked the teacher "how did the Roman's knock down the temple walls?" and then proceeded to ask me "Mummy, why did Jesus move away from Bethlehem?" To which I sputtered my guilt-laden "do I really believe this, should I really be telling her these stories, how do I clarify literalism and metaphor" kind of answer.

The dog continues to be a dog. She picks up everything - EVERYTHING - off the floor and sidewalks and has a special affinity for socks. A catalogue of things I have pulled from her mouth this week: screw, drywall anchor, dominoe piece, Anja's stuffed cat, dog, mouse, elephant, bookmark, a combination of all of our socks, a block, a bra, a bloody bird feather, a stranger's dirty kleenex, food wrappers, a stranger's spat out gum, a dryer sheet, etc, etc. When she does find a particularly tasty household object, she likes to scurry as fast as she can under beds, directly under the middle where it is impossible to reach her. It is ever so comfortable for me to be on my hands and knees trying to get at her with my big belly. She likes to nibble at toes and pant legs still. She will lick me awake at 6 every morning if Anja doesn't get to me first. One thing I don't like is she seems to be a bit bossy with other dogs and I cannot get her to stop pulling at her leash at them. People tell me this is puppy like and she just needs to be put in her place, but I HATE dog fights.

As my gestational diabetes test came back fine, the midwife and I are in agreement that we should start natural methods of induction at 37 weeks. Which means - da da da da da - hopefully I only have another 8 weeks of being pregnant.

I should go to sleep, being as tired as I am and knowing that I will be harrassed awake at 6 again tomorrow. What do 21-year-olds know about being tired?

A Brief Epistle on Grey's Anatomy and the REAL Sex lives of Residents

2010-03-06T19:23:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's because he is in pediatrics, or it is because he is a very simple soul and generally well-behaved, or that we are just tired, parenting marrieds, but Kirk swears there is no sex in call rooms at work. And really, I've seen pictures of the call rooms - less appealing than a 2 star motel. So, recently (we have caved and bought a television "for the Olympics," which may also account for my less than stellar writing record) I happened across Grey's Anatomy. There is a bizarre amount of hospital sex on that show, because, you know, no one is there to actually do any work and the hospitals are not full of contagious disease, otherwise sick and/or crazy people.

So, here is a brief schedule of REAL sex lives of residents (and Kirk will DIE when he reads this, but he is on call and I am feeling chatty - I might be in trouble).
Monday - Brenda's tired and goes to sleep at 8.
Tuesday - Kirk is on call
Wednesday - Brenda is tired and goes to sleep at 8
Thursday - Kirk is on call
Friday - we both fall asleep watching Stephen Colbert
Saturday - Kirk is on call.
Sunday - "wild card" - i.e. chance we are both asleep by 8.

This baby, in other words, is a product of immaculate conception.

Now, if some of you out there can counter this with true juicy stories, please do! Maybe there are lots of swinging single residents out there? How often are normal married people supposed to have sex, anyway?

PS - (sorry, Kim, this may be WAY too much family info!!!!)

Resolution Update in Scattered Form

2010-03-02T19:59:00.000-05:00

So, here we are at the beginning of March already. How many weeks does it take to form a habit?

Hmmm. The no-guilt resolution has its moments, but I think at this point, in hockey terms, it is guilt 20 million, Brenda 0. I'm having troubles mainly with motherhood guilt. Kirk and I agreed at the beginning of the semester that some sort of consistency would be good for Anja - i.e. regular hours at preschool instead of willy-nilly days off. And she does learn so much there - her primary versus secondary colours, starting French grammar, etc. In the meantime, though, my schedule is such that I am not at work all the hours she is at school. Most of this non-work time is now taken up with giving the dog a good hour and a half walk, but sometimes it does make me feel like I am "choosing" the dog over Anja. In other words, I am struggling to meet everyone's needs. I would probably feel less bad if I was a bucket of fun to be with when we are together - but I am generally in some kind of hormonal see-saw funk. Or maybe it's just that she is so whiny these days, and I haven't been able to find out why, but it is exhausting. Why am I not just a natural fun-person? Which leads me to think maybe I am one of those people who should have had a license to have children.

Writing. Well, I have made progress. During our reading break I did write every day, but now I feel a bit stuck as to the direction this particular project is going in. So I have been avoiding writing for a week - which means I am not following the resolution of writing every day. So feeling like I am never going to write anything decent again, and that I will stick to the fine art of procrastination and resulting guilt for the rest of my life...

Yoga. With the dog, I am walking lots now, at least said 1.5 hours a day. So I am not doing as much yoga, but am still doing it 2 or 3 times a week. I remain fairly happy about that.

Sugar - well. How about early induction to avoid overgrown babe? Weight gain? I still think I'm giong ok, though at the end of the day my ankles are a little more puffy than usual. I just feel, well, round. Overripe. However, this weekend I did make 3 weeks worth of dinners to combat our recent nutritionally deficient diet, though Anja, according to her screaming fit tonight, would rather have waffles and pancakes every night.

On the positive side, I have discovered a pottery co-op here and want to join once babe is a bit older. It's 24 hours open and it teaches fun things like how to fire and run a kiln. I would really, really like to start making dinnerware to sell. What do you think?

(While I'm writing this, I'm watching an episode of a sappy show called Brothers and Sisters, and there has been a recent miscarriage - it's wierd because even though I am currently hugely pregnant, I am weepy because she says her body keeps letting her down and she feels so broken - I can still relate).

I'm also wondering at this stage why current scientific research has not been able to shorten the gestational process just a wee bit. I am determined not to go past 38 weeks, which means just over 11 weeks to go.
11 weeks is a lifetime. Plus, I would really like one of those delicious ales Kirk has sitting in the fridge. Instead, I will go drown myself in frozen yogurt.

Life Continued

2010-02-21T20:11:00.000-05:00

It's been a very busy week or so - wierdly busy and social to the point I am grateful to have a night at home. It's been fun, though, too; one highlight being going to Winterlude and giant snow-slides and dog-sledding. However, I did also have "reading break" at work, so I got to write for a few hours a day, walk (or hobble around with) the dog. I'm finding it hard to know where this writing is going - but again I am trying to stay true to just writing for the love of it and not worrying about it's final form. I'm very good at this at pottery, perhaps because I have no expectations there - but it is a much more fun creative process than constantly listening to the critics in my brain. I am even getting proficient enough in pottery now to consider getting a membership at a studio after the baby is a bit older and making comissioned dinnerware sets. But, again, it's also just darn fun. I do have trouble throwing these days as the combination of leaning forward and pressing into clay is very hard on the pregnant sciatic nerve.

Indie the dog is settling in well. She does add a whole new dimension of complicatedness (i.e. getting up early enough before Kirk goes to work to walk her, etc, etc,), but she is learning very fast. She housetrained within 3 days, and is great at commands on leash and in the house (we had a house full of people and kids today and she stayed in a down when commanded). She is also learning recall when on a 30 foot rope, so I am pleased with that. She can be a little stinker as she still thinks nibbling people is great sport, and ALWAYS challenges my authority around her ball at the field, and likes to nibble the faux fur on my winter boots, and sometimes has "crazy" spells where I cannot catch her). All in all, though, I am so pleased with her. It doesn't quite seem real after the harrowing experiences of our other dog - Indie has met and done very well with other dog friends (I cannot believe I am making play dates for my dog, but I want her socialized with good dogs first), cats (she got boxed soundly by a tiny, old and decrepit cat), kids, people.... She even tolerated a child jumping on her today, until I put a very quick end to the situation after the mother failed to. I am a firm believer in the philosophy that just because your dog will tolerate these things doesn't mean she should have to. She seems firmly attached to me over everyone else and will follow me around the house and stay in rooms I am in. I don't mind having a buddy like that.

I am also finding I actually enjoy the early morning walks if I manage to get to bed early enough the night before (we bought a TV this week "for the Olympics" - again, how the mighty mightily fall. I went and got my hair cut this afternoon and Kirk and Anja watched the Olympics the entire time I was gone - bad! bad! bad! Although Anja does want to be a speed skater when she is four - I approve of this much more than I could if it was skeleton or aerial skiing...). In any case, I am getting sucked in by the ease of mindless entertainment, even if it is on a fuzzy screen as we don't have cable. Tonight, by nine!

Not much else to say, except back to work this week. 10 weeks to go. Below is a picture of Indie - how could I not take her home?

It's a ....

2010-02-07T21:17:00.000-05:00

Girl!

The dog, that is. The dog that is currently on the floor beside the couch, farting, much like Walter the Farting Dog, for all you preschool readers out there (imagine having to read that story, along with Walter Goes on a Cruise to your child for 21 days straight, thanks to my sister's Christmas present).

Anyway, how did this come to be, you must ask? Are you crazy? You have a 4 year old, a baby due in June, and a husband who you never see?

And I must answer that I don't really know, expect that for all my micromanaging of our daily life and future, I am at heart irrational and very, very impulsive. In fact, I have been advising a friend of mine who has a newborn and a 2 year old that a dog at this stage is a very, very bad idea, and that I certainly would not be getting a dog, as is advised by the experts, until my kids were well into elementary school.

It all started on Friday. Fridays I don't work, so was writing while waiting for Kirk, who has been working very strange and wee morning hours, to wake up. I opened my work email to see if there was any strike updates. And lo and behold, the veterinary technician program at the college had sent out an email about animals they had for adoptions. So, naturally, I looked. And, naturally, I immediately saw a picture of a droopy eared black puppy (Kirk and I are suckers for droopy eared, soulful eyed black puppies.) I would put in a photo, but I cannot figure it out, luddite that I am.

When Kirk arose, I said "Kirk, I want to show you something..." And, despite his saying "Brenda, we can't get a dog right now," then, "You know you will see that dog and not be able to say no" we ended up bringing one home on Saturday morning.

Her name is Indie, she is a black lab/field spaniel cross (which is a very good combination temperament wise), and she is smart as a whip and equally sweet. She is about knee height and full grown at around 1 year old. We had HUGE aggression problems with our previous dog (see post about miscarriage early last summer), and this little dog does not seem to have a stitch of mean-ness in her. As basically a pup, she still quite enjoys nibbling at people (Anja in particular), so we are being quite firm about this. In fact, given our previous experience, we are both very firm about rules, which are enforced through patience, consistency and leadership rather than treat training. (People look at me like I know not of what I speak about this, much like having kids, but I have been through the dog fire, and no one could convince me otherwise at this point) She goes up the stairs and through doors after us, is expected to remain where put until released, NO table food, NO furniture, NO beds, NO leading or pulling on walks, RESPECT of cats (Henry, one of our two cats, has given her a good couple of swats and in fact, the first time Indie saw Henry, she ran to Kirk and curled up on his lap) and kids, etc. She is very timid, though, and Kirk's firmness does scare her sometimes as he's, well, much bigger than she is. So she runs and hides by me until he manages to convince her that it's all ok. Of course, plenty of play, too.

She is not fully housebroken, which frightens me, but is a very quick study, so I'm hoping she gets it soon as it limits my new-found mobility and "me-time," (do you get the sense yet that I tend to shoot myself in the foot?) but I'll just replace swimming with walking - winter is almost over anyway. I am worried about Thursdays, as I work all day. Also, I forgot to consider that Kirk has to go to Iqualauit for a month next year, and that he might do some international fellowship electives in the years to come. And that kids under 8 and dogs should never be alone in the same room even if you do trust your dog. She also eats her own poo. Delicious when frozen in snow! How gross!

However, last night I was so worried about her going pee on our bedroom carpet, I kept waking up to ask her if she had to go pee. In response, she would run back to her bed, curl up, and close her eyes. She does not seem to like the cold.

So, I am crazy and overwhelmed and it's all entirely of my doing. We are forever-home type people for animals, though, so what to do at this point but enjoy, right?? Right???

Meanwhile, Henry, in a fit of pique, peed in the bathtub. I hear him scratching up there now.

Oh, the drama

2010-02-03T20:21:00.001-05:00

It's been a bit of a difficult week for a few reasons. First good parts: We had a nice little family getaway this weekend, and I was proud of myself for driving 2.5 hours on a slippery, mountainy (ok, it's Ontario, it was only hilly) road all alone with Anja in the car. She was happy listening to her music and said a total of four things the entire trip.
"Yes, I want plum"
"Mummy, fire truck!
only one "Mummy, are we almost there?"
and "I can't hear my music."

She is a world-class traveller.

She also said to me the other day "Mummy, what are earwigs? Because in my dream last night Daddy said if I wasn't quiet, earwigs would crawl into my ears. So I was quiet."

