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.

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.

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.

Guess what today is!

Happy Due Date, Essie!

That's right; today is the day Essie was 'supposed' to be born. Or, the most likely day on which she could have been born. Of course things didn't exactly go to plan, but I was attached to this date for a number of reasons. It was my grandma Morrow's birthday, it's one of Andrew's wonderful cousins birthday, and it just has nice vibes what with all the partying and goodtimes on May 24 weekend.




But yeah ... not so much, huh? Instead of sitting here with a massive belly and feeling as supremely uncomfortable as a pregnant woman can feel (which you know I would be; I am very accomplished at feeling physically uncomfortable) I am sitting here typing on my laptop with a little warm baby sleeping cradled against my left shoulder. I've been a mom for almost three months now. Essie's been home with us for three weeks! What should have been a third trimester became a scary medical journey that I never want to repeat again.




But despite the rough start Essie's so great. So healthy and strong. She's growing and changing incredibly quickly, fattening up and getting more and more aware of us and her surroundings. I've said multiple times to multiple people that her prematurity had nothing to do with her, technically. Pre-eclampsia is about the mother's body malfunctioning, and Essie wasn't the problem physically. She was trying to grow and flourish in there and would have if I hadn't crossed my wires. So I believe very strongly that this is why she managed to grow and flourish like she did in the NICU. She wasn't sick, she didn't need any intervention; she was just early, evicted from her safe haven and forced to deal with a ton of obstacles as a result. In response she basically kicked the ass of all those obstacles and now here she is, a full-term-age baby with fat cheeks (both kinds), a great appetite, a friendly, resilient personality and all the love in the world at her fingertips.




Sometimes when she was in the NICU I felt like the day I got to be a 'real' mom would never come. The constraints of having a NICU baby are many and I've talked a lot about them before. Since she came home I've come to appreciate how that time allowed me to regain my strength and health while helping her develop hers and I'm thankful for it as such. But now that she's here I'm so in love with having her with me, with being her mom and taking care of her that I'd never want to relinquish her to anyone else like that again.




The fact that I'm enjoying this new role as much as I am has been a pleasant surprise. Yes, of course I'm always tired. I was this tired when I worked that night job in Ottawa, though, and this is definitely a more rewarding variant of exhausted. She wakes me up to feed her with escalating growls and when I give her her bottle she is hungry and attacks it like a snapping turtle, her eyes wide. Then she settles into a happy feed, humming and sighing and staring into my eyes. I talk to her and sometimes she 'talks' as well, groaning and growling around her bottle which results in pretty much one of the most hilarious noises ever. She does this with her soother too, and I laugh every single time.




She is lauded for her every poop, fart and burp. Pooping is difficult for her so of course I get genuinely happy that she is more comfortable when she works out her issues, so to speak. Just because her accomplishments are basic and biological in nature doesn't mean she doesn't deserve praise, you know. Hooray for being so good at being a baby! Maybe I feel so enthusiastic about it since for so long she was holed up in an incubator, unable to do all these usual baby things because of the shitty hand she'd been dealt. Her pure baby-ness now is a wonderful thing.




I'm a frickin' mom. Essie has made me into a mom. It's not like I thought it might be which is a relief because frankly I had a dim view of what kind of a mother I'd end up being and what kind of kid I might have. BUT! I had Essie, who is pretty much wonderful and I genuinely like being with her. And so far I'm not sucking so much at the mom thing, most of which I credit entirely to hormones and instinct and the example set me by my own Mom, who taught me common sense.




So Essie; today, the day that I held in my mind for six months as a kind of finish line, a theoretical kind of thing like the idea of what's over that next hill we've never climbed before; today I want to celebrate you and how far you've come in this crazy old world. I'm so proud of how strong you were in the NICU, how you put up with all the discomfort and pain and fright. I'm proud that the nurses all recognized the toughness of you, the fight you put up to make the sliver of the world you were aware of as comfortable and controlled as you could even if it meant just shoving your CPAP or holding tightly on to your feeding tube. I'm proud that you surpassed their expectations of you and did things ahead of schedule as often as possible, even when it caught us unprepared. And I'm proud, proud, proud that you're MY daughter.

GrrrRAHrahrargharghARGH.

We took Essie over to Maysie and Dan's for the first time the other night. I was really looking forward to introducing her to Dan, who had not yet met her, and just chilling with friends since we hadn't done so since she came home.

It was a great night and she was lovely. Emma also came over so she got to meet her, and everyone who wanted to got a chance to hold her. At one point, though, Maysie said that she was surprised I got any sleep co-sleeping with her like I do since she's so noisy.

I was a bit bemused since I actually hadn't even noticed her making much noise while we were hanging out. What's very possible is that I've just gotten used to her particular brand of noise and am tuning it out. But THEN the next day I was on the phone with my mom and Essie was beside me making her poop growl, which is the gutteral growl she makes when she's trying very hard to poop. Mom was all, "Is she OK? She sounds upset." I assured her that no, she's not upset. She's just narrating her life. Loudly.

