Fine Young Fauves

Elias is now nine days past his due date, and not surprisingly he is now acting a lot like a nine-day-old newborn. His preemie tendencies to sleep a long time (too long, in fact) and to have eating troubles are both gone. Now he sleeps in standard 2- or 3-hour segments (at most) and otherwise occupies himself with eating. And eating. And eating. To give you a sense of this, in the course of writing the above few sentences, I had to stop and briefly nurse Elias. It's sort of like riding a bike, though, this doing everything with a nursing baby attached to one's breast. (I do wish I had a sling that would work for me– suggestions welcome– my New Native Baby Carrier is not pleasing me somehow–). Eating dinner, back to the old needing someone else to cut up my food because I'm doing everything one-handed while supporting Sir Nurse-A-Lot with the other. Reading the paper I can manage except for all the folding and unfolding (magazines are better), talking on the phone, paying bills, doing dishes, and ha-ha typing one-handed, as I am now, as he's woken up again. This reminds me of an incident in which a friend absent-mindedly greeted the UPS man at the door while flagrantly nursing. Multi-tasking is the order of the day. When the baby is in marsupial mode and lots of things still need to be done, the solution is obvious. (this moment: drinking tea for my latest sore throat/sinus deal, writing a blog entry, and nursing. Much as a mother needs a third eye, or eyes at the back of her head, she also needs a third arm and hand.) 

But of course were I bottle feeding, that would be some work also. Things I DON'T have to do include going out and buying formula (and paying big money for it), washing and boiling bottles and nipples, getting up in the middle of the night to mix and warm feedings, sitting there and holding the bottle while baby drinks. All this is greatly streamlined by simply unbuttoning and immediately having the right food in the right amount, right container, and at the right temperature. I won't wade in to the political and emotional quagmire that is the breast v. bottle debate, but let me just say that I'm very happy to see that after some years of hard resistance on the part of the formula industry, the national public service "babies are born to be breastfed" campaign has finally been launched. Go here to see/hear/read the ads they created…. 

http://www.4woman.gov/breastfeeding/index.cfm?page=adcouncil

Meanwhile, the odd thing about all this is that Elias is by far the easy part. If I only had him, this whole situation would be a walk in the park. The thing that's making it so challenging is Isaac. To put it simply : He's out of his mind. I do hope it's temporary insanity brought on by what is to date the biggest, hardest, and most overwhelming change he's ever experienced. Having one's life turned upside down for a new sibling, going from the center of the solar system to (I'm sure it feels this way) somewhere out there by that icy, lonely "minor planet" Pluto, has GOT to be a real shock and adjustment. I don't deny that and a lot of the time my heart bleeds for him. This is not easy for any of us in a lot of ways. We're now family of four, and I as a new mother of two often find myself in no-win situations where both of them are needing me and are upset. And he's not alone– the stories of the older sibling reaction to this upheaval are I think as common as multi-sibling families. My own brother Jonathan (then age 2) suggested that his new baby brother be "put in a hole." A lady I talked to at school the other day said that her son (aged 3) began to scream and insist that she call the baby's mommy to come and take the baby away! etc., etc. 

But as much as I understand this and I do feel for him (and I do my best to make sure he gets my UNdivided attention for a time each day), he is basically driving me crazy. For him, the emotional intensity of this transition takes the form of physical action– disorder, motion, speed, roughness, recklessness, destruction. It seems especially acute when I'm… you guessed it… breastfeeding the baby. And guess what I do all day? So guess what else I do? While breastfeeding and in some ways feeling rather hemmed in — I mean, I can't very well get up and rush around the room and physically haul Isaac into a time out, all with a baby on my breast… and I can't honestly stop breastfeeding every time Isaac provokes me… that's what he wants, isn't it?– Isaac is at his very worst. He does things like, say, walking around the room and literally picking up anything he can get his hands on and throwing it as hard as possible. Doesn't matter what or in what direction. just THROW  IT. I think we've already mentioned that the kid has a good arm. And then there's the climbing things not meant to be climbed. And then there are the crazy stunts, the jumping and running and crashing sort of stunts. At times he's even seemed to be actually trying to hurt himself to get my attention– the most obvious example is when he put his foot under the glider on which I was rocking such that it would get crushed. I mean, I stopped in time, but this seemed to be the plan. 

So I spend a lot of time getting a headache while sitting there and saying "no." NO NO NO NO NO! No! No! No! On and on. I try to get him to do something he CAN do, like come and a read a story with me. Or let's talk about your day at school. Or, let's play Chutes and Ladders. Or let's pretend… Or … whatever… anything I can come up with that NOT going to harm someone or break something or is not basically totally disruptive to the blissed out, oxytocin-induced baby/mother bonding time that I would like to be having. 

The other difficulty I face at the moment is transporting Isaac to and from school. It's logistically complicated and totally inconvenient. Last week, I would even say it seemed a safety and health problem. I'm not officially supposed to be driving post-c-section until tomorrow, but I ended up having to start last week due to lots of competing needs of competing parties in the family. Isaac needs to go to school. Ben needs to go to work. I need to sit at home, rest up from my c-section, sleep when the baby sleeps. Elias needs to be protected from germs. But not all of these needs could be met at the same time, and so I found myself out in the world, driving, carrying the baby into the germ-laden school, and causing a mild relapse in my healing process. Just getting out the door with the two of them is quite a task– I mean, there's a learning curve to it and I'm a rank beginner. I know it will get easier. It has to… 

The school we chose, knowing its location full well, is about 20 minutes away. 30 if there's traffic. Isaac attends in the mornings only, for a three-hour block of time. That means that it makes little sense to drive over there, drop him off, drive home for a scant two hours, and then drive back to get him, and of course drive home. So what this means is that I'm over on the other side of town for 2 1/2 hours, wondering what to do with myself and a tiny baby. Where can I breastfeed? Has been a major question on my mind. Where is the cafe with an easy chair in a secluded spot? Where are the latter-day hippies who will not hassle me or give me the fish eye? (Although at this point I would be more likely to organize a nurse-in than to go quietly… I feel a real strain of lactivism coming on!) Where are the low-germ, not so public places over there? I don't know. Maybe there aren't any. Hence this explains why I've been nursing in the car. That's not so bad. I do wish I had armrests. But what about when it's winter? What then? Will I nurse in the car like an Eskimo, pulling aside my layers of seal skin? And meanwhile, the baby has decided to do his one "BIG" sleep of the day– 4 hours– in the morning. At the exact time when I'm out in the world and not able to sleep myself. This disrupts the whole "sleep when he sleeps" system that is so critical to my well being and sanity. 

