The New Girl

In Three Words

When I am in the process of beginning treatment with a new patient, I do an in-depth interview with the parents first. I ask a bajillion questions to learn as much as I can about what's happening, the patient's early years and temperamental style, as well as the family's structure, culture and the dynamics that keep everything in (or out of) place.

In that first meeting, almost at the end--after I've asked a bunch of dry (sometimes difficult) questions--there is an exercise I do with the parents, in which I ask them to describe their child's personality to me using only three words.

"Can you give me three words to best describe your child's personality? Don't think too hard, just the first three things that come to mind," is basically what I say.

Having the parents try to compress their impressions of their children into so few words can kind of distill them, concentrating and clarifying them. After having heard the prose descriptions of their child, the Three Word Descriptions sometimes sound like poetry. Often, after getting all the sad or scary stuff out of the way, the parents can focus on the positive. Sometimes, it's hard for the parents to get in touch with the positive because of the sad or scared. Whatever the case may be, the results of this exercise are usually very interesting and enlightening.

So, you want to give it a try? It's really kind of fun.

Here are mine:

The Girl: Intense / Tender / Sparkly

The Boy: Funny / Easy / Loveable

In Case You Thought You Were Scarring Your Children The Most.

This morning, I caught my Pretty Much Totally Potty Trained son in my closet. Pooping in his new pajamas. Sans underwear. Yes, yes. Lets all observe a moment of silence for the brand new pj bottoms.

I, erm, handled the situation [like a reptile] in such a way that, how should I put it? My child might remember until [the therapy couch] next week or so.

Here's our [first of many, I'm sure] conversation on the topic:

The Boy: Hey, Mommy! Member when I pooped in my pants?

Me: Yes, I remember.

The Boy: That was not good, when I pooped in my pants.

Me: No, it wasn't really good.

TB: That was BAD, when I pooped in my pants.

Me: (omgINeverSaidBad) Welllll, it wasn't really *BAD,* it just wasn't...great.

TB: I'M VERY SORRY I POOPED IN MY PANTS, MOMMY!

Me: [Insert your own witty ending here because I'm all balled up in the corner, rocking back and forth, baaaaaaack and forth.]

That Shit About Your Heart Walking Around Outside Your Body After You Have A Kid Is True. Or, Why I Want To Cry About A Game Of Freeze Tag.

"Unfreeze me!!" cried her cousin.

She came barrel-assing around the car, running to get to him, both arms extended. She collided with him, hands to tender tummy, and unfroze him--he stepped backwards, scowled and scolded.

"NOT LIKE THAT! THAT HURT!" and then he turned and walked away from her.

While she stood, frozen for real, the look on her face--heartbreak.

I watched from the porch, where my BIL and I were waiting for the bus to come, watching our kids work shit out. But that look of heartbreak...

It broke my heart.

I put myself in her place. Running, exhilarated, playing big-kid games, rounding the corner, excited to team with her cousin, against her little brother. Thinking she was doing something good, something right. Only to be met with disapproval, reproach. The confusion, the shame, it froze her solid. Even though the freeze tag was over.

***

She is getting bigger. She takes a bus to school. She dresses herself. She does homework. She opens her snack box by herself. She puts her pencil case in her cubby. She picks up her room and makes her bed. She keeps her library book on her self, like the teacher told her. She practices writing and counting.

For her, though, the challenges are mostly emotional. Her struggle isn't writing the numbers, it's withstanding the immediate and overwhelming frustration she feels if she can't do it perfectly the first or second time. The frustration is fast and furious, sometimes leading to impulsive and destructive acting out. Her struggle is in taking correction, trying it another way, listening and following suggestions. Keeping calm enough to listen and reason when she's upset.

When she was little (you may recall,) it was impossible for her to hold in the pushes and the bopping other kids on the head in group activities. When she got a little older, I learned more about her.She started to say to other kids, "You're standing too close to me!"  So we learned that her comfortable zone for personal space is almost twice the size of what would be considered average.

But now, as she gets bigger still, she's been trying. Really hard. Our behavior charts are about kindness, responsibility, and persevering calmly while doing something frustrating. She's been collecting "smiles" on her chart and feeling pride when she completes things that are hard to do with calm perserverance.

Back on the driveway, I watched her eyes well up with tears and my heart hurt. I helped them through it, giving each their lines to say. The Nephew gave her a half-hearted hug and I watched her try to discreetly wipe her eyes.

And then, before I could talk it through with her, the bus came.

She was quiet as we walked across the street. She climbed onto the bus, into the seat, and looked out the window. She raised a hand and gave a sad, little, wave. The bus pulled away and took my heart with it.

The incident has been forgotten, I'm sure. She will have shaken it off, distracted by the business of kindergarten. She gets to go to the Treasure Chest today to pick a prize. Tonight, the whole family is coming to sing Happy Birthday to her brother. There will be a couple small gifts for her, too, I'm sure.