Of course, all this family time together caused Kirk and I some tension. Our communication patterns are sometimes not the best, and we have developed not-always-healthy ways of expressing frustration. Since I've been pregnant, too, I've been less willing to accept eye-rolly behaviour and untidiness (will you grow up and pick up after yourself already), and sometimes I do feel blamed for everything (i.e. not knowing exactly where the school we had to register Anja for kindergarten was driving, because we usually pass it on a walking path). In other words, I express my own frustration very quickly, usually in the form of raising my voice just a smidge. Anyway, Monday ended up with me saying "I'm this close to being done being married to you," weeping uncontrollably for 3 hours, then, when he went to work that evening, googling "how to ask your husband to leave," planning who he could move in with while he worked on his communication skills, and wondering who I would invite to the birth if we were separated and would I name the baby on my own?

The storm has blown over (unasked, Kirk even hauled out my huge u-shaped body pillow, which he hates, as a peace gesture), but I forget sometimes how emotionally volatile pregnancy can be. The thing is, though, it is so very easy to stay in the same tired old patterns, and I'm not quite sure how to get out of them. Sometimes I think it is ok to explode and say "enough! Breaking point reached here!" Is it bad to say it sounds like a huge amount of work? Is it shunting responsibility when I say that I would like, just once, to be the one not to take the initiative (counselling, what have you)for once? (Oh, I know it is - still, must it always be me?). Who here has good marital strategies?

All of this of course made me very tired, and I have subsequently gone to bed at 8 each evening. This bed time does not leave much time for writing. I had a good stint on the weekend, though.

Another thing that I'm trying not to let stress me out, but it is, is that the college teachers' union and the colleges have been involved in a tumultuous contract bargaining process with plenty of strike threats. I do not want to strike. I don't beleive that all negotiation options have been reached for on both sides.   I can't lose pay, and I don't want this loss of pay to affect the amount of maternity leave EI I will get for the next 6 months (I don't get a top up.) And I don't want, if there is a strike, for the semester to be extended, because I don't want to be waddling into class 40 weeks pregnant. Also, I want to have this baby at 38 weeks, because I don't want an 11 lb baby.

Finally, I am feeling very round. I have lost sight of my collar bones. This is very distressing. I am going to the midwife and getting weighed on Tuesday. Sigh. I was reading some pregnancy forums tonight and many people have only gained 5-6 lbs at my stage. I have to remind myself that I am in a healthy range (not to point fingers - I have a friend who had hyperemises gravidarum her whole pregnancy and threw up multiple times a day and could not gain weight...)

Anyway, I am watching House as I write this, and am very impressed with how they go in for surgery and start all kinds of treatment without true diagnosis.   I do like crotchety Dr. House none-the-less.

Can I also say that finding boys' names is very difficult?

It's a....

2010-01-26T19:19:00.000-05:00

A ha! Made you look!

I know I said last week that my ultrasound was on Friday. However, that day I happened to look at the requisition and saw that the ultrasound was actually on Monday. So spent the rest of the day a bit dramatically mopey. In any case, this meant that yesterday we all, Anja included, trundled off to the office (and I mean trundle, I had to walk slowly: what cruelty is it to ask a pregnant woman to drink three cups of water and then not pee for two hours?) Of course, on the way there, Kirk decided he didn't want to find out gender after all (complications: what to do about telling Anja then?).

And there was baby, 4 chambered heart and all (I think all - the tech seemed to be able to capture images of all important organs, brain and spine). Have you ever actually seen the heart beating away with all four chambers? Pretty amazing stuff - of course, Kirk has seen this lots, so was surprised by how neat I found that particular part. When the tech got to the nether regions, she told Kirk to look away and pointed "it" out to me (I had to get her to tell me again afterwards, because I thought I might be looking at a misplaced umbilicus.) In other words, it's a boy.

Don't worry - I am not telling you and not my husband (although, to be honest, I probably would have, not being the kind of person to keep news like this all to myself). Having done a radiology rotation, Kirk does know how to look at ultrasounds without having someone point everything out (whereas I see things in lumps and blobs with a bit of snakey spine thrown in for good measure). Later last night, he told me that when the tech was trying to get a full-body shot, he thought he "saw a package." From UPS, dear? I said "would you like me to confirm or deny?" He said "a boy, right?"

So, a boy. Strange. Very strange given that I was raised in a family entirely comprised of girls. And, of course, given that I am me, my reaction is complicated on many fronts.

First, I thought "I knew it." This pregnancy has been so EASY compared to Anja's - no massive bloating (I stll have ankles!), no real headaches, no real nausea, not even that much smell aversion, and I'm still fitting into the small maternity pants. Kirk says there is no real "scientific data" in thinking pregnancies differ as to if it's a boy or a girl... but....

Next, I was relieved, and I'm trying to sort out that reaction. Relieved that I won't have to deal with the intensity of a mother/daughter relationship.

Then, I was afraid. This would mean I might be, at some distant future point, the mother-in-law to some unsuspecting poor girl (which is different somehow than being a mother-in-law to a man - you are seen as crazy in an entirely different way).

Or how about being the creepy mother in the Robert Munsch's I'll Love You Forever (no offence to those who love the story - the intention is very sweet. Still creepy)

Registering next was the fact that I have never liked the awkward skinny boy stage in which they wear jogging pants and pull at themselves.

And that, so says popular wisdom, boys take longer to potty train.

Next, sad that I have bins and bins of pretty girls' clothes and dresses that I've saved up. And for some reason, boys' clothes just don't seem as cute.

Then, today at work, I saw in a new way all the slouchy unmotivated young men dropping the f-bomb far too much and actually prayed "please God, never, never, never."

And (Kirk thinks I'm totally immature about this), I will have to deal with and care for a penis on a daily basis. Dear God! I border on prudishness at the best of times. Besides my husband's and only then on certain nameless "occasions" do I deal with penises! And there is a horrid contraption for boy babies called a "pee-pee tee-pee!" (of course, I will probably have one - a tee-pee, that is).

Then I thought "I must teach my son to value women for the independent, creative thinkers, amazing people they are always."

Tonight, I'm thinking I can do this. I can raise my son to be a good, strong man, just as I can raise my daughter to be a good, strong woman.

Is there a difference? In play? In temperament? In, hopefully, sleep?

I don't know. I guess I'll find out. What do the mothers of boys or girls or of boys and girls think about this?

p.s. One thing that does concern in the big baby department is that this baby already wieghs 1.3 lbs. I am 21 week +3 days. 1.3 lbs is a 24 week measurement. Yikes!

2010-01-24T16:15:00.000-05:00

Today started out roughly - everyone else was in a good mood, but I woke up grumpy and barky at every little thing (crumbs on the living room floor, laundry not thrown in the hamper, but right beside it, being touched - for some reason, since becoming pregnant, I cannot stand being touched much...). Anyway, instead of staying home this afternoon inflicting grumpiness on everyone else, I snuck out to the local bookstore and enjoyed a full hour of browsing before Kirk had to go back to work. I read random cook books and healthy living books and pregnancy books and random works of fiction.

There was one pregnancy book that really stood out for me because it had a section on women's actual feelings surrounding weight gain and pregnancy, and how, if millions of women experience disordered eating, so too should we expect women to still have disordered eating, or feelings around eating, during pregnancy. I suffer from this a lot - never having been a full blown anorexic or bulimic, I have been borderline on both most of my adult life. Since Anja was born, this translated into secret binge-ish type eating (of which almost every member in my family does). It makes me miserable, I know it makes me miserable, but I can't always stop. I know I should stop. I know I don't want a big baby and I don't want the weight that came with Anja. So, I did feel guilty and inadequate when my midwife chastised me at our last visit for Christmas weight gain of 7 lbs in a month. What people don't always understand is it is not always a matter of control. And Christmas is not always a particularly joyous time for me (although that is changing with our own Christmas traditions). Anyway, I have been doing well since the chastising visit, for the most part, but it was so refreshing to read that I am not alone - that weight gain in pregnancy, while I know it's healthy, carries all sorts of emotional resonances for many women and we aren't all perfect all the time, even if we are pregnant.

Also great is that I picked up a copy of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. I know I'm a little behind the times on this one, but I read the first few chapters over a Green Tea Latte and feel a great affinity with her, and also am so thankful to find a best seller that also contains good, good writing. One of the questions she asks herself soon after her divorce is "what are the things that make you happy? That you want to do?" While reading, I had a mini-epiphany that I can still do things that make me happy and be a good mother. For instance, knowing I was a grumpy pot, knowing I just needed one quiet hour, and knowing that I love looking at books and doing something about it made me exquisitely happy and able to come back home and not bite everyone's heads off for every single word they utter. What's remarkable is that this choice has probably always been available to me, but for whatever (ummm, well my own mother) reason I've always associated motherhood with consigning yourself to the fact that everything must be a sacrifice. Many things are sacrifices, but who does it serve if you sacrifice the little things or the big things that make you happy?

What also made me feel connected to Gilbert's book was the fact she found a Louise Gluck book in Rome, and last week I pulled a Gluck book - Wild Iris - off my shelf and was amazed. I'm not sure of the copyright issues here (I could really quote the whole book), but here is one poem that spoke. Like many of the poems, it is told from the perspective of a flower:

Lamium

This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.
Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.
Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it
glinting through the leaves, erratic,
like somone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require
light in the same degree. Some of us
make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.
You and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.

Louise Gluck

I also should have gone to the store and bought something for dinner other than peanut butter and banana quesadillas and its-a-disaster-if-we-don't-have-any yogurt, but I didn't. I simply didn't want to. And no one is going to die with a peanut butter quesadilla tonight, even if we did have waffles last night. Anyway, I know I posted yesterday, but wanted to share these things. And that I bought the recently published L.M. Montgomery's The Blythes are Quoted (oh, I do feel slight guilt about the $40, but our library fines are currently over $200, so perhaps its better economically to buy the books), and am looking forward to reading and discussing.

One last thing: as I write this, Anja is watching Dora. Two episodes. Let me explain: we have no TV. Anja hardly ever watches anything except if she is sick (which is how we got into the Dora kick again this week). I always got a funny feeling when I saw kids zone out of the world in front of the TV and when I do it myself. And Dora is probably the least offensive of the bunch. However, I do feel a bit queasy and eerie when she responds so heartily to Boots and Dora's questions. "What did you like best about our adventure." "Um, I liked giving the lollipops to the kids." Oh, oh, oh. Surely playing with other kids would be better then forcing my daughter to socialize with an animated character. On the other hand, it lets me write this post, which means I will also get time to write something else this evening and possibly to yoga.

Time, Time, Time, See What's Become of Me

2010-01-23T19:15:00.000-05:00

A lot of thought about time lately, mainly from reading one of my favourite bloggers (http://www.julia.typepad.com/) and a note about a blog she reads, which had me at the first line "Today I took in a part-time boarder, just as if I were a Victorian widow who had, through circumstances only whispered about, fallen on Difficult Times"(www.irretrievablybroken.wordpress.com/).

Do we have enough leisure time as mothers and sometimes wives? How to have a successful career and be a good mom? Domestic help? And what are the implications of that? Is it better to stay at home or work? Things I've often thought about myself. What if Kirk and I got divorced? How would I be able to support a family? Would it seem like I just rode his doctorly coattails? (ha, a ha, a ha ha ha). Why do I feel guilty, or that it is time stolen when I do take time for myself? Is it leisure time when, say, you take the kiddo skating on the Canal like we did today? Or is that family time? Can they be seperated?

I'm not saying I know any answers for everyone, and I've learned a lot over the last few years not to judge any other mother until I've walked in her shoes, and I don't know if it is because Anja is getting older, or because I'm thinking alot about how to manage when the babe comes, or because we have been focussing on Kirk's career so, so much over the past 5 years (wow, 5 years), but I really think that for my own sanity, and my education, etc, etc, that I NEED to follow my own career path too. For me, it's easier than for some, because I can do it at night, fit it in around other work, etc, etc, but in a way it's harder too, because writing doesn't carry a lot of external rewards.

Another question: why do I need to fit it in around other things? Why is it still expected largely that I run the house? That I am in charge of all else besides Kirk's work? I don't particularly feel like I signed up for that. Why is true partnership only theoretical? I read a good quote on a comment page on one of the above blogs, about how just as it is an woman's right to acheive true equality in the workplace, it is also a man's right and opportunity to acheive true equality and partnership in the home.

