Ba Ba Ma Ma.

These days Essie is pretty major entertainment. I may or may not have talked before about what a weirdo she is, but she so is. In the most awesome way, of course. She has this demon voice that she loves using. Really deep and growly. It actually sounds painful but she doesn't seem to mind it. She just sits and curses us in her demon tongue.

Then in the next second she'll be singing in a high baby falsetto, as sweet as anything. She's a very, very talkative baby which surprises some people because she doesn't tend to be that way around anyone she's not that used to. Spend a few hours with her, though, and you'll likely witness her breaking into a monologue of some sort. Unfortunately she has an often-used combination of b's and m's that sound kind of like she's saying 'bad bad mama' but she's NOT saying that at all. At all.

She's not ambulatory yet, even if she is a giant creature who grows like a mutant weed. She can rotate herself in a full circle when we have her on the floor but that's as far as she travels. She can sit up without falling over much now and does kind of try to pull her legs up underneath her when she's on her stomach. She puts a lot of weight on her legs now if we hold her in a standing position but she gets lazy fast about that. I love that she can sit on the floor with a few pillows around her and keep herself amused with her toys for a long time.

Also she's FINALLY figured out how to bounce in her bouncy seat. I thought she was never going to figure it out, but she has and now she's kind of conflicted about the thing. She's been seeing it as more and more of a prison these days since she's outgrown the toy bar and I often put her in there when I need to leave the room for something. Now, though, she finds herself enjoying the bouncy-ness when she suddenly remembers that she doesn't really want to be strapped in there. Even with her Sesame Street circus within reach she's not that entertained, so here's hoping the bouncing brings on a new level of enjoyment.

We're excited about Christmas, it being Essie's first and all. She'll be seeing her cousin Orla again for the first time in a number of months and that should be awesome. She's at a stage where she loves kids, the closer to her size the better, and we're looking forward to her having a new appreciation for Orla this time around. I'm really happy that Ess has relatives that are close enough to her age on Andrew's side of the family, since I put off having kids a bit longer than my sisters did.

So, yeah. Things are good and I am always amused. Essie does weird, interesting things in little bursts, too, like the couple of days where she loudly sniffed her wrist, or the way the 'Bushel And A Peck' song had her mesmerized every time we sang it. Sadly that's not working as well now, since I liked how it helped me to get her to sleep. She's started laughing at her own farts, too, since I always laugh at hers. No one else's, though. Just hers.

Oh, hell. I'm THAT mom.

Well, I'm mostly physically recovered from my LEEP experience and haven't had much to write about when it comes to my physical health. Because I KNOW you're just ready to pounce on any post where I tell you gross details about my ailments, oh yeah.

I've discovered something new about myself as a mother these days. It appears that I'm a wimp. Or at least a wimp when it comes to transferring Essie from co-sleeping to sleeping on her own in a crib. I am truly bad at it. And the problem here is not Essie in any way, shape or form. No; it's me.

Ever since Ess came home from the hospital I've co-slept with her. It was easier for me to react to her quickly and it also afforded me a bit more sleep at night since when she needed fed I just had to grab her bottle off the dresser next to me instead of get up and go to another room to get her and feed her. It worked, even if it gave us less room in the bed, and we were all pretty happy.

Now I have to interrupt this story to tell another tiny one, but it's necessary. Essie and I are currently staying in Kingston at my mom's place and Andrew comes to stay on weekends. The apartment in Toronto was just not sufficient for Essie to have the space and freedom she needs as she gets more mobile, but we don't want to get locked into another rental agreement just yet, so this is the short-term solution. It's hard, yes, but Essie has already flourished so much in just the short time we've been here that we know it's the right thing.

OK, so Essie and I have still been co-sleeping here in Kingston but when Andrew is here the bed doesn't fit the three of us. Our bed in TO is a queen, this one is a double and I think even the queen would be too small at this point. Essie's a big girl now, around eighteen pounds and already longer than most babies at her actual age of nine months. She's way, waaaay out of the ballpark for her adjusted age of six months and is wearing clothes in nine to twelve-month sizes. She is not kidding around here.

The two of us fit comfortably in the bed, even if she does wiggle over to my side so she's pressed up against my back all night. It's cozy and warm and nice. But getting her to simmer down and go to sleep each night is becoming more and more difficult, so I figured that plus the weekend situation meant I had to transition her to sleeping on her own in the crib, and hopefully not needing me there while she falls asleep.

She's slept in her own bed a couple of times, but not truly all night long since it's pretty easy to just fall asleep with her after bringing her back to the big bed for a feeding during the weekend. This week I decided to get serious about it, finally, and yesterday I experimented by putting her down for a nap in the crib and just walking out of the room after tucking her in. To my great surprise she just drifted off to sleep like it was no big deal. She did that for her next nap, too! Wow.

When bedtime came, though, she was having none of it. I ended up snuggling her to sleep in the big bed and then putting her in the crib while she was asleep. And she slept there all night but I was a mess! I had nightmares all night long about leaving Essie alone in various places and finding out that she'd been screaming and crying the whole time because I'd abandoned her. We were sleeping in the same room but I felt like I was neglecting her or something.

I know I'm the one with the issues because this stuff isn't bothering Essie at all. My guess is that this is leftover angst from the time she spent in the NICU, when I had no choice but to leave her behind and go to sleep far away from her. Finally getting her home with me and being able to hold her in my arms as much as I wanted was a big deal and I felt like I should never, ever let her feel like I wasn't there for her.

So me = ridiculous wimp who feels like she's a mean mom for putting her baby in a crib at night. I'm sure I'll get over it eventually, especially when I can put her to bed for the night as easily as I can get her down for naps. That'll be pretty nice.

The Big LEEP.

Well, yesterday I went in for my LEEP procedure. Andrew drove me there in the morning for ten o'clock. I was still pretty nervous about the whole thing but I felt OK going in, honestly. I knew it had to happen and would probably not take very long so I just decided to grit my teeth and bear it.

And it would have been completely bearable except for the fact that, because Princess Margaret's is a teaching hospital, someone who was still learning performed the anaesthesia and the procedure. She either did not use enough anaesthesia or put it in the wrong spot because when they started the procedure I felt it.

The injections did sting, but it wasn't all that bad. I was surprised, then, that I started feeling really faint and dizzy and everything started sounding weird in my ears. They waited for it to pass, then once I was feeling all right started the LEEP.

I'd been told to expect a feeling of heat, which I did immediately feel. Then I started to feel pain which surprised me since they'd said that the injection of anaesthesia would be the worst part and I'd feel all right after that. My brain kind of went like this:

"Yep, heat. Huh. Hmmm. ow. ow. ow. owowow. Ow. Ow. OW. OWOWOW."

I quickly said I was feeling pain and they stopped, then talked a bit. The doctor told the student not to go so deep on the next pass, then they started again. This time it was immediately painful and I nearly jumped. I'd been told not to jump since they were using a crazy cauterizing tool inside my body and things could go very badly. I again said I could feel what they were doing and at this point started crying a bit which embarrassed me pretty badly. But man, it hurt. So. Much.

They gave me another shot and while it helped I still felt the rest of the procedure, but it was more like an aching feeling than a searing pain. I'm not sure why it was so painful since I've been told there aren't nerve endings in the cervix, but survey (of my cervix) seems to say otherwise.

I'm glad it's over, but I've been feeling a bit silly about how traumatized I feel. I think my strong reaction was specifically because I was so relieved when the needles were over, then found out that it could get a whole lot worse. I'm just crossing my fingers that I don't have to have another one!

A different kind of leeping.

I haven't been very writely lately, I know. Things are OK, but I've been stressing out about a certain something and trying to write about anything else just wasn't working for me. I'd start stuff and never finish it.

Anyone who's been reading this blog from the beginning might remember that when I had my first OBGYN visit after finding out I was pregnant he did a pap smear (of course) and that there were abnormal cells present. He saw the results as serious enough to send me to Princess Margaret hospital to have a colposcopy done by a doctor who specializes in treating cancer during pregnancy.