She doesn't get upset to the point of inconsolable crying so far. The closest she comes is when we're attempting a nursing session and as soon as she starts making the high-pitched shriek noise I stop and we switch to bottle feeding. I think, though, that this nursing balderdash is teaching her to cry more quickly than she would if we weren't still persisting. Or at least if I weren't still persisting. I have been purposely not talking about the nursing situation these days, so that's all I'll say about that.

But noisy; yes. I honestly do not mind the kind of noisy she is currently. I mean, this served her very well in the NICU where the squeaky wheel was definitely more likely to get greased. Her nurses (and those who didn't have her) all knew her trademark growl. At St. Mikes one nurse told me that she'd went prowling around the room to find which baby was making such a noise and fix whatever was wrong, only to find Essie just growling to herself for no apparent reason. I was tickled by it then and I still am, since it's obvious just by looking at her that she's not in any distress, she's just talking in her baby way about the situation. When there's something bugging her she still growls and groans, but kicks it up a notch or two without resorting to screaming or anything like that.

I fully expect her to find her crying voice sometime very, very soon. Her due date is coming up within the week and any money one day she'll suddenly start with the regular baby cry and leave her tiny bear growls behind. I will miss them so, so much.

Good from the bad.

On Monday I had to take Essie to Toronto Sick Kids Hospital for an eye exam. Preemies get tested on a regular basis after they're born for retinopathy of prematurity and this was to make sure that she was still doing well since she'd scored pretty much perfect on all her tests before this. Even so I was unhappy because I know for a fact that these tests are highly invasive and distressing for the poor babies.

Basically they take these gadgets like from A Clockwork Orange and clamp them inside their eyelids to hold their sockets wide open so they can go in there with a pokey-proddy tool and poke and prod their eyeballs, or 'manipulate' them, as they put it. They give them eye drops to dilate their pupils, and before they do the testing they anesthetize their eyeballs, but it's horrific for the poor little things. The doctor asked me if I'd brought her soother so she'd had something comforting to distract her, but I hadn't and I'm sure it wouldn't have done any good at all.

They also asked me if I'd be more comfortable waiting outside of the room, but since it was my daughter having to lie on that table and be supremely uncomfortable I figured I could handle sitting there not being the one with my eyeholes cranked open. So I sat in a chair and watched. From my angle I couldn't actually see what they were doing, but it was agony to listen to my normally low-fuss baby girl scream and scream and scream. One doctor swaddled her and held her head very still while the other did the tests, and after they finished the one holding her unwrapped her and told me I could pick her up.

I picked her up with a quickness, you can be sure, and immediately held her close to me against my left shoulder, trying to soothe her with my voice and physical contact. And, she instantly stopped crying, wiggling in closer to me and dropping the noise down to an aggrieved whimper. The doctor said, "Wow. She knows who her momma is!"

I was upset about seeing poor Essie so scared and uncomfortable, but the doctor's comment made me feel pretty good. Since she's come home I've been doing my best to give her as much touch and positive contact as humanly possible, wearing her in the sling a lot and sleeping with her beside me rather than putting her in a bassinet or crib. Also talking to her a lot so she'll know my voice. She had to spend her first two months so isolated, despite the best efforts of the nurses and our visits. Not the way a baby should begin life! So it means a LOT to me that she already knows me as a safe haven, that I won't hurt her and that my physical presence is a constant in her life now. One of the hardest aspects of her being in the NICU was imagining the times when she needed or wanted physical comfort when there wasn't a nurse able to provide it and I wasn't there.

Now I can give her that, and I'm seeing the difference it's making.

More woe in B**bland.

While Essie was at St. Mike's I was concerned about the supply of milk they had on hand for her. When we transferred there WCH sent over a bag of bottles of stocked milk left over from what I'd pumped for them and I was surprised at the size of it since I'd actually thought they'd have less. Then my supply got low for a bit there after the transfer and one day I asked Essie's nurse how much they had left. She LIED to me and said only what I'd brought in since the day before, which was about eight 80ml bottles worth.

I didn't know she was a LIAR so this freaked me out. I had given them permission to give Essie formula if they ever ran out of my milk, but I still figured it was optimal for her diet to stay the same. So, I did my best to keep pumping and bringing milk in and while I wasn't getting huge amounts, my supply did improve a bit. I estimated that I was meeting her daily needs just barely with what I was bringing in.

You can imagine my surprise on the day we took Essie home and a nurse came out with a big old bag of frozen breast milk and handed it to me. It looked to be about as much as had been sent over by WCH, and it turned out that it was mostly made up of the milk I'd expressed there. There was some newer stuff in there, but not much. So, it appeared they'd been using the newer stuff I was pumping and leaving the older (but still good) milk. I have no idea why; all I know is that they LIED TO ME and said they were out of milk when really they had a good supply on hand.

Whatever the reason, I am actually very thankful to have this bag of milk because things have been difficult in the land of breastfeeding. Essie is still having no success with nursing at all, and I've been having supply problems yet again. I'm trying to express after every feeding but it's not encouraging right now.

In the interests of trying to make it work I visited the La Leche League International website to see what they had to say. There is some awesome advice there on getting resistant babies to nurse and it was comforting to read that it's not that she doesn't want to nurse. I can tell that she'd nurse if she could figure it out since she roots and makes all the physical signals that tell me so. Anyhow, there was a lot of good stuff to read and I plan to put a lot of it into practice.