How do you work to acheive this in your own lives? Do you just give up after a while because things never seem to change (i.e. we all went skating today. We get home and Kirk runs to his computer, as always, while I am left to put all the coats, gloves, mitts, skates, helmets and stroller, and food and water away. Why? Why?)

Ok, enough complaining. I do feel much happier knowing I get to write every night. I think I just have trouble finding focus - I have a story idea on the go, a kid's book, poems, the blog (speaking of which, I pulled my unread Crime and Punishment from the shelf today - a gift from a Dad along time ago when I was an English major)....I am really trying just to honour the process at this point, though, and respect that it is not necessarily at this point about the end product.

This is also why I am very glad, too, to be in pottery again. I have decided not to feel any guilt about it at all. I do have a dream about having my own studio/kiln one day, even if it is just a shed in the back yard.

And, also thinking about why people blog and thinking it's actually a fairly amazing thing. I think there is a tendency to denigrate blogging as narcissism (and I accuse myself of this frequently), but isn't it instead this amazing way we have of connecting with like spirits? Of knowing we are not alone? Even if we never meet. Imagine the complete isolation women in the 50's and 60's as suburbia was forming. Imagine not being able to voice feelings of isolation, confusion, pent up creativity.

Well, I'm so tired tonight after skating (hello thighs), and not being able to have a good sleep last night due to crazy, crazy indigestion - I have never felt so sick without being sick, but have noticed lately I cannot even overeat a bite without feeling like I have an elephant on my stomach. I also keep wondering when the 1st trimester fatigue is going to disappear, but going back to work after Christmas seems to be hitting me hard, even with a lax schedule, ie, I need to sleep 10 hours a night AND have a nap, though if I have a nap, I can't sleep at night, ya da ya da ya da.

I'm hoping Anja is well tomorrow - after the sinusitis and double ear infection over Christmas, she's had another cough and fever this week and today pink eye. Here last semester I was so pleased we didn't miss a day of work. Oh well, at least this semester I get sick days.

And, if you read this blog, let me know! I feel lonely sometimes.

The Guilty Mother: Origins

2010-01-19T19:48:00.001-05:00

Wow. Type in "guilt," "etiology of guilt" or "etymology of guilt" into the handy Google Scholar search tool, and you will come up with, literally, thousands of results. There are academic papers from a counselling/pyschololgy perspective (now, to figure out how to use my college library account from home so I can access some of these sources for free!), to "words of a guilt economy," to references to Freud, Greek Myth, Kafka, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, to Crime and Punishment, to the fact that people who score in the INF (like me, add judgemental there) category in the Myers Briggs' Tests tend to carry a large amount of guilt due to high moral standards. In other words, a tonne of fun exploration for me, and much reading of things like Crime and Punishment, which, I say guiltily, I have never read.

Type in "Guilt and Mothers" in a general Google search and you will get over 4 million hits about everything from working, to not breastfeeding, to how mothers use guilt trips to motivate children.

From my initial surface gleanings, it appears Freud and the Bible, in other words nature/nurture, are neck and neck in terms of origins and manifestations of guilt, and it remains unclear to me which wins the race in my own life so far. I'm guessing a little bit (a lot) of both.

A good starting point, though, is always a definition. Here is the one for guilt from the OED:

noun 1 the fact of having committed an offence or crime. 2 a feeling of having done something wrong or failed in an obligation.

and for guilt trip, from OED:
noun informal a feeling of guilt, especially when self-indulgent or unjustified.

Hmm. So, in other words, a compulsively guilty person like me feels every day and almost all day like a criminal. I am finding that especially in my case, much of this guilt falls into the "guilt trip" category in that it lends itself to self-indulgence. For instance, here is a very abridged list of things in no particular order that I noted that I felt guilty about this week:

1. Not running in the winter. I realized that when I see people running on the cold, slush and snow, I immediately feel like an utter wimp. Then, in a strange moment of clarity, I realized I had forgetten I am pregnant and my pelvis is utterly whacked out and that's why I can't run. In other words, feeling guilty for something I shouldn't feel guilty about.
2. Gaining 7 pounds over Christmas, which leads me to feel premature guilt about the size of this baby and "I'm a horrible person" guilt about the weight I gained with Anja.
3. Wanting to find out gender of this baby. Everyone has an opinion, and Kirk would rather not find out. But I do. I think it will help me with bonding. But what if I ruin the surprise? What if, in the end, it's really better not to find out? What will people think of me? (We have the ultrasound at the end of this week).
4. Signing up for a weekday pottery course when Anja is in care. I should be working, writing, exercising or at the very least spending time with my daughter, and saving money for the impending strike at work. Then again, evenings are kaput for me due to Kirk's schedule, daycare is paid for already, and pottery makes me really, really happy, and I am trying to live more creatively this year.
5. Living in North America, Canada in particular, and being able to feed and clothe my child when others cannot. Knowing nothing of other lives in other conditions.
6. Not being able to write as well as I could at the end of my graduate degree. Writing say, for half an hour a day instead of 3 hours.
7. Being grumpy and tired and yelling at Anja the second and third time in a night she woke me and then argued with me about coming into our bed.
8. Being grumpy and tired and taking a nap after pottery on Monday instead of above worthier activities because of Anja waking me three times the night before.
9. Not being outward looking enough to make any real change in the world.
10. Me, of all people, judging the church service this week, which carried a biblical lament for Haiti - I thought it focused too much on our "feelings" about the whole thing, rather than the people of Haiti. Kirk disagreed, so maybe I'm just a meanie, and, really, who am I to judge self-indulgence?

As you can see, the majority of things on this list do fall into the self-indulgent category. For which I feel guilty. See?

So, how to break this cycle? I'm hoping my readings will help me and others understand and set up a way to live consciously, but not guiltily. I have a suspicion that one way to break it is more community involvement.

I am also hoping you, my dear readers, if you are out there, contribute to this discussion. What I would like to know is if you feel guilty, and when, and your musings on why. What is this phenomenon? Is it to do with motherhood or other things? How can we or how do you overcome?

(PS - I have been very much enjoying the writing/yoga commitment of mine, and think it is starting to help me get out, in small ways, of the guilt mindset....)

(PS II - A side note: on Friday, both Kirk and I had the day off, so put Anja in preschool - guilt, guilt - and had a date day, that included skating, Ikea, lunch and window shopping. One store we went into was a nursing store, just to see what's new in the land of babies and breastfeeding. When I asked if they sold breast pumps, the kind saleswoman said "It's really recommended that you not try to pump until after baby comes." What do you even say to that?

Haiti

2010-01-18T20:22:00.000-05:00

Hard to whinge about anything when tonight on the radio I heard a mother who had lost five children in the Haiti quake. 5. It defies all ability to comprehend. If you are looking for a place to donate, please visit http://www.pih.org/, which stands for Partners in Health and focuses on health care and education for the world's poorest and has been in Haiti for years.

The Guilty Mother

2010-01-09T13:42:00.000-05:00

So, today is one of those "fun" Saturdays where all we do is snipe at each other through "fun" family activities (oh, lets be honest, where I am being sniped at) where I had to go for a walk, by myself, and where I don't see many benefits of being married, and I am completely fed up with the whole enterprise.

And of course, when I came back from my walk, I had a child who had been sobbing the whole time I had been gone.

And, right after I've composed these two paragraphs, Kirk comes in and apologizes. There goes my righteous indignation. Can't I even have my righteous indignation for a few moments?

I am now exiled in my office for a few moments and am completely neglecting putting the last of the Christmas decorations in a box that will still sit on top of my freezer for months, right above the pile of broken floor tile that has been there since August, right beside a bucket of dried mortar. And, of course, avoiding mountains of laundry and making the grocery list, all of which will add up to more work for me tomorrow. Perhaps I should take a more Benedictine view of things.

The benefit of a walk by myself, though, beyond the sun that's finally come out, and the near silent path as it is -18 with wind chill today (I was comfortably bundled after skating at our local outdoor rink this morning), is that I had time to think.

As you know by now, I struggle with guilt alot. I had a friend ask me what I thought I could do about it the other day. And so, I am in the beginnings of devising a non-fiction book project about "The Guilty Mother" or, alternatively, "The Guilt-Free Mother." I have just finished reading two book projects - Julie and Julia (thanks Kim) and The Year of Living Biblically, by AJ Jacobs (funny and poignant book). As I was walking, I was thinking, why not a year of living guilt free - or at least attempting to? I'm not talking here about going out wildly drinking while Anja sits by herself in the house, but finding out the roots, mythologically and etymologically speaking, of guilt, specifically in a mothering context. Then, looking at ways to assuage the guilt or at least not always be shrouded in it. I could, for instance, have a guilt advisory board comprised of several people (mothers included), and would be interviewing people, etc, etc. It's a bit hard to articulate, but I'm thinking a little bit of how-to, but in a more substance laden way. Please do tell me what you think. Do you know people who would buy a book such as this? Would you buy it for first time mums? Of course, the book may have a blog component. I actually think this kind of book may sell quite well as women are the largest book-buying demographic. And I did know an agent way, way back when....

Having Survived

2010-01-05T21:11:00.000-05:00

I read some of my old blogs the other night and realized I mention sugar and porn on a disproportionate basis. To explain: I do not watch or surf for internet porn. And I am addicted to sugar despite all daily pledges to the contrary. I am hoping my writing/yoga routine will help dispense with the sugar habit, but as I write I am really thinking of the delicious chocolate cake left in our freezer from Christmas. Eating a piece last night may have contributed to middle-of-the-night insomnia, though, so I am wary.

The yoga routine is going well; the writing is also going, but it is hard to not feel frustrated at not acheiving the level of writing I had when, you know, I had two years just to write in a writing program. Tonight I wouldn't mind writing poetry, but Kirk has the hockey game on, and I am too cold to move away from the fireplace to my office upstairs. Plus, I should go to bed soon, as both Anja and I have been ill since Christmas. I have been blaming myself all week for being a terrible mother because the holdiays have been a trial, but as much as I hover over her, I didn't put two and two together until today, one day after starting her on antibiotics for a double ear infection and sinusitis, when she is my child again. Gone is the zombie-like pallor from her cheeks and the recurrent fever, back is her appetite (she has survived on a bite here and there since boxing day), and back is her cheery, incessantly chattery, not whiny personality. I, on the other hand, have had a sore throat since Christmas, but a strep test came back negative. I have been ridiculously tired, but again, this is probably also a result of being woken up four or five times a night for the past 10 days. A few nights ago, she woke up at 1, 1:30, 2, 2:30, 3, and 4, saying "Mummy, but I am so,so, so, so lonely all by myself," only to tell me at 5 that her ears hurt. Thank you very much. In any case, I don't feel quite myself, and am wondering if I am starting to become slightly anemic, as I ran out of my iron supplements three weeks ago and have been too tired to get a new bottle. Irony anyone?

Kirk also had a very hard week as he is now a "senior" resident, and worked 8-7 Monday and Tuesday, then Wednesday to Thursday morning, Friday to Saturday morning, and Sunday to Monday morning. Essentially, he worked 94 hours in 6 days and slept every second night.

A friend was describing a relationship book to me the other day and identifiying the usual patterns of destructive behaivour between spouses, and two problems for me arose. First, we don't seem to see enough of each other to have patterns these days. Second, I am too tired to care about fixing the problems we do have. Or, maybe that's not it, but maybe I am just resigned to things the way they are, as in, we have been together twelve years, and I know certain things aren't about to change. It helps to keep the disappointments at a minimum, but I'm not entirely sure this is healthy or not.

I've been thinking about what a strange narrative marriage really is (and trying, unsuccessfully, to write a poem about it), and how both the grudges and the small, quiet, content moments become the story we tell ourselves about our life again and again. I am thinking of our one night away this summer for our anniversary when we went up to Wakefield, Qc, and went to a concert at the famous Black Sheep Inn. And in how moments like this, Kirk is everything I love. He gets so transported by music (and a few good beers). How rare and wonderful it was to share that moment, the slow summer river running just outside the door. (If, by the way, you are interested in a very good folksy kind of album, download "Between Trains" by Bop Ensemble from i-tunes).

I've been also thinking alot about risk, and living the creative life, and the magic of doing something again and again and again and finally mastering it (see above album) just for the love of it, and I want that kind of life for myself. I am so much happier that way, instead of constantly with students about their attitudes and comma splices. So, I am trying to set up some goals for myself in the next year so maybe, just maybe, I won't have to go back to this job after babe is born.

p.s. I don't think Santa ruse is going to last very long in our household. Point one: "Mummy, why did Santa use the same wrapping paper as us?" Point two: "Mummy, why is there a box for my dollhouse?" And point three when today we were in Chapters, "Mummy, why did Santa bring my dollhouse to the store too?" "Well, I guess he had extras from Christmas." Several cha-chas later, I think I have it under control, but have to much more careful next year....