So she did the colposcopy back in December and scheduled me to have another one in mid-March to see if the bad patches had spread. The big wrench in that plan happened when Essie was born on March 3rd almost three months early and I missed the appointment. As soon as I realized what had happened I tried to contact the clinic, but it proved very difficult, for some reason. Calling the hospital and trying to get transferred to the correct office was a bunch of fail because every time they'd transfer me I'd end up on a line that rang and rang but never went to an answering machine or was picked up by a human.

When I went to see my OBGYN for my post-partum checkup I told him about my difficulties and he gave me a different number to call. Awesome. So I started calling that number and it went to an answering machine for a few different doctors, at which I left pleading messages to call me back so I could make a new followup appointment. These messages went unanswered for quite a long time, then finally I called the general hospital number again and wouldn't let the woman transfer me until she could assure me that she was doing so to a number with real people on the other end.

Someone answered! And told me to call a different number, but this woman did go to the trouble of pulling up my patient number and giving it to me, instructing me to leave that information next time I left a message. So that's what I did, and I waited some more. I left maybe one or two more messages, but finally someone called me back and told me I could make an appointment! O, happy day.

I did so, and they scheduled me for September 8th. I ended up also getting my tattoo done on that day and was quite honestly more nervous about the tattoo since I knew that a colposcopy doesn't hurt in the slightest. So they did their thing and checked it all out and said that things weren't looking bad at all, but decided to do a biopsy for the sake of being thorough. That made me nervous but it ended up not hurting at all, either. The tattoo was much more painful!

I wasn't too terribly worried. The doctor had been quite casual about what she was seeing with her naked eye, saying it didn't look worrisome at all. So I was actually a bit shocked when I got the results and they told me I have severe cervical dysplasia, otherwise known as high grade squamous intraepithelial lesions or carcinoma in situ. All very scary-sounding. When they did the biopsy they'd scheduled me for a treatment in case things did end up worse than they appeared, and I'm thankful for that now. I'm going in for a loop electrical excision procedure (LEEP). That, my friends, is a loop of electrified wire used as a knife to cut away the offending pre-cancerous hot spots on my cervix. Also very scary-sounding, although they use local anaesthetic to make sure I don't feel anything during.

Dudes, I am so freaking nervous about this procedure. In the last year I have pretty much lost all fear of needles WRT them taking my blood, putting in an IV or giving me some kind of shot in my muscle. The thing I'm most nervous about for this procedure is the locality of the anaesthetic. OW. I'm not looking forward to the needles they're going to give me to freeze the area. Not at all. Not one little bit. I am what you call somewhat terrified. Electrified cauterizing wire used as a blade? I'm not going to feel that one! I'll feel the impalement of my inner bits and I'm sad.

I know. Suck it up, be grateful this was caught before it was full-blown cancer, be thankful there's treatment and I should be fine. I'm thankful, but still scared.

Oh, heck, almost a month since my last entry!

After having the end of spring and the entire summer off for parental leave Andrew went back to work toward the end of September. It's been an adjustment for me. Surprisingly more of one than I expected, really. When Essie first came home as a preemie not even having reached her due date I was definitely overwhelmed in a "HOLY CRAP THIS IS MY LIFE NOW," kind of way. I'd never had a baby of my own at home before, of course. Andrew still had a few weeks left of work to finish up so I was alone with her during the day right from the beginning. However, it was not too bad and I remember being relieved at how quickly I took to it.



With that in mind it was a bit surprising to me that being alone with her now would be a big adjustment. I figured it would be pretty seamless since we're so used to her and her ways and it wasn't like I was experiencing a brand new lifestyle altogether. I quickly discovered, though, how much I had come to rely on the little things that having Andrew at home afforded me. Just being able to make lunch or even go to the bathroom without having to consider what to do with Essie in the meantime is something I can't take for granted any longer.



Essie herself is so different now, too, of course. As a teeny newborn she was sleepy most of the time and I could easily set her down by herself for a few minutes since she wasn't going to move at all or even really know the difference. Now ... now she knows the difference. Boy, does she ever. She's awake for a LOT more of the day than she used to be and if she naps in the daytime they're little catnaps, at most half an hour to an hour if I'm lucky. Thankfully she's never cranky and always wakes up with a big grin, but keeping her amused is something of a challenge at times. If she wasn't a good night sleeper I might be at the end of my rope, but she's a champion night sleeper.



So it's all eat, sleep, diaper, play, eat, sleep, diaper, play around here. She's doing pretty well physically and developmentally as far as we can tell, although she's not too terribly excited about rolling over. She's rolled over from her front to her back a few times, and rolled from her back to her front for the first time tonight (yay!), but she's not super-energetic in that way. She's mostly happy to loll around on her back playing with her feet or sitting up in our laps and looking around. The bouncy seat and play mat still amuse her, too, but she likes us best for amusement.

She's growing in her hair, slowly but surely, and growing out of her clothes faster than we can buy them. (Well, that last isn't true since we've barely had to buy her any clothes ourselves due to the generosity of family.) Those seemingly long legs of hers puzzle me because they look short enough, but they hang out of open pants and get all bent up in outfits with feet. Oh, well. I have gotten to know which brands to buy by now.



In other news: I'm really feeling the need to start some kind of new creative project. Nothing serious and deadline-oriented since life has gotten so full, but definitely artistic and productive. My friend Colin has started a new photo-blog and it's a daily reminder to me that I want to do something that I love, too. We'll see if I can fit it in around maintaining Essie and some semblance of a life!

Baby talking.

It's difficult to imagine on any given day that I'll love Essie even more twenty-four hours later, but somehow it always happens. My heart; it grew twelve sizes.

She's just so hilarious and loving and charming and sweet. You know what she is, though? A daddy's girl. Through and through. Nothing makes her smile bigger than making eye contact with Andrew. If we're all sitting on the bed I'll sit her on my thigh and she'll start to put on a show for Andrew. She grins and grins and grins, making her 'talking' noises, then flings herself forward in his direction, making that fake cough noise that babies make to get attention. If she's lying down all he has to do is put his face above hers and she starts cooing and gooing and whispering at him. It's enough to kill you with cuteness.

Don't worry, she gives me lots of love, too, but she never, ever fails to give Andrew the smiles. Lucky bastard.

It struck me the other day how once upon a time I told myself I'd never use 'baby talk' with my kid(s), that I'd always use full, adult sentences and never use cutesy euphimisms or nicknames for anything. Ha ha, I was dumb. I DO use some cutesy words. Not sickeningly much, but things like 'tummy' instead of 'stomach', and 'toesies' intead of 'toes'. I wondered why, what's the instinct that makes these words pop out?

My view is that it has everything to do with the total, unsullied innocence of babies. Essie is nothing but genuine right now, there's no guile whatsoever to anything she does. And when interacting with a tiny being who is so untouched by the world it's difficult not to reinforce that, make everything as light and fun and lovely as possible. I know it won't last, that she'll learn about the world in very short order so right now, when her smiles are exactly what she's feeling inside and her cries or frowns are because she's genuinely uncomfortable or hungry or wet, well, I want to cherish it like nothing else.

Right now her toes can be toesies without her rolling her eyes or saying 'gawd, mom'. And when a stomach is so soft and round and kissable it just feels more proper to call it a tummy than a clinical, boring STOMACH. There are other things (like her bottle [bubs] and soother [soosy, pronounced like the 'oo' in book]) that have nicknames just because I'm insane about giving things nicknames, but that's not the same. It makes me wonder how I ever thought I could speak to Essie like an adult when dude, she is a baby.

"Shaughnessy, I understand you're telling me you're hungry. Allow me to feed you some formula."

"That's a cat, otherwise known as a feline. He is a Siamese, one of many breeds."

"Your diaper is emitting a rather foul aroma! It's high time we exchanged it for a clean one."

All right, so maybe I wouldn't be all stilted and stuff, but the baby talk just happens and I can't bring myself to feel silly. Essie responds to my voice and tone and words with so much happiness and joy. That's enough to make it OK.

Six months old.