The rejection that she felt this morning is probably already long gone for her. Yet, I am at home, with that persistent, vague, uneasy feeling of something nagging at the back of my mind.

Then I remember. That face. The quick swipe of the back of her hand across her eyes. Her sad little wave.

The breeze rattles through the hole in the middle of my chest.

I can't wait until my heart gets back.

 

Just Say Yes.

Once, when I was in a clinical supervision meeting with a bunch of other mental health professionals with whom I worked, I rolled them in the aisles with a joke I made about a theoretical support group for adults with social skills deficits. The joke wasn't about having a support group, because, there's no joke there. Living as an adult with issues that affect your ability to make or sustain relationships is trying and difficult and there are lots of things for these folks to overcome. In case you don't have a lot of first-hand experience, here's a little, tiny bit of background (so you can understand my joke, yo.)

Children and adults who have difficulty with social skills are often "their own worst enemies," when it comes to the finer points of dealing with others. They are frequently ridgid thinkers, often inflexible and have difficulty changing their minds enough to make (sometimes even basic) compromise possible. So, it can be challenging for them to establish and maintain intimate relationships as they get older. Successful, fully functioning adults often enter therapy for something unrelated, and find themselves diagnosed with these deficts, which then explains lots of things about their pasts.

So, (yep. That was all background for one joke. I'm baaaAAAAaaaaack.) SOOO one of the psychologists said, only half in jest, "You know, we should start a dating service."

And my joke was that I thought we should also get them t-shirts made, emblazoned with the big, bold, logo:

.

JUST SAY YES.