The Resolve Continues

2010-01-01T20:36:00.000-05:00

Thank you both very much for your kind words, and it is so nice to know that my musings are not falling on deaf ears. And I do hope that it gives some hope or sense of companionship to others. Isn't the internet the strangest thing? I remember being in university when the internet was just getting up in running (and I had to walk there uphill both ways in 40 below when my horse got stuck in the snow...), and looking up "candy" recipes on one of the school computers in order to make Christmas gifts. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what came up, but do picture me frantically trying to close ever popping up windows. And now, it is possible for kindred spirits to find each other and porn all at the same time.

The first thing I did tonight after Anja went to sleep (asking to go. She had a bad virus last week complete with fever, and still has the cough, the not-eating-much and early fading) was yoga. That's two days in a row, as is writing. The non-chocolate eating not so much, although I did opt out of the ice cream on my waffles at a friend's brunch today. Such control!

***************

Along the lines of psychological space, I've also been ruminating a lot on the question of how much interior life it is ok to hold close to yourself.

To put this in context, just before Christmas when Kirk had the week off, I was catching up on a lot of napping and slept from 2-5 one afternoon post Christmas shopping (really, we don't buy a lot, so why did I get so tired? I did at one point find myself walking like a zombie through the nightmare of Wal-mart, which still seems only good for cheap pregnancy tests, and was unable to force myself to the exit. I almost had to phone for help. Very creepy).

Anyway, I was too zonko to go out with Kirk and Anja, so they went out to shop for me in the evening, and they were gone forever. I mean, until 9 o'clock, which is much, much past bedtime. And I got very worried, very lonely and very weepy, which was not helped by the fact that I had just finished reading "Home," by Marilynne Robinson, which is a beautiful but bleak parallel novel to "Gilead." I very much recommend them both - it is a remarkable way to read about the same conflict from two very different points of view, but you must read Gilead first. Plus, Kirk had been in Belleville for three weeks just prior, then on call and working much, and out to his staff party the week before while I deloused Anja, and I realized I am generally very bereft and lonely and directionless in the evening.

After this realization, I ended up sobbing on the phone to a friend about how I am a bad mother who somehow cannot give everything to her child. When I am with Anja, I have a constant running dialogue of all the little things I should be doing (laundry, getting dinner, etc), and other, bigger thoughts about "who am I," "what am I doing here, bathtime really bores the pants off of me," "why can't I stop this and just enjoy her," "I'm going to get to her teenagehood and realize I missed her childhood" etc. That whole week I'd been watching Kirk with her, who is so good at abandoning himself to her in play.

After listening patiently to the "I can't seem to give everything to anybody, I always hold back in all my relationships" and the "Anja has known from in utero that there is something I withhold from her and that's what makes her want to always be close" I managed to gargle out between sobs, my friend, who is a wonderful person and mother said, "But Brenda, do you think it's even possible to give everything to Anja? Do you think it's even a good thing?"

Huh.

I don't know.

I do know my own mother had not much of an alternate life to her children (very, very long story), and this did not lead any of us to be more fruitful, happy people.  On the other hand, I know people who don't give enough to their children, and my heart dies a little just thinking about it.

I have a friend who is a very wise 82, a mother of five herself, and a decorated children's author at that (lucky me!), and still remembers her mother as a firecracker who could always make her children laugh. I'm also thinking of Annie Dillard here, and her essay on her mother in either An American Childhood or Teaching a Stone to Talk and how her mother was creative, slightly wacky, and wonderful. In one scene, when bored with adult converstion at the beach, her mother dug her toe into the sand and rolled as fast as she could down into the water. In both of these mothers there seems to have been some kind of living, breathing, unexpected spark, some hold on the essence of mysterious spontaneity and joy.

In other words, maybe it's that giving everything to your children doesn't mean devoting yourself to hockey and soccer practices, or about being the most artistic, or patient, or what have you, and Lord knows I lack in both the fun and patience departments. Maybe giving "everything" to your children means fostering enough of a firey, creative place within yourself so that your own spark ignites all corners of your life. That sounds terribly new-agey, but what I mean is that if you have one facet of your life that is just yours, that no-one else can complain about, put strictures on,or ultimately distract you from, perhaps bath time becomes more bearable and your children see and respect that spark and strive for sparks of their own.

This is the kind of discussion that I wish was in the baby and the parenting books (though it would probably scare or offend the first time parents who still have ideals and who haven't yet learned the miraculous saying "never say never") beecause, it seems to me, that when we become mothers we become almost more of who we are, and yet everything "should" be about the wonderful and "simple" bond with the baby.

I wish I had known from the beginning that this was to be one of if not the most complicated relationship of my life.   The question is can I just dig in my toe and start rolling?

Resolution/ Really Virginia?

2009-12-31T19:23:00.000-05:00

It is 6:42 on New Year's Eve and Kirk, having worked 24 hours yesterday/last night and who is working 24 hours tomorrow and 24 hours Sunday, is passed out snoring in front of the fire place, as he has been since 11:30 a.m. As waking people annoys me, especially him, I think I will let him sleep on the floor all night. Anja is asleep too, which leaves me to myself again and also leaves me thinking.

For one reason or another, I have been thinking a lot about Virginia Woolf lately and will have to read a few of her books and essays again to get a handle on the particulars, but I am thinking about a room of one's own, the often intolerable state of being female in her time, her resolved and purposeful end, etc, etc. I admire her, her writing, and her courage immensely, but sometimes, wholly unfairly, I think "Really, Virginia? You had a room of your own. You, by purpose or accident, had no kids!" Perhaps I am just exceptionally sensitive to this with a not-quite-four-year-old and a baby on the way, or perhaps I am just reverting to old patterns. In other words, it is very easy to blame situations (med school, residency, having to work a job I dislike rather intensely at the moment ya da ya da) and people (who I created/gestated, quite intentionally, myself) for that yawping black room somewhere in the soul. It is also another thing to know there is a room and not be able, or to be too lazy, to find a way out of it, which is what I think I've been doing for a year now. Or, rather, I've been in the hole since I was pregnant with Anja, but have only been aware of the room for the last year.

What clarified this room-dwelling was watching videos of Anja as a baby that Kirk found the other night and realizing that I've only let myself remember the bleak moments of her babyhood, when I often felt lonely and overwhelmed, and not the lovely moments. These videos of this beautiful, happy baby shocked me becuase I've always thought I've been good at remembering things - not the details, per se - but the overall colour or mood of the experience. But, as these videos show, clearly I am wrong sometimes. Whatsmore, I've allowed this bleak feeling to overtake my memories of her early life, because I never wrote anything to counter it. Not the momentousness, not even the minutae.

I never wrote.

And so, so much feels lost to me. I have been stuck in a room that has, really, trapped me.

So 2010 is, despite and perhaps because of the little bean who is set to sprout in June, about creating a room of my choosing, largely, of carving a psychological space where I can create. I have felt so terribly uncreative for the past five years, and this results in food addictions, in feelings of constant irritation and guilt and of wasting time. (I heard a radio interview this year about a woman who, much like me, feels constant guilt. For instance, she was in a sauna and determined she should stay for a set period of time. When she grew too hot, she wanted to leave, but felt guilty for not sticking to her original plan. So she argued with herself for a while, and when she finally did leave the sauna, berated herself for ruining her sauna experience with guilt. This is my constant interior dialogue in a nutshell.)

And maybe creating is about putting my own stamp on the world before I die, maybe it is just about the act of creating itself. Maybe it is just about owning up to the fact that I need to do what I was put on earth to do.

What does carving space mean in practical terms? Strangely, or not so strangely, it means re-embracing daily yoga practice. I wrote my entire first book and a second unpublished book during the year I discovered yoga. There has to be some connection there. Also, I can't run anymore during pregnancy because of pelvic issues and icy winter. More than that, it means writing every single day until the baby comes (then, a gentle reassessment.) Art = habit. I know this, but I need to know this. I don't care what I write, whether it is the blog (I am having existential questions about the nature of blogging - mainly, I don't have a project, so to speak - do I need a project?), or poems, or non-fiction or fiction, good or bad. I will do my exercises and hopefully something will come out of it.

It is about not being fearful. It is about stopping wasting time. It is about a room of my own. So here's to Virginia on the eve of the new year.

p.s.
L.M. Montgomery's last manuscript about the Blythes (i.e. Anne) was published in the fall. I will read and review!

Confessions of an Irregular Blogger

2009-11-11T21:28:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't realized it by now, I seem to be an irregular blogger prone to fits and starts. Clearly, I have been fitting lately, but I plead the fact I am teaching too many courses and am always marking, marking, marking to the point I am developing issues from my left wrist up to my shoulder. Just when I think I'll get a day or two off from marking, I realize there are late assignments, or I forgot about an assignment (I have 6 classes and it's hard to keep track). In fact, I should be marking now, but am considering it unfair to students to continue if all I want to do is put their papers tidily in a stack on a train track. Conveniently, we have a trainyards just up the street.

It has been the kind of semester in which I am grateful I am unable, for the sake of the babe, to drink or smoke (although an older male colleague of mine suggested a shot of whisky here or there wouldn't hurt). Certainly, I ate all of Anja's Halloween candy and leftovers from trick-or-treaters, and I am feeling duly ashamed that my pants are ALREADY beginning to not fit, and the baby has not risen up to my abdomen yet. I do not want to become the whale I was with Anja. Today, I haven't eaten a spoonful of sugar.

Not eating sugar, of course, is not that difficult to do when, as the medical people put it, progesterone is slowing down the smooth muscle tissue in your innards, and making you the most heinous bloated and gassy creature imaginable. At least some degree of vomiting in pregnancy is considered socially acceptable. Gassiness hardly fits in with the glowing image of smooth-skinned and vibrant earth goddess.

Speaking of earth goddess, I did meet with the midwife a few weeks ago. I did like her; she was British trained and is thus very practical. Another midwife in her practice just put together an international conference on breach birth and changed some very old assumptions on the part of OBGYNs. In any case, my midwife assured me that, as in most second pregnancies, I would not become so fluid filled as I was with Anja that I would begin to gush if someone stuck a pin in me. She also assured me that I would not need an epidural as chances are I will only push for 30 minutes with this one. Assurances, assurances. I am still fearful, but must keep in mind that labour does not last an actual lifetime despite all pain receptors to the contrary.

Still, what do I want from this birth? Kirk told a neonatologist at his hospital that I was pregnant, and she "suggested" that I have the baby at one hospital over the other for better neonatal intensive care. The midwife "suggests" I avoid an epidural. Kirk "suggests" I take whatever the neonatologist says as law. Hello? Hello? Is there an informed mother in the room? Check. Have I done this before? Check. Am I willing to do what is takes to have a safe birth? Check. Do I want a nice birth suite with a bathtub in a low-key hospital with more than adequate neonatal intensive care especially considering the perhaps-not-so-pro epidural route in an effort to minimize intervention? Check.

I did forget how many (unsolicited) opinions there are out there about how a pregnancy and birth should be handled. I am not saying it is all about "my" experience, but I think my informed opinion should factor in a smidge.

Anja is very excited about the baby and says "Hello Baby, I love you" to my tummy all the time. I am working on posting a very cute video of her singing her own tune to some guitar strumming. She has an awesome Janis Joplin move. It seems that she had the dreaded H1N1 two weekends or so ago, but because she was in the window between vaccine and immunity, it wasn't terrible. I am glad I am now immune as people at work are dropping like flies.

Speaking of apocalypses, I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," and I can't get it out of my mind. This is the exact kind of event I fear for my children, and I know I would be totally inadequate to the task of protecting them. It is a minimalist, yet totally evocative and scary book that is already up on my top ten list, neck and neck with Jose Saramego's "Blindness." I don't even know if I want to see the movie as the book's images are seared into my head and I kind of like it that way. The book is always better.

And so, again, to sleep.

A heart beating...

2009-10-21T22:21:00.000-04:00

I had another ultrasound today, hopefully the last for a while. There was the peanut, a little blob with a head and knobs of arms with a perfect heart rate. So, can I start believing in this now? I am not really sick, although the texture of lettuce is starting to get to me, and I can smell bad breath from across town (Kirk and Anja seem particularly prone to, as Kirk would say in his medical-ese, halitosis.) My boobs hurt, and I am tired. But the headaches have been slim to none and no vomiting yet. I am hoping at this stage (almost 8 weeks), I will miss that train altogether.

