Speed Racer: The Birth Story

The first contraction hit at 7:46 pm. I know this, because I checked the time. I was pretty sure that it was just more false labor, but still. One always hopes. So I checked the time, and then went back to eating my fajita.

Ten minutes later another contraction hit. Ow, I said to no one in particular. That hurt.

Was that one different? HBF asked. Is it time?

Probably not. I'll just wait and see.

Eight minutes later I was doubled over. Emilia pulled out her doctor's kit and held the stethoscope to my belly. Baby brother wants to come out now?

I don't know sweetie.

HBF: Should we go in?

I don't know. It might be another false alarm.

HBF: I think we should go in.

I don't know. (*doubles over*)

HBF: Seriously.

Fifteen minutes later we were in the car, no thanks to me. I dawdled, even as the contractions sped up, reluctant to go in to the hospital and face another round of eye-rolling if these were, as I thought, just another bout of bad false contractions. HBF prodded and pushed until I relented and buckled into the passenger seat. We drove away at 8:26pm, just as another bad contraction hit.

And then another.

And another.

We were barely fifteen minutes from home - and still probably some thirty minutes from our downtown hospital - when it became apparent that whatever was happening was happening quickly. Very quickly. Since we'd left home, the contractions had gone from eight minutes or so apart to barely a minute apart to not apart at all. HBF called 911; 911 patched him through to an ambulance; the ambulance advised that we pull off the highway and wait for them.

HBF: Pull off and wait?

(Me: GAAAAAR-OHMYGOD-GAAAAAR-NOTGOINGTOMAKEIT-GAAAAAR!!!)

(Emilia: WHAT'S MOMMY YELLING 'BOUT DADDY?!)

HBF: I really don't think we have time to stop and wait.

Ambulance Dispatch: We can't chase you down, sir.

HBF: Then I'll just keep driving.

Mad vehicular dashes to hospitals with women in labor are usually played for laughs on film and television. Let me tell you: there is nothing funny about racing toward a hospital that seems to recede ever further into the horizon as you speed forward in excruciating pain, your body completely out of your control, medical disaster ever more imminent with every passing second. Even when the toddler in the back seat starts shouting MOMMY YOU NEED MEDICINE YOU NEED MY TOADSTOOL? it's not funny. It's stone-cold terrifying.

And when your body just starts bearing down and pushing and you cannot stop it and then you're still like ten minutes away from the hospital and the baby starts shoving its way out of your parts and OMG YOU CAN FEEL IT COMING OUT? Then? Your mind kind of snaps.

(So does the mind of your husband, who at this point is simultaneously driving a speeding vehicle with one hand on the horn and the other trying to feel for baby's head between your legs while shouting into his phone-headpiece to someone at the ER that the baby's coming the baby's coming you need to be ready when we get there!)*

We arrived at the hospital at about 9:05pm. At the wrong entrance. Which was locked. Sufficient banging and the luck of some random guy wandering through the lobby got us in, and much shouting from HBF brought the medical team that had been waiting for us running. I was already mid-delivery: the bag of waters was being involuntarily pushed out - intact - and the baby was crowning. Eleven minutes later, at 9:16pm - after much horror-movie-worthy screaming - Jasper was out.

90 minutes from start to finish of active labor. Eleven minutes after stepping out of the vehicle. Fourth degree tearing (borderline) requiring on-the-spot surgery which, you know, without epidural or spinal anaesthesia or anything more significant than local anaesthetic and an extra-strength Tylenol? Almost as hair-raising as the near in-vehicle delivery. Almost.

It was terrifying. The most terrifying experience of my life, bar nothing.

But still, still... after all that - there's him. Big and hale and hearty and a joy - an infinite joy - to behold. Worth any measure of terror, worth any measure of pain.

And the best birthday present ever.

*****

HBF broke, like, a zillion traffic laws, but he was a hero, he really was, getting us to the hospital in the nick of time. We found out immediately after the birth that we couldn't have delivered Jasper safely without help - the cord was wrapped around his neck. There was, quite literally, not a second to spare. My mind snaps a little bit more every time I think about this. Which is why I'm going to try to not think about it anymore.

I bitch about the gods a lot, but someone or something was looking out for us. And for that - for everything - I am deeply, deeply grateful.