Today was Essie's six-month birthday, or half-birthday as I like to call it. We didn't do anything to celebrate, of course, since she could care less and we had other things to do. Well, I did, anyhow, having an appointment to keep this afternoon. Andrew goes back to work at the end of the month so it's nice to take advantage of being able to go out by myself!

Anyhow: Essie is six months old and we're completely amazed. Yesterday was also her four-month homecoming anniversary, so we had two notable days in a row to feel great about. It's incredibly strange to remember what it was like to hold her as a brand-new preemie. It's even a bit weird to think what it was like to bring her home! I have pictures to look at of that time, but I have to admit that I find it very difficult to go back and look at the Facebook albums I made when she was in the hospital. This is odd to me, since at the time those pictures were precious and I couldn't stop myself from poring over them whenever I was at home where she wasn't. I loved to gaze at them, inspect her every tiny feature, obsess about how much weight she'd put on and whether it was noticeable yet.



Now, though, I get extremely emotional and upset when I look at them. Back then I was trying to be so strong and for the most part succeeding. I didn't have a lot of choice, really, and so I just did it. It was hard and it felt hard, but Essie herself was more important to me. Now that she's home, she's healthy, she's happy and chubby and thriving ... well, maybe now I'm feeling the backlash of how truly difficult the whole experience was. I've got some distance from it and gained some perspective that tells me just how traumatizing it is to nearly lose your baby, nearly die yourself and then have to deal with your baby being very sick and requiring intervention just to survive each day for two months. It ... kind of sucks.



It makes me overwhelmingly grateful for the baby she is now. She's so alive and every day Andrew and I look at her and marvel at her. She reminds us to stop what we're doing and just enjoy life since that's what she does all day long. Her smile makes us smile back every single time. It's impossible not to smile back at her, so smiles have increased exponentially around here. Watching her discover something new or figure out a new trick is like watching a magic show. Every day she's a little brighter, a little stronger, a little bit more aware and alert.



I didn't expect a baby that looks like me, but the older she gets the more people say she does. I don't mind, certainly, and I see so much of my family in her. Her hair is still indeterminate except for the two stubbornly white-blonde spots on the right side near the front. Her eyebrows seem reddish-blonde, but might be darkening up a bit. Her eyes are definitely not blue, but haven't settled on a positive true brown like mine and might end up being hazel; that particular brown-green that a few of my family members share. Her legs don't look especially long to me, but it's hard to find sleepers with long enough legs for her in her age range and so she might end up tall, something that would surprise me but not shock me totally since there are some taller women in my extended family, and there certainly are on Andrew's side of the family.



It's just exciting to watch her grow. She's only three months adjusted and keeping up well with the milestones for that age, but the changes just pop up every few days and I haven't gotten used to one when suddenly she's on to the next thing, soaking up experience as quick as she can. She saw her feet a while ago and watched them suspiciously, not sure how to get them within tasting reach, but grabbed them for the first time the other day at my mom's place while she was playing with an overhead toy, kicking at Big Bird and Cookie Monster. She still doesn't really understand them and hasn't grabbed them since, but to see her grip her pudgy toes with her fingers was amazing to me.

She's a baby, normal and lovely as can be, and I'm so very, very lucky to have her in my life.

This is how she rolls.

Essie rolled over for the first time today. I decided to give her some tummy time since she was full of freaky energy and tummy time usually works some of that out by making her furious. Seriously; I have a hard time dealing with putting her on her stomach sometimes since doing something purposely that will make your baby cry kind of sucks. (Also I am not a fan of the twee name 'tummy time' but that's what the professionals call it and it kind of just rolls off the tongue.)

ANYhow; tummy time. I put her on her stomach and turned away for a few seconds to grab a toy to put in front of her to give her something to look at. I turned around and there she was on her back, her expression totally saying, "What just happened?"

I was amazed, so I put her on her stomach once more. She immediately rolled over to her back and looked pleased with herself. I flipped her, she did it again. We waited for Andrew to come back in to the room from having his shower and I showed him. She took a bit longer the last time since she'd tired herself out a bit by this point (yay) but she did it and we had to accept that we have a baby on her way to mobility. Yikes.

She's pretty much exactly on track with this milestone for her adjusted age, so that's nice. She has also, as Andrew put it, discovered 'loud'. She's started screaming conversationally, not just to indicate she's upset. Actually; she doesn't scream to indicate that she's upset, so this is very new for all of us and extremely so for our neighbours at 11:30 last night! Whatevs, she shut up pretty quickly once I gave her a bottle and snuggled her to sleep but I have noticed that her most active, frenetic behaviours usually start when she's getting tired. She doesn't really want to get tired, so she starts kicking her legs like crazy and talking and shooting her arms around. Then she gets frustrated because damn, she's tired, and her eyes get all red and she's kind of irritable while her eyelids are drooping shut. It's cute, but here's hoping it doesn't get worse!

Also she is growing out of her clothes at a rapid rate except for one onesie that I mentioned to Andrew today. It's a magic onesie that seems to be growing with her and getting looser on her rather than smaller. She's wearing it right now! Honestly I suspect that it's just cheap material that is stretching out a bit, but I like the thought of a magic onesie. She'll always have something to wear!

Owie. But also some stuff to be grateful for.

I haven't written in a bit because I had a week from hell and haven't felt much like getting out of bed, much less writing. At first I was all, 'Oh, I won't talk about it, it's so unladylike and so very unbecoming,' but on second thought I don't really care. I'll still try to use euphemistic language so as not to offend anyone's delicate sensibilities, but other than that ... hah.

So I've been having a week of uterus pirhanas and it's been driving me insane. Since having Essie PMS has been twice as bad (maybe more, since it wasn't something I suffered from much before and I considered myself lucky.) My usual depression/anxiety combo kicks into extreme overdrive and I feel like the world is ending and there is no hope for the future for anyone, ANYONE. So far I've been thinking I'm lucky since I'm not having 24/7 postpartum or anything like that, but the week leading up to the event is quite ungood in my brain. And during the actual event? Phyisical pain like crazy.

It's tiresome and I do not want. It's yet another reason to add to the list of countable blessings with regard to having a happy, low-fuss baby. If I felt like this and had to deal with hours of screaming or sleeplessness I'm sure I'd be looking for bridges or tall buildings right quick, but Essie is so very, very good. I also often feel awkward talking about that, like I should somehow not bring it up in case I'm perceived as bragging and thus alienating anyone reading who has to deal with a baby with colic or whatnot, but I have to give this kid her props. She's posessed of an extreme good nature and I appreciate her for it every single day. Taking it for granted? Not over here.

So, that's my last couple of weeks emotionally in a nutshell. LUCKY for me there was some extreme goodness in there. My family threw me an awesome baby shower last weekend. La hosted it and did all the prep work and inviting and whatnot (because she's so incredibly awesome and beautiful.) It was full of moms and aunts and uncles and cousins and sisters and in-laws and nieces and nephews. It was co-ed (obviously) and was a BLAST. It was also hot. Really, seriously hot. Essie spent the whole time in just a diaper, even though I'd originally dressed her in a sweet pink sundress and sandals. Most of the rest of us wished we could sit around in just our unders, but it just wouldn't have been right so we all stayed clothed and envied the freedom of pink, innocent babies.

Speaking of pink, innocent babies here she is sitting in her brand new Bumbo at the shower:



SO CUTE. She's got her frog in there with her to help her fit a bit better since she's still just a teeny bit small for it. Not for long, though!

Very poop-centric, this one.

Andrew took Essie to her pediatrician's appointment last week. I stayed home, ostensibly to do some housework and make spaghetti sauce for dinner but also so that I could twirl around singing, "All alone, all alone," to myself in the empty apartment while the cats looked on.

The dishes were done, surfaces were wiped, sauce was made, songs were sung and cats were petted. Then Andrew and Essie came home and I nearly ripped her out of the sling since I had missed her sunny little self so much. After spending a while sniffing and snuggling and kissing her I got the report from Andrew on the visit.