I am meeting my midwife-hopeful tomorrow. It's a different system here than in Alberta; you get the first person who will take you and that's that. However, I've had two friends recommend her. My first question will be: what is your stance on epidurals? Now, I had the best birth possible (comfy place, big tub, great midwives, no tearing) with Anja, but she was 9 lbs 10 ounces and has her father's gigantic head (at her 18 month visit, the family resident said I should watch for water on the brain. Really? Does she look like she has water on the brain?). It took 3.5 hours to push her out. I was miserable. It was not remotely fun. I did not feel orgasmic or godess like. I have done many hard physcial things, including running a marathon and mountaineering for three weeks straight, and getting Anja out was the hardest. I remember distinctly asking why the midwives couldn't just pull her out, and stating that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, next time I was having a C-section. I was unable to sleep the other night, panicking at the fact that giving birth is the inevitable consequence of pregnancy. I am betwixt two worlds, fearing intervention and really thinking it might be necessary.

***************

I dislike my job significantly at the moment. Not only do I have another 120 assignments to mark in the next two weeks, it all starts again in two weeks when the students hand in their next illegible assignments in which they can barely follow the instruction "Include your name on the front page." Which means I am marking every night after working all day and doing none of my prep. I also dislike students who tell me I owe them an apology for not emailing them back over Thanksgiving, who question my qualifications and credentials, and send me emails telling me I am wasting the tax dollars of Canadians. I also dislike having to tell people that they might as well leave if they are going to read a newspaper in class, or surf the internet, or talk when I am lecturing. Though, right now I am marking my writing students, and it is like swimming in a beautiful ocean compared to what I have just been through with other students. Basic literacy is an amazing tool.

*********************************

I did not win a poetry award I was shortlisted for last night. Oh, well - I truly did not expect to win and in fact pegged the winner correctly. Attending the event in the presence of other writers and a horrid teaching day yesterday combined to reaffirm that I must write more. I hope I can in January when my course load reduces. And, of course, when the new baby naps. Ba hah hah hah. What makes me feel woefully inadequate is a writer who is nominated for both the Giller and GG this year. She wrote her novel through the pregnancy and early childhoods of two children. And I can't even seem to compose a decent line in a poem, though I have been trying for almost 5 years. Oh, god. 5 years since I wrote anything half-decent.

*********************************

I need to sleep. Not enough sleep at all this week. Good night!

I miss the contemplative life.

Itchy, itchy, itchy

2009-10-08T00:46:00.000-04:00

Currently, it's 12:41. I can't sleep because I am covered in mystery hives that go from the top of my head to the my toes. I am hoping to all hope that it is not some early form of PUPPP, which I had for two, crazily itchy weeks after Anja was born. Kirk thinks it's excercise induced hives as I went for a run today; however, I have been running for 11 years and I have never had hives. I am wondering if it is the new jeans I bought. What I do know is that there is no benadryl in the house (very safe in pregnancy) and my hands feel like they are on fire. I am also sporting some lovely splotches on my face. Oh, I'm so looking forward to teaching tomorrow, bright and early!

It's a....

2009-10-05T21:16:00.000-04:00

baby! In the right place and growing!

A bit of a crazy day as I went to the doctor (another two hour saga involving a resident, but, thankfully sans Anja), and was told that my last ultrasound showed "a uterine cyst, too early to determine embryonic structure" and "a large cyst in the right adnexal (ovary) with possible vascular involvment." It was the "possible vascular involvement" that freaked me out.

I arrived at the ultrasound heart-pounding and had the same tech-who-thinks-she's-a-doctor (the actual resident at the doctor's office asked, when I said I would set up an appointment after the ultrasound, very sweetly asked "How will you know the results?" "Oh," I said. "Techs talk. You only get worried when they stop talking at all and go get the radiologist." "Well," she said. "They are not supposed to") as last time. Wierdness of gross wierdnesses and more than a little creepy, she told me to undress with her in the room while she set up her equipment. Now, I know in 30 seconds she was going to stick a very large wand up my vagina, but please! A modicum of privacy and decency was called for, and isn't it just standard good practice for medical professionals to leave the room while you are changing/ie removing your clothes completely from the waist down? Is this not a wierd violation? Is this not why they give you a sheet to cover yourself with? Did I have the right to ask her to please leave and return? Why don't I stick up for myself in these situations? Really, I was just beside myself about the possiblity of ectopic, befuddled, etc.

So, she spotted the embryonic sac within two seconds - clearly it's grown since Thursday. Too early to see the heartbeat, but sigh. My little embryo.

Thumb Twiddling

2009-10-04T21:36:00.000-04:00

And jelly bean eating. I must stop the sugar. But what better marking companion than butter-popcorn flavour jelly beans?

I digress. Yesterday, we went apple picking for the first time. How I love the east! It means I do need recipes for all things apples - anyone know how to freeze your own applesauce? Does it freeze well?

Other than that, I went for an ultrasound Friday. The tech, though, decided she wasn't going to see anything before she started because she felt it was too early. When I explained my ectopic ruptured at just over five weeks, she said "it doesn't matter, I know I won't see anything." Well, it turns out she may, but don't quote her on it, have seen something residing nicely in the uterus. So tommorrow evening, a follow-up ultrasound.

In the meantime, I am also repeating my beta HCG's tomorrow (they were just above normal range last week, which is good) - my doctor said not to worry about doing it every two days, and in a way that's liberating (how could I possibly get in every two days?) , but not knowing the count makes me not trust that the level is going up. After all, last pregnancy, I didn't clue in when things went south. I can't seem to trust the process right now, or to believe that I am actually pregnant. I don't know if I will ever get beyond that worry this time around. I am, though, tired, but not as tired as I was with the previous two pregnancies (I remember the day my ectopic ruptured, I was driving home and almost fell asleep at the wheel. I had a fever and didn't realize it...). I am not terribly gaggy, though have been avoiding sinus rinses, and smells do bother me. Mostly, I'm having crazy dreams and am waking up completely soaked through my pajamas several times a night. I have at least one miscarriage dream a night - I'm thinking hormones?

Tommorrow is also the day I go for a first official prenatal dr's visit, though I feel perhaps it's a bit too early, as it hasn't been established as a viable pregnancy yet, and the risk of miscarriage is still there. I am also booked to see midwives a little later in the month. I'm in a wierd space about that. Anja's birth was the best birth a person could ask for - a drug-free water with midwives birth. Still, she was 9 lb 10 ounces, and, after pushing for 3.5 hours, I can't say that I enjoyed myself. It was damn hard. I know there are reasons I chose that route before, and it was transformational, but do I really need to be transformed again? Surely, just a wee epidural would help? I am getting ahead of myself.

So, a day of medical appointments and trying to catch up on course prep tomorrow. Cross fingers and toes!

Deadly Serious

2009-09-30T22:42:00.000-04:00

A quick post before I must go to bed, bleary-eyed from 3 hours of solid, non-distracted marking.

Today, Anja and I were going up the stairs to the doctor's office when a man coming down the stairs with his 10-year-old-daughter answered the phone. The conversation was something about a messed-up health-card application and went like this, verbatim, in a deadly, deadly serious voice:

"You fucked up the health card application. Why? Because you are a fucking idiot. And when you get you get your ass home, I'm going to take care of you."

The daughter was scrambling, embarrassed, afraid.

I didn't know what to do, but the nothing I did do is inexusable. I've been thinking about it all night; what I should have done is asked that girl is she was afraid and wanted to go back into the doctor's office with me - would that have made her situation worse? What I should have done is watch him get into his car, get the license plate, and call the police. Or ask the doctor's receptionist who he was, explain the situation and call the police. At the time, I was stunned, as was another passerby in the hallway. I think I was so stunned because it is so far removed from the reality I deal with everyday. I can complain all I want about Kirk, but I don't live in fear and violence - not even close.

Meanwhile, somewhere in our genteel city tonight, some mother and her children are getting beaten or worse. Fuck.

People that make you go "huh?"

2009-09-28T22:01:00.000-04:00

A wierd day for a few reasons. First, it seems I have a permanent case of PMS (I've been told it's pregnancy, though I don't remember being this irate with Anja, and with the others I was too tired) and Kirk is the most annoyingly messy person in the whole wide world. Ok, maybe I'm being unfair, but unfair is allowed when you just get fed up with being a glorified maid-cook-laundry-washer-grocery shopper-handily free child-care provider - child picker-upper- who also happens to bring in her own income-and-is-now-pregnant and quivering ball of fear and jelly beans (in fact, I bought gourmet jelly bellies today in a moment of weakness. I need a picture of a 14 pound baby on my pantry, as it seems 9 lb 10 ounces of Anja wasn't big enough for me) . Harumph.

It seems I am always holding the whip in my hand, ready to lash out. Today, I read the blog of a friend who is grieving her husband. Someone commented that she needed to pick herself up out of this and find God because he could help her. Whereas I have a tendency to think "Where was God when her husband died?" Quick as a sperm meets egg, I replied to the comment with a jolly good tongue-lashing that said, in essence, back off.

And, after picking up Anja from school today, we went grocery shopping and entered the check out line at 4:40 pm, which, as anyone who frequents grocery stores knows, is the universal time of day when the most people are waiting in line and the least amount of cashiers are at the checkouts. We waited. We waited. I was tired and hungry, but I was not morose and was valiantly staving off annoyance. I must have, however, looked morose, because a genteel old man in a plummy red sweater leaned into me and told me that whenever I felt blue or overwhelmed, I should make Jesus my friend and he would help me. I was rendered speechless, though I politely smiled. What can you possibly say here besides a very polite fuck off, which, as intellegent as a comeback as that is, I didn't even think of until he had finished patting me on the shoulder and was well on his way. The thing is, this man was making many assumptions about me. First, that I wanted him to whisper platitudes in my ear while waiting in a grocery line after having a three-year-old insist on pushing the cart herself around the store for an hour, second that he knew what I was thinking or my situation in life, third that I was a person with no faith and thus needed to be evangelized to.

The truth is, I am a person who has a very rocky faith in some kind of God, though not one that supports making others feel small and inadequate because they suffer and grieve, or one that foists itself on others in unsuspecting moments. I don't know even know exactly what I believe, only that there is something indelible about the human spirit, and I am increasingly grateful for the beauty of joy, compassion and hope, though I am an inadequate practitioner. I recently read a book by novelist David Adams Richards called God Is, which served less of a defense of religion and more as an indictment of intellectualism at the expense of real emotion and humanity. This skeptical intellectualism is a position I contantly find myself in - looking for the wrongs in people's behaivour, or examples of what I judge to be stupidity or self-righteousness. And yet I myself am, more often than not, stupid and self-righteous.

After the last baby-loss, I was given a gift certificate for a massage. By chance, my massage therapist was also a yoga teacher, and when he found out I had been a yoga teacher, asked if he could help do some energy-work/healing. So, he hummed the chakras while he massaged, and part of me felt ridiculous and thought he was ridiculous. Part of me, though, was grateful that other people had it in them to help a stranger in need in whatever way they knew how. Maybe I need to be more generous with other people, even if their help feels more like an assault. Maybe they are helping - if anything, they got me to try to think my way out of judgement and annoyance, which are probably more poisonous to me than their words.

Celebratory Jelly Beans

2009-09-23T20:12:00.002-04:00

Two items against which I was firmly, stoically resolved just 24 hours ago: sugar and pregnancy tests.

I had an hour-long ocular migraine today (very wierd, like having a dancing, flashing ameoba in my eyes, which, in turn, makes me very dizzy - I only started getting them this year, and no longer get as many regular-old migraines), accompanied by the feeling of an ice-axe hacking my brain. Unusual. PMS perhaps? A change in weather? Stress (I did have a dream last night that I arrived for class wearing my clothes inside out, that my slides were all porn and the students were making fun of me...) Or something else? Most of my ocular migraines last only 15-30 minutes. So I made Kirk get me a pregnancy test before I downed a bottle of Advil. And guess what?

Two very strong pink lines on the very first test within seconds of the pee hitting the stick.

"Wait," says Kirk, "there are rivers to cross. Don't tell anyone and don't post it on your blog." To this I said, "But I tell everyone when something bad happens anyway, so why not something good?" A friend put it to me this way - "There is always room for joy and hope."

Cross your fingers and toes for this little baby, please! I am still in a state of euphoria-crossed-with-paralyzing-fear-disbelief.

Celebratory jelly beans tonight, and then junk food stops. I did gain 60 pounds with Anja, after all.