Ben and I have been trying to figure out options– should we hire a full-time nanny to take Isaac to and from school and then also run him to the point of exhaustion someplace before bringing him home? (With all this bad weather it's clear we need an indoor large-motor facility for him). Should we try to extend his day, either bringing him to school early or picking him up late? Should we try to find some sort of kiddie transportation service (they do exist apparently) to take him to and from? I don't know. None are a good fit, really… And so tomorrow morning I will be up again, likely on a few winks of sleep, definitely with a bad cold, getting Isaac ready for school while also nursing Elias and trying somehow to put on clothes myself. Somehow trying to get breakfast into Isaac at least and to get us out the door on time. Definitely having moments where one or both are crying and not being immediately attended to.  And then out there in society, facing the germy coughing public…

Last week, though, we were driving home in the pouring rain, and I had a moment of clarity about all this. Isaac said, “Let’s listen to the song about wisdom.” I didn’t know what song he was referring to and started offering the various CDs I had on hand. He settled on the Beatles “Let it Be.” But still, dense as I am, I didn’t know what he meant by the song about wisdom. We ran through the tracks. The first couple tracks were emphatically not it, but then he said that the song about “nothing’s gonna change my world” was it. Yes! We listened while I thought, “Hm. It’s not directly ‘about wisdom’ but it has a sort of wise message. Nothing is going to change my world! Yes, I can see what he means. It’s a message of acceptance. Your reality is what it is… you should just find the good in what you have… ” Then we moved on to the next song, and again, Isaac said “that’s it!” It was “I, Me, Mine” in which the chorus goes, “I—me—me—mine!” I thought, “Hm. Well, it’s not obviously about wisdom, but it seems to be a critique of consumerist culture, you know, the selfishness of it all. And maybe I am being selfish. And what is motherhood about but self sacrifice?” And then we finally came to the song “let it be” itself.  In which, of course, the lyric is “When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be.” Of course! Words of wisdom! This is what he meant all along, although I later understood that for him it’s a multi-song opus. (In order to hear it again you have to go back to track three.) Soon I found myself swept up into the moment, singing along in a rendition that made up for its lack of tonal precision with a whole lot of soul.

Something about the pouring rain, my two boys in the back seat, maybe a touch of exhaustion-induced euphoria, and the repeating message to just “let it be” got through to me. What am I complaining about? I have two beautiful sons, all I ever wanted and more. None of the rest of it matters! We’ll work all this out eventually. I’ll get more sleep. Elias will get bigger. Isaac will regain his sanity. We’ll adjust. It’s time to just get into a zen state, stop struggling, and let it all just be what it is. 

Ugh. More hospitals. We just got home from a five-day stint in the joint after my c-section. Then back again for another round starting on Sunday, ending yesterday. This time Elias was the patient, and day one was really scary and horrible. 

Last week, the baby had a stuffy nose and was sneezing, but seemed otherwise well until Saturday night when he slept an unprecedented 8 hours. Now, some might think "Yippee! My baby slept through the night!" But this is not the correct reaction. The doctor told me directly that I should not let Elias sleep more than four hours in a row, even at night, because his little body is just way too small to go that long without food or drink. I'm supposed to set a clock and wake him up! But I never have done this, in part because I'm still recovering from the whole surgery/birth experience, and also because Elias usually does wake up on his own, every three hours or so. (More about his incredible reasonableness as a baby in a moment.) So he slept and I slept all night Saturday. When I woke up Sunday morning and realized the time, I was quite worried. I tried to wake him up and feed him, but he was very groggy and out of it. He ate, but more or less in his sleep. Then I recognized some signs of labored breathing. Pretty near immediately Ben and I were on the phone to nurse on call and set up to see a non-ER doctor. 

That visit revealed that he had a fever of 100.6, which initially I thought was no big deal– not all that high or serious. But it quickly became clear that was NOT the case. The doctor at this office got on the phone to our regular pediatrician, who soon was on the phone with me. He said that we needed to take Elias to the ER and that he would need a lot of tests. He also said that it was possible that they would need to admit him to the hospital for a few days to make sure he was okay. "We have to take fever in newborns very seriously," our pediatrician said. "We can't take any chances with it at all." Okay, I said, of course we wouldn't take chances. But at the same time part of me was thinking, "isn't this a little over the top? I mean, it's just a cold!" 

Things got worse after we arrived at the ER and went through the usual rigmarole. His fever there was well over 101 by then and everyone was very concerned. Two doctors came in a broke the news to us that Elias would need blood drawn, a urinary catheter to get a clean sample of urine, an IV placed, a nasal swab, and then the coup de gras– a spinal tap. I swear that when they said he would need a spinal tap, tears shot horizontally out of my eyes at once. "But WHY??" I asked, crying despite myself. "Are you looking for meningitis? Why do you think it's meningitis?" They explained that they were indeed looking for meningitis, and that in a newborn they just have to search everything to find out the source of the infection. They said, as gently as possible, that if they missed something he could die. And so they couldn't risk missing anything whatsoever. "But we're really good at drawing spinal fluid– it won't be that bad. We do this all the time," they said to reassure me. But still, I was not reassured at all. I just had a needle in my spine nigh unto two weeks ago. And I was just recently talking with my mother, who had a spinal tap about 40 years ago (when I was an infant myself) and remembers it still as the single most painful experience of her life.