Now, am going to rest. Really.

*******

Because you asked: he weighed 9 lbs 2 oz - just a hair under what the ultrasound indicated. Around 20 inches long with a VERY big head (and chubby cheeks with one dimple).

And Emilia was right there until the gory parts, at which point she was enlisted by nurses to help supervise the nursing desk until it was slightly less terrifying for her to enter the room. When she did rejoin us, she was all smiles - huge smiles - and bursting with pride for having helped bring her baby brother into the world.

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.)

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.

White Flag

This is probably the last (intrauterine) picture of my boy:


It's not the best picture, not least because he's a bit squished up in there and he wouldn't hold still and so what might otherwise be a sweet sideways view of his wee face turned out to be a sweet sideways view of a wee face with two noses and four eyes. Which, you know, wouldn't stop us from loving him with all our hearts, but still. It doesn't matter, though, two eyes or four: it's a picture. It's him.

This picture was taken two days ago, when I was 36 weeks and 4 days pregnant. His estimated weight, at time of picture taking?

7 LBS 12 OZ.

With over three weeks to go until my supposed due date, he weighs 7 lbs and 12 oz. And he's been trying to punch and kick his way out for days now. No wonder my body has started advanced labor training already: I just might be facing childbirth on a par with the Battle of Thermopylae, where my nether regions are the pass at Thermopylae and this child is the Persians.

Whether I end up like Leonidas remains to be seen. At this point, I'm already conquered, so it doesn't really matter, does it? Take the pass, my fetal Xerxes, and just try not to break anything, please.

PLEASE?

Mommy Dearest

My child hates me.

Okay, maybe she doesn't hate me, but I am certainly not her Most Favorite Person Ever. That title goes to HBF, aka Daddy, who can do no wrong. (Last night, at bedtime: "I love Daddy" "Of course you do, sweetie. Do you love Mommy?" "Nope. I love Daddy. And medicine." Don't ask.)

Me, on the other hand - I'm persona non grata. On a good day, she tolerates my presence with a polite firmness that makes perfectly clear that she has boundaries and that I am to respect them (NO, Mommy, just me and Daddy gonna play outside. NOT YOU. THANK YOU.) On a bad day, she wants me as far away as possible, and tells me so in the fiercest of terms. (GO AWAY MOMMY. GO. A. WAAAAAY!) Sometimes, she pushes at me with her little fists and furrows her wee face into a scowl and issues her command that I retreat in a terrible little voice that is somehow at once deep-throated and high-pitched. More than once, she's thwacked me with her Toadstool (aka Phallic Lovey), as punctuation to her commands. More than once, she's thrown her entire little being into the effort of getting me away from her now. More than once, she's growled and scowled and faced me like an enemy.

GO. A. WAY.

MOMMY.

NOW!

And, you know, even though I know that toddlers go through these phases, and even though I know that her behavior is probably even more understandable now that I'm in the late stages of a pregnancy that has taken me away from her - in spirit if not in body - far more often than has been tolerable for me, even though I know that of course she still loves me, even though I know all of this, it hurts, and the pain of it cuts deep. She scowls at me and tells me to go, go, go away don't stay here go away I don't want you here BECUZ and throws her wee body against my legs in an effort to just get me away and it's like a million tiny knives cutting through my skin and into my bones and it takes every ounce of emotional energy that I have left to not burst into tears right in front of her.

Do you want to give Mommy a kiss?

NO.

Do you want to give Mommy a hug?

NO.

Can Mommy sit down next to you?

NO.

She's not like this all of the time, of course. She's been quite happy to go out for coffee with Mommy on occasion and go to the bakery with Mommy and go buy treats with Mommy (which, you getting the picture here? If Mommy shoves cookies or candy or mock lattes in her pockets, Wonderbaby is quite happy to have Mommy nearby. Otherwise, not so much). But these remain exceptions to the general rule, which is Mommy go away. And that breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart because now, more than ever, I want to just snuggle up with her and really revel in these last days of exclusive togetherness. I want her to be Mommy's girl for just a little while, so that when her baby brother comes (she now pats my tummy and refers to him by name, loving him, it seems, a lot more enthusiastically than she loves me) all I'll need to do is grab her hand and whisper Mommy's girl and she'll know that ours is a special love and that we'll always, always have it, just between us. But she doesn't want that right now. She wants her dad. And she wants Mommy - slow, belabored, distracted Mommy - out of her face.