 

~~~~~~~~~

A while back, Liz from Mom-101, wrote a post about an unironic argument about lollipops. (LONG LIVE THE INTERNET!!) The post itself was fun and funny. But, as is the way of Liz's posts, it also percolated in me and made me think. This time, it was a kind of passing comment she made in the post which, in part, shaped the direction of the conversation in the comments. As I read through the comments, I found a community of parents who said that they often default to "No." I do it, too. And as parents, there are lots of reasons for it. Some nos are necessary, having to do with safety, security or punctuality. If I'm being completely honest, though, a lot of the nos I have for my children could be yeses, if only.

If only:

I could get the living room picked up first.

I hadn't just picked up the living room.

They weren't already dressed in regular clothes.

I wasn't in the middle of making breakfast/lunch/dinner.

It wasn't so cold/warm/wet/sunny outside.

I didn't want to look at my twitter feed/facebook/email on my phone.

It wasn't so messy.

It wasn't so early/late.

They could ask without whining.

I would just slow down and let them 'help' me.

These aren't earthshattering news flashes. It's not an alien concept, I know, you can most likely relate. I'm trying not to judge myself harshly. I don't find guilt ("mommy-type" or otherwise) to be very productive. But when I examine the whens and whys of my nos, the common theme generally boils down to one thing:

My own anxiety.

So, it's not a social skill deficit, but my own anxiety that makes me rigid, inflexible and unable to change my mind. Anxiety makes me say no without really considering. 

After all, I have a lot to do. All parents do. It doesn't matter if you are a mom or dad, or if you work from home, outside the home, stay at home, whatever. Taking care of other human beings is a lot of work. So, when I'm making breakfast and trying to unload the dishwasher and make my tea (FFS,) and get the snack for my daughter's backpack and get people's clothes on and their teeth brushed, all to the tune of the two kids whining and bickering in the other room, when my son rockets into the kitchen and head-butts me in the hip, while sucking his thumb and holding his wubby, and mumbles, "Hode me, Mommy," it's all I can do not to push him down and step over him to get to the refrigerator. So anxious am I to get us all out the door on time, to hit my caffeine quota, to put just onnnnne more load of laundry in the washer. As it is, I offer a sympathetic, "I can't, right now, baby, I'm _________," as I twist by, sidestepping him, continuing on to the next item on my to-do list.

Think about that for a couple seconds.

When I think about it, what I'm left with is this: I'm so busy and anxious about the job of taking care of them that I'm missing opportunities to actually care for them. To show them love and care and comfort. To stop my spinning and doing and fixing and making and picking up toys and clothes long enough to pick up an actual, real life child who is asking me to. To show them what is really true, they are more important than the laundry, than the dishes in the dishwasher, than even my tea.

These days of chocolate-smeared hands gripping clean pants are fleeting. Of course we all know this to our bones but it's so easily forgotten in the crush of chores to be done. There will come a day, too soon, where there will be no more requests to be held. Laundry, on the other hand? Not so fleeting. This is my kids' childhood. It's happening right this very second. They only get one and it's now and the clock is ticking.

And so, this is what I'm doing.

Every time I want to say no, I'm going to pause, take a deep breath, count to five and then answer. I'm going to try to say more yeses. Sometimes, of course, there will be nos. I'm not talking about letting my kids run naked outside. I'm not swapping out my brain for another brain. But, really. The laundry isn't going anywhere, while the child is slowly receding from my kids, a little bit each day. Soon there will be none left.

(So, I'm also going to, without fail, pick up a child who asks.)

In an instant, this time is going to live only in memories and, well, most of the great memories come from the times we say yes. The times when we're brave enough, flexible enough and compromising enough to say yes. Yes to the mess, yes to the ice cream before dinner, yes to the "help" offered with the baking, yes to the playing in the rain, yes to painting on the driveway and yes to after-lunch autumn leaf collecting.

What I don't want to have to remember is loads of moments like this:

Nimbly sidestepping an affection-seeking boy because I needed to get to the fridge to fill his water bottle.

 

Fat. And Skinny.

I went to pick them up from the gym's kids' club and my daughter looked at me, smiled, and out of the blue said to me, "I want to be fat, Mom, not skinny.*" At the sound of that sentence, my head spun and I looked at her and she had the nervous grin she gets when she's testing the waters, gauging reactions.

My heart started thumping. She has never, ever heard those two words uttered in our home. Never. Of this, I am entirely sure. Having made a conscious choice, I don't make comments, critical or otherwise, about my body or my looks or my weight--to her or others, in or out of her earshot, since becoming a mother to a daughter.

"Where did you hear that? Who said those words?" I asked, none too gently.

Sensing my intensity and upset, she froze, unsure.

I'm not naive enough to think this was never going to happen. I'm not even naive enough to think I had until middle school for it, as steeped as we are in this female-body-critiquing culture. A culture in which we feel free to assess, discuss, analyze women's bodies, their weight, their shape. A culture in which women casually and openly castigate themselves and their bodies in the presence of their impressionable children (both boys and girls,) passing to them the mantle, unconsciously, modeling the expectation and the behavior and the language.

Fat. And skinny.

*****

When I was a girl, my mom was fat. I knew this not because she looked appreciably different from the moms of my friends, not because she was disabled in any way by her size, not because other kids made fun of her or picked on me because of her.