I stayed in the room for the IV placement and the blood work. But when it was spinal time I left. I bailed! I realized on the one hand that having me standing there and sobbing wouldn't be helpful to anyone, and also I realized that in all honesty I just couldn't bear it. Ben was there, thank god, and so I left the baby to be comforted by him and began what turned into an hour or so of wandering around the Emergency Room and environs. I went outside to make a phone call, but couldn't reach anyone. I came back in and paced up and down the halls. They were lined with glass cases, secured by computer key pads, full of unpleasant medical supplies. Enema bags stand out in my memory, as does this whole row of boxes brimming with what looked to be spare fingers of various sizes. Upon closer examination they were finger splints, but just made of a yucky pinkish rubber, as if that would make them blend in better with the person's real hand. It occurred to me that if you were not Caucasian this would be especially ridiculous. 

I kept expecting that the procedure would just have to be done soon. But it went on and on. A lady came and asked me if I was with the baby in room four (I suppose I was still crying intermittently) and got me a chair and some ginger ale. I placed myself outside the door. I could hear, at times, a shrill and piercing scream from Elias. I kept repeating to myself, "He cries when you change his diapers. He cries when you change his diapers." I stared at the glass case in front of me, which held a stunning variety of crutches and canes, sized for Tiny Tim to Shaquille O'Neal, and everyone in between. I wondered whether it would be better after all to just be in there and see what was happening, instead of imagining it. I considered writing a letter to the CIA, to tell them to stop with the waterboarding and whatnot, and just simply take some of those jihadi infants and give them spinal taps. If there were any movement or friend I could betray to make it stop, I would have done so in an instant.

Finally it was all over– when I came into the room, it seemed to me that the whole table was covered with my baby's blood. Although really it was just a few biggish splotches of blood combined with iodine puddles. It seemed that Ben and Elias had both survived. But then the bad news: "We didn't get it," the doctor said grimly. "We tried and tried but we just couldn't get it." I stared at her and gradually understood. You mean– all for naught?? You mean my baby went through this and still you do not have the spinal fluid?? "They'll have to try again up in Peeds." I felt weak. I took the baby and nursed him, and he nursed like one who had been lost in the desert. When they all left the room, I asked Ben sotto voce, "How many times did they try?" He looked stricken and replied, "Six, I think." 

The rest of the day is sort of a blur. I waited forever for "transport up to Peeds." Luckily they realized that hiking all over hell and back through halls and tunnels, carrying the baby and the gear, would be a little beyond me only 13 days post-op. So they called for a wheelchair. The young woman who came pushing it, though, after an endless wait, was seemingly in worse shape than I was. As she huffed and puffed pushing me up various hill-like ramps, I considered offering to change places. Then I realized that while pushing me and Elias along (Ben had gone home to get supplies), she was actually EATING. Something crunchy! 

Oh dear lord– it was all just too surreal. 

We got up to the room, only a few doors down from the one where Isaac spent four days in March (Ben is now the only member of our family who has not recently been an inpatient.) Old home week with the nurses. One resident raised the possibility that maybe… maybe… Elias would not need the spinal tap after all. We clung to that hope for a few hours, along with the hope that for some reason we would be sent home after only one night. (I've learned at last to stop listening to residents. They only confuse me.) But just as Ben was getting ready to head home, they came in to say that they would need to do the spinal after all. Ben steeled himself and carried the baby out, while I did my best to go catatonic in front the most banal possible TV. 

A long time later they came back. Ben looked like a broken man. He looked like one returning from combat. I could hardly bear to look at his red and traumatized face. But I asked the critical question: "Did they get it?" He replied, "Yes–after three tries." Then his eyes started tearing up. He handed the baby to me. "He needs you," he said. "He NEEDS you." I took the baby and nursed him, thinking Six plus three equals nine. He had a needle poked into his spine… nine… times today. 

I had two dueling sides of my brain. The rational side would say, "Well, better safe than sorry. We don't want him to get a fatal disease for god's sake." And the irrational side would say, "It's just a cold! Why are they torturing my baby!?" 

One thing I never understood about meningitis, until a nurse explained it to me on Tuesday: it's not like a certain bacteria or virus, specifically, causes it. It's not like the measles or chicken pox, where in effect you need to be exposed to someone who has it in order to get it. It's different– anything can turn into it by attacking the spine and then the brain. So, in a tiny baby like Elias it could be, say, an ear infection, or strep throat, or really any bug at all. Once I understood this, and later, once I understood that it can be fatal with unreal swiftness, speed counted in hours not days, I understood why they had to do all this to our poor tiny baby. (He's not even due to be born until tomorrow! Tomorrow is his due date, October 13.) 

The next morning the preliminary tests were all negative, meaning there was no dread bacteria running amok in his little body, or none that showed up immediately. Later on he got a positive on his nasal swab for a common flu virus called parainfluenza. Stiil, they needed us to stay until all the tests were clean for 48 solid hours. Since the spinal was finally drawn late on Sunday evening, this meant that we really couldn't go home until Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, he improved rapidly. HIs fever came down. He went back to his normal eating and sleeping habits. By Monday afternoon I wasn't worried about him anymore. I could see he was well and fine. The only vestige of his illness that remained, really, was his incredibly yucky slime-filled nose, which at times they sucked out with a special vacuum apparatus. Such a tiny nose– no bigger than your thumbnail– and yet, it would yield a stunning quantity of bloody and green goop. 