And that hurts. It really, really, hurts.

I almost didn't write about this - because, in part, I've been something of a cranky-assed downer of late, and am getting sick of my own bitching, but more so because I feared hearing anything, from anyone, that might suggest that this is not normal, that I must be doing something wrong, something to make her justifiably angry with me, something to make her want to keep her distance. Something beyond just being pregnant and distracted (which, if it is the pregnancy? Is bad enough, because whither our mother-daughter relationship when the baby comes, and I'm even more distracted?) Something wrong with me, something bad about me, her bad mother. And I just didn't think that I was up for hearing that, even as the gentlest suggestion.

But if it is me, I need to hear it, because I need to change it. And if it's not me - if lots of children go through this - then I need to hear that even more. Because I need some peace.

Mommy fought the Law but the Law won.

Evil Mom-Blogger Haters Sent Me Into Labor. Sort Of.

False labor. What the hell is up with that, seriously? It's, like, the meanest trick that the gods have up their sleeves - save, say, giving a pregnant woman who is racked by both anxiety and extreme morning sickness walking pneumonia and her toddler an eye infection two days before they move house. Maybe.

False labor is worse than that. It's worse because not only is it physically painful - the contractions feel pretty damn close to the real thing, which, you know, is not good - it is out-and-out psychological torture. You never know when they're going to hit, and when they do, you don't know whether it's the real thing or not until they begin to subside. So it's this recurring experience of

ouch-OUCH-OUCH-OOOH-OUCH- isthisit?-isthisit?-OUCH-OOOH-isit?-isit? .... ouch-ouch-nope-ouch-maybe?-nope-nope ... gawd ... THIS SUCKS.

It's even better when it happens, like, six times in the middle of the night while your legs and feet are cramping themselves into something approximating badly contorted crab claws. And what's even more awesome? My doctor tells me that although the false contractions (which, she says, could be caused by stress. HA) might signal an early labor, they might also continue for some weeks! Which: GREAT. Shoot me now.

So I'm exhausted. Mentally and physically exhausted and pretty desperately in need of a very dry double vodka martini and maybe a flock of scantily-clad manservants to hand-feed me the olives while I slurp the liquor. Because, you know, that'd help a bit.

But seeing as that's probably not forthcoming, maybe I'll just go crawl back under the covers and not sleep for a few more hours.

HBM (aka CNEZPMB): Portrait Of A Woman Nine Months Plus Pregnant and Hating It.
(Seriously.)

*******

If I had more mental energy, I'd be participating in this week's Friday Flashback party, for which the topic is, First or Most Memorable Early Movie Memory: Discuss. I'd have something to say about having been terrified by Darby O'Gill and the Little People, or about being forbidden by my parents from seeing Grease, two experiences that scarred me for life. Travels into the darker reaches of my childhood memory, however, just might bring on more contractions, though, so, yeah, not up for it. Feel free to jump in yourself, though. (See an example at OTJ, who brings up Escape From Witch Mountain, which, omg, SEMINAL WORK OF CINEMATIC ART AIMED AT FANTASIST CHILDREN.)

(Also, if you're feeling all participatory and Earth-friendly today, you might go do this, too)

Seconds

In four weeks, give or take some days, I will give birth. To a baby. Another one.

At this point in my first pregnancy, I was totally prepared for the arrival of the baby and for any and all potential natural disasters and had already moved on to alphabetizing the boxes of teas in the tea cupboard. I had purchased and assembled (okay, had husband assemble) a stroller (carefully selected after extensive research) and a crib (examined and re-examined and re-examined again for possible defects and potential baby-head-mangling gaps.) I had outfitted the crib in organic cotton linens and stocked the dresser with impossibly tiny onesies and receiving blankets and diapers and diaper ointment and baby jammies and wee socks and booties and even some of those creepy little fingerless cotton mittens that I never did use. I had stocked the bookshelves with baby books, and put pictures up on the walls, and put little stuffed toys on the daybed. If that baby came early, I was ready. If that baby came late, I was ready. If a tornado hit and shut down the city and we were suddenly faced with an extreme diaper cream shortage? I was ready. If the ice caps melted and the streets flooded and we were suddenly forced to float south on a crib made bouyant by a thousand Pampers Swaddlers and some teething rings? I. WAS. READY.

