Birth Day

Miss Emilia would like to introduce you all to her baby brother, Mister Jasper, who arrived last night at 9:16pm.

After very narrowly escaping being born at the side of the road.

Their bad mother, who is happy but nonetheless shell-shocked from what was - no exaggeration - a somewhat traumatic birth experience, needs to recover for a day or two before sharing that story. In the meantime, accept this photo and a weakly blown virtual kiss as both birth announcement and thank-you (for your amazing support during this crazy pregnancy) card.

xo

Getting Down To Business: Update

No baby. Lost rocked, though, so, hey, there was that.

Spent the better part of today at hospital while doctors fussed over size of baby and fact of ongoing contractions that seem to go nowhere. The baby? IS HUGE. Well over nine pounds now and measuring off the chart for length and head size and everything size and very near to the point where they automatically recommend c-section. My doctor, however, is very anti-c-section unless absolutely medically necessary so there was consultation after consultation with other doctors and OBs about whether the fact that my body has been preparing itself slooowly for 'natural' labor is reason enough to wait some more days.

They decided that it is. Wait.

I cried.

Which, embarassing, but still. CANNOT do this. Need this baby out. And would strongly prefer that the 'getting out' not involve my nether regions being torn to shreds by a gargantuan head and general fetal massivosity.

I'm now exhausted and in pain and terrified of staying pregnant while this baby grows and grows and becomes too big to fit out my hoo-ha. And the castor oil? Has done nothing as yet. (Although, for the record? Mixed with a cocktail of cream soda and root beer - don't ask - it doesn't taste all that bad.) NOTHING.

So. Having tried pretty much everything - seriously - that there is to try, all that's left is praying.

Am praying.

Getting Down To Business

Why I have to have this baby this weekend, or else:

1) Because if I have to go through another full day or night of 'false' but nonetheless really f*cking painful labor contractions, I may be compelled to shoot myself in the head, or dope myself to sleep with vodka, and neither of those things would be good for the baby, would they?

2) Because my current daily ratio of sleeping to not-sleeping, given the above, in hours as measured on a 24-hour clock - 2:24.

3) Because once tonight's episode of Lost is over, I'll only have 6 days and 23 hours in which to get this baby out and sorted so that I'm back on schedule to watch the next episode, next week.

4) Because it's my birthday next week, and a) I'd prefer that this child be born at least a few days before or after my own birthday, and I'm not waiting until next weekend (see #'s 1 - 3 above), and b) I'd very much like to have a vodka martini on that day, and not one that is cut with castor oil.

5) Because, have you seen me lately? I am the size of a small dirigible. And if this baby was pushing 8lbs over two weeks ago - even allowing for margins for error - I do not even want to contemplate how big he will be next week.

6) Because I'm ready. We're ready. It's time.

So, having exhausted all other options except Eggplant Parmesan (cooked eggplant being a couple of notches below castor oil on my personal list of stomachable foodstuffs and beverages), I'm pretty certain that I will be quaffing some castor oil within 24 hours of the closing credits scrolling onscreen for tonight's episode of Lost. I am well aware that many of you will regard this as reckless, reckless behaviour, but still: am at wit's end. Must act. Gastrointestinal discomfort, even in the extreme, is, at this point, among the very least of the physical evils that I face, including but not restricted to intermittent but ongoing painful labor and the many-days long stretch of no sleep caused by that labor. Diarrhea? MEH.

Am forging ahead. Hopefully, the next time you hear from me will be from the other side. Otherwise, expect more bitching.

PS -I refuse to confirm or deny any of the name guesses made on my last post, but I will say this: you will know. It may be a one-time only deal, but I will share the name with you. After I share it with him.

My Baby, By Any Other Name...

