venting

Yesterday at the doc my blood pressure was up again. It's not very high compared to the normal population, but it's up significantly from my usual. They now want to do monitoring (stress strip test and ultrasound for fluid levels) twice a week because of my blood pressure. In fact, they are talking about wanting to induce at 39 weeks (I'll be 38 on Thurs) if it keeps going up. Ugh. It's so hard to know if they're just being hysterical. I got so upset today about it all... I want want want want want to be able to have a natural birth experience, you know? I want it so badly, and I feel on one hand like their conservatism and lack of faith in the BODY will keep me from that. On the other hand, preeclampsia is serious, I know, and maybe I'm just being selfish in wanting this particular birth experience and ignoring the seriousness of the issue? It's hard to say. I'm seeing a midwife at my next visit and am interested to hear what she has to say about it, whether she thinks it's serious enough to warrent early induction. If I can make it to 40 weeks then maybe we can induce using natural methods like breaking the water, nipple stim, etc. Although I'm FINE with my experience with Frances, which was not ideal, feel that it was the only way and best way, I really was hoping this time would go differently. It's funny—some women wouldn't care. Some women would be pleased to have the birth come earlier, and they wouldn't think twice about being induced b/c they'd have the epidural anyway, and what's the big deal? Something about it trips something deep in me, though I'm not quite sure what. When I close my eyes and fantasize about the birth, it happens here in my own house. I secretly hope the labor goes so fast we don't have time to make it to the hospital. I wish Mitch were brave enough to plan for a home birth, but here we are. And a hospital birth is what it is. (but why am I doing it??)

What it comes down to is that I don't fully trust the doctors, but why not? It's something I'm having a hard time accessing on a conscious level.

Mitch says I'm stressed about something but he doesn't know what it is. I think it's nothing more complicated than the urge to nest v/s feeling unsettled—can't get our house straight enough; feel like I should be packing up, not hunkering down; projects to do to get the house on the market, etc. I think it's the nesting urge that's not being fulfilled. Maybe I can figure out some little things that might satisfy this urge for the moment, some things I can control, like cooking and freezing food for after the baby... Or organizing a diaper table in our room.

This seems to me a pretty chaotic and possibly incoherent post, but that's what I've got. Please leave comments if you have insights. I'll take anything these days. :)

doctors

Friday my doc said no more exercise. He said he "didn't think I needed bedrest yet" and that I needed to "take it easy." Ugh. But he did say the words bed rest. Bed rest. How would that work exactly? I've taken this to mean I shouldn't vacuum the house all in one swoop, but instead do one room at a time and then sit down awhile. Of course, the minute he said bed-rest I remembered all the organizing and cleaning out I wanted to do before the baby comes. I've done some of the attic already but there are closets that are calling me! I'd really like to take advantage of the nesting urge when it strikes.

And it turns out my child has hand-foot-mouth disease. Why do they call it a disease when it's just a virus? It seemed that maybe she had something else because the rash was all over, so we went to the doc Friday (2 docs! Both mine and Frances'. She was worried at the 2nd one (mine) that they were going to look in her ears again.) and they used a tongue depressant to look in her mouth, from which they confirmed it is HFMD. Terribly traumatic, the tongue depressant. Had to nearly pry her teeth open to get out the paci. Even worse than looking in the ears. In any case, bumps all over--legs, arms, diaper area, hands, feet, mouth. So icky.

I hate that we go to a doc that is connected w/ a teaching hospital. Not that the connection itself is so bad, but I'm always caught off guard when a resident or intern appears. I need to be prepared, the moment I see it's someone in training, to say, "Nothing personal, but I'd rather have the doctor do... (the exam, whatever)." Friday the doc brought in this guy that looked 22 and introduced me to him, then said he was going to look F over and get some info, then the doc was going to come back. What this actually meant was that the young guy was going to do a full exam (feeling her stomach, listening to her heart and lungs, looking in her ears, etc) and then the doc was going to come in and do the full exam again. We were already pushing against her naptime and she felt crummy as it was, and let me tell you that two exams is really more than she can take. The young fella not only hurt her when he looked in her ears, but he felt bad that she was crying so much and kept patting her and telling her it was okay, and she did NOT want him touching her more than he already was. So every time he'd console her it would just get worse. I was so irritated with myself for not saying something, for allowing him to practice on her. I know they need practice... and I'm sorry that I can't help w/ that, but this time in particular I shouldn't have. Anyway.