In doing my research there, though, I came across some things that upset me a bit. LLL is known for their strict stance on breastfeeding and only breastfeeding and they are big believers in nipple confusion. They don't think a baby should be introduced to any kind of fake nipples at all and that doing so will result in the baby getting turned off of the real thing since it's actually a bit more work for them to nurse for real rather than bottle feed. Fake nipples include both bottle nipples and soothers.

Before Essie made her dramatic appearance I was not convinced I'd encourage her to use a soother at all. However, she came early and had to endure being a preemie. The reason preemies are given soothers when they're in a NICU is so that they'll have a form of self-soothing since they're so isolated from the regular physical comfort and touch that most humans receive at birth. Do you think that there is any way on this planet that I'd hear that and say, "Oh, no, please don't give her a soother. I don't want her to be able to comfort herself if it means difficulty when I try to nurse her later."

Is that honestly a choice to some mothers? If there are mothers out there who would choose that over their premature, sick little baby having a way to comfort themselves during a painful, frightening time then I seriously would like to put the beatdown on them.

Oh, sorry, am I being NORMATIVE? I might be. But as much as this breastfeeding frustration sucks, I'm sure that being born too soon, intubated, stuck with IV pokes all over her arms and feet, having repeated painful eye exams, feeding tubes stuck down her throat, having to wear an uncomfortable CPAP and enduring many, many other things I wasn't even aware of sucked EVEN WORSE for Shaughnessy and she didn't even have the perspective of knowing why it was all happening. All she had was whatever instinctive physical defense she was capable of.

If they'd told me that the only form of comfort possible for her was a bong hit every hour, you'd better believe I'd have been in there lighting it up for her.

The big transfer.

On Thursday afternoon I got a call from the charge nurse to tell me that Shaughnessy was going to be transferred that night to the level 2 nursery at St. Michael's hospital. I'd been expecting yet dreading this call for a while so it wasn't much of a surprise. I knew that we weren't supposed to be at WCH any more and it was only serendipity that had kept us there thus far.

The transfer was supposed to happen at 8:30 but the ambulance actually arrived early so she went around 8-ish, I think. I was about to change her diaper and take her temperature and all that stuff when they got there, so instead her night nurse took over and got her ready to go. It was a nurse who hadn't had her before and while she was listening to her chest with the stethoscope Shaughnessy started up her usual grunting and growling. The nurse tried to work around it, but eventually looked at my girl in pretend exasperation and said, 'You sound like a bear!" I loved this, since her growliness is something that I find extremely funny. If my sources are correct she'll outgrow some of this around the time she reaches her due date so I really need to cherish it while I can!

Anyhow, the nurse did get her settled into the transfer incubator out in the hallway where the ambulance attendants were waiting around. When she was done she draped a blanket over the top, saying to us that whenever people see one of these incubators they gawk at it to try to see the baby inside so it was just a bit of privacy. Then we all started off.

When we got to the elevators to go down to the first floor a huge group of people came out into the elevator area. It was a tour showing expectant parents the various floors they'd be visiting or could possibly end up visiting. It looked like they'd just come up from the high risk floor where we'd spent the first month and a half and when they all saw the incubator they looked very solemn indeed. All the moms were hugely pregnant, likely due near the time I'd been or near thereabouts. The back of the incubator wasn't covered by the blanket and we did see lots of the parents peering in trying to get a look at the preemie within. Shaughnessy was wrapped in blankets, wearing a hat, strapped in a head hugger, covered with more blankets over that, strapped down to the floor of the incubator itself and surrounded by rolled up towels so there was nothing to see but fabric.

We eventually got into the elevator and left the group behind but it was just so awkward and funny and strange. For them the reality that our daughter has had to live is what they are hoping against with everything they have, so that brief encounter in the elevator area was serious and scary and sad. For us it was anything but, seeing as how her transfer is just another indicator of how healthy she is and how much progress she's made. I know that if I'd been a part of that group I'd have felt the exact same way and pitied the poor parents walking next to the incubator, but all I felt was grateful that my girl was OK.

I rode up front with the ambulance driver and Andrew took the subway to meet us at St. Mike's. The drive over was pretty awkward because the driver had a sense of humour that I just didn't understand at all, and had a little outburst to himself where he was looking out the window to his left and muttered angrily, "I just don't give a damn!" It was unrelated to anything we'd said and anything going on around us (that I could see) so I just waited out the rest of the ride as best I could. Eeek.

When we arrived and got up to the nursery one of the first people I saw was a mom I'd been getting to know at WCH, so she and I chatted a bit while the nurse got Ms. Essie out of the incubator and handed her off to her new nurse. Then they did a whole inspection of her with the pediatrics fellow checking all of her reflexes and muscles and whatnot. After all that the new nurse dressed her in new clothes, wrapped her up, covered her with a blanket and that was it! Transfer complete!