I knew she was fat because she told me she was.

Consistently, overtly, expressly, regularly.

Not only was the messaging that she was fat, overweight, heavy, but that she was different and unsightly and embarrassing to me. I remember the sharp spike of fear, bewilderment and guilt I felt when she'd accuse me of being embarrassed to be seen with her because of her weight. I wasn't. I told that last to my therapist once and she replied, "Weren't you?" It was her way of asking me to think past a reflexive statement, perhaps a defense.

So I gave it some real thought.

And no, I really wasn't embarrassed. That had been my mother's projection. I didn't see her the way she saw herself. Even now, when I look at pictures of her from that time, she was surprisingly groovy in the seventies, with her frosted hair and her white polyester and her big glasses. She had maybe an extra 30lbs. That's it. And although she would become heavier through the years and end up morbidly obese (and truly different looking than the moms of my friends) when I was a kid, I only knew what she told me.

As confusing as it was.

****

Back in the gym, I struggled to cool down. Reeling in the tangled lines of the still-intense past and the dreaded worst-case-scenario futures, I forced myself to just be present in the moment with my 5 year old daughter, who just heard some words for the first time and was trying them out. (*Because if she's telling me she wants to be fat and not skinny, I'm thinking she may not totally understand the finer points.)

So I changed the subject and we walked to the car. When we were underway and both facing forward, I asked, "Do you know what 'fat' means? Do you know what it means to be fat?"

And her answer was, "It's not a nice thing to say about someone. A girl called someone it at recess and the teacher told us all it wasn't a nice word to say."

She had no idea.

So, we had a talk. A long talk about words and how they can have more than one or even two meanings. A talk about body sizes and shapes. About differences. About how people are built, bigger and smaller, and how we eat and why we exercise, and brush our teeth and take baths and how people look different on the outside but everyone has feelings on the inside. And we talked a little about the world.

And I had to tell my sweet girl that there are people in this world who think that if a person is 'fat', she's not smart or healthy or worthy of love. There are people in this world who call themselves 'fat', condemning themselves, in their heads or out loud.

And there are people in this world who call others 'fat', as a taunt. As a way to say, "You're different from us, you're not good enough."

Some of them are 5 years old, on a kindergarten playground.

As confusing as that is.

Remember That One Kid I Had? Almost Two Years Ago?

He is, in most ways, the opposite of his sister. This is more common than not, I know. The second one is looking for a place to fit, after all. Where my daughter is...full of 90 degree angles, let's say, The Boy is round. And squooshy. He fits...anywhere. Snuggly.

We laugh that he is The Mayor everywhere he goes. Everyone loves The Boy. He is so, so easy to love.

He's also just easy. Period.

He's recently started to talk with real enthusiasm for the sport. Stringing three, four, even five word sentences together, with this adorable little two-beat pause in between words.

"Tank you----Mommy."

He's showing the first signs of potty interest (OH PLEASE) which culminated in him SITTING IN THE TOILET WHILE FULLY CLOTHED at the gym's kid's club. He's also started to require "Poo-pate" for his tooth brush, which, I gotta tell you, mature as I am, makes me snicker. He's car-obsessed. OBSESSED. One day, The Man and I were saying how, at his age, TLNG was crazy about Elmo. (Remember that shit?) And how The Boy has no interests and what the hell is wrong with him and what are we going to have for 2nd party decorations? And the next day, it's like some kind of little boy switch got fucking FLIPPED up in here and it's all, "START YOUR ENGINES! RACE-RACE-RACE-MOMMY-I-WINNNNNN!"

He's coordinated and swings a baseball bat like he MEANS IT. He has a little lean-to-the-side stance and EVERYTHING. Crazy. He climbs and runs and jumps and not a single person who knows us in real life can believe TLNG ended up with stitches before he did. We got a [giant monstrosity] swing set in the back yard. It's huge and I imagined that The Boy would be able to navigate it independently by next summer. At a year-and-a-half, that kid climbed the ladder, went down the slide and was able to sit straight-backed enough for a big-kid swing. He uses a scooter. He's just...pretty cool.

And here's the thing: he melts my heart. Completely.

The connection that I've had with my girl, since the minute she came out, has been crystalline--amazing. Sparkly and intense. Rock hard and indestructible. As she's gotten older, she's gotten easier in some ways and way more challenging in other ways. I fully expect this trajectory to continue. Ahem. (Send help. Or chocolate.) But there is an intensity to her, to us. Our relationship is rife--fraught--with strong emotion, with a degree of struggle. Part of it is stage. Part of it is personality style. And while I love her and really LIKE her, even admire her spirit, sometimes it's kind of hard to be her Mommy.

But my boy. Oh, my boy. I don't know how to explain it, really. If it's the product of age and stage or gender or birth order or temperamental style. Or, most likely, all of the above. He sneaked up on me. He came into the world sleeping in four hour chunks and self soothing and before I knew it, he was walking and eating and playing and snuggling. He was easy. So easy and quiet, I could all of a sudden understand how someone might forget they had a kid in the car. Started to believe people who said their kids slept through the night at 3 months, because omfg, he DID.

It took a while to feel like I really know him, I think. The volume of his personality is a little lower and it was a while before my ears could adjust to hear it. But he seeped into my bones along the way and it seems that, like his car obsession, my intense maternal love for him got flipped and all of a sudden I'm crying because one day, he's going to have whiskers and be taller than me. Our connection is there. But it's so different than that to which I was accustomed. Softer and more pliable. Looping and elastic and comfortable. And beautiful, too.