Essie's been spitting up a lot these days. Nothing major, nothing serious, but still she's been spitting up a bit more than we thought might be normal so Andrew asked about it. The pediatrician wasn't too worried but suggested mixing a little bit of pablum in her formula to thicken it up a bit, which might cut down on her bringing it back up.

So, Andrew went grocery shopping and came home with a package of President' s Choice organic rice pablum, which I mixed a teaspoon or so of into her next bottle. She didn't even flinch, just drank it down as usual. I did the same for the bottle after that, and when she was pretty much exactly halfway through it my brain said, "BZZZT what about constipation?"

Hmmm. Essie is always constipated these days. Sometimes her poop even makes her cry. So, I looked up rice pablum to see how constipating it is and was HORRIFIED to read what moms and doctors had to say. The worst quote likened a mixture of formula and pablum to pouring concrete directly into your baby's bowels.

I yanked the bottle away and made a fresh one, making it a bit more watery than usual, even. Essie didn't care, whatever, a bottle's a bottle. She doesn't even care what temperature it is, warm or room temperature, it's all the same to her. This was Thursday. On Friday she pooped and it was a normal poop. A pre-pablum poop, I knew, since there was no way she'd processed the bottles of concrete mix from the night before that quickly.

Fast-forward to today, Sunday, the day she'd be due for a poop after pooping on Friday. She's an every-two-days pooper, this kid, and like I said; it's often very uncomfortable and downright painful for her. Poor bug. I'd had a restless night with Essie and was napping kind of fitfully. Andrew and Essie were also in the bed, relaxing on a thunderstormy day, and I heard Andrew say, "Oh, poop." He'd done a diaper scan and seen some poop. I told him he should let her work it all out and then change the diaper.

After a bit he scanned again and said, "Yeah, poop." I was excited. I sat up to witness the triumphant passing of the concrete poop, relieved that it hadn't taken weeks to work through. Andrew opened the diaper, carefully folding the sticky tabs so that they wouldn't catch on Essie's perfect baby skin. Then. Then: he pulled back the front of the diaper and revealed the concrete poop within!

Lo: A tiny nugget of poop sat forlornly in her diaper. Not even a nugget: A pellet. She had produced one tiny, insignificant pellet of poop. I laughed. I laughed and laughed. The poop pellet was just so anticlimactic.

Thankfully she produced a much more significant poop in her next diaper and I am satisfied that our concrete worries are behind us. BUT! I am getting excited for solid foods now since it seems she can process more than just formula pretty well. Go, baby, go!

Good times, good times.

Last weekend we went to Ottawa for the annual cottage weekend at Colin's family cottage. It's something I really look forward to every year, and this year even more so since it was Essie's first time. She got to meet Colin (the birthday boy) and Jen for the first time which was very awesome.



We may have overestimated Essie's ability to deal with lots of travel, though. We stayed in Ottawa at night and traveled to the cottage in Val Des Monts during the day instead of staying there overnight. I figured it would be more sensitive to the other cottage-goers in the sense that they wouldn't be disturbed by overnight baby noises or the early rising of babies that often happens. I also figured it would be easier to care for Essie in the city and that part was definitely true.




Essie was not quite herself, though, and I think perhaps she didn't quite cope with the back-and-forthing in the car coupled with the exuberance of the cottage atmosphere as well as we'd hoped. This isn't to say she was screechy or anything. No; she was just more somber and a bit more whimpery than we're used to with her. When we had her to ourselves back at Colin and Jen's place she was smiley and sweet as usual.

But O, the good times we had eating fabulous cupcakes, playing games, talking and even doing karaoke! (It was my first karaoke experience, and even though I sucked it was fun.) There was an incident, however. Andrew usually sets off a fireworks display after dark on one of the nights, and this year the finale firework malfunctioned and he ended up burning a couple of his fingers. Not terribly badly, thankfully, but just in case it was worse than it looked Andrew went to the emergency room back in Ottawa. This meant that Colin and another lovely couple accompanied us back to town so that Andrew wouldn't have to drive, then they headed back in one car together. We appreciated that a LOT, since I currently don't have a license and couldn't drive the rental.

His burns turned out to be mostly second-degree and warranted nothing more than some bandaids, so all is well if slightly sore.



We came home on Tuesday to our sweet cats and Essie has been doing very well. She had a pediatrician's appointment today and she's just, just shy of thirteen pounds. It's a bit less than we expected based on how she's been gaining over the last few months, but she put on almost two pounds since her last visit so that's still pretty substantial! She's getting so big and active and LOUD. She's really discovered her 'complaining' voice, and it's got quite a volume. I'm not surprised, but the days of the growls are officially over now and I'm already nostalgic for my tiny, grunty little baby. Of course this big, smiley, talkative baby is just as lovely and even more engaging but damn if they don't change overnight.

Caring more than I should.

At the infant massage class I talked about in the last entry all the other moms were breastfeeding their babies and we were the only couple bottle-feeding (with formula, no less.) I had some angsty pangs about that which irritated me since I've stressed to myself a million times that bottle-feeding Essie is NO BIG DEAL.

Well, apparently I didn't believe myself, but I think my issue is more with the opinions of other parents than it is with Essie or her health. Essie is obviously thriving, getting fatter and happier and healthier all the time. My angst stems from the fact that I feel like I may be looked down on for my 'choice'.

It wasn't much of a choice. Essie resisted breastfeeding very strongly. I was never happy with pumping at any point anyhow, and when my milk supply got harder and harder to maintain it got a lot easier to mix formula and bottle-feed her; something she was entirely content with. Instead of an agitated, unhappy baby at every feeding I had a happy, satisfied baby. It made sense to me.

I could explain that to anyone I suspect might be raising a mental brow at me when they see us bottle-feeding, but since I am a paranoid person at the best of times it's more likely that there are no mental brows and I'm being overly sensitive to perceived prejudice. While Essie was at the hospital, though, the pressure to breastfeed or at least pump breastmilk for bottle feeding was overt, and I've heard from other new moms that even with a regular, non-preemie birth there is still great pressure placed on them to breastfeed over anything else. So I do get anxious that the moms who have bought into it and think that anything less is wrong will be judging me when they see me with a bottle.

All that said, I was very aware of the fact that at the massage class Andrew was the only dad who also fed his baby, and I'm pretty sure he was the only dad who burped his baby (although I could be wrong on that one.) It's a positive about this bottle-feeding business that I'm appreciating more and more. It affords me more freedom, yes, but it also allows Andrew to bond with Essie and take on aspects of her care that he wouldn't otherwise be likely to. I love that when we're all in bed together she'll lay there quietly watching him for long, long stretches, just staring at him. He gets great smiles from her and she'll do all she can to catch his attention when he's absorbed in something.

So I guess I need to let go of feeling so self-conscious about not breastfeeding Ess. I am aware of so many positives as a result of bottle-feeding that it's just stupidly self-indulgent at this point to think it's any big deal, especially since it's having no adverse affects on the one it matters to most: our daughter.

Overdue update.

It's been a busy week so I haven't been writing anything anywhere except on Facebook. Oh, those statuses are such an easy way to give little, pithy updates. I have a Twitter that I don't use much because of Facebook statuses, even, and I have it set so that my tweets become my status.

Anyhow, I was overcome with sudden panic about the fact that we want to move to a two-bedroom apartment and actually have a room for Essie and her stuff rather than just having her things piled haphazardly around. Soon there will be a necessity for actual furniture for this kid, and that day is coming more quickly than I'd even thought. We've lived in this apartment for going on three years now and it's a small, dark little cave that we've crammed with bunches of junk and I've started the process of winnowing through the junk and generally cleaning the heck out of it and trying to get rid of stuff. We want to give notice and I stress out about prospective tenants looking at my living space, so figured this time around I'd better be highly proactive.

The worst part, of course, is when you feel like you're only moving the mess around, not actually resolving it. Sigh.