I'm having a lot of separation anxiety about not being at WCH any more. Yes, the St. Mike's nursery is bigger and fancier and the rocking chairs are nicer and all that jazz, but it's just not WCH with the nurses we know and the familiar surroundings and all that. WCH is a hospital that I have come to have a lot of respect for and I want to give back to it in some way. Also, change sucks and in a weird way I feel very unsettled about Shaughnessy being in a place that I don't know well. It's not sensible since she's about as safe as safe can be living in a hospital nursery with medical professionals all around her, but whatever.

I did get to nurse her again yesterday which was awesome and went even better than the first time. She drank about 12 cc's before getting tired this time. I can see how it will take some time before she's able to subsist just on breastfeeding alone since she really needs to work up her strength in order to get a full feed from nursing. But it's just as wonderful as I thought it would be to be able to sit and look down at my daughter and hold her hand and sing to her while she nurses. She's awake for most of it and she looks at me and we connect. I feel like I'm more than just her friendliest nurse in that moment.

I think this song is about me.

OK, one of the weird things about having a premature baby in the hospital is that you are watched and analyzed in a way that parents of full-term, healthy babies are definitely not. When we go in to see our girl our visits get entered in her daily chart and there is a checklist of parental involvement that the nurses have to keep an eye on.

This is for a sensible reason. There are parents who react badly to having a premature baby. They don't know how to relate to this tiny, alarming being. If the baby is especially ill some parents are scared out of their minds and don't know how to deal with it, so end up avoiding the NICU and having to handle their baby. The nurses and doctors need to be aware of this so they can address the situation and help the parents cope.

This hasn't been a problem for us. We go in to see her every day. We gladly change her diapers, hold her, take her temperature, wipe her face and do all the little things we can do for her. Now that she's in level 2 we're encouraged to do even more for her and so far we're loving it.

Because I yam who I yam, though, this is crazy-making for me. I love my baby, I am not afraid to handle her, bathe her, change her, feed her, do all the things for her that as a mother I have to and want to do, but while she's in the hospital this stuff is being monitored and I find it really intimidating. I have this irrational fear that no matter how hard I try, something will be found lacking.

Of course if she'd gone full-term I'd have had her and then been sent home ASAP. There wouldn't be anyone keeping an eye on how many times a day I feed her, how much time I spend with her, what bathing technique I use. I am an overly-private person (in my RL, not so much online, I guess) so this situation pushes all my buttons and I have to work hard to remember that it's not personal.

The nurse who did the bath demo with us the other night said that in a sense the parents of preemies who are first-time parents are lucky to have this extended period of acclimatization. Having the opportunity to learn all the things you've never done before in a setting with professionals who can show you what to do instead of having to figure it out on your own is a luxury. She's totally right. It's my personal oddities that make the 'being monitored' aspect of it difficult for me and I know it. Parents of full-term babies no longer stay in the hospital long enough to experience that kind of nursing care and our nurse said it made her sad.

Do not get me wrong. I am inexpressibly grateful for Shaughnessy's time in the NICU. I have total respect and admiration for WCH and the staff. They have made the scariest time of my life so much easier than it could have been and I will gladly continue to forgo privacy and autonomy in my interactions with my daughter as long as it's in her best interests. If it had to be that way for the rest of her life I'd do it and do it willingly. But the day that she comes home and she's all mine, MINE, MINE! Well; that'll be a really good day. :)

Oh, man.

Right after I posted the hospital called and said Shaughnessy was back down in level 3. She had a bad choke on some spit-up and they think she aspirated some in her lungs. They've put her back on an IV and discontinued her feeds for the moment (I'm not 100% sure why but I'll find out as soon as I go) and thankfully haven't put her back on CPAP. She'd be devastated to have to wear it again.

I'll update late tonight when I get back home.

Update 11:54 p.m.

Well, we went in to see her and when I got there Andrew was already there, having gone straight from work as soon as I called him to let him know what happened. He was giving her hand hugs and helping her keep her soother in and it was really nice to get there and see her being loved up by her dad.

The charge nurse explained things again to me as soon as I came in and reassured me that they thought she was looking OK but that they were going to do x-rays to see what was going on in her lungs. She was also more pale than usual and very sleepy and still since the whole episode had been stressful. We sat with her for a bit and since the shift change was coming up we decided to go out for a bite to eat so that we wouldn't be in the way.

When we got back her colour had improved some but she was still very out of it. Toward ten she was getting pretty upset, though, since she'd missed two feeds by that point and was used to getting them so regularly. Her night nurse said that the doctors would decide on their rounds when she should go back on her feeds and that wasn't coming up for a little bit so I figured we'd come home and I'd call back a bit later to see how she was doing and whether she was back on them. She did calm down after a diaper change and also a change from the position she'd been in for the last few hours so we felt OK about leaving after that.

If things continue to go well and she doesn't take a turn for the worse she could be back in the level 2 nursery by Sunday morning. It can take a few days for lung problems to really worsen, but so far everyone seems to think she's doing OK and will likely recover well.

Fatty Fat Fat

Suddenly my baby girl is getting some real meat on her bones! Breast milk must be amazing stuff because that's all she's eating (although they do fortify the pumped stuff at the hospital.) I'm sick AGAIN and haven't been in the NICU for the last few days, but Andrew is taking pictures and really capturing the sudden chubbiness of her cheeks. She's just, just shy of four pounds now. A few more grams to go and she'll have doubled her birth weight!