This time? I am not ready. Not even close.

I have one new onesie for this child - one - and that was a gift. I haven't even gone through Wonderbaby's baby things - the stuff that I didn't give away in the weeks and months during which I was convinced that I would never go through that new child thing again, HELL NO - to see if there is, by chance, one or two onesies or pajama sets that are not a) pink, or b) irretrievably shit-stained. The bassinet is in storage, as is the infant car seat. The BabyBjorn was given away, loooong ago, after Wonderbaby rejected it. And the nursery? Looks like this:


Those are bins of laundry - washed, yes, but unfolded, because who has time for that? - in the foreground. And a vacuum cleaner. And while there are books and magazines on the bookshelf, they're all old New Yorker magazines, Penguin Classics paperbacks and Martin Amis novels. Not a single work of Margaret Wise Brown to be found.

I tell myself that it doesn't mean anything, my inattention to the details of preparing for the arrival of this child. I tell myself that I'm slacking because I learned from the last one that all the organic cotton onesies and stocks of diaper cream in the world can't prepare you for the onslaught of mess and noise and love that a baby brings. I tell myself that what's different this time is that I know that money can't buy me baby-love. Or peace, or quiet, or security from fear. I tell myself that I'm not nesting, that I'm not feathering the nest, because I know that the feathers don't matter. That only my love, and his father's love, and his sister's love matter.

But still I worry. Isn't there a fine line between acknowledging what doesn't matter, and not caring? Mightn't I be perched on the slippery slope of devoting less care and attention to this child? This second child?

When I first found out that I was pregnant this time around, I was gripped - along with the joy - with fear and anxiety and ambivalence. I worried that while I was providing Wonderbaby with a wonderful, wonderful gift in a new sibling, I might also be depriving her of me - my love, my devotion, my attention, all of these things, undivided. I don't worry about that anymore. She has been and will always will be given enough love and attention and adoration to last lifetimes. Now, instead, I worry that I am bringing her brother into a life where everything that he is offered - love, attention, adoration, onesies - is divided. Handed down. Seconds. Even if what he is being handed down - even if what is divided - is in quantities that can only be measured by infinities, doesn't it matter that these are still seconds? That whatever he has - kisses, hugs, baby socks - will have been had by his sister, literally or figuratively, first?

That my love for him - although perhaps more the sweeter for coming from a calmer, more mature place - will not be my first, most intense love?

I will love him - DO love him - to the height and depth and breadth my soul can reach, etc. There will be no gaps or shortages in that love; there will be no further distance that that love could travel, no greater height that love could climb. It is, and will be, complete.

But it will always be the love that came second.

Does that matter?

Sammich, With Bevvies, To Go (A Urinary Tale)

"I no go pottie"

"That's fine. If you don't have to go, that's fine."

"I fine. I no have to go."

There's a loud rip as the diaper is torn and yanked out from between her legs, and then a thud as it lands at my feet.

"I no need diaper."

"I would rather you wear a diaper."

"No."

"Then you need to wear your Dora pants."

"No. I fine. I put pee-pee in toilet."

Fine, I think. Whatever. I'm too far exhausted to wrestle her into a diaper, and far too mentally and emotionally spent to invite another tantrum. And isn't there some sort of toilet-training method that involves just letting your kid run around naked and piss on the floor and it's all like attachment-potty-training or some such shit? Whatever. I GIVE UP.

Five minutes later, I notice that she has a small plastic cup - a bath toy - clutched between her knees.

"What are you doing with the cup, sweetie?"

"I just HOLDING IT. I FINE. YOU DON'T TAKE IT AWAY."

Whatever.

Two minutes later, my attention - heretofore entirely occupied by the critical task of figuring out whether to hoist my massive, belly-heavy self to its feet and down to the kitchen for more chocolate, and risk distracting the hellion from her concentrated effort to balance wooden fried eggs between wooden slices of bread and create the perfect fake fried egg sandwich, or to just stay safely and comfortably put - is captured by the sound of a single stream of rain hitting an empty plastic bucket.