We've known Sprout's name for a long time. Naming him, in fact, was one of the easier parts of child-preparation for us. It came to us, and it felt right, and that was that. So he has a name, and we - and Wonderbaby - have been referring to him by name for a long time. Which I love, because he's already part of the family, someone we know, someone whose name is included with all of our own when we talk about the future, or when we whisper good wishes to everyone we love at bedtime. I love that Wonderbaby discusses him freely with anyone who asks - I have a baby brudder his name is xxxxxx I love him I gonna share my toys we gonna have CAKE and and and I love him and I kiss him LIKE THIS (blows kiss at mommy's belly) - as though he were already here, which he is, of course, in the most important way, in our hearts.

And I've gotten accustomed to the occasional eyebrow being raised when Wonderbaby utters his name. It's not a strange name - artists and writers and characters of fiction have had this name - but it is a little on the eccentric side, maybe. It's not a name that you hear every day. So, yes, there have been moments when an utterance of his name provokes those arched brows and a politely restrained oh isn't that an unusual name. Which doesn't bother me. It's his name, and I just know that it's perfect for him, even having not yet met him. I just know. It just is.

Still, I avoided telling my mother, because I knew she'd hate it. I knew, because she hated all the boys names that I mentioned to her when Wonderbaby was just a Wonderfetus, gender unknown. "Theodore? Theo? Oh, NO, honey, I don't like that name AT ALL. Not AT ALL." I knew that I would have to preface any announcement of his name with the caveat that she would not like it and that I wouldn't care and that she'd just have to deal, etc, etc, but still. I knew that it would be an uncomfortable conversation. I knew that there would be an awkward silence over the telephone. I knew that she would sigh deeply and maybe issue a protracted hmmmm before saying something to the effect of I don't know, Cath and I suppose that I'll have to get used to it. Which is exactly what she did, yesterday, when I told her.

I'm not crazy about it.

I knew that you wouldn't be.

I just worry... will kids make fun of him? What will you call him for short?

MOM. It's not unusual enough for him to be made fun of just because of that. There are far more unusual boys' names out there. And I don't know what we'll call him for short. It doesn't matter. What matters is that this is his name.

Well... (DEEP SIGH) I suppose that I'll have to get used to it.

Yes. Yes, you will.

What about Theodore? Didn't you want that name before? I've always liked that name...

I love my mother, I really do, and have always valued and admired her naked honesty - she is very nearly constitutionally incapable of withholding her opinion - and I had told myself that I just wouldn't care if she didn't like his name, I had told myself that I knew she wouldn't like it, that I was prepared for her to not like it. But still... there was a moment there, the briefest moment between his name falling from my lips and her reaction to that name, during which I held my breath and willed her to like it. Wished for her to like it, to recognize it as the perfect name, as his name. And so I was deflated when she reacted as I had expected. Disappointed.

Because, as I keep saying, it is his name, his perfect name, and I feel lucky to have found it, just as I felt lucky to have found Wonderbaby's perfect name. So, the larger part of me says that it does not matter what anyone else thinks: I am his mother, and, along with his father, I hold responsibility for his naming, for finding the name that is uniquely his. Only we can recognize that name. It is ours to give to him, his to take from us, his to wear, his to own. Even if he grows up to hate it - which is always a possibility - it will remain his name, his original name, the one that I will whisper in his ear the very moment that he is first placed in my arms and that I will shout from the rooftops at every opportunity thereafter.

But, but... my instructions to my mother - get used to it, you will just have to get used to it - remind me that to some extent a name really is just a name, just a word, something that we get used to, something that grows on us, something that becomes our own because of what we make of it, not because it fell from the sky of ideas like a shooting star into our mother's lap and presented itself as sacred, sacrosanct, perfect. Our boy will be our boy, regardless of his name, regardless of whether we call him Jack or John or Junior or Pilot Inspektor. He will, if our experience with Wonderbaby is anything to go by, have many names, be called many things, be referred to by many terms of endearment. He will be, no doubt, our Prince, our Pirate, our Monster, our Parakeet, our Crunch. And no matter what he is called, he will always be him.