less than 3 weeks

I sleep on the pull-out couch these days. Not only do I have a fortress of pillows—the body pillow, four regular pillows plus 2 throw pillows to prop up my swollen numb hands—but I get up to pee every two hours. When I was still in the bed with Mitch, I would try to roll as gently as I could out of the bed and slide ever so gently back into it, so as not to disturb him, but I finally had to admit that there was nothing gentle about my motions. Really what I was doing was heaving myself over and up, and then when I returned I had to rearrange all my pillows and heave myself back in the middle of them.

I've also had to stop carrying Frances. I can lift her onto the changing table or into the car seat, but I can't hold her for any length of time. It's not as hard as I thought it would be, and she doesn't seem to mind. Now and then when she's falling apart and needs me to hold her, I just sit down on the floor so she can come to me. The largest problem is, for example, that I can't pick her up inside the house and carry her to the car where I strap her in. Instead, I have to hold her hand as we walk down the stairs and sidewalk, and I have to be patient while she dallies at the bushes, then I have to convince her to get in the car, which is sometimes not so easy. Again with the flexibility. I've just had to rethink my schedule and how fast things get done, rethink how I arrange my day and what's important. It's been good for me. Sometimes it would certainly be easier to pick her up so we could make better time walking across the library parking lot... I'm sort of glad I've had to go more slowly with Frances this last bit, because I think it's prepared me well for the change of pace in my life after the baby comes.

Less than 3 weeks to go before my due date! I'm excited to see how Frances interacts with the baby, how she reacts to having a new creature in the house. I'm excited to see her hold him and see how she helps; she loves to be a helper. I held a 4-week old the other day and it felt so strange... I'd forgotten what it was like. Funny little creatures.

sugar sugar

All I want to eat is sugar. And baked goods containing sugar. And chocolate. (I also drink about a 1/2 gallon of milk/day these days, which seems absurd to me.) Today it took seriously all of my will power not to buy a box of HoHos at the grocery. One might think that it's not a big deal if I eat a box of HoHos; I am pregnant after all, and shouldn't I be allowed to indulge? There are actually several reasons I shouldn't eat this stuff (besides its being disgusting...), one of which is that both chocolate and artificial crap ingredients give me migraines. On the one hand, my migraines have been considerably reduced here in pregnancy, so the chances of its causing one are slim. But in addition to a possible debilitating headache, the sugar causes all kinds of general havoc in my body and brain. Tonight when my husband spied chocolate sauce on my vanilla ice cream he frowned at me; he doesn't understand failure of willpower. It all seems quite simple to him—something is problematic; don't do it.

Perhaps this is connected in some way to my lack of patience yesterday. It wasn't just with F; it was also the jar I couldn't open because of my sad swollen hands, the dog's non-stop barking, etc. At one point I heard myself scream at the top of my lungs for the dog to SHUT UP. Then I felt really silly. I don't know if I mean screaming at the dog is connected to a lack of willpower or eating too much sugar. F just looked at me like everything was perfectly normal.

I wish I knew what causes my patience to give out somedays and to stay perfectly intact other days. Of course, this would probably require me to UNDERSTAND what it is I'm feeling when I feel it. Yesterday afternoon (sometime after screaming at the dog) I smelled a twinge of anxiety about the house in NY, about the move, about the changes coming with the coming babe. Sometimes there's excitement, sometimes anxiety. Perhaps if I knew what I was feeling it wouldn't have to well up and take me unaware.

Just after coming back from Rochester I was only excited about the move, and definitely less anxious about the winter there, having seen it first hand. Now that we've got a house and I've seen it and the neighborhood, my work is to picture myself there—pushing the stroller down the street, meeting neighbors as I go, driving to the grocery; living my life. I'm going to visualize this, visualize myself happy there, comfortable, satisfied. Visualize what I want to have made real.