VROOOOOOOM!

By The Time You've Finished Reading This Post, I Will Owe You For The Hour Of Therapy. You've Been Warned.

Ah, you guys.

I don't even know where to start. I've been struggling with Parenting Issues in my little [hidey hole] corner of the internet and it's been...a struggle. It's a teeter-totter-roller-coaster up in this piece and I debate even how much to write about it, since the internet is all PERMANENT and someday, my beautiful girl will be able to read and do internet searches and well, I wouldn't ever want her to stumble on something that would have her feeling like I didn't Like her all the time, even though, I feel like, well, like I don't Like her all the time.

Oh my word.

Seriously.

There's nothing that makes you feel more reptilian than admitting there are moments that you don't Like your own offspring.

And by you, I mean me.

This is a fairly new occurance around here, actually, but it's not at all new to me. I see it in my job occasionally. Worn-out, anxious, exasperated, parents of a child who has a 'Difficult Temperament' or other challenging behaviors will come into my office for help. They sit on the couch and discuss their child and his behaviors and list all of the books they've read and the techniques they've tried and the meetings they've had with school personnel, counselors, therapists, and doctors. They tell me about the frustrating, irritating, and even humiliating situations that have resulted from these behaviors. And what is abundantly clear, as they are talking and confiding and crying, is that they Love their child. That much is so obvious, it goes without saying.

But equally obvious, and almost always unspoken and (I imagine) carried in the pits of their stomachs like a stone, is the fact that they are having great difficulty Liking their child. And I'm not talking about the flash of anger or resentment that comes with the territory of your kid being an ass. I'm talking about an ongoing, chronic disconnection from feelings of fondness, tenderness, or anything else resembling a Warm Fuzzy.

And so it is for me, internet, these past few weeks. My girl, my feisty one, has always had a tough temperament. She is not terribly flexible. She is tenacious in all the most challenging ways. She is easily frustrated, sometimes anxious and overwhelmed. She needs about 748576 feet of personal space around her or she starts whacking people. She's a little wired and a lot sharp and likes to rattle cages. Kind of like her mother. Go figure.

The interesting thing about temperament is, objectively, there's no such thing as a difficult or easy temperament. They just are what they are, kind of like feelings. It's the context that decides what's easy and what's not, see. Parenting or teaching a flexible, regular, generally contented, movable child is just....easier. (And, uh, I know that from personal experience, as well.) I've always known this stuff about my girl. Re-reading that post I linked was a little mind-bending. It seems that Four is a recycled Two but with more vocabulary! And horse-power!

Without going into the grizzly gorries because, oh my holy hell, she's four years old and her worst isn't that bad, suffice it to say it's bad enough. Bad enough to make me feel like I'm standing off to the side and watching myself watching my kid. With no smile, no tenderness, no warm fuzzies. It feels cold and a little scary to be here at four.

I'm getting my wits about me and we've embarked on the latest round of lollipop rewards, sticker charts and positive reinforcement (all of which usually end up working for us). We've got family meetings and loving talks to counter-balance punishments and frank rage, fueled by my helplessness and fear.

I understand my own feelings pretty well. I know I'm not a reptile. I know it's a normal part of parenting and it waxes and wanes and that, if I'm feeling it, others are too, somewhere. Maybe, one day, I'll be on someone's couch, crying and listing and hoping it all comes out right enough to convey the intensity of my love for this kid.

Because it's like the blazing sun in the desert, you know.

It really is.

Birth Story.

I had just taken my last dose of [voodoo medicine] homeopathic remedy to induce labor.  You have to take, like, six doses over 12 hours and at 9pm on September 26th, I'd finished it, told my husband (with my tongue in my cheek) that my labor was going to start aaaaaaany minute and went to curl up in the basement and watch some tv.  For the life of me I can't remember what I had on but about 5 minutes in I felt a strange, *popping* kind of kick.

And then I felt a slow, spreading warmth and thought, 'Oh, holy shit.'

Even though I was officially overdue, I hadn't packed a hospital bag.  (I had a feeling that I was going to be significantly overdue...don't ask me why.)  My daughter was in bed asleep.  My husband was upstairs on the computer.  I walked up the steps, into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and had a fucking panic attack. 

'Um. I think my water just broke,' I yelled out to my husband, effectively passing my panic right along.

After what seemed like an hour of bumbling around, trying to figure out what to do, my brain took over and I directed The Man to call his mom while I called my midwife and started to pack a bag. 

I had yet to have a contraction.  

My midwife advised me to go to the hospital, since I was GBS positive and they needed to start the anti-biotics.  I was happy to go, as the labor with my first progressed pretty rapidly and I had some fear that I wouldn't make it on time.  (My sister had given birth to my niece and her labor was so fast that the midwife almost missed it. It, uh, was a home-birth ANYWAY but I was glad that *I* didn't have to deliver the baby.) 

Anyway.

The Man and I got into the car when my MIL got there and off we rode.  My sister was meeting me there.  (The Doula was out of town and in retrospect, it was so, SO great to have The Little Sister there. SO.)  All the way to the hospital, I thought of my daughter.  I wept for her, a little, knowing that when she woke up, her whole world would be different.  We had prepared her as well as we could, of course, but I already ached for what she was about to go through.