The him that he is, though - the him that he will be - that 'him' has a name, a name that I, we, have given him, a name that we love him by, and will always love him by. His name, his very own name. It is indeed special, and it will be the first word that he hears.

What anybody else thinks of it? Doesn't matter. It's between we and him.

(A question that vexes me, though: DO I TELL THE INTERNETS? I've long wanted to stop calling Wonderbaby 'Wonderbaby' and call her by her real name. And I'd so love to share Sprout's real name. But I've become so accustomed to using pseudonyms, even as I've become less convinced of their protective effect. This, however, is another topic for another day, and something to distract me while I continue suffering through this interminable, unpredictable labor.)

Mama, Me

I had hoped that this Mother's Day would bring me a baby. It didn't, and I was discouraged.

Then I remembered: I already have a baby. I already am a mother. Not that I'd forgotten, but I've been so distracted for the past however many days by this interminable early labor that I've come to define myself almost entirely as a very cranky pregnant woman who will be in said labor forever.

But, always, behind and before and beyond all of that, there is this:


She.


She made me a mother. She has made me the mother that I am.



This Mother's Day is hers.

All my love forever and ever, sweetie.


*(the day's not over yet and it's been the worst contraction day so far, by far, so who knows. Still, I'm reserving my hopes for tomorrow.)

Yo, Mamas

No, I have still not had this baby. I'm still having contractions, sometimes painful ones, but they're still irregular. I'm not going to prattle on about how frustrating this is, because you've heard it from me already.

What I am going to say is this: THANK YOU. For helping to keep me sane. Because, for seriously? I might have already gone well 'round the crazy bend by now if I didn't have this amazing community surrounding me and supporting me and helping me navigate the craziness that is this pregnancy and life, generally.

I wrote you all an OMG Thank You So Much And By The Way Happy Mothers Day card (early, because, well, if the gods are smiling upon I will be busy giving birth by Mothers Day). It's here. I meant every word of it.

********

I'm still working on visiting and thanking you all individually for those beautiful, beautiful shower posts, but it's slow going because everything I'm doing these keeps getting interrupted by painful and mind-messing early labor bizniss. I'll get to your post, I promise. I'm so thankful for all of them. They've been making me laugh and cry and the emotional release has been so welcome.

********

My blog updates might get more sporadic from here on out. It's tiring and tiresome - to me - to keep writing about NOT having this baby yet, so hard, so frustrating, early labor wtf, bitch bitch bitch. And if I am fortunate to get this baby out soon, I'll be going quiet for a few days (although the news WILL get posted.) Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just keep on bitching, daring the gods to NOT let this child pass. Because The Amazing Thirteen Month Pregnant Bitch-Woman (writing about her 5+ months of labor) might just make for a good alternate blog identity.

Camels take thirteen-plus months to gestate. Am not camel. YOU HEAR THAT, GODS???

Hysterical

Hysteric - from the Greek, hysterikos - of or from the womb (uterus: hystera); suffering caused by the womb.

Yesterday, I went to the hospital. I wasn't convinced that I was in full-on regular labor, but something was up, and I was concerned enough about what was going on - over two days of very painful, if irregular, contractions, and reduced fetal movement, and this after a full week of less intense 'false' labor - that I called my doctor and asked what I should do. The nurse on duty said, predictably, go into triage, better safe than sorry, this could be labor, it could something else, in any case we want to make sure that you and the baby are okay.

She also said, bring your hospital bag, just in case. Not having packed a hospital bag - because, you know, packing hospital bags just jinxes any possibility of a baby coming in a timely manner, yanno? - I gathered up my phone and camera and laptop, shoved a clean pair of underpants in my coat pocket and commanded my husband to drive.

The nurses at triage were wonderful, sympathetic, gentle women who said all the right things about me coming in and getting checked out and felt my belly gently as it contracted and contracted again and then hooked me up to all of those monitors and things and cooed soothingly as the heart monitor registered a healthy heartbeat etc, etc. Your contractions are registering as mild, they said, but of course that doesn't mean that they're not painful. Coo, coo, cluck, cluck, everything looks good, dear.