Ok, ok, one last thing

2009-09-22T19:54:00.002-04:00

Horror of horror germ stories.

I was in the public washroom at school today, where their idea of cleaning is picking up the bits of toilet paper from the floor and wiping the water off the counter.

A woman came out of a stall, turned on the tap and gasp! drank from her hands before washing them!

This, my friends, is a perfect explanation for my OCD.

Good Night!

Sundries

2009-09-22T18:49:00.002-04:00

Two posts in two days for me - a record!

***********
In the interest of staying disciplined, relatively in-shape and sane, I have commenced running at 6 a.m. on all weekday mornings except when Kirk is working nights and on Fridays, when I start teaching at 9 and would have to start running at 5:30, which is too dark and, well, too early. Though I am thinking that if I could wake up at 5:30, maybe I could write for half an hour. Throw down the gauntlet. Challenge me!

This morning I appreciated two things: first, I was running in a tank top and dripping buckets of sweat because of the warmth (+15) and humidity. Second, in the quiet of morning, I could hear the crunch and scuffle of red, red maple leaves under my feet.

I came home to Anja, who had been sleeping when I left, looking for me out the window, screaming for a "mummy-hug" and Kirk fast asleep upstairs in bed. Concerning.

Of course, getting up that early means going to bed early. I'm exhausted at the end of the day anyway and what I usually do is look bleary-eyed at the computer and eat ice cream or cookies. So, to bed by 9 at the latest. And no ice-cream out of the carton. I have survived two evenings with hugely reduced, almost-non-existent sugar intake (4 ju jubes don't count, do they?). I will lose my summer "I can eat what I want in excess because I'm painting and had a miscarriage and it's summer - who gains weight in summer?" pounds.

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On the topic of self-discipline, I have yet to purchase a pregnancy test this month, even though I am in the window of time a First Response test would work. I can hardly believe myself. I have even logically thought through occassional bouts of nausea (anxiety due to the fact I actually don't like getting up in front of people and now have to do so every day, the resumption of folic acid just in case), gagging through my oceans of sinus rinses (it really does just suck), and sore breasts (they really can just hurt if you squeeze them hard enough looking for meaning-filled tenderness).

*********************

After proudly toilet-training Anja last year without the use of bribes, I, the mighty, have fallen. She now gets a sticker on a calender after every night she falls asleep "nicely" - that is, without asking for more food, and without screaming and crying, and on her own. After three and a half years I could not take another night of shenanigans and managed to get Kirk past both his and Anja's first few nights of "resistance to change"

Also, she saw some of the afore-mentioned ju jubes in the pantry and asked if she could have some after dinner. Fortuitously, this was after a week of major temper tantrums involving kicking me, doors, etc, etc, etc. So, I thought to reply "Yes, if you don't scream or whine or argue with me the rest of the day and you eat your vegetables all up." We have since had three temper-tantrum free days in a row and in increased vegetable intake.

I know I am going to parenting hell.

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Query at the risk of offending the unlikely male reader of this blog: how is it that multi-tasking is so impossible to the male species?

For instance, how can I, on my "day off," i.e. Saturday, change the sheets on the beds, wash, fold and put away 7 loads of laundry, go for a run, shop for two weeks worth of groceries, clean up the flower bed, put out the chrysanthemums, play with my child, feed said child 6 times, clean up the kitchen 6 times, bathe and put to bed said child, do three hours worth of prep work for school, catch Henry the cat mid-barf, throw him outside, let Henry and Alice the other cat in and out and in and out and in and out, etc, etc, etc, etc

while

On Kirk's day off, with a to-do list of many items that have been awaiting his attention for several weeks now (including revisiting our taxes because for the 4th year in a row we are being audited -- why? why? -- and repairing the holes he has made by banging his bicycle into my newly painted walls and finishing the goddamn baseboards) he manages to scratch one item off: clean cat litter.

*********************

And now to sleep. And I will sleep with my pet Zeep. Today is gone, today was fun, tommorrow is another one. From near to far and from here to there, funny things are everywhere.

Perscription/Prescription

2009-09-21T21:12:00.002-04:00

I just realized I spelled prescription "perscription" throughout the post. Some English teacher I am!

The Frustrations of the "Almost" Dr

2009-09-21T17:55:00.004-04:00

Today I waited two hours for a scheduled appointment at the doctor's office with Anja on a gorgeous +24 afternoon. Sometimes it's hard to see our regular family doctor (who is, in case I hadn't made it clear, fabulous), so you see someone else in the practice. About two weeks ago, Kirk had taken Anja to see the same doctor for a case of peri-oral dermatitis, which is essentially a raised, bumpy, scaly patch all around her month; it's not life threatening to be sure, but she's had it all summer, we've tried everything we can at home for it, and given it's on her face, I don't want it to scar.

Before visiting the doctor, Kirk hauled out his dermatology books and identified what it was and the treatment needed. At the appointment, he didn't, however, say he knew what it was, what treatment it needed or in fact that he was a peds resident. Understandably, he doesn't want to step on toes (I, however, have no such compunction and told the resident what treatment we thought it needed and why - after that long of a wait, I possessed no such social graces). Anyway, he didn't argue with the doctor and brought home a 1% hydrocortisone that we had already tried. Needless to say, it didn't work.

So today, it took us an hour and a half to even get in the exam room. When we get in there, we see a resident who, while very nice, didn't have a clue what she was doing. Hence, most likely, the long wait. I understand, given that Kirk is a resident, that sometimes having residents adds on time, but really? Then, we had to wait for another half an hour for the doctor to come in and say it looked better than last time (how in God's name would she remember what a rash two weeks ago looked like??), that she wouldn't treat it with anything else, and Anja's skin "would likely never be perfect," and that if Kirk really wanted he could get her seen at the hospital's derm clinic. Clearly, she didn't like me pulling the "he's a peds resident" card.

Still, if what you had prescribed didn't work, and nothing has changed, and you can't keep using hydrocortisone because it thins the skin, why wouldn't you try something else? I don't think "her skin will never be perfect" is an acceptable answer and I'm not being a crazy "these days" kind of mother. No, a moisturizer doesn't do a damn thing. Yes, I've tried an anti-fungal. Yes, I've tried vaseline. Yes, I've tried a polysporin. Just give us the $#%^&*& prescription! Clearly, also a doctor who doesn't like someone who isn't just a drooling idiot who doesn't know her head from her ass (even though I'm married to one - especially because I'm married to one, I so get it).

Needless to say, after we walked out of clinic, smoke was coming out of my ears. And all could have been easily solved if he could write his own bloody prescriptions. ^&**%%$$!!!

So it begins...

2009-09-10T20:58:00.003-04:00

The semester, that is. I am teaching six courses this semester, and for those of you unclear with college parlance, that means upwards of 45 hours per week of class, marking and prep time, though I only get paid for 18. As my mother-in-law put it, that means I'll be marking around 1000 writing assignments in the next 15 weeks. It will be ok, right? Still, I could mark all day every day if it meant I didn't have to do a song and dance every week about the importance of writing and speaking "clearly, concisely and correctly," if I didn't have to ask members of my class to avoid speaking on a cell phone while I am lecturing, or tell someone that no, she could not bring her dog to class, or that even though your roommate came home drunk last night and you were too tired to come to class, you still miss out on attendance marks.

Oh, vey. Of course, who am I to complain? Kirk works upwards of 100 hours every single week and no, I do not exaggerate, (take that, my too tired to come to class students). I forget how tiring work is when I'm off during the summer, and going back in the fall makes me appreciate what he does day in and day out all the more. Maybe, just maybe, I realize, it isn't quite fair for me to nag him about the baseboards that aren't still done downstairs (ok, it might not be fair, but it's oh so hard to stop!). And sure, I have students tell me I need nicer clothes (and perhaps I could buy them if I didn't have to clothe a growing child first, and if I got paid for every hour I work, and if we weren't servicing our med-school debt), but if I make a mistake it's only embarrasing to me; no one is likely to die. I do sometimes forget that if Kirk makes a mistake, little babies and kids could very well die.

Last week, he had a very rough call night. "On-call" at his hospital does not mean you are at home waiting for your phone to ring; it means you go to work at 8 in the morning and are there until 9 (at least) the next day. It means that you deal with all the non-stable issues at night and admissions through the emerg. Generally, he is lucky to get three or four hours of sleep somewhere in that stretch. This night in particular, there was no sleep to be had. He had to "pronounce" a baby, which means declare him/her dead (I cannot even imagine the horror of this, both for him and the parents), and he also had to admit a baby who was transferred from another hospital immediately after birth. The baby' actual condition did not fit with the supposed cause of the condition and Kirk and his fellow resident did not clue into or act on this issue fast enough. In essence, they didn't call their staff soon enough in order to diagnose appropriately and get the baby into surgery. Luckily, nothing terrible happenned to the baby in the meantime, but what if it had? Tiny, new lives dying or close to dying; it must be a wierd and scary place to be in.

I don't feel I am particulary good at supporting him in these situations, and I don't quite know what that's about. As a parent, I can't even begin to comprehend how some of these babies, children and parents get through each day. But how do you support the person who is, as a health-care provider, directly involved in these crisis, but really is peripheral to the fact that a child, some mother's baby, is very ill or dying? What do you say to a person who has to declare babies dead? And put central lines in preemies? And has patients who have been hit by large trucks to the point they have lost all their skin from the waist down and the use of their legs?

Needless to say, sometimes throughout the journey/ordeal of this medical career, we become strangers to each other. In a way, I think that must happen in most marriages and at this point in time I'm undecided as to whether it's a terribly sad or perfectly normal thing. Maybe it's a bit of both? How can I hold on to the person I married? Or is this a better person?

*************************************

Ever gaining new knowledge of how these new-fangled technologies work, I've updated the comments section so anyone can post. Please let me know if you read this blog, especially if I don't know you. Lately, I've been considering the strangeness and wonderfulness of the blogosphere and can't believe it took me this long to discover some of them.

Current Obsessions with Peeing on a Stick

2009-08-31T20:24:00.003-04:00

So, I've never exactly had to touch a door handle four times before I've opened it (though I do have to handwash maniacally in winter), or had to check to make sure the stove was off 10.5 times before I've gone out, but I am dangerously prone to what some may call compulsions. Alchohol? Nope - big, fat blabbermouth (big surprise). Pot? Nope - makes me even more paranoid. Cigarettes? Very soothing and would smoke a pack - make that ten - a day if it wasn't so darn bad for me. Gambling? Kirk and I once went into a casino and found it so abject we walked right back out again (although the Silas Marner/Gollum in me does drool a bit at the possibilities), so nope. No, no, none of those straightforward "there is help out there" addictions for me; my crack is the HPT, otherwise known as the home pregnancy test.

A bit of background: when I was pregnant with my ectopic, I knew I was pregnant due to the same hyper-active gag reflex I had when pregnant with Anja, which often caused me to throw-up on the street at the same time I was attempting to scoop always runny dog poop into a bag (if you were walking down the sidewalk, which would be better to step in - a pile of dog poop, or a half-scraped up pile of dog diahrrea followed by, when you would least expect it, a pile of barf? I digress). So, off I went to the drugstore to by an HPT, which, when used, came out negative. And yet I was still gaggy. The fact that I had an impending surgery to remove a wayward (ie outside of uterus IUD), made the situation a bit more critical. The fact that I hadn't had a period since before I had Anja made the situation a bit more confusing. So, I bought one more test. Then one more. Then one more. All negative, yet I was convinced I was pregnant. Then I had a few days of bleeding, but still had a niggle in my brain, so bought another test, which came back positive. The question then became: did I already miscarry? Should the surgery go ahead? And on and on, with the result being emergency surgery to remove rupturing ectopic and offending IUD (the emerg doc actually asked me if the extra-uterine IUD was intentional). Anyway, a case in point that sometimes HPT's might be behind the times a bit and sometimes your body knows better.

However, given that Anja was a one shot deal and that I hadn't even had a period for two years before the ectopic, I had always thought I could get pregnant at the drop of a hat. So, when Kirk and I realized this spring that finances/my work were perfectly timed to have another baby, I thought it would be no problem. Indeed, that first month I even felt gaggy and headachy and tired (ignoring completely the fact I started a new medication to control above handwashing habit). So, I bought a pee-stick, thrilled to know that you could now test 5 whole days early. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. (anyone counting the dollar signs, yet?). Then period. Test again, because, after all, my ectopic didn't register until after the bleeding. Three months of nothing nothing nothing period nothing nothing nothing. Then overjoyed, pregnant, then miscarriage and not knowing things weren't right and then losing all faith in my ability to know things about my body. Then now.