Essie, though, is doing so, so fantastically well. The smiles! The talking! You can tell she's really trying to emulate the noises we make and the way we move our mouths and it's hilarious. Check it:



My baby is the smartest and cutest! OK, maybe not but she seems that way to me. ;)

We took her to an infant massage class that our friend Candice, a registered massage therapist, ran. It was very cool to attend and learn how to squish our baby girl. There were some parts of it that Ess didn't like as much as others, but by the end she was totally relaxed and happy. I plan to do it as much as possible. What surprised me most, actually, was the facial massage stuff. I figured she'd hate that since she gets agitated when things are touching her face, but she loved it. It was the hand massage that bothered her most. The back stuff didn't go over super-well with her, but mostly because it involved her being on her stomach and nothing pisses her off like tummy time. SO: If you have a newborn or infant and think that sounds like fun, make sure you check Candice's site for class schedules. I might do it again just for a refresher sometime!

I'm sure there are a million more things that I'd intended to write about but my mind is totally blanking on them right now. Essie's not feeling so hot today so I'm a bit worried about that even though it's nothing serious. Just more sleeping than usual and more crankiness, plus a touch warm-feeling. It's probably just a growth-spurt and I'll find out tomorrow that she doesn't fit into any of her onesies any more. She's like a weed!

Oh, how you've changed.

Becoming a mother for the first time is scary in a lot of ways, but one of the less talked about ways is that it can be a problem for other people in your life. Your life changes drastically, and so your interactions with others change as well. I understand that well, and understood it before I had Essie. I never said to myself, "Oh, motherhood will never change me. I'll still be the same old Keltie!"

What I was most afraid of? That it wouldn't change me. That I'd be the same old Keltie.

Being pregnant was overall very odd for me. Just when it was getting real and fun and far less tiring I was suddenly an early mom. I didn't get a lot of opportunity to get past the 'this can't be real' phase before it was incredibly real and twice as terrifying. I looked definitely pregnant for about, oh ... two weeks? Tops. Nobody ever gave me their seat on the subway or patted my belly.

So I don't feel as if I changed much as a person during that time. I hadn't made room in my brain for the reality of Shaughnessy since I thought I had more time to get used to her being inside of me. She was a concept, and a pretty major one, but not part of the world yet. She was yet another oddity about my physical being that I was contending with, I guess.

The circumstances of her birth were kind of equivalent to being thrown into a pool when you can't swim. And the pool water is freezing cold. And not very clean. I had to learn to swim with a quickness. Once I was discharged from the hospital I had to do all kinds of things that I wasn't thrilled about doing, but having a kid takes choice away from you completely. You don't have a choice about taking care of your baby. YOU had it, you silly thing, so you have to take care of it. I had to pump if I wanted her to have my breastmilk and I had to get out of the apartment every single day to go see her and take it to her (something difficult for my agoraphobic self, even if it doesn't sound like such a big deal.)

Now that she's home I have even less choice. 'Sleeping in' doesn't actually exist any more, even if Andrew is taking care of her while letting me sleep. On a very visceral level I'm so attuned to being her mother that the sound of her crying or making any other baby noise will wake me and I'll be on high alert even when I'm trying to get myself settled back to sleep. But when I do have to wake up to her cries or whimpers for a bottle or a diaper change it sucks as much as waking up to a strident alarm clock. It feels shitty to rouse yourself from comfortable sleep. There is no choice though, and so I do it.

So on that level I have changed. I have a giant new responsibility and I'm doing what is necessary to fulfill it and changing my entire previous lifestyle to accommodate it. The nice thing about babies is that the longer you work at it the greater the returns. She's started smiling at us now when she sees our faces, which is pretty awesome at a time when you're feeling sad about having to be awake.

I've also changed in some ways that I was worried I wouldn't. I worried I wouldn't love my baby enough, which is so obviously not the case that I feel relieved every time I think of it. She is heart-splittingly lovable and I can't decide if it's that I have an exceptionally awesome kid or it's a built-in failsafe kicking in deep in my brain. Whichever; I don't care. I love this kid. I spend all day with her and it's all about her needs coming first now, not mine. It's not painful in the way I feared it would be, though. I worried that I'd be the mom sitting there staring at her wailing baby trying VERY hard not to smother it with a pillow and yes; there are frustrating moments so far, but no murderous instincts. I know that there are tantrum times coming down the road that I'll have to contend with. For now, though, I'm just happy that I've turned into a mother, one who loves her daughter when she's unhappy as well as being smilingly adorable.

So, um ... I've changed. I'm finding that it's hard to put into words how I've changed, I guess. I am embracing the all-consuming aspect of it right now in a way that might be surprising to anyone who knew me before Essie was born and had heard my many reservations about motherhood back when I was contemplating never having children. She's here, though, and I am now throwing myself willingly into the water rather than being forced in. I'm taking all the pictures I can, talking about her all the time, noticing other babies more as a result and maybe squee-ing a bit over them. I'm not trying to retain my concept of what I was before she came along; rather I'm excited about watching what I grow into now that she's here.

My hope is that if you love me, so are you.

Home again, home again.

We spent the last two weeks in Kingston with my mom. It was awesome and I knew that the danger in doing so would be that once the time came to leave I wouldn't want to. I was right and it was really, really hard. Essie had gotten used to her grandma's love and attention and it was so difficult to tear her away from that. I also hate that my mom can't see Ess whenever she wants to. :(

So I was pretty blue when we got home but Essie doesn't let me sit around feeling sorry for myself too much, so it's been the usual day-to-day stuff. It's amazing how much she changed over just the last two weeks, though! She grew her eyelashes in, finally, and looks like a real sweetie with them. She lost a ton of hair on the top of her head and it's already growing back in super-fast. The biggest change, though, is her activity level. She's suddenly much more interested in what's going on around her and while she's always been a wiggler, now she's a REAL wiggler and seems to want to be moving around a lot.

Of course she can't do too much, so this pisses her off a tiny bit. Poor bug.

We had a pediatrician's appointment today and Essie weighed in at 11 pounds, four ounces! So a bit of a gain since this past Thursday at the hospital. The doctor said she hardly even recognized her from the last visit and admired how she's chubbed up and looks bright and happy. She said that Ess was due for her next shots, though, so did them and this did not go over well with our little girl. They're given in the fronts of the thighs so the doctor had me hold Ess while she did them and while the first one made her squawk, the second one made her cry for real and it broke my heart. Essie has the saddest cry ever, especially since she never really cries. We thought she'd been working on crying lately, but this ... this was a cry.

I jammed her soother in her mouth and she resorted to sucking it sadly instead of crying. My poor, poor bug. For the rest of the trip home (including a stop at the grocery store) she was solemn and a bit sad, but she was OK once we got here and I cuddled her, fed her and then sent her off to the bedroom with her dad so I could do some stuff. They're both sleeping hard on the bed now.


Shhhh, they're 'leepin.

Anyhow, things with Ess are great. We're getting really spoiled by the reactions from health professionals about how great and healthy and vibrant she is. It'll come as a shock if anyone just goes, "Meh, she's all right. Pretty average." Even if she is average for a baby of her adjusted age, the way she started off will always make me look at her and marvel, I'm sure.

LEEP LEEP!

Yesterday Essie had the most awake, alert day of her life. It was like she was at a day-long party or something. It started at around seven in the morning and I hadn't gotten quite enough sleep. I wasn't horribly underslept, I just didn't have quite enough under my belt. So I was not prepared for Essie's sudden baby party.

You can only hold a baby for so long before you need to eat or bathe or go to the bathroom or crouch in a corner and weep. When Ess is awake, though, she wants you paying attention to her because she's pretty dependent on others for her entertainment. If you lay her down she is not satisfied. She's no dummy. She knows you're not HOLDING her, stupid, and so she will begin to prompt you to get with the program and pick her up. She does this through adorable wiggling and baby noises and it takes her a bit to escalate to anything more serious.

I took this video during the approximate middle of the party:



Twitch, twitch, wiggle, wiggle, gasp, wiggle, twitch, gasp. No crying, no real anger. Just persistent, focused action designed to alert you to her non-held, fully adorable status. I tried hard all day to get her to sleep. I used all the tricks I knew and her grandma did too. Mimi came over at one point with July and Rowan, both of whom seem very taken with Essie and like to admire her and hold her. Essie stayed awake during their visit. Usually when they come over Essie is asleep or on her way to it so Rowan (who turns four this month) will say, "The baby is 'leepin." He's also accused me of choking her to death when I'm trying to burp her on my lap with her chin propped in my hand which is not as accurate an observation, but hey. He's four.