It's not raining. And we have no buckets.

Wonderbaby has abandoned her toy kitchen cum sandwich station and is standing with chubby naked legs spread, both of her little hands clutching the plastic cup directly beneath her nether regions, and is peeing into the cup. She waits for the stream to run its course, and then waits another moment to catch the drips, and then marches blithely past me, out of the playroom and into the bathroom, where - as I continue to watch, in stunned, immobile silence - she carefully pours the contents of the cup into the toilet and flushes.

"I PUT PEE-PEE IN TOILET MAMA. I ALL DONE."

Then she washes her hands, and leaves the cup in the bathroom sink. She returns to her post in the playroom, where she puts the wooden slices of bread stacked with wooden fried eggs on a little wooden plate, dashes some imaginary salt from the toy shaker over it all, and hands it to me.

"There you go Mama. You need my cup? For juice?"

Does one laugh, or cry? SERIOUSLY.

Am f*cked.

Bad Mother Blues

I am having one of those days. Actually, it's the second such day, which means that I have been having one of those days for about 24 hours too long now. I am having one of those days in which I do not like being a parent. And, also, one of those days in which I do not like being pregnant. Which, as a pregnant parent, puts me in the uncomfortable position of disliking the most important aspects of my current existence.

I love my daughter. I shouldn't even have to say it. I love her to the heights and depths, etc, etc, as I do my unborn son. I love that I am her, and his, mother. But I just don't like being a mother, the activity of being a mother, right now, not so much.

I'm just so tired. I'm eight and half months pregnant. My back aches and my legs are cramping and I haven't slept in days. I don't so much walk as lumber. And my sweet little girl, home from daycare since Wednesday while HBF is off doing husbandly things, is determined that my incapacities not interfere with her pursuit of world domination. We cannot have quiet time, we cannot snuggle, and we cannot lurk indoors. There are worlds - and parks and trees and sidewalks and schoolyards and grocery stores - to conquer, at maximum velocity, and she will not be dissuaded from doing it all nownownowMOMMYWEGONOW. It does not matter that I am greatly slowed and incapable of meeting all of her demands: thwart her, oppose her, deny her will... I will be rewarded with an epic tantrum. Cyrus of Persia, the Tarquins of Rome, Napoleon, Stalin - they knew nothing of the imposition of the will as the force behind true tyranny. They did not have toddlers.

I am, today, whipped and beaten and thoroughly down. I am physically spent, and mentally and psychically weak from flagellating myself with guilt - am bad mother am bad mother - and just exhausted. Also, the espresso machine is broken.

Dora is my last hope. All of my remaining energies will be channelled into convincing the dictator that she really, really wants to watch Dora. If I succeed, I will curl up under the blankets and suckle a dark chocolate bar. If I do not succeed... well, if you don't hear from me - or if you happen to hear the screaming - somebody may need to send help. Allied Forces, some UN peacekeepers and a hostage negotiator or two might do the trick.

Pass The Smelling Salts

The thing about pregnancy? It is comparative, as a physical and emotional experience, to being drunk, 24-7. But it veers, sometimes dramatically, between different varieties of drunk: the kind of drunk that is just barely-buzzed-but-a-little-off-kilter drunk, the full-on-happy-buzz drunk, the ever-amusing wobbly-and-weepy-drunk, the inevitable crouched-over-the-toilet drunk, and - in its worst incarnations - the collapsed-on-the-floor-while-world-spins drunk.

I had thought that I was well past the floor-kissing-spinny drunks, but apparently not. For the past week I have been having bad dizzy spells of increasing intensity, which culminated yesterday in multiple spells which ended with me crumpling to the floor, unable to get up. Which, when reported to doctor, resulted in the always encouraging immediate summons to hospital.

I'm fine, sort of. I am, apparently, pretty seriously anemic - and that's even while being on iron supplements - and have very low blood pressure (low enough that they didn't want to do blood tests, which is good, but also bad, because I have to go back and do them anyway when I'm not all faint-y), but the baby's fine, which is, to my mind, all that matters. That said, it seems to me that maybe this baby is just a little bit, you know, too strong. Iron-sucking-strong.