Things about my relationships with HPT's I, with hesitation, admit: I don't read the test strictly in the ten minute window. In fact, I can look at it for hours, at every possible angle (under bright lights, held up to the window, upside down, etc), which means, of course, that I am doing the possibly gross thing of man-handling something I peed all over days ago. The only thing that makes this more embarrassing is that Anja, of course, more times than not accompanies me to the washroom and narrates all.

What's even more shameful is a) thinking you really have to start varying the stores you buy HPT's from so people don't think you are a complete freak and b) hiding them from your knows-your-obsessed-and-freakish husband.

And who needs internet porn when you can spend hours comparing your pregnancy tests to pictures of ones taken at various DPO (that's days past ovulation to you innocents) by people you do not know and will never meet?

Sigh. And did I mention the money? Did I also mention we do not have the money for me to be doing this (though I am in charge of the books and can hide it nicely - a little out of the food budget won't be missed, will it?)

I also remember clearly stating, to several people, that I could not keep doing this to myself post-miscarriage this summer. And this week, here I was again, feeling gaggy, refusing to admit that maybe the cat litter just needs cleaning more often (but I can't do it, after all, I might be pregnant), and tired, ignoring the fact that I had a doozy of a cold this week.

Then reading tonight on the completely-100% reliable - scientifically accurate - internet that some women have had negative HPT's and bloodtests and had ultrasounds that showed little babies and heartbeats... well, maybe it could happen? Right? Kirk poo-pooed the idea in his very rational way, but he also told me I was not pregnant with ectopic when I was and that, statistically, even if I got another IUD the puncture of uterus leading to ectopic pregnancy scenario was unlikely to happen again. Don't worry, I'm not calling the doctor. I'm not that crazy. Yet.

What is it about wanting to be pregnant that's making me crazy? How do people who try for years cope? What's the deal with annoyingly fertile couples with 6 kids? What's the deal with people who don't even want kids and wind up with them anyway?

I think part of it this month must be the post-miscarriage panic and sheer pissed-off anger coming back. I am furious. Spittingly rageful. As in could rip the packaging off a 5 days early First Response Pregnancy test with my teeth, pee on it, then throw it against the wall. Would this give me two pink lines?

ps. So much for my blog promoting world peace. I will get there, I promise! As soon as I can stop looking at that beautiful sylph in the mirror-pool.

Mummy, Are You Happy (part one)

2009-08-05T22:44:00.001-04:00

Last night marked our 8th wedding anniversary, which I marked by locking myself in my bedroom while Anja screamed about various aspects of dinner on the other side. Now, before you feel too horrified about our lack of meaningful anniversary time, Kirk and I plan on doing something "special" while his parents are visiting next week and can babysit the munchkin. In the meantime, Kirk had a community pediatric presentation last night and I had felt too tired to go to my pottery class - until dinner.

I've recently come to the conclusion that I hit the hard brick of my good-mommy wall right about dinner time, which, of course, corresponds with Anja hitting her no-whining wall. As we are often alone for dinner and bedtime (and even when we are not), this - combined with our mutual stubborness - can make for a lot of metaphorical bloody foreheads.

Last night, as with most nights, it started about not liking dinner (who hasn't heard that?), and quickly progressed to the "issue" of sitting on my lap at dinner. I know, I know, she is only three, what harm can it bring to let her sit on my lap every time she demands during a meal time? I know I have received more than one raised eyebrow at my obstinant dislike of this practice from Kirk. What he may not understand, however, is that it is not about the lap-sitting, and not even about the fact I would like to eat my dinner with fork and knife, but it is the issue of just wanting a teeny, tiny, little piece of myself that Anja doesn't demand. She, for instance, demands to eat breakfast with me (even though Kirk is already up getting ready for work and I could sleep that extra half-hour); she comes into the bathroom most times when I'm peeing and often narrates the experience, insists either of us lay with her until she falls asleep, which can take hours at the end of the day; she comes down into our room half-way through every night to sleep, etc, etc, etc. She talks and talks and talks and asks the same question over and over and over and over and over and over and over again all day long:
-Mummy, why aren't you finding a parking spot? (X3)
-Mummy, did I eat all my (insert food item here) when I was a baby? (X 10)
-Mummy, is (insert food here) a little bit healthy? It has no sugar? (X 10)
-Mummy, what are we doing today? (X20)
-Mummy, what are we doing tommorrow? (X15)
-Mummy, what are we doing next year? (X 2)

The problem is, I like silence, I like just thinking and being, and I've been feeling fairly annoyed all summer with what feels like constant nattering. Well, yesterday my suspicions yesterday that I was showing my annoyance way too much were confirmed. Yesterday, we had a little friend over and she started reacting to her friend's behaviour by yelling STOP! STOP IT RIGHT NOW! in the exact, totally exasperated tone I use with her. Oh, oh.

That shiny marble of truth rolled around my head for the rest of the afteroon, and by dinner time, I knew she was extra tired. Then commenced the battle about how much of what she ate, sitting on my lap, then wanting a hug. A hug, you say, what is so offensive about hugging a three year old? If I step back, and even in the moment, in the sane part of me, too, I realize I could just stop the whole match and give her a hug, but the stubborn part of me thinks "but then she wouldn't be eating her bloody dinner!" Which resulted last night in me screaming back after 45 minutes of being screamed at, then commencing the door-locking episode in an effort to save both myself and her. Which also resulted in my clear-as-day realization that the most negative influence in her life right now is me. Which resulted in sobbing on my part, sobbing on hers, an eventual hug and finishing of dinner, and Kirk coming home to finding me weeping while putting her in her pajamas. Which resulted in him sending me to pottery and me trimming the bottoms right out (ie punching holes out) of two of my bowls.

So. The question becomes not what is wrong with her, but what is wrong with me? She, after all, is only three, and I am supposed to be the one to guide her. I chose to create her. I chose to have her wiggle her way into every part of my life. I do love her more intensely than anything else in the world. Why can't I show that to her every day? Why do I get caught up in my own tantrums? What is it about me that I just can't let these things roll? Kirk is ever so good at diffusing situations through humour and playfulness. Why am I so woefully inadequate?

My doctor, who is also a psychologist (how lucky am I), said everyone gets impatient with their kids, and people who say they don't are lying. I myself have said to my good friend, who is now parenting alone due to the death of her husband, "of course you get impatient - look what you are dealing with." But I also know it sure doesn't feel good when you do yell at your kids, and it feels even worse when you see them modelling your bad behaviour.

I heard a panel discussion on the radio this evening about a new book titled something like "40 reasons never to have kids." One panelist said the great thing about having kids was that they dissassemble your personality, and it's up to you to put yourself back together again - leaving all the parts that don't work on the floor.

Can I do that? I am so scared of setting a precedent where we fight for the rest of our lives and she won't talk to me when she's a teenager or adult. Where her memories of me will be of me being stupid and small. I am so scared I won't be able to leave behind those greasy, gritty parts of me that are bad for her.

So, today when she asked "Mummy, are you happy?" I tried. I tried really, really hard not to sigh before answering her questions, to hug her when she fell instead of saying something along the lines of "I told you so." To make her laugh. To cuddle.

I'm sure going to try to be tomorrow, too.

Things that really do suck about miscarriages

2009-07-15T21:55:00.003-04:00

-You never really know the cause. Blighted ovum (in that there was an implanted egg and placenta, but no further growth, which is heartbreaking itself, because it never was a baby?)? Genetics (will it happen again)?

-If you already have a child, you tend to go places where all The Happy Families go. Which means pregnant women and newborns everywhere.

-Tissue.

-You have nothing physical to mourn. Everything gets flushed down the toilet.

-The disappearance of all pregnancy symptoms.

-It is strangely embarrassing. Something some people don't wish to discuss. A failure of your own body to sustain life. A confirmation that really you were never adequate all along.

-The return of your bloodwork that says your beta HCG has returned to below 2. The follow-up ultrasound that shows, well, nothing, even though you had the ridiculous hope that maybe it was all just a clinical error.

-You were the only one to really know the child. Not even the father has had a real connection yet, so the greif tends to be yours alone.

-People ask how far along you were - as if you would love a child less, or it wouldn't have as much effect on you, at 6 weeks versus at 16 weeks.

-On the next pregnancy, having to write "4th pregnancy, 1 live birth" on all the paperwork.

-Deciding on having the guts to do it all again. The complete and utter terror and ridiculous hope and the bullshit of all the rigamorale involved with a post-ectopic pregnancy.

-On seeing the wonder of your daughter and realizing what could have been.

-On wanting to enjoy what was to be a great summer, and feeling like curling up in a ball all day long.

-On having people ask "are you still upset?" 3 days later.

-Being alone, alone, alone, and not having the energy to explain you feel alone and why to anyone except your computer screen, when really you should be marking essays.

-To have to carry the ache of these two little souls my whole life.

It's Nights Like These I Miss My Dog

2009-07-09T19:30:00.002-04:00

Today, on a walk with Anja and a friend's daughter, I saw a dog who looked exactly like our old dog, Ben. He tried to lick the girls, and I gave him my face to kiss instead.

Two years and four months ago we had to put Ben down, not because he was sick or old and in pain, but because he had a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality that was growing worse with age and with the unapproved arrival of Anja. Long story short, we got him when he was already 4, and knew nothing about his history. The pound said he showed no signs of aggression. We learned the hard way over 5 years that he didn't like other dogs, cats, or homeless people, or people carrying duffle bags, or women wearing fur coats. He would give small warnings of "attack" mode, and if these were not heeded (ie by dogs who insisted on sniffing his bottom for a kilometer or two), he would go for the jugular. We worked with the best trainers, and tried and tried to change it, but the straw that broke the camel's back was when, if there hadn't been a baby gate between them (we never, ever, ever, had the baby in the same room as him if she wasn't in our arms), he would have attacked Anja. We tried to place him in foster care, but no one would take him. They said he would die of a broken heart away from us, anyway, and they were probably right. He died in our arms at the vet's. We had to do it, but it still felt like the biggest betrayal in the world.

You see, like most dogs do for their owners, Ben had fierce loyalty, love and devotion to Kirk and I. He kept me safe on runs through Pacific Spirit Park in Vancouver, on solo hiking trips, and trained for marathons with both Kirk and I (the only two times I saw him tired were after running 30 km and after our trip on the Juan de Fuca trail on Vancouver Island). More than that, he was totally cued in to our states of mind.

When I was pregnant with Anja, I had another bout of depression (see post about moving to Calgary for med school and being pregnant and alone). Every time I had a bath, Ben would insist on coming into the bathroom and keeping watch on the bathmat until I got out again - like he knew bad things could happen in the bath in my state of mind. When I started to feel better, he didn't do this anymore.

I can still hear him digging his bed and see him turning circle after circle before settling down. I can hear his huff of breath, his sleeping dream chases (squirrel!), and feel his fur and the rise and fall of his belly under my hand. Sometimes I think these sensory/body memories are what builds us into who we are. I miss his complete companionship, the way he pranced to the kitchen for post-walk cookies, his kisses on my face.

Tonight, I could really use Ben around to keep me company. Kirk is on call again. He's been on pediatric ICU, which has it's own fair share of horror stories. The trouble is with this intense rotation is that this week, I am experiencing a miscarriage. It's the second baby I've lost in a row - the first to an ectopic pregnancy last year. This time, it looked like trouble after an ultrasound meant to screen out another ectopic showed no baby at all after at least 30 minutes of invasive and uncomfortable transvaginal "procedure." It was still fairly early, so there was a chance they just couldn't see anything yet, but I had a doctor's appointment that afternoon anyway. My fabulous, fantastic family doctor took another round of blood to monitor HCG, which has to happen in all post-ectopic pregnancies. Mine had been doubling normally to that point. It takes a day for results, and I still held out hope, but the next day I started to bleed. My doctor saw me at 8:45 that night and said my HCG had fallen significantly, from 174 to 40. And so it began.

Between me being gone most of Tuesday night at the doctor's, Kirk having a trauma come in yesterday afternoon and so not being able to call to see how I was and having to work late, then falling asleep putting Anja to bed, I've seen him maybe a total of three hours since this all began. I feel like I am in this pretty much alone, though I've had much needed support from friends here and afar, from my preist, and even my family doctor who called tonight to see how I was. Still, the person I most need isn't here.

I know there are terrible, awful, indescribable things happening to the children at the hospital, and I honestly feel like weeping when he tells me of his patients. He's also vocalized to me that he finds it hard to worry about things at home when dealing with life, death and incredibly painful things happening to these poor kids. I guess I just think this maybe isn't one of the small inconsequentials of home.