But in the absence of something REAL to worry about, I had many spare hours to be annoyed by the accommodations. It's no spa and resort at the Cleveland Clinic, although they do try. They are all so nice and well-meaning, but it's an institution that's not built around comfort. I found myself sleeping on a fold-out plastic couch in three defined segments, and on a pronounced slope (head at the high end, at least). My polyester bedding did little to cover the bright blue vinyl surface. The sheets did not fit and within an hour or so would be in a wad in the center of the "bed" under me. The pillows, made of rubber, were inflated with air. The thermostat offered a choice of oven or freezer. The food, beyond detestable. The view, a concrete wall with some gravel and forlorn rain-sodden litter in front of it. The four walls, and the TV, the baby, and me. For three days. I tried to read, but couldn't. No lap top, no internet access. The lone shower down the hall, and the nurses often too busy to watch the baby while I slipped away. And no privacy, no freedom to even sleep at will. It never failed that I would get the baby all quiet and finally in his little cage-like crib, asleep, when someone would come to wake him. There was an endless parade of people in the room at any time of the day or night. Who? Here's a partial list: 

-the nurses, to check Elias's IV, add things to it, count and weigh his used diapers, etc.

-the nursing assistants to take his vitals, put a tiny 2-inch blood pressure cuff around his little calf, thermometer in the rectum, strip him cold and naked to be weighed, etc. 

-the respiratory therapists, checking to see if he needed to be suctioned

-the housekeeping people collecting trash and swabbing things down

-"room service" as they called themselves rather grandly, coming to bring and later to collect their trays of food-like substitutes

-the doctors, making their rounds separately and each listening to his chest and so on

This added up to even less and less sleep for me. Of course, when they were NOT there, this would be the time that the baby would wake up and need attention. Hence between all of them I came home much more exhausted than I left, and also having developed a sore throat. 

But how sweet it is to be home! How wonderful the bedding and the food and the privacy and the freedom to curl up in peace! 

The only problem is that last night, Isaac was up incredibly sick. First coughing hard enough that Ben went in to give him a dose of albuterol (his asthma puffer, as needed for cough), then up vomiting all over the place. And after the sheets were all changed and he fell asleep again, up screaming with a terrible earache. 

So now what? Does Isaac have a NEW virus to give to the baby? All morning I've been thinking Elias looks flushed, and seems a little warm. But I fear taking his temperature because I know what it will lead to if it's over 100.4. Months ago I could see that on paper this would be a tough fall. You take a preschooler and put him in school for the first time, and he's going to get everything in the book. You add one newborn and mix and this is what you get. I could see it coming, but couldn't really do anything about it. The goal now is just to get through it. I'm nursing that baby like there's no tomorrow, trying to get as many antibodies in his as possible, trying to get that little immune system up and running. In the meantime, join me in hoping that nothing too bad comes along again. And please forgive me if you come over to visit and find that I'm a little bit fascist about making you wash your hands. 

Phew. It’s so hard to fathom that it was only five short days ago that I left here in the pre-dawn light, preceded by a very large belly. I’ve been in something of a purple haze as well as living life stripped of standard “day” and “night’ type markers.  So the dreamlike quality of this sunny afternoon, the surreality of it, make a certain sense.

I’m here in my own bed with baby nearby.

We had a rough patch beginning Wednesday night and on into Thursday. On Wednesday night, Elias started this horrible sort of inconsolable screaming, combined with a refusal to nurse. Baffling and stressful for me, of course, and I would assume the same if not more so for HIM. Ben was keeping the home fires burning while I was in the trenches. Meanwhile an array of nurses and I figured it was just gas… or something… I even sent him to the nursery, so desperate for sleep was I. (And in pain, and under the influence of strong pain medication, which only made it all the more impossible to stay awake.) But the nurses there sent him back! He was too disruptive. This is, I hope, not the first of a long career of academic expulsions…

Anyway on Thursday morning (I won’t say I woke up, but the sun rose) he looked incredibly yellow to me. Indeed, he had come down with jaundice. He also had lost more weight than they wanted him to lose, AND to top it off had only one wet diaper in the previous 24 hours. Diagnosis: Not getting enough milk. Our nursing champ was off his game. My milk was barely even in yet. So I was very stressed out and upset (neither good for milk production), to say nothing of in pain and exhausted. But the lactation team got on the case. They said his suck was “disorganized” and said that in fact he has some preemie-type nursing issues! (So disappointing to hear this…) Soon enough we were back on the pump-n-syringe method—déjà vu all over again, just as it had been with Isaac. I pumped and gave him milk in this hair thin tube alongside my breast while he nursed; I let them give him a little bit of formula, seeing as it was sort of an emergency; I drank lactation tea and tons of water.

For a while there I worried that they would not let him come home with me today. All seemed to depend on his bilirubin test this morning. I awaited the results anxiously. But it was fine—his fluid intake yesterday was way better than Wednesday, and his weight loss leveled off too. (Strange how a few ounces and a few hours could suddenly make the whole situation seem so much less bleak.) This morning he seemed again to fully understand the whole point of nursing—and his role, the part about pulling out the milk and swallowing it! His job. He is already burdened by responsibility, but today seems ready to face the challenge. We brought home all the syringes and gear, but already in two nursing sessions here at home, he seems to not need it. So now we’re on the standard infant meal schedule: breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, brunch, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, teatime…. Etc. Just as it should be.

Notes on his name:

I meant to add some comments on his name, but somehow the whole thing escaped my attention the other day. Needless to say the naming process is an arduous one. But we worked through it gradually over the last several months. There were few options in which both of us liked BOTH the sound of the name as well as the meaning/story attached to it. But with Elias, we did have a good compromise. It’s a family name on Ben’s mother’s side. I like the antique quality of it. And I actually do love the Elijah story in the Bible. (Elias is the way Elijah is referred to in the New Testament.) I read the Bible a lot this summer, looking for names, and honestly many of the stories went a long way towards putting me off a name I liked rather than the other way around. I was also up for just naming the kid the more common Elijah directly and skipping the middle man, but amazingly Ben found it to be TOO Biblical.