My diet's okay. I'm not big on the meats - hence the supplements - so it's a bit heavy on the carbs and the dairy and the chocolate, but it's really pretty decent, especially compared to the starved-out-wasteland of barfiness that was my first trimester. So how is it that I've become this pale, wan limp life-form, prone to buckling at the knees and slumping to the floor? (This would all be so much more compelling if I looked like Keira Knightley and wore filmy, lacy nightgowns and had a raspberry-velvet chaise-longue to fall upon backwards in a graceful faint. Sadly, I look nothing like Miss Knightley and do not own a chaise-longue and am much more likely to be wearing milk-stained yoga pants than filmy Victorian nighties as I crumple inelegantly to the floor, so. My spells are not so aesthetically compelling as they could be, I suppose.)

Assuming that I don't have some sort of malignant brain tumor (*knocks wood furiously*), it must be that this alien life-form, this adorable-but-nonetheless-parasitic superbeing, is sucking every nutrient from my body and turning these to his own nefarious supergrowth purposes. I mean, I can feel him in there. He does not rest, he does not stop moving (that this is fully reminiscent of Wonderbaby's fetal tenure is both wonderful and entirely disconcerting) and I'm guessing that all of those fetal gymnastics and marathon kick-sessions require high-level doses of mommy-juice. Sumo-level doses, that are sucking me dry.

How long this can continue before I waste away to a pale, bulbous shell, a dessicated old tulip petal, fallen and forgotten on the floor, of no use to anyone but the adorable little life-sucking vampiro-fetus growing inside me? Not that I wouldn't give my life to him many times over, but still. I'd much rather remain conscious and upright, the better to enjoy the little WonderSprout and his equally energy-draining sister.

So what do I do? Embark upon an all-steak diet? Hunt down some iron-fortified chocolate and binge? Or maybe just invest in some Victorian nightgowns, a chaise-longue and a bucket of smelling salts?

Juno's Choice

I'll say this right up front: I haven't seen the movie Juno. (I haven't seen any other Oscar-nominated flick either, because big-screen movies are no longer a central part of my life experience, now that I am a mother and hiring a nanny for a night out costs a gajillion dollars that I would much rather spend on handbags and chocolate and DVDs.) (Which, you know, really should be enjoyed together. Lounging in bed with a box of chocolates, watching the last season of Buffy while you fondle your brand new cherry-red leather bag with the multiple pockets and the extra-long strap? Bliss. But I digress.)

Where was I? Right. Juno. Haven't seen it. But I've heard all about it and I plan to see it the minute I can get it on DVD and that qualifies me to comment upon it. Also? I am currently and have been in the past pregnant, and had a baby, and it's a movie about being pregnant and having babies. So.

That's the crux of it, actually: it's a movie about having the baby. And, more to the point, about being young and being caught in some maternal web that you didn't expect to stumble into and that you don't know how to get out of and making the choice to just make yourself at home there until such time as you can extricate yourself in some straightforward manner. I've been there too. I didn't handle it the same way, but I've been there, in that web, wondering how to get out.

There's been a lot of critical commentary since the movie's release about how the movie a) treats teen pregnancy too blithely, what with the snappy dialogue and the laissez-faire attitude of the heroine and all, and b) marginalizes abortion as the go-to solution for an unwanted pregnancy. In a recent article, a Vancouver writer (a man; is his sex is relevant to this discussion? you tell me) asked - discussing Juno and Judd Apatow's Knocked Up as a piece - how it is "that neither (character) really considers abortion as a viable alternative to carrying a fetus to term? In the contexts of both films, all roads for our pregnant women (should) lead to the abortion clinic. This is not an ideological analysis, it is rational one, it is what both of these characters, as they have been written, would do. Instead, for the sake of the stories in question and the messages inherent in them, the writers have perverted their characters' actions, giving these women no coherent rational (sic) for their actions, or lack thereof.

Whoa. Abortion is the only thing that either of these characters would do, the only road that they would take, full stop? And the fact that their stories centered upon them making other choices is a perversion of what would have been more rational actions? The writer goes on to say that what the monumental success of films like Juno - films that about unplanned pregnancies that evade the subject of abortion as the only real alternative for young, smart single women - reveal "is that behind the Indie soundtracks, hip, animated graphics, weed-smoking slackers and Mohawk hair cuts, we remain as a society utterly conservative in our views on what women should do with their bodies."