When people tell me "it will all be worth it in the end," I want to slap them and scream at the same time. Yes, we are so lucky to live here in this country and that we will have the money (because this is what people really mean when they talk about it being worth it in the end), and he will have a fulfilling career in which he gets to help people, but what they don't realize is that here I am alone for the third night since I started to miscarry, and that I'm missing the dog I killed because he was always, always there waiting to lay his head on my lap, to look up at me with those big sad eyes and say "I know."

Small Heartbreaks

2009-07-03T21:27:00.003-04:00

In the grand scheme of things, maybe it is not such a big deal. A little one-off by a three-year-old, maybe because she was unsure about coming, or maybe just because three-year-old's say these things. In any case, my heart has been aching for my daughter all day.

Today, because I have the summer off and Anja is home with me, we had some other kids over for summer playgroup. It rained all day, so no park and wading pool. Anja and a little girl were playing downstairs when her mum said to me "This morning ***** said 'I don't like Anja, but I like Anja's house.'" I think my breathing stopped. I know I had to stop myself from crying then and in spurts the rest of the day (it doesn't help that I am particularly emotional these days.)

How can someone not like my daughter? She is sweet and loving and full of joy. She has the curliest blond mop you'll ever see. She loves to sing; she loves to play; she loves to listen to music and dance. She loves to read stories, to be outside, to take care of people. Her favourite thing in the world is to snuggle up in my arms. As she says, "I love all the animals." She asks me every day "Mummy, are you happy?" (a complicated question: perhaps the subject of another post).

I worry for her. I worry that she so badly wants to fit in with other kids. I worry because she has such a tender, pure heart. I worry that I can't protect her from the whims of others, be they great and terrible whims or small whims that kill the spirit slowly. I worry that I will not be able to help her maintain her sense of personal integrity and strength as she grows up. I worry about protecting her body and soul from all that is evil in the world (not at all that this little girl or her comment is evil, it just stirs up all these overwhelming questions.). Oh lord, I think, she is just three. Does it have to start now?

I know there is a lot of talk in the media these days about parents and working parents and stay at home parents and parents who treat their children like handbags and don't want to give up their lifestyle for their children and parents these days, parents these days, parents these days.

I would just like to say here that as a parent these days, the minute my daughter was born, I knew it was the foremost duty to protect her - to sheild her from disasters personal, political and environmental. By that I don't mean spoil her or not let her figure things out for herself, but as I am responsible for bringing this innocent creature into the world, I am responsible for fighting for her to the death.

Perhaps this is what scares me most: I think most mothers around the world think that way. I think far too many mothers have fought for their children to the death and haven't been able to save them from rape, pain and death. I think all mothers and children deserve more than that. I think I don't really have a clue what that means, and how it happens around the world day after day after day. I think that to help protect the integrity of my daughter's spirit, I have to show her how to protect and care for others. This is not easy; I have never felt particularly brave. I have never known (or I have given myself the excuse that I have never known) how to crawl out of my own shell. I am proud of her daddy, because this is what he does every day. And I am scared shitless, because I have this feeling that his work will take him and us to places far away or close to home where things are bad, bad, bad. I have a feeling Anja and I will have to do something about this ourselves. I am scared of opening myself and her up to what that is.

In the meantime, when she wanders down to my room tonight (which she inevitably does), I will hold her as close as I can for as long as I can.

The Pros and Cons

2009-06-16T21:07:00.004-04:00

There are a few great pros to being married to a peds resident:

-I learn that the effective dosing for Advil and Tylenol differs from what is on the bottle and so can treat fevers better.
-The Doctor has an autoscope handy for looking in ears and determining the cause of said fevers (mine and hers) and is up on current treatment guidelines (ie wait for a day or two before antibiotics because ear infections can be viral. Huh.)
-I learn LOTS just by listening to him (and Lord knows he loves to talk!). For instance, did you know children are developing higher incidences of fatty liver disease (usually associated with alcoholism) because our intake of fructose has increased exponentially? I did a check of common things in our house - bread with sucrose/fructose in it, crackers, yogurt, the list goes on. I am appalled and am trying to follow some advice I once heard: only shop for things on the perimeter of the store because they are the freshest and most natural (ice cream is on the perimeter at our local store :)
-I have someone who knows what to do for croup at 2 a.m.
-I have someone to page at 2 a.m.
-I don't always have to consult Dr. Sears.
-It's true - being part of the medical mafia, I get family doctors more easily
-The Doctor utterly loves children - ours and others' - and genuinely wants the best for them. Strange kids (one of which was labelled by her dayhome provider as the Anti-Christ - can you imagine?) start crawling all over him in the park.

Besides the fact that he isn't home much, there are a few cons to being a peds resident's wife:

-My daughter pretty much has to be bleeding out or not breathing before the Doctor thinks an emerg trip is warranted
-I should probably consult Dr. Sears, too (the Doctor's only a resident, after all)
-Sometimes - well, often times - mums just know.

I Have Developed a Debilitating Fear of Diarrhea

2009-06-11T22:07:00.003-04:00

In a fit of pique, after folding the 20th load of laundry in two weeks (vacations and visitors), this evening I asked my husband, how it was that he got to learn interesting things all day and I got to clean poop out of toilets?

"Well," said Dr. X, who is currently on his GI rotation, "actually, today I had to pick through little nuggets of poop from a constipated kid, then I had to pull out a sample of bloody diarrhea from the fridge and look at that."

"At least," said I, annoyed that even in this he gets to trump me, "you didn't have to clean it."

Speaking of poop, poop itself may be the biggest downfall of being married to a kids' doc, especially when he is on Emerg and the waiting room is lined with children vomiting into k-trays, or when there is a never-ending outbreak of rotavirus on the wards. If I had the choice, I would make him strip outside the front door when he got home. Then I would spray his body wholly with Lysol. Twice. I often feel barfy myself after I've had to -gasp - touch his work clothes in order to wash them. To his credit, he is an excellent handwasher (his hospital, however, is not - scoring only 37% on a recent handwashing audit), and my daughter has only gotten two little and one horrible, marathon, 6-day tummy bug all year - three days of which Dr. X was on call. At least I could page him when she fell down from dizziness.

Once you start seeing germs, though, you start seeing them everywhere. I do tend towards the anxious and obsessive-compulsive in things, and I admit I am beginning to understand why Glenn Gould refused to shake hands and often wore gloves in public. I have unreasonable affection for public Purell dispensers, and always carry a small bottle in my bag. I stand, gaping in horror, willing myself to chastise people in public washrooms when they a) don't wash their hands at all or b) run their hands lightly under water without soap. Infection control is all about the handwashing, people! I am apoplectic when people bring their children to social functions with much finger food and then casually mention while I am mid-carrot that Johnny has a bit of diahrrea. I spend the next 24-48 hours feeling queasy. It did get so bad this winter that I had trouble eating at other people's houses and still have trouble sharing hand towels with members of my own household, not to mention putting my hands on door handles in public places.

Of course, I realize in my saner moments that it is not about the diarrhea at all. Dr. X was away in Laos for a month when my daughter was younger, and she and I both got very sick. All my friends had children of their own, and you can't ask people with kids to help you in those situations. I had no family in town. I felt very alone, which is what it is all about - that and being out of control. There is so much about going through med school and residency that is out of control - the crazy debt and constant financial worries about making it month to month, the fact that his overnight call schedule changes week to week so that, with a child, I have trouble getting out at all to do my own thing, the having to do all the other tasks that, working 100 hours a week, he really does not have the time to do - bills, sorting out all his various fees, insurances and loans, groceries, cleaning, dr's visits, laundry, breakfast, lunch, dinner, dishes, bathtime, bedtime, playtime, AND having paid employment of my own. To me, sickness such as this just serves as a big reminder that my control over my life, my world, the world is in fact very slim and that everything could unravel at any moment.

Wait - here I am whinging away and then realizing this doesn't sound much different than most of the other mums I know!

Maybe it's a simplistic answer, but maybe it's that none of us were ever meant to do this alone. Maybe I need to find better ways of building community, of giving help and of taking it when it is offered to me. That's a hard one, because taking help seems to indicate failure to me, and because really, so many people in the world have it worse off than me. Maybe it is about learning how to be ok not being in control. I really don't know if I am capable of doing that. Still, maybe the one-or-two-parent family with daycare scenario just isn't enough for any of us. Solutions? What are your suggestions? Meal-making parties? Swapping babysitting? Showing people that we care more through little things. Having people over for dinner more.

As long as everyone washes their hands.

Not Just Mrs Doctor - A Beginning

2009-06-03T21:45:00.005-04:00

It seems I've always had crushes on doctors. I don't know if there is enough space in the blogosphere to psychoanalyze my crush on Trapper John Macintire from MASH, or perhaps I'll save it for another time. For now, I'll stick to Gilbert Blythe.

Reading or watching Anne of Green Gables was a favourite past time of mine - not only for the fiesty Anne and her troubles with cordial, but also because of her fraught-with-tension relationship with Gilbert. Who could forget the first time Gilbert whispered "carrots" or Anne smashing her slate over his head? Who could forget the agony of Anne's rejection of his first marriage proposal or of his subsequent near-death experience? The first kiss when she indeed agreed to be Mrs Dr Blythe?

I admit that I still tend to be foolishly romantic when it comes to literary or television romances (and, ridiculously, Nora Roberts), that I have a particular affinity for heritage clothing, and that I dream of a life where apple orchards and horse-drawn carriages are dialy norms. Still, as I am able to look at Anne and Gilbert through adult and literary-study spectacles, their relationship - as they move through their early marriage and childbearing years - evolves in a troubling way. In the beginning, they were an intellectually equal couple, competing for the top spot in the class, showing down at spelling bees, pursuing higher education. Yet, as the books progress through to Anne's House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside, etc, fiery Anne begins to fade - she moons about alot by herself on the beach as Gilbert tends to his patients, she befriends an old sailor, she becomes known to one and all as Mrs Dr, she suspects Gilbert of not delivering middle of the night babies, but of having affairs. She bears 7 children who themselves begin to take over her story with Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside. Mrs Dr, mother and wife. I miss the Anne who lips off to Mrs. Rachel Lynde, who saves Diana's sister, who cracks slates over boys' heads.

All this to say, I don't ever want to become a Mrs Dr, though sometimes, on these darker nights when my husband is on-call and after my three-year-old daughter is asleep, I fear that I am becoming that. You see, when we met, my husband was a 20-year-old boy (as I was a 20-year-old-girl), and neither one of us knew what to do with our lives. We stuck together through 4 university degrees for me, 2 for him, got married somewhere in the middle of it all, and then he received that fateful acceptance letter from medical school. For me, at that moment, everything seemed to change.

I don't want to give the impression that I am bemoaning my fate here. As I am reminded over and over again "it will all pay off in the end." What I am saying is that there are compromises along the way, and I don't think anyone entering this field, or supporting someone who is entering this field, has a clue what those compromises could be. Maybe the point of growing up is learning about compromise and sacrifice. Still, I don't want that compromise to be me.

When my husband was accepted into medical school, I had just finished my second graduate degree, was in early negotiations with a literary agent, just got a job teaching at a college, completed a writing studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Needless to say, at 28, I was entering some kind of momentum. Then we moved, and I became friendless, jobless, pregnant and unable to sleep or write. Medical school began and I never saw my husband again. Ok, that might be an exaggeration, but we certainly didn't even walk our dog together anymore.

Being jobless, friendless, pregnant, and unable to sleep or write, I believe it's fair to say I lost some of my confidence. This was compounded by his classmates' questions, "So, what do you do?" I learned the way to stop a conversation is to say that you are a penniless poet who currently gestates for a living. Now, I have met many of my husband's female colleagues who are wonderful, intellegent, funny, compassionate and creative people, but at that time I felt nothing but crushing inadequacy to their success - here they were strong, smart, successful women and I was, well, me.

I won't go into all the details of medical school, early residency, and all other associated travails in this post as it seems to be long enough. Sufficed to say that I hope this blog - should you find it - will help you know that if you are a medical spouse - male or female - your experiences are shared. And, if you are not part of the medical mafia, maybe you will find the salacious and secret details you always wanted to know. Even more, I hope this blog will be a space where I can again exercise my medicalized and mummy-fied brain, a space where bigger issues (violence against children, wars) that have been eating away at me can be explored, and a space I can share with you through all those nights I'm awake, my husband's gone, and the rest of the house is sleeping.