Anyway… just to clarify if you were wondering. It’s pronounced “eh-LYE-as” as a kindred spirit to Elijah, rather than “EH-lee-as” along with the Elliot and Elian Gonzolez sort of crowd. (Our beloved obstetrician, who saw us through thick and thin, is named Elliot.) We reserve the right to call him Eli for short.

Chaffee, with a long A sound, is my mother’s maiden name. For me it connotes a whole wing of the family that’s very far away from us in Ohio, and a part of the family I wanted to connect Elias to. It’s my great-grandfather who went down on the Titanic (H.F. Chaffee). My grandfather, who for all his many faults was a charismatic and talented man, a dreamer and an inventor.  It’s about a colorful eccentricity (the dreamy gene I mentioned before), along with intelligence and much, much artistic talent. If you take just my mother and her siblings, you have John (musician, carpenter, can build/fix anything); my mother (bronze artist, as well as gifted at drawing and painting); my aunt Judy (BFA in ceramics, also can paint); my aunt Barb (BFA in painting); and my aunt Marilyn (clay animation, calligraphy, book arts). Chaffees all…

We toyed with other middle names of course… I was lobbying for Benjamin as a middle name, in fact. And Peter, which was Ben’s first choice first name, I thought a nice middle name. But Ben really wanted a last name as middle name, which is the standard in his family. A late-game contender was Dueber, his grandmother’s maiden name. But in the end we decided that that skewed the whole thing lopsidedly to his family, and we needed something from my side to balance it out.

So there it is! I filled out the birth certificate this morning and felt very good about our boy and his moniker.

We’re home! The pregnancy is all done and the fruits of our labors are here and adorable. I still can’t get over it. It’s so wonderful to have the whole process behind me. Suddenly the term “bundle of joy” seems perfectly apt and not at all sappy. 

I’m writing this from my hospital bed during a few lucid moments before my favorite opiate kicks in again. We’re having technical difficulties with posting from here, but Ben is going to carry the laptop home or someplace with wifi and post from there. That means, though, that comments and e-mails won’t get to me in a timely fashion. Oh well!

Anyway, here are the wonderful FACTS you’ve been waiting for:

Elias Chaffee [plus Ben’s last name]
Born September 25 at 3:54 p.m.
6 pounds, 5 ounces
19.5 inches

healthy, robust, and beautiful with dark baby hair in very attractive finger waves, and when he opens his eyes they are sort of an electric shade of blue. Otherwise he looks like Isaac’s identical twin. I assume the hair and eyes will both change radically in the next few months, but he cuts a striking figure at the moment.

So tiny! I can’t believe that Isaac was ever this tiny, and yet he was even tinier.

He’s wonderful! While only nine days further along the gestation path, and only two ounces heavier than Isaac was, he’s a much more vigorous and mature little creature. His lungs are gorgeous and strong. He has not needed a BIT of incubator time. He has no feeding issues and nursed heartily right out of the gate.

Also, the whole c-section experience yesterday went so much more smoothly than last time. I attribute a lot of this to going into it while NOT in labor, as opposed to following 16 hours of labor, and my body’s general state of calm. Relative calm anyway. The whole thing is such an intense and strange thing to do, I guess it’s impossible (unless you’re some sort of yoga-breathing master or are able to leave your body at will) to actually be CALM while someone is cutting you open and extracting a baby.

Two parts that I especially dreaded repeating were first off the spinal—the needle going WAY into your spine to numb everything from the chest down—and secondly the nausea during the first few hours of recovery, did NOT happen the same way at all this time. The placement of the spinal did hurt, but not in a full-on blood-curdling scream sort of way. More a deep gasp and eyes squeezed tightly shut. Then done—then the weird sheets of cold running down both legs as the numbness took hold.

The room was very bright and cold and bustling. Now and then I would catch a glimpse of too much information in a reflection in the lights overhead, so I pretty much kept my eyes closed the whole time. Ben sat next to my head (we were behind a curtain), holding my hand and maintaining a running monologue about vacations we would take one day soon. His voice went a long way towards steadying me and giving me something else to think about than what all the medical staff were saying. (“Knife.” Etc.)

And then, just like in the case of Isaac, they all could see the little full moon emerging and cries of “it’s a boy!” went round the room. Ben stood up a bit to peep over the curtain and got to see some of the process. But when it comes to blood and gore, Ben is not exactly made of iron. Earlier in the day when I was having the amnio, the doctor asked Ben to hold the ultrasound wand for him, and Ben pretty near fainted…

Anyway, after the long and to-me difficult process of putting everything back together in there layer by layer, it was finally all over. I was wheeled back to the recovery room where we had spent the whole day waiting, while woman after woman had come back from surgery and endured the dry heaves. It was hard to sit through hearing that for hours without being fully aware that soon it would be me. Last time the nausea during the first few hours post-op was really horrible. This time… not much! It really was not so bad, and I hurled not at all!

Better yet, they brought the baby pretty soon, within an hour or so, and he immediately set to nursing like he’d done all this plenty of times before.

He’s a super champ—that’s there is to it.

So—it’s all glory. We have a beautiful new baby and the process has been smooth as silk.

Looks like I’ll be heading home on Friday.

The implications of my conversation with my OB on Thursday became clear a few minutes after I last posted, when I learned online that 98-99% of babies at 37 weeks DO have the lung maturity needed to be born. Most people consider 37 weeks full term, although I guess it’s more traditional to consider 38-42 full-term (i.e., your due date plus or minus two weeks.) So that means to me that this lung maturity test that I’m having in the early morning iight tomorrow will most, most, most likely be positive. Which means that soon after the results (which take only an hour or so), I’ll have a c-section!