It may be entirely true - in fact, I suspect that it is entirely true - that we remain, as a society, utterly conservative in our attitudes toward women's rights v.v. their bodies. But that does not mean that the rejection of certain choices - or the pop cultural representation of the rejection of certain choices - represents a social step backward in women's struggle for more control over the right to choose. Ensuring that women have choice - that they are able to control their maternal destinies - does not require that the so-called alternative choice be presented as the social norm. In fact, I'd argue that any socio-cultural pressure toward that end - making abortion the norm for dealing with unwanted pregnancies - actually militates against meaningful choice. The idea that 'the right thing' - or in the above-quoted writer's words, the rational thing - for any bright young woman with a bright future who is facing an unexpected pregnancy to do is to have an abortion is a kind of anti-choice position, isn't it? The idea that is there is only one rational choice for women - or, worse, for certain kinds of women - is oppressive regardless of what that 'choice' is, precisely because the idea that there is only one such choice makes that choice, well, no longer a choice.

I was pretty young when I had to make that choice. I was no longer in high school, but I wasn't quite yet an adult (especially when I look back on it now, from the vantage point of old age), and I was fully vulnerable to the suggestion - the unspoken but nonetheless culturally pervasive suggestion - that nice girls (smart girls, girls with futures, girls like me) did not have babies before they'd gotten themselves properly established on some appropriate life path. This suggestion did not come from my parents - my mother held back from trying to influence my decision, but her pain over my ultimate decision was obvious - but from the culture. I was an older version of Juno, and a younger version of the character from Knocked Up, and amongst my peers, abortion was just what one did when faced with this situation. It was the only rational choice, the only option, understood within the context of my lifeworld. And to that extent, it wasn't really a choice. Not a meaningful one.

To be clear, I don't regret having taken the road that I did. I really don't. I don't not regret it, either - it's complicated, but I will always be haunted in some difficult-to-articulate way by the choice that I was and am glad to have been able to make - but from the standpoint of my life as it is now, I wouldn't alter a single footstep from the pathways of my past. But I do wonder, sometimes, sometimes more often than is comfortable, whether I might have made a different decision in a different life - in a life where I maybe knew a little more of what I know now about life and love and babies, in a life where I might have viewed the alternatives to abortion as more meaningfully possible alternatives. I might very well have ended up making exactly the same choice. But had I done so, under those different cultural circumstances, I might have done so without viewing the alternatives as completely unfathomable. And mightn't that have been more empowering than just doing what everyone else was doing because that was just what one was expected to do? Mightn't that have been a more meaningful choice?

Cry Baby, Redux

Sometimes, you write something, and believe it to be, like, one-hundred and ten percent true - like, say, I cry so much because I am hormonal, and happy - and then, just hours later, you find yourself standing in the kitchenwares aisle at Zellers sobbing and whimpering, to no-one in particular, I am crying because I CANNOT HANDLE THIS SHIT, I CANNOT HANDLE THIS SHIT, I CANNOT DO THIS, as your toddler disappears around another corner with a fistful of lifted lollipops in her tiny hands, cackling with the maniacal glee that only a shoplifting toddler can summon.

And you seriously consider going home and deleting every reference to happiness from your blog and very possibly removing every single happiness signifier in your household - beginning with that stupid grin on that stupid stuffed Dora doll that Wonderbaby received for Christmas, which, you think, could be quite effectively dealt with by means of black Sharpie - because how can one be happy when one simply cannot cope with the quotidien requirements of being a mother while also being pregnant and having run out of chocolate?

And although you don't make the tempting deletions, and you resist defacing the nauseatingly cheerful Dora doll with a Sharpie pen, and you do, thankfully, wake up the next day feeling a little more balanced, you decide that you need to be a lot more careful about your declarations about happiness, because the gods are bitches, and they will fuck with you if you get cocky.

And then you go buy more chocolate.

Sprout

Finally, finally, some evidence - for my own eyes - that this pregnancy is more than just nausea and vomiting and unremitting fatigue. Proof that there's a there in there, and that there is occupied:


That's Super Sprout, and from the way that he or she is kicking my ass, Sprout is going to have a lot in common with the Wonderbaby.