Craziness. As of today she's in a level 2 NICU! This is big news since it was all riding on her being off the CPAP for good, and after 48 hours with no desats or bradys she's clear. She was supposed to be moving to St. Michael's but they just haven't had the room, so they finally moved her to the level 2 NICU at Women's College. It's for preemies who have a possibility of being downgraded back to level 3. I'm thrilled that she's still at WCH because I really love that hospital and its staff, but I'm also kind of glad because I'm worried she might still need the CPAP after a few more days, like last time, and have to go back to level 3. As soon as a space opens up for her at St. Mike's she's supposed to move, but I'm in no hurry for that.

Anyhow, overall things are good except for me being sick and not able to visit my daughter. It makes me feel so guilty, even if it's the best thing for her right now. Happily she'll be meeting her great-grandpa today. Andrew's grandpa (and much more of his family) is in town for Easter weekend and she'll be meeting a bunch of them. Quick visits, and not everyone can make it who wanted to, but people are finally getting to see her! I want my sisters to come meet her as soon as possible, too. She changes so fast now.

She looks like Shaughnessy most of all.

Shaughnessy's having a pretty good week, overall. She's back off of her CPAP, seemingly for good this time. We were a bit worried that they were cycling her off of it too quickly again, but as I kept reminding both Andrew and myself; a week in the life of a preemie is a pretty significant chunk of time and her lungs have probably strengthened up more than we'd expect.

She's had two eye exams so far to check for ROP and so far both have come up at zero, which is the best result you can get. She is startled by loud sound and is obviously light sensitive so for now I'm not worried about basic sight and hearing. It's too soon to know if they're perfect or anything like that, but it's all encouraging!

What the CPAP news means is that she'll be moving to a different hospital within the week. I called today to check on her and the nurse asked me what hospital we want her moved to since it's imminent. We want either St. Michael's or Mt. Sinai and would prefer the latter since it's even easier to get to, but we'll see. I don't know what the protocol is for these kinds of things and nobody had really mentioned Mt. Sinai to us as a possibility.

ANYHOW, I'm just excited because she's doing so well and getting so big. She's really starting to put on weight and fatten up a bit. She's hardly recognizable as the baby I had five weeks ago. She's not fat yet, by any means, but her cheeks are really filling out, her arms and thighs are starting to get pudgy and she may even have a butt beginning! In all the dreams I had about having a baby during my pregnancy I had a fatty fat little girl, but as one of the nurses said to me she might just be a lean baby naturally when she's reached her 'ideal' weight. She is a lot like her dad.



Speaking of which; I think she looks totally like Andrew. She has his face shape, definitely has light hair and just overall seems to bear a strong resemblance to him. I'd read all about babies looking more like their fathers as an evolutionary safeguard against the father rejecting the child, but I was surprised to read up on it more and discover that apparently the mother will also insist strongly to the father that the child resembles him, even if they're less likely to claim the same thing when he's not around.

Now, I'm ALWAYS telling Andrew how much I think our girl looks like him. I'm disappointed to think that I'm obeying some sort of evolutionary imperative, but I also insist the same thing to anyone else who will listen. I mean, I think she might have my ears and nose and will probably look like a girl and all, but you can SEE the Andrew half of the equation when you look at our daughter. Even the nurses have told me so.



What it boils down to is that no matter who she looks like she's adorable.

She knows what she wants.

Ooooh, girlfriend.

Shaughnessy was in pretty fine form today. When I got to the hospital my mom was already there (because I was late, for shame) and told me that it had taken TWO nurses to get the CPAP back on her little granddaughter after she'd had it off, so mightily did she fight it. And after it was on she smooshed her face against her blankets and knocked it right back off her nose again.

She spent the rest of the day battling her CPAP and her feeding tube. Erin A. came for a quick visit as well and while she was sitting there with me the nurse let me hold Shaughnessy for a bit. Not Kangaroo Care; just cradled in my arms in her head hugger. Well, little miss thang got seriously overwrought about the CPAP at that point and began twisting her head back and forth against the sides until the prongs were out of her nose and the hat part was askew. Then she worked her feeding tube out of the tape on her chin (tape which she'd already ripped free a couple of times) and they had to stop her feed and take the CPAP off, she was such a grouchy, growly mess.

After that, she calmed down and was a lovely little sweetie for the rest of Erin's visit. She (Shaughnessy; not Erin) did spend some time rooting around against the side of her head-hugger hoping to find a boob to nurse on but had no luck since it's a head-hugger and I was also fully clothed. I hate to see her rooting and not be allowed to try to nurse her yet, but they all say it's still too early. So: no nursing. And she pretty much slept and muttered the rest of the time.

When I say she's growly I mean it, though. She makes an awesome crabby little grunty growl noise when she's displeased. It's very particular to her and definitely means she's about to pitch a fit of some sort if what's bugging her isn't taken care of. They've taken to swaddling her pretty tightly in her blankets and head hugger when they want to be entirely sure the CPAP stays on and that does seem to calm her down some, which is understandable. Infants and preemies in particular respond well to swaddling as a calming device. So the growlies can be tempered that way after she realizes she can't move her arms too easily. It's when she's free to move her limbs that she really goes to town.