My doctor wasn't in or on-call, so they called in a resident to examine me further. The resident did not coo or cluck. The resident sat down in a chair next to the hospital bed and looked me up and down. I've looked at the fetal cardiogram blah blah blah, she said. Everything looks fine, and you seem to be in very early labor. She paused again. But it *is* early. Why did you come in?

(Momentary stunned silence)

'Um, because of the pain? The pain has been bad. Off and on, for days now. DAYS. Since early last week or so. And the baby wasn't moving so much. So I called, AND THE NURSE TOLD TO ME TO.'

That can happen; it can go on for weeks; it can be painful, yes, but it's perfectly normal. Your uterus is just getting ready for the birth blah blah blah.

'I know, I know, but my doctor told me to come in straight away if the pains got worse. They got worse. And the baby, not moving, and I called the nurse and she said...'

Of course, of course, you did the right thing (fake cooing)

She pauses again, and flips through my file.

I see here that you're a patient in the Reproductive Life Stages* program here at the hospital... *(RLS = Crazy Pregnant and Post-Partum Ladies Psychiatric Care Club, membership by referral only.)

'YES WHY?' (hysteria rising in voice)

Just asking. You've been feeling okay? Managing your anxiety? Have you spoken to them recently?

(Is she calling me crazy oh my effing god? IS SHE CALLING ME CRAZY FOR COMING IN HERE?)

'A few weeks ago WHY?'

Just want to make sure that you're not too anxious about this pregnancy.

'I am anxious right now because I am in PAIN.'

I know, I know (fake clucking, jotting of notes that I KNOW say something to the effect of batshit loco.)

She pauses again. So, she says after a moment. What are we going to do with you?

*HEAD EXPLODES*

I left, after numerous sympathetic back pats from triage nurses who cooed kind things about not hesitating to come in again if the pains worried me, and promptly burst into tears. When I got home, there was a message on the phone from Reproductive Life Stages, 'checking in' on me: was I okay? did I need an appointment? At which point I might have burst into tears again, if I hadn't needed to double over just right that minute to cope with yet another pain.

I'll talk to my doctor about it, and she will, I know, shake her head vigorously and insist that I was absolutely right to come in, and that I must not hesitate to do so again, and that I should pay no mind to any real or perceived suggestion that my experience with this interminable false/early/whatever labor is anything but legitimately frustrating and worrying and that, again, again I must not hesitate to call or come in at any time if I'm in any way concerned.

But the damage has been done. If I wasn't a basket-case before, I'm well on my way to being one now. If this baby doesn't begin his emergence in some sort of very obvious, textbook way, I'm going to be reluctant to call again, ever.

Which means that this baby just might get born in our bathroom. In which case, those clean underpants in my coat pocket really will be a useless precaution.

(For the Countdown To Baby record, the contractions subsided in the night - so I got to sleep for a few hours for the first time in DAYS - but are back again and are hurting and would be it be wrong for me to hit the liquor, like, now?)

If This Is It, Please Let Me Know

UPDATE: No baby yet. Have been to hospital and they say that I am in 'early' labor and that it could go on for days and oh, hai, yeah, sometimes it hurts like a bitch but it's just that way sometimes. Will update on that hospital visit - which made me, much to my embarassment, cry - later, after I have drunk my castor-oil martinis.

You all are getting sick to the death of the subject of my pregnancy, I know, and I apologize. Believe me, if I could summon the will to discourse intelligently upon any other topic, I would do so. Because, yes - as I keep saying over and over again - I am well and truly sick to the death of it myself.