So that means that this is my last day pre-baby. I’ve been at loose ends much of the day trying to figure out something worthy to do with it. But what is worthy? It’s hard to say. Again I feel this hurricane metaphor coming on– like I can see it on the radar screen, but at the moment outside my window it’s calm and sunny. This is such a dark sort of metaphor for having a baby. (Or the eve of battle? by the fireside the night before St. Crispins day…? we few, we happy few…) But I think I’m really talking about the surgery more than the baby. I’ve been trying to go around noticing and appreciating the pain-free regions of my body. The non-staples across my low abdomen. The non-IV sites in my arms. The non-nausea from pain medication and the non-soreness of my soon-to-be-poor nipples. I’ve tried to sleep in long, wide stretches, uninterrupted. But also the baby part is not a walk in the park for the first few… weeks? Months? Depends on the baby, I guess. I am banking on an EASY one this time, having paid my dues already! I am reassured by those who tell me emphatically that NO TWO ARE ALIKE, and “you never get two from column A.” This to me translates to a much easier ride this time.

Reasons it will be easier: (I list them to reassure myself):

1) This baby is over a week farther along, meaning that it’s much bigger and ready to be born.
2) This pregnancy has overall been a lot calmer for me, so if indeed gestating in a sea of stress hormones does have an effect on the baby (science is divided on this question), then this one should be calmer.
2a) Doesn’t it make sense that if Isaac takes after the more high-strung/high energy side of his family (Ben’s) this one will take after my side? I mean, a little more low-key? A good sleeper?
3) Last time I spent about three brutal months casting about for my “mothering philosophy” while reading a cacaphony of conflicting books. This time I know full well that I’m in the “attachment parenting” camp. I need not bother myself with sleep training, cry-it-out-ists, bottles, formula or cribs. I am more a co-sleeping, breastfeeding on demand, baby-wearing, type mother. I’m confident that this is the right way– for me– to do it and I need not be confused or swayed by those legions who disagree.
4) Chances are good that this one won’t have a tight frenulum, i.e. a slight birth defect of the tongue that it made it so hard for Isaac to nurse or eat by any means and required him to be fed arduously by a tube for the first month.
4a) After breastfeeding Isaac for two and a half years, I’m a pro at it. So at least ONE of us will know the scoop. (It’s very hard when both parties– mom and baby– are equally clueless.)
5) This time I’ve been able to do a much better job of gathering resources and items that I will need. Ducks are in a row around here! At least as much as they humanly can be.
6) I had some bad luck last time having a serious abdominal infection develop a month after the surgery, which led to a round of hard-core antibiotics, which lead to a round of thrush. (I read one time the experience of having thrush, a yeast infection on the nipples, is like “having broken glass in your breasts– and then someone bites on it!” I will attest to the truth of this…) But this won’t this time! I mean, what are the chances?
7) Being born in late September instead of late October gives us a better shot of having some outside time before being sequestered for the winter. Also Isaac was immune-impaired and we had to be hyper-vigiliant about not taking him out, whereas this one hopefully won’t be. (We took some risks now around that first Christmastime that chill me to the marrow in retrospect. This after having seen Isaac battle RSV as a big healthy 14 month old rather than a tiny newborn. What if he had gotten it then?? Not knowing about his asthma? We were so stupid!!)
8) I will have Team Barbara to help for the first couple weeks– Barbara the doula and Barbara the wonderful aunt from Wisconsin! Last time I knew only that a baby nurse made no sense for me with the above-mentioned parenting style, but I didn’t know what instead I actually needed– help with everything else in the house not directly baby-centric! Team Barbara will be able to set us on the right path at least.
9) I know what’s coming in a much clearer sense. I’m as ready as anyone can be to face it all.
10) I won’t have to ALSO deal with the pure shock of suddenly being responsible for 100% of the needs of another human being on this earth. I know what that’s like already. It’s charted territory.

There. That’s a nice round ten. Such a good roster of improvements. It WILL be easier. Mantra. Repeat.

And of course… let me add the excitement part. The part about– is it Sassy Lassy or Sassy LADDY? What will it look like? Red hair this time? Any hair? Dark eyes or light? Will it get close to seven pounds? (Again, avarice…) What sort of PERSON will it be? ?? I’m about to meet the baby face to face after knowing in the abstract sense of sharing my body with it and carrying it everywhere lo these nine months and more. That’s really monumental!

So. Tonight Isaac is sleeping with over at his grandparents. Thank goodness– we have to leave the house by 6:15 a.m. tomorrow and if there were ever a night that being up with Isaac at all hours (due to a nightmare or something like that) would be inconvenient, this is that night! Ben and I are going out to a nice, final dinner together and then hopefully to a good night’s sleep. And then… we’ll see!

There’s that nagging 1-2% chance that for some reason I’ll be sent home sans baby because the lungs are not ready after all. But so unlikely. No need to dwell on that.

I’ll post if/when I can. I’ll be at Hillcrest Hospital, presumably all week, part of the Cleveland Clinic. hillcresthospital.org. They have a “virtual nursery” online where they post the newborns, photos and basic info without last names. I’ll see how that works also, it might not be immediate… Farewell!

Starting on Tuesday night, I felt that labor was encroaching upon me. One of the top warning signs of labor, for instance, is when a very pregnant woman gets up out of bed, turns on the light, and begins to pack for the hospital. This is what I did on Tuesday night. I was feeling so odd and out of sorts, abdominally ill at ease, and restless as a caged lioness. All day yesterday i had spates of contractions, some harsh, some vague, some organized into a pattern, some not. Doula Barbara was on hand to advise me. She noted that my belly had dropped noticeably and in watching my pain quotient and pattern gave me 24 hours, max. 

Tomorrow I will be 36 weeks pregnant. For those math whizzes among you, you will quickly see that this is also known as 9 months. Many people aren't aware that a standard pregnancy is ten months, 40 weeks, but still. What we're talking about here is a pretty much done deal. 

I was sound asleep this morning when two little hands began patting my forehead. I opened my eyes to find Isaac’s face about an inch from mine.

“Mama,” he whispered. “Did you know Johnny Cash is a criminal?”

“What? Huh? Why?” I said. My first thought was, you mean drug possession?

“He shot a man! That’s why he’s in Fulsom Prison.”