I held her again before coming home. Mom and Erin had both left and I was waiting for Andrew to arrive when the nurse asked if I wanted to do Kangaroo Care. Of course I did, and Shaughnessy again spent a little while rooting around with her mouth on my chest trying to find a meal. Poor baby. I'm going to point it out to the nurses next time and see if they'll bump up the intro to nursing schedule for her since she's obviously trying to get to the head of the class.

Despite all of the above, she really is a very peaceful baby when she wants to be:

Regarding miracles.

Maysie sent me this article yesterday. I read it and immediately empathized with the feeling behind what the author had written since I am all about stripping away over-sentimentality and coming at things with hard-boiled common sense. Her point was that people often call premature babies 'miracle babies', but that for their parents those tentative months in the NICU feel anything but miraculous, when all kinds of health problems and complications are a part of day to day life.

It's very terrifying. The uncertainty you feel is exhausting even when, like us, you are blessed with a relatively strong and tough baby that has few if any problems that require invasive treatment. You compulsively count the days, adding them into weeks, waiting for them to equal months until that magical term is reached, the time when your baby should have appeared in the world.

We have weeks and weeks left until then. We are still the anxious parents beside the incubator, peering in at our little girl, delighted just to be in her presence. The sheer luxury of having a baby you can pick up and cuddle on a whim is entirely unknown to us. The privilege of holding her is something that is still meted out to us by her nurses, something we ask for and hope that we asked at a convenient time. When it is offered it's a treat.

On the other hand it is difficult not to refer to these little ones as miracles. When we sit by her side or gaze at the other one of us holding her we are impressed by every little thing that she does. Remembering all the time that she is doing things far, far ahead of schedule for her tiny little body constantly amazes us. Since her birth I've felt a brand new desire to push myself, seeing how she has had to push herself and do it with a determination I never expected to see in such a frail little individual.

Perhaps I am romanticizing the situation, ascribing something to her that isn't really there. It could be argued that she's doing well because her body is simply capable of it and that it isn't taking any sort of spark of personality to drive it along. But I see her irritation and anger at the CPAP she has to wear, how she clearly wants it off of her head and tries to pry it off with her hands or scrape it off on the surface of her blankets. Her nurses tell me all the time that she's a funny, charming little baby and that she makes her wishes well-known, nurses that deal with a constantly changing influx of babies and who have seen it all.

She yawns, she hiccups, she holds on to whatever she can grab and grips it for all she's worth. She opens her eyes and peeks out at the world she's in, unaware that all the blurs will someday coalesce into recognizable objects and loving faces. She cries very little, using her voice to squawk in short-term displeasure rather than kvetch for long periods. These are all things that most every baby does, yeah, but she's doing them all uphill in a way that full-term babies don't have to. Even if she's not technically a miracle, I find her to be the most thrilling, life-affirming thing to ever happen to me and it feels just a teeny bit magical. Even for a lover of hard-boiled common sense.

I didn't say 'nipples' once!

So, the battle of the breast pump has been ongoing. The battle is all in my head, really, but I continue to hate pumping like cats hate water. Cats can swim, see, and I can pump. I just don't like it. *hiss*

What I hate about it is the stupid ceremony of it all. Sterilizing the bottles and bits, drying them out, assembling them, hooking up the tubes to the machine, hooking up the machine to the bottles, attaching them to myself, pumping, emptying the bottles into the milk containers, labeling them, rinsing out the bottles and bits and setting them out for later, putting away the tubes and labels and putting away the machine. When you're nursing you just stick the baby on your breast. You don't boil either of them first.

Sigh.

I'd been intending to learn to hand express. I'd read about it a bit and thought it sounded like a good idea in case I ever found myself without a breast pump around and needed to express. After reading about it even more, though, it sounded like something that I could possibly do as a substitute for using the machine. It's supposed to be good for mastitis and also produce more milk than pumping, something I'm interested in because I'm a bit stressed about providing enough milk. So, I've tried it a few times and tonight I was able to hand express instead of pumping altogether!

Woot indeed, because it knocks out a ton of the annoying steps from the pumping ceremony and I can express straight into the collecting containers instead of having to sterilize anything. All I have to have is clean hands and then I label the container and stick it in the fridge. Pretty sweet.

Also I am still nervous about the lactation consultant cornering me in the NICU and asking me all kinds of questions. Yesterday I was sitting beside Shaughnessy's incubator and the LC was helping a mom with nursing her preemie for the first time. I was glad she was otherwise occupied, but when Shaughnessy's nurse noticed the LC she asked me if I had any breastfeeding questions or anything. I was all, "NO, I'M FINE, MY SUPPLY IS FINE, IT'S ALL FINE, THANKS VERY MUCH!"

Instead of taking the hint she went over to the LC, who was finished with the other mom and washing her hands at the sink, and said, "I have a mom over here you might want to chat with and see if she has any questions."

I told Andrew today that when this kind of thing goes down my instincts are all, "Cheese it, it's the Lactation Consultant!" I didn't run away, scramble or flee; I just gritted my teeth and tried to make it quick by being all immediately confident about my milk supply. She went ahead and quizzed me about how many times a day I pump and how much I think I produce each time. I exaggerated a bit, but then she wrote it down! So now my exaggerations are recorded and I could be caught in my exaggerations at a future date. Dang it.