I'm going to go eat some cereal.

like a movie scene

Just a little while ago F and I were in the front yard while she pulled the dog around by his leash. I was trying to get her in the stroller for a walk, and she was trying to delay as long as she could. We live on a corner, and a car pulled up to the stop sign across the street. It was an older little sporty thing, a kind of death trap with the SUVs on the road, a car you drop down to get into. A 1970s 240Z or something; white, missing the front bumper, sounding like perhaps it was missing its muffler too. I paused and watched it a moment as it idled there on the corner across from us. Other than the color, it was just like the car my boyfriend had my senior year of high school. His was brown, also missing the front bumper, and smelled always of exhaust, which I came to associate with sweet and good things. As I watched the car I thought sort of nostalgically about my boyfriend and about who I was then, and I waited to see what kind of person was driving this one. The car pulled forward through the stop sign, and drove past us. The driver's window was down and the driver, a younger guy with dark eyes and a hat pulled down over his hair, half smiled at me and lifted his hand in a wave. It was the oddest thing--he looked just like my old boyfriend. Here I was on the lawn of the house I own with my husband, hugely pregnant and puffy, watching my little daughter toddle over the grass and pull a dog twice her size. It's been 18 years since I sat in that exhaust filled car and felt it rumble under me, and I haven't seen him in over 10 years at least. For a moment I stood there sort of stunned, watching the car disappear down the street. I actually wondered if it were my old boyfriend, here in town visiting someone maybe, but that didn't make any sense. I hear about him now and then and he lives far away in another life. But standing on my lawn, for a strange moment there was an overlap, a pause in which my life stretched itself out and sort of folded over. I don't know what these kinds of experiences serve to tell us, but lately I've been thinking I'm not the same person I was then. Yet seeing that car, having the driver smile shyly and wave, reminded me of all the ways in which I am indeed the very same person, the ways the same dreams pass through me now as then.

extremely short update

We got a house! We're under contract... Yippee!

And I'm in some new unfamiliar place of being relaxed in my life. Traveling w/ Frances wasn't stressful, not because it wasn't tiring, but because of my perspective. That, and she was a champ... entertaining everyone and generally being charming.

Excited and relaxed about the move, excited and relaxed about the baby. How did this happen? I like this new place; I hope I can stay here.

changes

We're in Rochester. The streetlights glow up from the snow. Looking at houses tomorrow, looking for the place that will contain our LIVES the next few years. (A container. tupperware? glass? aluminum foil?) Really tired after traveling, though Frances was a dream—well behaved, happy, having a good time. Right now I choose to believe the next babe is going to be the same. I choose not to lean on Murphy's Law, not to believe that just because this one is lovely the next one will be a maniac. I choose to believe that this is the kind of tot we create, though I know she actually has very little to do with me.

More soon.

this present moment

As I write this, I am sitting at the instructor's station in a university classroom while 32 undergraduates earnestly labor over an exam I made up last night. These three hours may be the end of my experience as a professor; for the next while, anyway, I will be a full-time stay at home mom. (I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about that later on. (I don't yet know, for example, how I'm going to feel about my response to the question "What do you do?")) For the moment I am here in this classroom with kids that I find interesting and sometimes insightful and charming either way, and my child is elsewhere with someone who is not me, and there is a space between, a kind of zone in which the air moves freely.

Something I've noticed lately when I've been with Frances: when we go out—to the grocery, for a walk in the stroller, wherever—I approach her with the apprehension that she might be fussy or difficult. I arm myself with snacks, milk, kid music in the car, books for her to look at. But maybe this apprehension alone causes the difficultness I fear. Certainly she can sense my emotional state. And why do I fear this from her? If she's unhappy, I usually come up with something that will distract/satisfy her. My newest approach is to assume that she's going to be fine, and what I've found is that she is; my anxiety, in the end, accomplishes nothing except to make me anxious, which is a terrible way to live.

Sometimes when Mitch watches Frances she says she wants to go for a hike or to the museum, but when it comes time to get in the car (or the kid-carrier), she throws a fit. She doesn't want to. So Mitch simply changes plans: they play in the yard or go to the park instead, where Frances has a very nice time. Perhaps my problem is MY inflexibility. It doesn't occur to me to change plans... I feel that I must convince her to do whatever it is she doesn't want to, for the sake of the task at hand. Of course, there are going to be times when this is necessary. But there are many many more when I can be flexible and simply respond to what happens in that moment.