I KNEW I should have seen Walk the Line. I was not prepared for this conversation, in terms of data. So I’m lying there groggily wracking my brains. Did Johnny Cash really shoot someone? No—he was just a drug addict. And he wasn’t incarcerated in Fulsom Prison, just there to play the concert.

“No, honey,” I explained. “He was just there for the day. And he didn’t really shoot anyone. It’s just a song he was singing. Not a true story. Just a song.”

“Yes it IS true!” Isaac insisted. “He shot him just to watch him die. Why he shot him just to watch him die?”

And so began day two of Isaac’s new career at school, with me half asleep and trying to explain the difference between fiction and nonfiction while also defending Johnny Cash’s honor and trying to counteract a widespread notion that life is cheap.

Yesterday, day one, Isaac just had to go to school for one hour to get his feet wet .  (Once established it will only be three hours a day anyway, half day preschool.) He’s been expressing a fair amount of trepidation about the whole concept, insisting that he’ll go to school when he’s big, but he’s not big yet. Yesterday as we neared the school building, he suggested that we just “drive by” instead of going in. This  being a downgrade from his earlier idea, “just go in an say hi, then leave.”

Turns out I was having my own weird school anxiety come up. I had two bad dreams the night before about being late!

The critical moment was when we had to part ways at the door of his classroom. The teacher, Mr Johann (the nicest man, apparently Dutch, with very twinkly, crinkly eyes), was greeting each child, shaking hands, and welcoming him/her into the room. The children in the hall dwindled, until only Isaac and his little friend Henry were left. Isaac started hiding behind my butt and/or between and under my legs. It was hard to extricate him. Finally I asked Mr. Johann if I could just walk in for a moment, which he said was fine. So I went in with Isaac and tried to interest him in all manner of wonders that are in there. Finally he did get intrigued by the tiny fridge and the snack-having process and I said good bye. Seemed pretty smooth actually. Ben took off from work to see this all through, and so we went to have a cup of tea nearby and kill the hour until it was time to pick Isaac up again.

When we came back, we decided to peek in the window and see what was going on. I saw Isaac, seemingly trying to escape out the door into the hallway. The other kids were all toiling away busily and Isaac had his nose pressed against the glass on the far side of the room. Then, unfortunately, he turned and saw me! I slipped away, but I think that he melted down at that point. Luckily, there was only five more minutes until freedom!

Today, he was embraced in the hall by this cute little girl called Sage. They sat next to each other on these tiny chairs and chatted. She seemed very fond of Isaac, repeatedly hugging and kissing him. They practiced raising their eyebrows and other facial expressions. She said he was his baby and he protested that he’s NOT a baby! I’m especially glad that he’s getting to know Sage. Her mother is also enormously pregnant, with twins. So Isaac and Sage can have a new-baby support group this fall, when both of their lives are up-ended around the same time.

The parting at the door this time was almost completely seamless. Isaac hid behind my butt a little bit, but soon Mr. Johann coaxed him over to shake hands, and before I knew it, Isaac disappeared into the classroom without the slightest fuss. A group of new parents gathered in this little break room to chat and kill time. Soon, before I knew it, the morning was all done. Isaac was prancing out and yelling, “I learned how to grind coffee! They teached me how!”

So, we’ll see how tomorrow goes. Basically it looks like he’s taking to it quite well and his new life is launched.

Meanwhile, my new life is launched also. The doula, Barbara, mother of 7, started yesterday. She’s a warm and plump little person. From her golden sandals to her golden braid, she sort of reminds me of a gnome wife, in the best possible sense. She’s calm and mellow and unfazed by anything that Isaac can come up with. I mean—7 kids! I don’t think he can think up anything she hasn’t already dealt with. Also, she bustles around. I made list of things to do, time permitting, and she so got so much folding, cleaning, and tidying done, it was incredible to behold. I sat on the couch all afternoon, napping, reading, whatever. Wow!

However, when she left at 5:00, Isaac went insane. He tore though the house like a natural disaster and I found it basically impossible to keep him from destroying everything in his path, while also making dinner. After two short hours of that I felt utterly wrung out again, as if all the previous resting were negated. So this time period between Barbara’s departure and Ben’s return is something that still needs work. Perhaps we just need to eat more take-out.

Today, of course, the morning out and about exhausted me. But I’ve been lazyin’ around all afternoon, and yet there are clean sheets magically on the beds and the laundry beast seems almost completely on its way to being tamed!  Seems we’re off to a good start on all fronts.

We took some pregnant lady pics yesterday. I’ll attempt to post one…

I have now officially entered the phase of pregnancy I like to call, “Have I Swallowed a Goat?” For it seems impossible that anything so seemingly soft and cuddly as a tiny baby could have this many knees, elbows, and hooves. Sassy’s position isn’t helping either. The little baseball head is lodged under my stomach—it’s like free gastric bypass surgery! Always compressing my stomach to a shadow of its former self, while also providing waves of heartburn. No matter how small a meal I eat, it’s always too big. Meanwhile, further south, the little feet tap dance on my bladder. That is, when not attempting to reach beyond my left hip bone. 

Way back in January or February, or whenever it was, registering for Suzuki camp the first week in August seemed like a fine thing to do. If I was even pregnant yet, I was working with the tenuous nature of that pregnancy. That is to say, whether I would still be pregnant in August was an open question and nothing I would/could/should
really plan around. Even so—I figured it would be okay. Just an hour and a half each day for five days, and then all Isaac’s prerequisites for starting Suzuki piano lessons would be complete. Any thought of heat I may have had would have seemed pleasantly abstract looked at from the vantage point of sleet and snow. Also—the alternative was taking a several week course, doing a series of separate lesson observations, and a parent orientation night. Suzuki camp would take of all that in one fell swoop! That way, when Isaac turned four this October, he would have all his ducks in a row and be able to start piano whenever a teacher became available.