I've been having crazy false labor for about the past 16 hours now. It's not regular labor, because, well, it's irregular, but it's more painful than past episodes, and this morning it's involving actual back pain and shit and although I know that this can go on for weeks, it feels different enough that I think something might be up. Which means, of course - because I have gone and written those words down and therefore invited the gods to bitch-slap me hard - that it's all probably all going to amount to nothing. But still: I get to sit here and feel my insides cramp up and wonder, for the umpteenth time, is this it? while contemplating the pros and cons of either continuing suffer through an interminable labor (because, false or not, this feels like labor, and so it is, to my mind, labor, and someday this kid is going to hear all about how mommy was in labor with you for weeks and don't you forget it) OR finally getting to a point where this kid might decide to get his massive self out of there.

For the record: the 'pros' of this continuing to be false labor involve the fact that so long as the labor is false, I do not have to get up off my lazy ass and do anything about it, like, say, pushing a giant kid out of my nether regions. The pros of this being true labor, obviously, involve the fact that I CAN HAS GIANT FETUS OUT OF MAH UTURUS kthxbye?

This is me, this morning, at 37 and a half weeks pregnant:


I am massive. My back hurts. My belly hurts. And it just keeps contracting and uncontracting and messing with my head omfg and I wish that I knew whether this time, it really is time.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go double over in pain and pray for respite.

*******

Everybody who participated in the shower this weekend? Thank you all beyond much, really. I'm trying to get around to all the posts to thank you personally - I've made it to about half of them so far, I think - but I'm being slowed by this may-or-may-not-be-labor thing. I promise that I'll get there eventually. In the meantime, big love to you all. (And also to everybody who talked me down from my panic about C-section nazis terrorizing me with their calls of doom and gory videos. Thanks for hearing me out, and for, as always, saying just the right soothing things in low tones and telling me to just go ahead, get it out, be angry. I love you for that.)

Oh, Hai, Person With The Childbirth Horror Videos? DO NOT SHOW ME THEM

I haven't even given birth to this child yet and I've already gotten my first flaming piece of assvice. Which, you know, would be totally poetic - seeing as this weekend is the weekend of a virtual assvicefest of a baby shower that is being held partly in my honor - if the nature of the assvice weren't so freaktastically disturbing.

Yesterday, I wrote a little post that was intended to thank my sweet friends for throwing this shower. I preambled with some babble about how miserable I've been and how badly I want this behemoth infant out of my body and included a few lines about an exchange that I'd had with my doctor that morning that went something along the lines of oh hai doctur pleez get this babee out of mah body and no srsly doctur I can haz C-section? Which - and I didn't think that this needed explaining - were tongue-in-cheek (mostly - more on this below) both in their original statement and in my recounting of them here, on this bad blog.

I did worry a little bit that I might offend someone - I know that some people have strong opinions about c-sections, and that some women who have had them experienced them as disempowering etc, etc, - and so I toyed with the idea of posting a little disclaimer to the effect that AM JOKING (mostly) PLEASE DON'T TAKE OFFENSE. But then I thought, a) if I had to apologize for every instance of black humor on this blog, it would be all apology, no blog, which kinda defeats the purpose, and b) I was also kinda not joking - to the extent that, yes, I am getting that desperate - and shouldn't have to apologize for my awkward attempts at expressing the extent of my current discomfort.

So I left it alone. I had closed comments anyway, so that people would follow the links that I provided rather than feel obligated to leave comments, so I figured that I wouldn't hear much about it. But then I opened my inbox in the middle of the night - have I mentioned? am not sleeping because there is no sleeping position known to womankind that can comfortably accommodate a belly with a 30-something inch girth - and clicked open a comment with a link to a video that seemed expressly designed to give me nightmares: full, unedited video of Anna Nicole Smith's C-section. The next comment, which would have preceded the comment with the link, said something to the effect of you must watch this... get as far away from your OB as you can... they are setting you up for a slaughter! (Those last few words? Not paraphrased.)

Which, you know? Not helpful advice for a woman who is 9 plus months pregnant with a gargantuan baby and who can't sleep even without the Sears-gone-Freddie-Krueger threats of doom and the explicit horror videos.