About a minute away from the hospital, I had my first taste of memory.  The contraction was slight and easily managed but it brought back a visceral, physical memory from deep inside my body.

'Oh yeeeeah, I remember this shit,' my body said, 'this shit huuurts.'

We got settled into the room and my sister came and the nurse was asking me questions and talking about the iv antibiotics and blah blah.  Then she asked if I'd saved the pad because she had to see if my membrane 'had really ruptured.'  She said this in a way that made me worry about whether or not I'd misinterpreted the event.  Like maybe I'd just been peeing my pants for the last 15 minutes.  She got the long ass q-tip and lo, the water had broken.  She checked me and told me that I was 2cm dilated. 

'It's going to be a LONG night for you guys,' she said, 'we're not going to see that baby until tomorrow morning.'

This was the first time that I tried to tell her that my last labor had progressed quickly.  I also tried to communicate the feedback I'd gotten from the nurses last time.  They were all, without exception, shocked at my behavior during labor.  Quiet but joking almost throughout.  I wanted both the staff and my midwife to know these things, in case it was the same this time.  The only reason that I hadn't had my daughter within 6 hours, start to finish, was because I pushed for OVER THREE HOURS (and I was still joking then, em effers.)

The nurse asked me if I wanted something for pain and I declined, telling her that unless the labor was long and unproductive, I didn't want medication.  The contractions weren't really difficult at that point.  I asked when she was going to call my midwife.  She smiled at me like I'd said something endearing.

'Oh,' she said, 'I won't be calling her for a WHILE yet.  When it gets closer I'll give her a call.'

This was about 11pm.

They came in and hung the antibiotics and I found out that my blood pressure was elevated (AGAIN) and so, I had to wear the fetal monitor OF DOOM constantly instead of intermittently and I was PISSED but RESIGNED and so I just moved whenever I felt the need to and the nurses had to come in and rearrange it and they weren't as sweet about it as the nurses at the last hospital but oh WELL, right?  SORRY, thems the BREAKS, OB nurses. She also asked me about 1229489 more times if I wanted anything for pain.  Something that doesn't bother me at all right now but at the time, made me inexplicably annoyed.  It was almost as if she'd never seen anyone like me before.  Like she thought she knew me better than I knew my own self. Like she just knew better.

My sister considered going home and then coming back later (since it was going to be so long and all) but she had a feeling that it wasn't going to be as long as the nurse thought and so she stayed.  I felt the same way but since I'm the sort who's inclined to 'Not Get My Hopes Up,' I tend toward the, 'Well, it COULD take all night, I suppose.'  

I was still joking, even though the contractions were getting more intense.  I looked around the room and I was Tweeting, my sister was texting and The Man was updating his Facebook status. Ah, technology.  At one point, the two of them (neither one a doula, obv.) were trying to time my contractions.  As the pain set in, I'd let them know and then while I'm 'Going Inside' trying to 'Breathe Deep The Giving Of Life' and all that shit, I hear them whispering to each other. Talking out the sides of their mouths, quiet-like, thinking that I can't hear them while LOST IN THE PAIN OF LABOR.

The Man: 'Are you supposed to start timing from the beginning of the contraction to the end?'

The Little Sister: 'I think so. Or. I don't know. I'm timing from the beginning until the end, you're supposed to time how long in between.'

TM: 'So, should I time from the end of one to the beginning of the next? To find out how far apart they are?'

[pause]

TLS: 'Hmm. I think so.'

Me: 'You both KNOW I can HEAR you, right?'

About 1:00 am or so, the contractions started to get more intense. I told my [crack-pot] cracker-jack team, who sat, one with a book, the other with a smart-phone, continuing to joke and loaf about, despite the dramatic increase in crampiness in my uteral region. It is a weird thing about a big experience like that, maybe, but I was shocked on a couple occasions that they couldn't, like, read my mind or intuit the change in my internal state. I know that's ridiculous, really, but it's kind of when a little kid presses on her bruise and says, 'Doesn't that hurt?' I had to actually speak. Out loud.

'Hey. I could use a little...you know, labor support over here.'

They both jumped up and it was about this point that The Man started to resemble one of those life-sized, movie house cut-outs of himself. He stood at one side of the bed, ashen-faced, and tried not to panic. My sister leaned in, comforted and did what a doula would do. The pain was still managable with that support and I recall that hour or so passing pretty quickly, despite the jump in intensity.

I wanted to sit upright and since it had been hours since I'd seen ANY medical professional, I got out of bed and planted myself in a rocking chair, monitors in place. The intensity of the contractions steadily increased and I distinctly remember thinking that if I wasn't progressing, if these contractions weren't productive, I'd skip the epidural and go straight for the cyanide.

Ahem.

Anyway.

For whatever reason, when each contraction would roll through, I would grip The Man's hand in mine, put my forehead on his forearm and push my head against it, like I was trying to snap that fucker in half. I'm so not kidding. I'm chuckling as I write this but at the time, it seemed like a completely logical pain reliever. So, there you are.

The contractions were getting longer and longer with shorter rest in between and at about 2:50 am, I looked at my sister and asked, 'Dude. Am I going through transition in this fucking rocking chair?'

About that time, the nurse came in. I don't remember if she asked me how I was doing or whatever. I just remember asking if she called my midwife yet.

'No, not yet. I'll call her when you get closer,' she said.

'Yeah, but..'

'We'll hang the second bag of anti-biotics at around 4.'

'Yeah, but...these contractions are getting pretty strong,' I said, 'Are you going to check me?'