I mention all this preemptively in response to your query as to how I could be so STUPID as to try this business while 29 weeks pregnant during a heat wave. I didn’t know I would be this pregnant and I certainly didn’t know that the heat indices would pick this particular week to soar into the triple digits!

That being said, it was stupid in that it was totally hot and exhausting and I came home every day feeling like I had been run over by a train. (If you’re not familiar with Suzuki, the parent is closely involved in it, and often even learns the instrument at the same time as the student… meaning I couldn’t delegate this to a babysitter.) I did at least have the foresight to line up babysitting such that I could come home and go comatose in the A/C for the rest of the afternoon.

The other factor I didn’t really foresee, and how could I have, was how Isaac would take to it. You never know with these things. We’ve had a bad run lately in that his art class in June was pretty hellish—I mean, his non-cooperation and generally miserable behavior during the enriching experience left a lot to be desired. On the other hand, he loved his Dalcroze dance and music class all of July and I’m so glad we did that. So—you can’t predict really what all the factors will be and whether such an experience will be good or ill.

But, basically, he hated Suzuki Camp. Most of it, anyway, and he made it incredibly miserable for me also. It’s cold comfort that I was with a cadre of other mothers, mostly of boys, who also suffered through the week with squirming and overall stunningly ill-behaved children. That this sort of thing is normal and age-appropriate doesn’t really make it any easier to deal with.

Each day was in three half-hour segments. 1) Suzuki method, an okay but occasionally dull segment more directed to the parents, but some singing and clapping that seemed workable for the kids also; too much standing up and sitting down in a hot room for me; 2) Dalcroze, running around and dancing to piano music in a blissfully air conditioned dance studio while parents sat down in comfort; 3) a concert, back in the hot room, in which children were exposed to several different instruments.

For me the day broke down as basically 1) okay, so-so; 2) great; 3) pure hell. Although I should say that as the week wore on the pure hell part spread and colonized the others. Yesterday Isaac was horrible even in Dalcroze, where it’s mostly running around and he loves the teacher.

Some of the kids (note: all girls) could deal with this structure well. They could sing variations on Twinkle until the cows came home and would earnestly try to touch their little heads and shoulders and so forth as instructed. A few of the girls couldn’t and I didn’t see one boy who could. People have always told me that “boys are different” and I can confirm that it’s true. Sitting still and being talked to does not seem to work for boys. So what did Isaac (and the other non-cooperators) do instead?

 Go limp and lie on the floor; when picked up, behave as rag doll, so floppy that even holding him on my lap was a challenge
 Make a scene, demand to know what it’s taking so long, is it all done yet?? Etc.
 Make a different scene along the lines of “where’s MY violin? When is MY turn to play?”
 Run away, far away out of the room and down the hall—particularly effective when mom is great with child
 Bother others; get in their personal space; crawl over them; touch them; shove them; be a nuisance; ignore the teacher’s repeated requests/commands to stop it

Yesterday in the concert, Isaac was really exceptionally bad. Trying to escape. Not listening. Whining. Struggling on my lap. Wandering away. And we were supposed to perform with our class! Our little Twinkle variation routine. The thing that made my head almost explode in frustration (granted I was hot and tired too) was that I could not come up with any sort of punishment or deterrent that would fit the crime. I had to reject my first idea—strangulation—on the grounds that there were too many witnesses. I had to reject my second idea because I didn’t have a hickory switch and there was not a woodshed for miles. So that left me really with taking him out of there—which made me furious because it was exactly what he wanted! He was being horrible IN ORDER to be dragged or carted out of there and tossed into the car and driven home. That was his goal. In the end, because he was disrupting others (although the atmosphere was brimming with the background noise of fifty preschoolers), I did haul him out a few minutes before the ordeal was really over.

And I lectured him the whole way home. Pointless, I know. He has the attention span of a gnat and much like yelling at a dog who pooped on the floor in the middle of the night and has now completely forgotten about it. But I needed to vent. I wanted to say in effect, “Why do I bother? Why do I bother trying to enrich your life? Why don’t I just plop you down in front of Thomas videos all day and let your brain rot away on its stem? You’d be happier and I’d be happier!” I know—this whole line of thinking is one big cliché about the thanklessness of being a parent. It’s been flogged to death since the beginning of human history.

Okay.

Silver linings. He wants to play the violin now. I mean—he really seems insistent on this point. I myself was totally charmed by the TINY CELLOS the tiny little people were playing, and their tiny footstools. I said to Isaac, “How would you like to learn to play the cello?” and he replied angrily, “I already know how to play the cello!” (Must be a past life regression thing. Or just the same arrogance that had him also recently insisting that he already knows how to write. Yes, but not in a way that others can READ it…) But all week, seeing the little kids with their violin cases and their bows and all the trappings, he just really was upset that he did not have one too. We’ll see how it goes. He can’t really start lessons this fall anyway, because too much transition is going on here as it is. But in January when the second semester starts, we’ll see if he still feels that way. If so, they start violin lessons on a little box with a stick glued on to it. Only after it really seems to be a go do you actually buy or rent a tiny violin. (One mom I talked to got theirs on eBay for 99 cents!)

Another silver lining—seeing Isaac belt out Twinkle Twinkle with ten other preschoolers… he reminded me of that scene in Casa Blanca where all the French patrons in the bar stand up and sing the Marseillaise with a glorious mixture of defiance and pride. Little fist keeping time, head bobbing, and voice at full volume. It’s a vision that sort of makes all the suffering worth it.

Another silver lining—getting up and getting there every day did set a nice steady rhythm to the week. He enjoyed feeling like a school boy, wearing his back pack (full of toys) and feeling at home in the place. He took to it, sort of, in some ways. I said something along the lines of “Well, at least this is good practice for when you go to school in a couple weeks.” And replied, slightly annoyed at my dimness, “But the ZUCCHINI CAMP IS my school!”

No, I’m happy to say, it’s not.