Anyhow, Essie stayed mostly awake and kept partying. After they left, though, the baby party was winding down and Essie was becoming that partygoer. You know the one. The one who likes to talk and who has reached the point of not really enjoying the party any more but don't want to actually leave yet. So they latch on to someone and talk politics or religion or some other possibly anti-social topic and it's strident and kind of off-putting and uncomfortable to the remaining party-goers. That's who Essie became. The baby party had gone on too long, she was no longer happy about it, her eyes were red and her grumps were grumpy.

She kept falling asleep for ten or twenty minutes, then waking up and saying, "HEY, what happened to the party?" This went on until I decided to just take her to bed already and I guess once we hit the mattress she got the idea and had a normal night's sleep from then on. A normal night's sleep means waking up every three hours and demanding food, but at least there is sleep in there, right?

Oh, man. It looks like she might be entering a partying phase of her life where she's more wakeful during the day and sleeping longer stretches at night which is FINE, I just want to be aware of it so I can adapt. I'm really looking forward to her sleeping through the night if she's the type of baby to do it!

Anyhow, today hasn't been quite as party-ish. Check it:



The baby is 'leepin.

O noes! It's an emergency!

Last night we had our first emergency room experience with Essie. Thankfully it wasn't a terrifying emergency at any point. Essie'd been kind of out of sorts for about a week since starting on the thrush medication. Last night Mom and I went shopping with Mimi and when we got back Andrew said that while we were gone Essie had been fighting with drinking her bottle and then throwing up pretty much every drop she drank after each eating session. I fed her a bit more and she did exactly what he'd been talking about; struggling and fussing while eating like it was uncomfortable, then barfing it all back up.

Seeming a bit uncomfortable is one thing; not keeping any food down is quite another. After a quick call to TeleHealth we decided to just go to the emergency room with her. We all loaded up into Mom's car and off we went.

I brought a full bottle with us in case the doctor wanted to see what we were talking about and since her stomach was mostly empty Essie got fairly quiet and calm. We had a bit of a wait to see the triage nurse, then another minor wait in the common waiting area. Things moved pretty fast for us, though, since Essie is so young and a preemie to boot. I felt guilty about that since I felt like she was doing well and in no immediate danger, but I'm no doctor and if there was something serious going on with her we wanted to know.

The ER nurse was a former NICU nurse so she was extra-great with Ess, but the funny part was that she'd forgotten we were the parents of the preemie baby and couldn't tell until I mentioned it. She was totally surprised and said she'd never have known unless we'd said something about it. She took us off to weigh old Essie and I was wondering how much she'd have put on. Last time she was weighed on June 8th she was eight pounds, four ounces, and this time she was 11 pounds! This kid is not kidding around about being big and healthy.


Sucking back a bottle in the emergency room like nothing was ever wrong with her.

The ER doctor (Dr. Cottle, for all you BSG fans) pretty quickly determined that Essie doesn't have anything wrong with her other than ongoing thrush issues, and that the vomiting might be because the thrush is in her throat as well and it's irritating to her. So she just told us to continue with the meds four times a day, and assured me that no, the meds will not harm her in any way even if she seems uncomfortable. After the diagnosis she praised Essie up like gangbusters and told us we were obviously taking great care of her and that she was a superstar.

I always love hearing stuff like that, especially that it's obvious that we're taking good care of her. It does make me wonder, though, how many babies they see that aren't receiving good care. Is it in any way remarkable or are they just being reassuring? Babies are pretty straightforward when all is said and done. Keep 'em clean, keep 'em clothed, feed 'em when they're hungry and talk nicely to them. They grow! They're even amusing and interesting a lot of the time as a result.

They're not quite as simple to take care of as houseplants, but then every houseplant I've ever owned has died a horrible death of outright neglect. Essie, on the other hand, is doing just fine. I think the reason for this is that a houseplant has never once smiled at me.

Mid-trip update.

So we've been here at Essie's Grandma's place now for over a week and it's been so incredibly awesome for me to see the two of them getting so much quality time together. I think there's nothing in the world my mom loves so much as a tiny, sweet baby and if that baby is in the slightest distress she's ON IT.

Like, the other day my mom had had insomnia the night before and hadn't slept a wink. She went off to bed, but got up when she heard Essie crying in the living room with me, took her from me and walked her around until she was soothed and sleepy again. Then gave her back to me and went to bed! That's love.

Essie's been more cranky than usual the last few days because she has thrush and the medicine for it is making her feel sick. The med info says it can cause diarrhea, intestinal discomfort, stomach pain and nausea. Poor little bug. She hasn't been freaking out but she's definitely been more serious when awake and seeming more uncomfortable overall. When Essie cries you know she's in actual discomfort, not just complaining for complaining's sake. She doesn't cry much at all, this kid, so hearing it at all is startling and worrying.

Hopefully the thrush will be all cleared up soon and she'll be back to her normal, mellow self. Other than that excitement we've pretty much just been chilling out and hanging with my mom. She's bought Ess a bunch of cute clothes, of course, and we finally managed to find a couple of sunhats after discovering they're strangely difficult to find during the actual summer season. Here are some pics from the last week:


Crashed out on the sofa on a pretty brutally hot day. Just a diaper was sufficient for clothes!



After her hot nap, cooling off by a window on Grandma's lap.



Getting some morning cuddles on Grandma's shoulder.



Leaving WalMart, the only store in which we could find any sunhats for newborns. Essie's rocking it.

Essie is more of a mellow yellow kid.

I can't stop kissing her. It's mostly her cheeks. She has the most pokeable, kissable, pinchable cheeks ever and when she's awake and interactive I just HAVE to kiss them. This, of course, guarantees that her first words will not be anything like 'boo' or 'gee' or 'dada' but will instead be, "If you do not stop invading my personal space I am moving in with GRANDMA."

Sucks to be you, kid. She'll kiss you too. Plus take you to Sunday School.

But O, how I love this baby. Her Aunt Jenny is in town this week and we went to Fresh to have dinner with her last night. Jenny commented that Essie is a pretty chill, calm baby and she really is (for the most part.) Of course she had a bit of an out-of-character cranky period after we got home but that's OK. Her cranky periods are so few and far between that we just count our blessings every day and make the most of what could very well be a temporary state. For the other 22 hours of the day she is so fun and funny and charming. And chubby.

I read in someone's blog a few years back (and I don't recall which blogger it was although I know it was one of the upper echelon of 'mommybloggers') that they would totally stalk their baby on MySpace. I laughed at the time because it's funny, but OH MY HECK it's true. Andrew and I have been trading off every other night of taking the 'Essie shift' where one of us is responsible for waking up and taking care of feeding and diapers when she needs it. The thing is that when I'm in bed and I wake up and hear her making some kind of noise out in the living room with Andrew it takes everything in me to just stay in bed and go back to sleep. I want to go to her, I want to hold her in my arms and snuggle her close and kiss her head and nuzzle her neck. She's so freaking nice and lovely and I enjoy her so much.

I want to describe to you so badly what the things are that fire me up so much with love for her. The problem is that it all sounds kind of crazy or too commonplace. Like how she drinks her bottle. The way she puts her hands on the sides of it and makes a little 'nyuck nyuck' noise when she swallows and how she keeps her eyes on mine. Then she stops drinking and sighs and takes a little rest (never letting go of the nipple, mind you) then digs right back in.

See? I just described a baby drinking a bottle. But ... but it's ESSIE drinking it, see, and she's ESSIE and ... and ... argh. I can't make it work with words.