This is the real issue, I believe: being in the moment. (In fact, nearly every issue I have in my life comes down to this. It's like I keep learning this lesson over and over. (Isn't that the definition of insanity?)) To BE in this very moment, to simply notice it for what it is, to experience it fully, feel the feelings, smell the smells, hear the sounds. If I can just be, and assume that Frances will just be, then going to the grocery store takes on a whole new flavor. If this very moment produces a disgruntled child, then I deal with that when it comes. In the meantime, the child isn't disgruntled, so it's crazy for me to brace myself against that (so far, fictional) possibility.

(This morning Mitch said that he believes that I get nervous not only about what might happen, but that I won't be able to handle that thing when it comes, that it will put me over the edge. He suggested I change my perspective and believe that whatever comes I can handle. The question then becomes not "Oh no, what if something happens?" but "Hm, I wonder how I'll solve this...")

This Buddhist present moment stuff is also the key to being a stay at home mom, I suspect. (Well, it's really the key to understanding the entire Universe, but there's not enough space for all of that here.) In order to not go a little nutty when staying home with kids, you have to fully experience what it is you're experiencing. They'll only be small for just a moment, and spending that moment wishing for a bit more space in which to move (or nap or shower quietly or pee alone) is antithetical to the choice to stay home and experience their childhood in the first place.

So this is where I am. My new approach is to make friends with this moment: to focus on it, to feel the air around me, to assume Frances is here and fine in this moment as well. It's funny—when I can do this, she seems calmer. She seems to indeed be along for the ride rather than quietly simmering before a blow. Perhaps she was calm all along and I didn't notice because I was looking for signs of irritation, or perhaps she is indeed calmer because she senses that Mom is more relaxed in the world. She's terribly perceptive; of course she picks up on what I'm feeling. I want to provide a world of calm for her, want her to assume that the world is a safe place. In order to do this I have to be vigilant: it's my nature to slide back into anxious preparedness, always expecting something to struggle against, some impediment, some blow. I could do a whole analysis here about where that came from, but I won't. I'll save that for my counselor's office.

hiatus

Just a note to anyone who is checking for new posts: this month I am teaching a Winter Term class at the university, which means an entire semester's worth of material compressed into 3 weeks, meeting every day. So I'm a little pressed for time. I have this week and next week to go, and then I'll catch up here again.

I will tell you that Frances now sits on the recliner in the living room and puts her baby on the seat beside her, and there she opens and reads books to her baby. It's amazing watching the developmental advancements of a little human.

The baby that I'm carrying around these days is active active active, and he's got the hiccups as I write this.

Cheers~

new year, new world

To celebrate the new year I'm going to attach an email I recently found. It was written (by me) to some mom girlfriends on Dec 31, 2006 and is rather interesting to read here a full year later. I think it is telling of what this last year has been for me. It doesn't seem that long ago in time, but it does feel like I've traveled a great distance from this:

****

Well, ladies, we've just put Miss F down in her own room for the first time. I'm ambivalent about it—she's growing up already!! How does one deal with such enormous mundane everyday dramas? And I'm going back to work on Wednesday. Another thing I feel absolutely ambivalent about. I feel like I'm going to miss her so much, but I know in my head (in my head, not my gut) that it will be good for her, good for me, good for Mitch, good all the way around. I find these days I have this strange reaction to other people's holding her—it's a sort of mix of jealousy and missing holding her myself, nothing as completely formed as either, just an odd longing that I feel is absolutely instinct, the mother instinct I've heard about but didn't understand. Ah, a strange new world it is.

I know A already has the book, but the rest of you should read _Whole Child, Whole Parent_. It's not a parenting guide like we're used to, more of a spiritual book, the spiritual awakening that is having a child. It's rather amazing.

It's the last day of 2006, the year in which our babes were born. I'm not really feeling as sappy as I sound. I want to get together soon, with all of our little ones in the same room. They've been in the same room before, but then they were on the inside of our bodies. We weren't able to hold any of them but our own. I wonder if any of us will be awake to see the new year? Probably only if we're up nursing. :)