Look, I know that for some women, C-sections are almost as bad as female circumcision and forced sterilization in terms of disempowerment and violation of the female body, and I can totally see how if one felt that way, one might want to intervene to prevent others from undergoing such a procedure and that this person had all sorts of good intentions, BUT. How different is such intervention from, say, anti-abortion intervention, if imposed upon someone who has not asked for an opinion on the matter? I mean, sending me gory videos and telling me that I'm doomed for slaughter? Terrifying me isn't exactly the right way to engage me on the issue of C-sections, nor does it any way help me in any way to cope with the massive physical and psychological burden that this pregnancy has become (yes, I said it: burden. I am that f*cking miserable from pain and fatigue and the feeling of complete and utter broken-down uselessness). You're welcome to tell me that you disagree with C-sections (although, again, my request for a C-section was tongue-in-cheek, as are any and all statements to the effect that I plan on flushing this child out with castor-oil-and-vodka martinis) (maybe), but please do not tell me that I am 'not thinking' and that I am unappreciative of equal rights v.v. my body and puhleeze do not use scare tactics to make whatever point you're making.

I'm not planning a c-section, nor would my doctor even support giving me one for anything less than pressing medical reasons. Which, again, is not to say that I wouldn't joke that I can't see getting much bigger and incapacitated without being tempted to demand one or perform one on myself, and that it wouldn't be all the funnier for me because it's maybe a little bit true. Joking about it doesn't mean that I don't take this birth - or the means by which I will undergo the birth - very seriously. It does mean that I take choice very seriously - as I wrote at BlogHer just this week - and that I hold in very high value the fact that as a woman living in North America in the 21st century, I can choose whether to give birth at home or in a hospital, with drugs or without, and that if I need a c-section, I can have one.

And it also means that I am very attached the principle that what I do with those choices is nobody's f*cking business but my own. Which is to say, if anyone else out there is thinking of sending me gory childbirth videos starring doomed D-list celebrities, C-section or otherwise, don't.

Just don't.

Joy, and Pain (Pump It Up Pump It Up)

I cannot even begin to tell you how crap I feel. Seriously. Between the ongoing false labor and the muscle-searing leg cramps, the chest-sucking heartburn and the debilitating backache, the no sleep and the no f*cking sleep, I'm this close to asking somebody to just club me in the head so that I can be unconscious for the rest of this pregnancy.

My doctor, today: Well, this baby seems to be over the 90th percentile for size, so it's not surprising that you're uncomfortable.

Me: How much bigger are you going to let him get before you get him out of me?

Doctor: (laughs)

Me: No, seriously.

Doctor: We like to let babies come out when they're ready.

Me: What about when I'm ready? I'm ready now. Seriously. Can't you just, like, give me a C-section or something? Today?

Doctor: (laughs)

Me: (kills doctor)

I'm just, you know, done. And of course you know, because what else do I do but bitch about it (when, that is, I'm not bitching about other anxieties and issues)?

So, this weekend? I am declaring a moratorium for myself on bitching about pregnancy and motherhood. I declare a moratorium on bitching, period. In part because I am getting just so tired of myself, and in larger part because some very, very dear friends have decided to remind me - and a coupla other knocked up ladies I know - that there's much to celebrate to about this time, and also, that no-one has a right to be so bitchy when they have such good friends. By throwing a virtual shower. Which has me so bursty in the heart and choked up in the throat that I just don't know what to say about it.

Go see for yourself. Participate - they've got prizes, really cool ones. And also, it's fun, and I am totally needing me some fun right now, so please get liquored up on my behalf and join in. It's on until Sunday night.

********

Another, much more sombre reason to not be a flaming bitch from hell, even though I feel that I am totally justified in my desire to give in to that urge: because I am so lucky to facing a healthy childbirth and - fingers crossed and prayers fervently whispered - a healthy child. I'm facing the greatest of happinesses. Some moms lose their happinesses. I only know this pain at a remove, but what I know of it is already too much. I don't know how they do it, but they're writing about it. Go see.