I joke that she's the best baby ever and there will never be a better baby, but at the same time I feel very strongly that I want to raise her with the most realistic expectations possible. I don't want her to be saddled with the idea that she's a special, special flower and a total genius and a cut above most other kids. I don't buy into this Indigo Kid bullshit which is where a lot of that 'You're the greatest and other people just don't understand you!' stuff leads. Here's a freaking awesome quote from the Wikipedia:

Skeptics suggest that the indigo phenomenon is due to parents preferring to believe their children are special, rather than having a medical diagnosis which implies damage or imperfection. Also criticized are the traits used to describe children, which have been compared to the Forer effect - so vague as to be able to apply to anyone.

Yeah. Pfft. BUT: I want Essie to be who she is. I want her to go to school and play with other kids and learn what she learns and be good at some things and not so good at others. I want her to gravitate toward the things she's interested in and help her pursue the things she's most passionate about. I don't want her to feel any pressure to always be better than the rest and the smartest and the one that stands out most. I just want her to be happy to do her personal best and understand that that is what's most important.

Wait, wait!

Descriptions of indigo children include the belief that they are empathetic, curious, possess a clear sense of self-definition and purpose, strong-willed, independent and unconventional. Indigo children have also been described as having a strong feeling of entitlement, or "deserving to be here." Other alleged traits include a high intelligence quotient, intuitive, resistance to authority, disruptive, impatient and easily bored. According to Tober and Carroll, indigo children function poorly in conventional schools due to their rejection of authority, being smarter than their teachers and a lack of response to guilt-, fear- or manipulation-based discipline.

HAhahahahahaha! So ... basically they're assholes? Got it.

Out and about.

Essie attended her first concert last week. Our friend Michele Jacot puts on an annual show called Commingle and this was the third one, actually called Commmingle Three (and that is not a typo.) The last two years I showed some pieces and last year had a piece up for auction but this year there was less art, more singing and performing. There was a silent auction and the whole thing was a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis foundation.

I love Commingle because lots of people we know perform (mainly Michele herself, being an insanely talented professional classical musician). One of the highlights of the show for me, though, is Cadence. I'm pretty much a squee-squee Cadence fangirl. A capella singing, four tenors, excellent showmen ... dang. It just makes me so happy!

I was a bit leery about taking Essie to the show. I'm not the type of parent who thinks that my baby should be welcome at any function, no matter what. There are some things that just aren't baby-appropriate. Like movies. I wouldn't dream of taking Essie to a movie theatre, believe me. I know there are movie nights for parents specifically so that they can see movies while also bringing the kids, but not in general. So I was worried that the night of Commingle would be the night that Essie decided she wasn't going to be an easygoing baby and wouldn't sleep through all kinds of noise.

I was relieved that Maysie and Dan showed up (which I had no idea they were going to) and took the table beside ours. Then the table on the other side of us only had one guy and he left and sat somewhere else (or left altogether, I'm not sure; he was the representative for the CF Foundation and took off after his speech) before Essie even made a peep. So we were buffered a bit, and quite honestly Essie was pretty great. If she started to make any noise I offered her a bottle or her soother and she quieted down every time. I was poised to dash out of there with her, though, so that she wouldn't interrupt anything or take away from anyone's enjoyment. Maysie and Dan left during the first intermission and Candice and Rich came up and sat in their places so we still had people we knew beside us, at least!

So, I don't know that I'll be taking her to many more events like that, if any. It's stressful for me as her mom to worry about it and I really do feel that if you have a kid you just have to accept you can't take them to certain events that you would have attended before sprogging. If Michele hadn't explicitly told me she wanted us to come and bring Essie I might have sat it out at home. Thankfully it all went really well, but she's only going to get crankier and more opinionated as she grows and I'm not going to take it for granted that she'll behave appropriately at public events like concerts and shows.

Good, healthy baby.

Essie had a pediatrician's appointment on Monday. I don't mind taking her to them because it's always nice to have verification that she's continuing to do well, but I was getting a little irritated about hearing that the fact that my daughter was gaining weight quickly was undesirable. I was not looking forward to hearing about it again.

Thankfully this time the pediatrician had nothing but good things to say! Essie weighed eight pounds, four ounces (up from seven pounds, fourteen ounces at the last visit two weeks ago) but there was no finger shaking this time. The doctor just praised her health and said that no one would guess she was a preemie if they didn't know what had happened. She also said that I was doing a good job as a mom, which was pretty nice to hear, you know, coming from a doctor.

I'm so used to how Essie is that I sometimes get confused on whether she's ahead in certain things. There was a five-day-old baby in the waiting room while we were there and her grandma commented that Essie must be close to the same age. Essie was asleep at the time so they didn't see what she's like when she's awake, but she's certainly more alert and focused than that newborn was. She already tracks things with her eyes (in a limited way) and just overall seems more engaged and aware. This baby was all limp and foggy and even though it was adorable, Essie seems more 'human' to me.

Of course she's had lots more time to practice being a tiny person out in the big world so it shouldn't surprise me, but it does kind of confuse me from time to time. I have also still been trying to settle on a good answer for when strangers ask me how old she is without having to go into the really long explanation. I'm going to start just saying her actual age and leaving it at that. Some people will realize she's pretty tiny for her age, and some people won't know the difference. I won't offer more info unless they ask specifically.

It's not that I don't want to talk to people about it or her. It's just that lots of people ask, and if I told the whole story every time I'd get pretty tired of it. In the waiting room at the pediatrician's office is OK since we're all there for the same reason and have babies in common, but on the bus or in line at Shopper's Drug Mart ... not so much.

Dummy dumb dumb.

You know how sometimes you say something and it doesn't occur to you until much, much later that you were highly inappropriate or insulting or both?

No? Just me?

Damn.

Sigh. It happened to me last night. We went to May and Dan's 10th anniversary party. I was excited to go since I knew there'd be a number of friends in attendance who hadn't yet met Essie, plus getting out of the house for such a fun reason is pretty sweet. One of the highlights of the parties that Maysie and Dan throw is that I always meet someone interesting and new at them and last night I got to meet a couple of people like that. One was a cool woman who was there with her husband and 9 month-old son and we chatted a lot about breastfeeding (which is on my mind a lot these days.)

The other woman is someone who went to high school with Andrew and Dan. She is nine months pregnant (and I think she even said that yesterday was her due date) and looked awesome. Glowing and energetic and lovely. I ended up having a great chat with her toward the end of the night and talking to her about my experience with pre-eclampsia and Women's College Hospital. At one point I mentioned that I was quite satisfied with having had a c-section and that given the choice I'd likely opt for a c-section again.

She was all, oh really? And so I proceeded to say that yes, I would, but that my experience might have been easier since they weren't pulling a full-term baby out of the hole in my abdomen and so I might have recovered faster. Then I went on to say that while I was in recovery I lay there listening to the screams and shrieks of other women going through natural childbirth and that I couldn't imagine what kind of pain they'd be feeling since nothing I experienced was anywhere near the level of pain that would cause me to scream.

She got a kind of bemused look on her face, but NOTHING registered to me at that moment that I was saying something awful to a woman who is about to give birth in the next week or so. I just blathered on about how glad I was that I didn't have to feel horrific pain and that I was thankful I hadn't been in such agony.

Oh, I am so dumb. This poor woman. I know that in the months that I was pregnant I went to great lengths to either not think about labour or convince myself that really, it wouldn't be so bad. That all the stories I'd heard were exaggerations, likely, and that women make it sound worse than it is. I was basically scared out of my mind and who knows how I'd have felt if I'd carried Essie full-term. At nine months I'd have likely been in weak-kneed terror and if some dumb bint had stood there talking about the horrors of childbirth I might well have punched her in the snout.

I would totally have deserved a snout-punching. I am so, so dumb.

One month, baby.

Essie's been home with us for a month as of today! It's so strange. On the one hand I can't believe she hasn't always been here with us, but on the other hand it feels like just yesterday we brought her through the apartment doors for the first time.

I don't miss going to the hospital every day. I don't miss the feeling of having her care be something I had no say in. I don't miss feeling like it was a special occasion when I could hold her or do regular, every-day things like change her diaper or bathe her.

I DO miss having medical professionals around all the time to let me know when things are OK. Not that it often happens that I think I need an immediate answer or that she seems sick or anything. It was just a luxury, is all. I also miss free diapers. That was nice.