I just don't want to talk about my boobs to people (who don't read this weblog, I guess.) My boobs are private boobs and I will not let my daughter starve! My hope is that Shaughnessy will take to breast feeding fairly easily and I can put this pumping jazz behind us. In the meantime I can at least alternate hand expressing with machine pumping to make it a bit less irritating!

One step back.

Shaughnessy had a bit of a setback this week. When I went in to see her on Monday I thought she looked a bit pale and seemed listless. They set me up with her to do Kangaroo Care and throughout the whole time I held her she kept having little spells where her breathing was too slow or stopped. I'd have to rub her back to remind her to take a breath whenever this happened. This was VERY unlike her, as was her paleness and general lack of energy.

Andrew had arrived while I was holding her and we were told by the nurses that it was possible that she could have an infection of some kind setting in. We were very upset to hear this, of course, since she'd been doing so well up to this point and we honestly aren't used to getting any bad news, just consistent reports of her good progress. So bad news is out of the ordinary, something that not all parents of preemies are lucky enough to experience.

They also mentioned that if it wasn't an infection it could be that she was tiring herself out from being off the CPAP altogether and had hit the wall. They decided to put her on low-flow air, run some bloodwork and see if an infection was the problem, but in the meantime pretty much sent us home to let her rest. It was getting late anyhow so we went, worried and concerned for our little girl.

Thankfully when I talked to her nurse the next day it was good news. There was no sign of any infection, and they'd put her back on the CPAP. Since going back on it she'd had no more breathing interruptions and was getting her colour and energy back. So; in the end even though Shaughnessy thinks she doesn't need to be on the CPAP, she obviously does and her stubbornness will not change that fact. Breathing entirely on her own is still a bit of an effort for her little lungs which is understandable, given that she's not even supposed to be using them yet!

This does mean she's staying in the level 3 NICU until she's breathing on her own but we're just so thankful that there's nothing wrong with her that we're OK with it! The CPAP is at most a bit uncomfortable at times. It doesn't have any adverse effects other than some frustration for her, so I'm grateful to see her with it on rather than her having to fight off an illness!

She's mighty mighty.

Shaughnessy shrieked at me in rage tonight! I was doing Kangaroo Care with her in the NICU and her legs seemed a little scrunched up in a possibly-could-get-uncomfortable way, so I tried to shift them so that she was more stretched out. The nurses like it better when their legs are extended because it gives their lungs more room to breathe, too.

So, I attempted to get her to straighten out her legs a bit and she squawked, then literally shrieked at me. Not a pain yell, but an anger yell. Her nurse, who was tending to another baby, hardly even glanced over, just laughed and said, "Heh, you're trying to move her, aren't you?" I finished what I was doing and tucked her back in against me, at which point she immediately settled down and got totally quiet and happy once again. It seems that when she's comfy she does NOT appreciate being relocated, and gives her nurses the same attitude. Trying to move her to her stomach from a different position always results in stiff, stick-straight legs stuck out in front of her and much bitching.

Apparently she is also trying to figure out how to escape her incubator. The nurses have been reporting to me that she's been discovered up against the back of her incubator, entirely out of her head hugger, and this morning she was wedged into a corner of it, happy as could be. They had no idea how long she'd been like that, but only discovered her when it was time to give her a feed.

The capper, though, is her CPAP. They tried her off of it permanently earlier this week since she was doing so well with an on/off cycle. She did great for the first 24 hours, but then had an episode where she choked a bit on some spit-up, after which they put her back on the CPAP as a preventative measure after the choking so she wouldn't tire out. As of today the CPAP was making her so angry that she spent three hours this morning fussing over it and fighting with it, so they made the decision to take her off of it permanently again rather than have her blow a gasket. Her nurse told me that as soon as they took it off her head she calmed right down and went to sleep.

I'm thinking that girlfriend doesn't realize she's a preemie, or just doesn't care. Apparently she has places to go and people to see and we're cramping her style in a big way. Since she's really doing so well and is what one nurse referred to tonight as a 'straightforward baby' in terms of care needs she'll be moving to the next level NICU fairly soon. That means moving to a different hospital since she's been so healthy and had so few things wrong with her. I'm VERY sad to think of her no longer being at Women's College Hospital, but I can deal. Whatever brings her home to us sooner is good.

There are still some hurdles for her to get past, like regulating her own temperature, learning to nurse as her sole means of food intake and being entirely independent of any breathing assistance. That last is basically no longer an issue unless she has a setback, so the other two just need a few more weeks of growing and learning. Since she is so obviously determined and strong I'm not too worried about her getting there in good time.

I don't know if you can tell, but I am incredibly proud of our baby girl. :)

Admittedly maybe it's SOME kind of science.

I think that upon finding out I was pregnant I, more than anyone else, was curious to see how I responded to motherhood. I don't mean the overall, lifelong experience of it. What I mean is the very fact of having a child. I wondered what my reaction would be to the actual baby that popped out of my womb.