'We don't like to check too much if you're GBS positive. I see that your contractions are getting more intense on the monitor. When we hang the next bag of anti-biotics, I'll check you. So, unless you tell me that you have to push, I'll see you in a little bit.'

And then, she left.

My sister said, 'She's not making it until 4. She's going to have this baby before then.'

I was starting to believe her and abandoned all thoughts of a cyanide capsule.

Around 10 minutes after 3:00, I felt like I had to pee. I'd felt that way after each contraction and I decided to go. My sister went to get the nurse and while the details are muddied, I recall being half-in and half-out of the bed, the nurse at my side, helping me to the bathroom. And then she said, 'Now, don't you go having that baby in the toilet.'

And.

And I.

What?!

'That doesn't happen,' I said, but it was a question.

'Oh, yes it does, more than you'd think,' was her answer and then I realized that I was having another one of those moments when I thought others should be able to know my thoughts. Because suddenly, I wasn't going anywhere and I wasn't going to do anything.

Besides push out a baby.

The next few minutes were full of flurry and panic and flashes of motion and sounds. I was fully in the bed and gripped by such a fierce urge to push that I have no words to describe it. At some point, the nurse checked me and said something I didn't get, followed by, '...you are a 9, though,' along with some kind of injunction not to push. They were waking the on-call doctor, who was sleeping down the hall.

My mind and my body were in a battle, for sure, I was full of worry and panic, trying to hold in the urge to push and cheating--I couldn't help it--bearing down even though I was afraid I was hurting myself in the process. Not to mention, you know, no doctor, no midwife. I remembered my sister having to dance around in her bathroom and fight her own urge to push while we waited for her midwife--it was a home birth and it was the midwife or me and I remember hissing, 'You better cross your legs and keep them together because I am NOT delivering this baby!'

I had a true appreciation for her at that moment because as I laid on my side, trying not to push and failing, I couldn't believe she held out. I could feel my baby trying to get out of my body. I was  freaked out that I was only dilated 9cm and was afraid of rupturing myself and then, from somewhere, I heard one of the nurses say that if my urge to push was so great, I was probably a 10.

Okie Dokie.

Just the lack of the doctor, then. I looked at my husband and thought he might fall over. I was on my side, trying not to push but feeling my son's head descend, I could feel him coming out.

'He's coming!' I yelled, 'he's coming!'

And then, you'll never believe what my sister said.

She said, 'He's coming! They went to go get him, he's just down the hall!'

It was straight out of a movie, I swear, especially when I'm all: 'I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE DOCTOR!! I'M TALKING ABOUT THE BABY! HE'S! COMING! NOWWWWW!!'

Two seconds later, the doctor walked in and pulling on his gloves, he said, 'Uh. Can we--break the bed down, please?'

The rest took another minute, at the most.

One big, long, push and he was out.

Sigh.

The Little sister went with The Boy to the little grow-light table. The Man was still a cardboard cut-out, holding my hand. I looked at him, misty-eyed and worried. And the first words out of my mouth were these:

'I am SO GLAD I never have to do that again.'

 

 

Do You Like Onions In Things?

There are a few things that are absolutely GRATING ON MY FUCKING NERVES right now. Would you like to hear about them? [Too Bad.] Oh, good! Here we go.

The first thing is that every single morning for the past, oh, week or so, my son has been waking up at 4 in the morning, weeping and wailing, without stopping until I go in there, armed with a bottle, medicine and [my revenge] some saline nose spray and the nose frida. Even the time change did not disrupt his schedule and he seemed totally oblivious that the 4:00 was really 3:00. He just skipped right over that adjustment and kept on rocking the 4am wake up. As soon as the door opens and I present myself, grumbly and pissed off, the crying magically ceases and he says, 'Mama. Mama.' And then my irritation leaves and the dull resignation-slash-warm-sappiness-AKA-he's-only-little-for-a-little-while-feeling sets in and I hug him up and change his diaper and give him medicine and chuckle at how much he HATES the nose frida. I sit on that fucking exercise ball and give him a bottle and he is SO DROWSY. Then I go to put him in the crib and he twists his little bendy ass around so that he goes in STANDING UP.

Standing.

At 4:30am.

What the fuck is up with that, I ask you?

Anyhow, usually the crying part is over then and either he's up talking and laughing to himself or he is pretty quiet and falls back to sleep. I am, as you could probably guess, completely awake by that time and so, you know. I wake up grouchy and irritable and ill-prepared to handle the rigors of my days. And when I say rigors, I mean my daughter.

Which brings me to the second thing: she is making me nuts. Nuts! With the (intensified and inexplicable) baby-talking! And the (renewed after a long, lovely absence) Crazy-Ass Temper Fits! And the (brand new) Ignoring Me-Slash-Selective Mutism! Where she refuses to answer the simplest question! At all! I don't have to provide you with an illustration of how all three of these behaviors combine to create the MOST ANNOYING SITUATIONS IN HISTORY, do I? I didn't think so. You can trust that they DO. Every day, multiple times a day.

I am threadbare and due mostly to the sleep deprivation, my patience is thiiiiiiin. I find that I have an annoyed edge to my voice whenever I'm talking to my daughter and today it started at 7:03am, when she refused to say good-morning or give me our customary Morning Hug and insistently said the baby word, 'Powwnnyyyy,' over and over, to indicate, I suppose, that she wanted me to find her lost pony.

Can you hear that clicking? It's my MARBLES. I'm losing them one by one.

Anyway.

If it wasn't for my promise to myself that I was going to post more regularly, I'd be suffering in silence [and you wouldn't have had to suffer through this post.]