It's been a strange transition. Very different from bringing home a newborn directly after giving birth, I am certain. She wasn't 'new' in the same way, and was already pretty stoic about a lot of things. We'd had the opportunity to get to know a lot of her quirks already and had some practice when it came to many aspects of her care. I wanted very much to get her used to lots of human contact and love and I've been very successful in that regard, if success means she never wants to be put down now! I joke, but I also like it. I certainly don't get tired of holding her and snuggling her!

I am kind of reluctantly trying to ease her into sleeping on her own, though. Not at night (or whenever I end up getting the bulk of my sleep, anyhow) but during the day when I should be able to put her down and get some things done. She doesn't always want to be in the sling, so I can't depend on it for her sleep times. She definitely knows the difference between being held and simply being set down in warm, cozy blankets and she'll protest.

Anyhow; in the month that she's been home with us she's already gone on two road trips, attended a comic arts festival, ridden the bus and subway and met a bunch of family on both sides. She's outgrown all of her preemie clothes and is quickly starting to work through her newborn stuff as well, fitting better and better into the 0 - 3 months sized stuff instead. She's out of preemie diapers and well into the newborn size, with the Pampers brand newborn size getting a bit tight. She likes having baths (or at least doesn't seem to hate them), loves having her tiny bit of hair brushed and has decided that she's too big for swaddling. Swaddling is for preemie chumps, not grown-up full-term babies like herself.

She'll allow the modified arms-free swaddle but ... come on. That's a toga.

All is transient.

I like reading weblogs a lot. Personal weblogs of people I know especially, but if I stumble across a weblog written by someone I don't know and they're entertaining and engaging I probably end up following it. Since Essie's birth I've read blogs written by other preemie parents about their time in the NICU and coming home, and have found other blogs through those blogs.

There's one in particular that I've followed. I don't even recall how I found it. Probably when I was doing a search on various medical things I was worried about for Essie. It's a blog written by a 23 year old single mom whose daughter was diagnosed as having anencephaly at 19 weeks gestation.

Anencephaly is a devastating diagnosis because there's no good outcome. Basically it's when the skull hasn't formed properly, leaving the brain exposed and the amniotic fluid eats away a large portion of brain matter. Babies with this diagnosis obviously have no chance of survival and it's often recommended that the mother terminate the pregnancy as early as possible. If they don't terminate the baby remains alive, being attached to the mother as life support, and develops as normally as it can under the circumstances until birth, at which point it passes away.

Some parents make the latter decision, knowing that they'll have only minutes or possibly hours with their child. Many of these babies are stillborn. But still some parents choose to do this rather than abort early, and feel that even if it's harder on them, it's worth it somehow.

I have very little personal understanding of how to make that kind of decision, or what I would realistically choose in their position. But I found this blog written by this 23 year old mother who decided that she'd carry her daughter to term and say goodbye to her when she was born. She knew it wasn't a standard choice and fought tooth and nail with medical professionals to have her pregnancy and birth treated with the same dignity and respect as 'normal' pregnancies and births. She had no usual baby showers, collected nothing beyond some clothes for her daughter to wear when she was born. Her support system was at least fairly extensive as she is devoutly Christian and the choice to not abort was a natural one in her circle, but she still carried her child knowing the probable date of her death.

So then her daughter, Faith Hope, was born by c-section. And she lived for a few hours with no assistance beyond feeding and pain management. And then a few hours more, and then a few hours more. And kept on living. Soon her mother took her home to live out her remaining time there.

Faith lived for 93 days. During that time she cried, smiled, ate, made regular baby noises, demonstrated that she could hear sounds and feel pain, fulfilled all of the list of reflexes babies are supposed to present ... pretty much did everything babies with her condition aren't expected to do. Her mother posted many, many videos on the weblog demonstrating all of this, and apart from the bandage covering the top of her head and eyes she looked and responded much like a normal baby. That in itself was unusual since babies with anencephaly often have a startling, alien appearance especially around the face due to the eyes not having enough cranial support.

Trolls eventually discovered the site and began making comments, telling Myah (the mother) that she was raising a meat puppet, an empty doll with no feelings or sensations behind the random firings of what few neurons existed. They told her she'd have been better off if her baby had died or she'd aborted her as soon as she knew what was wrong. They tore her down for having feelings and love for her daughter. She quickly took comment capability off of her weblog and set up her email to be screened by another person so she'd never see those emails. In her position what else was she supposed to do? Say, "You're right," and leave her daughter out to die?

Faith had health problems mostly related to her breathing. She was on medications for it and also eventually ended up on a feeding tube. There's no question that she wasn't a 'normal' baby. Her mother celebrated her every minute alive and gave her all the love and affection any mother could. But over the last week Faith developed bleeding ulcers due to her feeding tube and one of her medications, and on the 23rd she died.

I visited the weblog not expecting this at all, as the last report had her feeling quite well. The illness came on quickly and she died just as quickly. I was shocked, and ended up pretty much bawling my face off as I read about it and watched some of the videos her mother posted to remember her as she'd been in the beginning.

I questioned myself a bit later. Why was I so affected by this? And after processing it a bit I realized that I was crying not so much for Faith, who was never expected to stay in the world very long and who passed away peacefully, but for her mother. Myah probably felt incredibly protective and defensive throughout Faith's life, knowing that many didn't approve of her decision in the first place, and had to feel that way on top of the overwhelming emotional tumult that comes with having a child no matter what.

I think of what I felt for Essie while she was in the NICU, instinctively wanting to make her pain go away and make it all better. How did Myah feel, knowing her daughter had such an extreme condition and yet lived and even thrived against those odds? As proud as I did? Prouder? Then she got to know the personality she saw in her little girl and loved her even more every day, still knowing they were on borrowed time. No matter what her medical condition this baby was her daughter and it's obvious she loved her more than anything in the world. Since Essie's birth I can relate to that feeling so closely, so viscerally, that it makes me choke up to even think of how she has to feel without her little girl.

Is Faith better off dead? Is Myah better off not having to care for a child who would have been severely retarded if she'd lived on, requiring complete physical care for the rest of her life? I know it all depends on point of view and we're not the ones who held her as she died a few days ago. But I also know that I had no actual idea of what I could feel for a child of my own before Essie, and there's a possibility that despite all her appearances of doing fabulously there are still things that can go wrong for her in the future as a result of being a preemie. What I can't imagine is a single thing that would make me feel like life would be better if Essie weren't in it.

Nearly a sneeze.

We went to May and Dan's tonight for a visit, where Essie got to meet Candice and Rich for the first time, as well as the fabulous Sabrina! It was a good time and Essie was her usual mellow, growly self. At one point Maysie said that she hoped we'd be getting some of her growls and whatnot on record, so when we got home I decided to take some video using our camera.

The result? Not so much growling, but I did manage to accidentally catch her making her sneeze noise! I wasn't expecting it at all, but she started as soon as I started filming. If she almost sneezes she does it, or she does it after a big sneeze. Golly, it's cute!

Also, as you can see, putting a soother in a baby's mouth while filming them is kind of hard. Nearly went right up her nose, there. You can kind of hear me giggling about it while she's all, 'get it right, mama.'

Dressy Essie

My mom sent us a package full of awesome baby clothes. I'd mentioned how I'd love to dress Essie in shades of brown but that it's harder to find nice clothes for baby girls in brown. Mom used her special Grandma skills to find some, though, and packaged them up and sent them off.

I got the package the other day and indeed it was full of awesome brown baby clothes. Also included, however, was a FANTASTIC sundress. A fantastic, colourful, summery sundress. I could hardly wait to put it on her so I did a little photo shoot so I could have some gorgeous shots of her in it for the Facebook albums. (This blog crossposts to my Facebook as well, so apologies to those who have already seen the pictures. There are bonus ones here, though!)

Make sure you click on them to see them full-size!





Of course, Essie can't exactly sit up on her own yet or anything so for pretty much all of these sitting up shots I'd whipped my hand back and taken the shot super-fast before she fell over. Here are the ones where I didn't take the picture quite quickly enough:




This last one is my favourite.