For most of my adult life I didn't have a desire to go forth and procreate. I never really did, even as a kid. I didn't play house with the whole, "I can hardly wait to grow up and be a mommy," sort of thing going on. I think I played the parts of daddy, kid, cat and dog with enthusiasm equal to that of the mommy role. The 'baby rabies' was a foreign concept to me as I reached my twenties. I liked kids, I just didn't feel the need for any of my own. I also didn't choose to spend much time around them. I babysat for my entire teenage career, and did so even into college, so I tried to avoid getting involved in children's ministries at church. That wasn't a popular choice and I did end up getting pressured into it from time to time, but I tried my best to stay out of it.

So ... yeah. I've just never been that 'someday ... a baby' person. Getting married did not equal having kids. Being an adult didn't either. It wasn't something I was going to jump into recklessly.

At times when I found myself doubting that choice I tried to picture myself with a baby. It was less than convincing. The baby was always very conceptual. Chubby, roly-poly, wispy-haired and warm with vague features. It was just some baby. I didn't feel anything emotionally significant when I imagined that baby. It was like any number of babies I'd seen and while it was appealing in an infant way, it didn't make my heart jump or my ovaries twitch. I'd heard and read about parents who didn't feel a bond with their baby when it was born and I wondered a bit if I'd be like that; that I just didn't have that instinct in me.

And then Shaughnessy was born. I spent her first 30 hours away from her, flat on my back being pumped full of magnesium sulfate and unable to visit the NICU until I was off it. I couldn't tell physically that I'd given birth since I'd had a c-section and was still medicated against any pain, and I hadn't yet seen her with my own eyes. I worried that I wasn't connecting with the fact that I'd had a baby, and that I didn't feel enough emotion regarding the whole situation. Yes, I was being very hard on myself in a very turbulent time, but I couldn't grasp what had happened and it concerned me a LOT. I thought I was already failing the parenthood test.

The next day I met my daughter. And while there wasn't some instant, mind-blowing connection that opened up the floodgates of motherhood and swept me away on a tidal wave of maternal instinct, there was something just as surprising to me. I met her and instead of feeling that neither-here-nor-there feeling I had toward the conceptual baby of my imaginings I realized, "Oh, it's YOU!"



It wasn't just some baby after all. It was Shaughnessy. I recognized her. I saw her and knew her as my daughter and that was that. Of course, that didn't make things easier. No; it made everything more difficult in the most amazing way. I was terrified of losing her as quickly as I'd gained her. I hated that her nurses had the freedom to handle her any way they wanted to while I had to stand by and watch and get permission to do any little thing. I lay awake in bed imagining all the horrible things she'd had to endure so far and the potential things I'd been told could go wrong yet. I wanted to be the one caring for her and protecting her and comforting her and sustaining her.

Basically, I felt like any other parent of a premature baby. But boy, oh boy, did I feel it. Any worries I had about not feeling enough for her were erased very quickly.

So, my deduction is this: It's not rocket science. Babies are not conceptual. They are YOUR FRIGGING BABY and even if you don't like kids in general, you're still very likely to feel something pretty strong for your very own child. While there may be parents who don't have an initial bond, I'd be willing to bet that they do form one sooner rather than later and it ceases to be an issue.

Of course, this is all coming from the perspective of the mother. I was hopped up on hormones, magnesium sulfate, pain meds, blood pressure meds, fatigue, hunger and fear. I'm going to have to quiz a few formerly-childfree dads on their reaction to their newborns; especially dads of premature babies.

Update-y goodness.

As soon as Andrew got well enough to finally get into the NICU to see Shaughnessy I got sick with whatever it was he'd had. At least we managed to pass off the baton, but still ... it sucks to not be seeing her together.

Andrew seeing her does make me extremely happy, of course. I hate to think of neither of us able to go in, so the fact that at least one of her parents can see her daily makes me feel a lot better. And Andrew made sure to get a great shot of himself holding her for the first time. See:




While he was there Shaughnessy's nurse was doing her hands-on care and had Andrew help out with it, but didn't make him change her diaper, hee hee. The diapers that they use are ridiculously small preemie diapers but they still come up to Shaughnessy's armpits if they're not folded down. When Andrew asked about that the nurse said they just fold them down so they don't look dumb, not for any practical reason. I think I'll start folding them down first when I change her, because I always end up giving her saggy-butt diapers and that's probably why.

Her IV burn is healing well, it seems, so I'm going to stop worrying about it. She's been doing really well with breathing off of the CPAP machine, too, so hopefully that means soon she'll be off of it for good! It hasn't bothered me so much with regards to her breathing because I know it wasn't hurting her and was necessary to keep her breathing and strengthening her lungs, but it'll be nice for her to not have to wear the gear on her head and face any more. It gets in the way of how cute she is, and always seemed uncomfortable on her face and cheeks. There are two different kinds they use; a mask and a two-pronged one that sits inside her nostrils. They both have their pluses, but I'll be glad to see them gone!

She's off the IV altogether because after the IV burn happened they didn't want to chance another interstitial vein and she was nearly at full feeds anyhow. Now she's at full feeds, is off the IV, is soon going to be off of the CPAP and hopefully I'll get to start nursing her within a month! I can hardly wait for that!