Before I go back to drinking coffee and breathing deeply before tackling the giant job of unloading the diswasher, I'll tell you the story behind the title of this post.

After my mom died, The Little Sister and I went back to my hometown to have Thanksgiving with my dad and my grandfather. We were making all the family favorites in our own way, really, and worked our aaaaasses off. We included my grandmother's mac and cheese. My sister, however, omitted the grated raw onion on top, since none of us liked it anyway. The crunchy texture just didn't suit us. This was our first-ever time making a Thanksgiving dinner. And we were without my mom. It was tough.

If you've never read about my grand-dad, this might not make too much sense but you have to know that he's sort of...er...difficult. Kind of obsessive and nit-picky and before and during dinner he made a series of remarks and comments that I'm SURE he thought were benign but were actually most annoying.

So.

After dinner, my grandfather was telling The Little Sister how good everything was. Then he said, 'Do you like onions in things?' And my sister was all, 'Huh?' And he said, 'Do you like onions in things?' And my sister was all, 'Uh. Yeah, sure.' And he said, 'You know what's good? For the Macaroni and Cheese, you take an onion and you just grraaaaate that onion right on top.'

And I had to suppress my deep, deep, laughter when my sister leaned in and muttered, 'You mean like how you're grrrraaaatting my nerves right now?'

It Gets Better. Special Mom's Edition.

When I dropped off my son at the gym's Kids' Club, (REFUSING TO SPELL CLUB WITH A 'K',) there was a very upset little girl, being held by the worker. "She's new," I heard her say to another mom. About 20(ish) minutes later, as I went in to change my [gym-pooper, WTF?] son's diaper, I saw the little girl, still being held, still crying--looking much, much worse for the wear.

"I called once and the mom said she was going to leave her because she needs to get used to it but I think she needs to come and get her," said the sweet, 19 year old girl who works there.

I had a series of flash-backs. Waiting until my daughter was 15 months old to even ATTEMPT going back to the gym, knowing that she'd be a screaming mess. Going every single day for a MONTH, staying for only 10 minutes because she'd be crying her face off. Feeling hopeless and trapped and like I'd never, ever be able to resume a normal life. Crying on the way home out of frustration and depression, aching to have one thing be easy. Just one.

When the mother came in, she reached for her baby and while soothing her said, "Well, I got 15 minutes. I guess that's a good first day. Should we come for 15 minutes tomorrow, too?"

I wanted to say something encouraging. My impulse was to reach out and relate. And then I thought, "This is probably her third kid and you're going to look like a know-it-all-idiot-assvice-giver."

But there was something about her. About her voice. I held my breath and jumped in.

"Is she your first?" I asked.

"Yes, she is," she said.

I told her how she reminded me of my daughter. About how my girl had colic and was touchy anyway, ("Her TOO, oh my lord!") and how I waited to bring her and how I would bring her every day for only 10 minutes, knowing ahead of time I'd be called and how I'd cry on the way home.

"But, you know," I said, "it gets better."

I told her how my girl adjusted and then, one day, it was like a switch was flipped. That once she was a little older and had a little more practice, things like going to the gym became much easier.

"How long did it take her?" the mom asked.

We are sensitive, I think. Sensitive to parenting differences or child temperament differences that look like they might be caused by parenting differences. Sensitive to others' comments or questions or suggestions or, let's face it, assvice. Feeling (or actually being) criticized for doing this job that is exceptionally difficult most of the time. We make judgment calls every day, in charge of these dependent little people and we hope, most of us, that we are choosing Right most of the time.

But being called to the carpet, so often by people who have no business doing the calling, can and does chafe, I think. It scrapes us up. Makes us a little raw. So that even a slight breeze can sting. It also makes me reluctant to try to comfort or connect, lest I step on a nerve or a feeling. Lest I unknowingly take a loofah to an already exfoliated, or maybe thin, skin.

It can be a fine line between, "Oh, man, I've been there and it really DOES suck," (i.e. I understand and empathize) and "I've been there, done that and got over it," (i.e. Yeah, yeah, they all go through it, suck it up.)

It makes me think of this issue that I had with The Man. Every once in a while, he would observe or be subjected to something that usually only happens to me, the primary care-giver. Like, TLNG would become hysterically unhinged because he put the wrong number of raisins on her plate, for instance.

"Wow," he'd say, "what's up with THAT?!"

"Welcome to *MY* world," I'd say.

He'd get angry and upset and it had to happen a few times before my sleep-deprived mind was sharp enough to inquire-slash-figure out what the fuck was happening.

In welcoming my husband to *my* world, I was offering what I *thought* was a humorous kind of empathy. I was trying to say, 'RIGHT?! Who knew that having exactly EIGHT RAISINS was the KEY TO HAPPINESS? Today?'

But what he heard was more like, "Yeah, WHATEVER. I deal with this shit like EVERY FUCKING DAY, dude. You're not telling me anything I DON'T ALREADY KNOW. BETTER THAN YOU."

Since we're married and we like each other, we worked that out and it's all good, now. The mother wrestling her kid into a cart in the produce section, or the mother whose kid is standing still in the middle of the sidewalk I'm trying to walk on, or the mother whose toddler is face-down, screaming in the aisle of CVS isn't likely to give me a second chance, though.

 I don't know where I'm going with this, really.

Except that like gay teenagers, I think that sometimes moms of newborns or toddlers or multiple children in challenging phases need to hear it, too.

It gets better.

"And you know, this one here," I said, pointing to my son, "he walks right in and never looks back, so there's always hope for the next one."

She sighed and chuckled and looked at me, "Thank you," she said, "thank you, so much."