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.

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.

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.

Hells no

OK, so Essie's due date is on Sunday and recently I have been looking at her and thinking there is NO WAY THAT CHILD COULD HAVE COME OUT OF ME ... you know, the 'natural way'.

It's her head, you see. Her head, it is really big. Man, when she was born I was fascinated by the eensy-teeniness of her eensy-teeny head. When we'd do Kangaroo Care I'd cup my palm and fingers over the curve of her skull and marvel at how miniature she was. Now I place my hand on the top of her head and it sits there, flat. Big-headed babies are not uncommon in my family and if this is how big our heads and my sisters' kids heads were when they were all born (the natural way) all I can say is, "Wow. My vagina does not envy yours at all."

It really hit me this morning. Essie was clean and dry and fed and had fallen asleep against my shoulder. I was supporting her with one arm and she was folded up into a very classic fetal position, head curled into her arms, legs all tucked up under and against her, her spine a cute little curve down to her butt. She was compact and bean-shaped and it struck me that yes, even though it seems entirely unimaginable to me, she actually could fit inside of me at the size she is now. Getting out is another matter altogether, but the way she was all tucked up against me really made me see it.

So. WEIRD.

Please don't mistake me; I'm still not mourning a natural birth. I thought maybe I would over time, but almost three months later and I'm still relieved I had a painless delivery. I guess I'm just not that invested in experiencing pain, you know? Obviously I wouldn't choose to give birth under the circumstances that Essie was born in a second time. Given the choice between her being a preemie or experiencing the pain of natural childbirth I'd choose the natural childbirth, pain be damned. But there's a certain relief in knowing that if she's our only child, I won't have to endure the pain of labour in this lifetime.

Because that head? Is way bigger than a grapefruit.

Musings on a second child.

In an email today I was mentioning to a friend that I missed out on having a third trimester entirely. Even though there are actually positives for me as a result (like being in good physical form when Shaughnessy comes home) I still feel cheated out of that experience. She was kicking quite a lot by the time I had the c-section, but there has been a major portion of the pregnancy experience missing for me, even if it's one that is described as often uncomfortable.

The thing about preeclampsia is that if you plan to have more children, you're supposed to have them sooner rather than later. The sooner you have your next child, the less chance there is that you'll have preeclampsia again. After a c-section you're supposed to wait at least a year to get pregnant again, and if you give birth within two years you have to have another c-section or there's a chance your uterus could rupture during birth.

Andrew has been kind of shocked to hear me saying things like, "Yeah, if we have another kid we'd have to start trying next year," and things along those lines. I'm not saying that I definitely want to start trying that soon, or even that I definitely want to have more than one baby. I think that a large part of that kind of talk stems from me trying to deal with the fact that I'm not in the middle of my third trimester when that's exactly where I should be right now. I can only think about a complete pregnancy experience as something I can have if I do it again, so I currently kind of want that even if the desire is ridiculous and totally hormone-induced.

I was a middle child and loved it. I got to be the baby for six whole years, then I got to be a big sister without having to be the oldest child and do everything first. There wasn't any of that oldest or youngest baggage involved for me. I don't really know what the only child experience is like, and since I love having siblings so much I kind of want that for Shaughnessy. I never did have a brother, but I always wished I had one, too. Siblings are crazy-fun to have, or at least mine are!

As for the c-section thing; I like the idea of a c-section again. Call me insane, but I know what having a c-section is like now and it's no worse than getting your gallbladder out (which I have also had done.) I HEARD women giving birth the natural way while I was in hospital and I guarantee you that as far as physical comfort is concerned my experience was WAY better. That's including recovery. There was nothing involved in my experience that made me scream, dudes. The kind of pain you feel after c-section surgery isn't fun, no, but it's also not earth-shattering and I know I can take it. This is also something I reserve the right to change my mind about, but if I want to have kids close together I'd be hard-pressed to find a doctor willing to let me have a VBAC.

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.

Angry and sad.

With Shaughnessy's birth has also come the emergence of the 'Motherbeast'. The Motherbeast personifies all the primal, raw feelings of protectiveness and nurturing that have flared up in me. It's overwhelming, to say the least, and sometimes kind of scary. Seeing my daughter endure all the things she's had to endure so far in her tiny, short life has been like poking a stick at the Motherbeast and I get truly angry. There's so much frustration and helplessness in having a preemie that you just want to BLAME someone, take it out on someone and make them FIX it. I literally want to resort to violence at times, and I'm surprised at myself.

Which brings us to the other side of things. Because when I'm not feeling the protective fierceness of the Motherbeast, I'm feeling the frightened guilt of a puppy who knows it's done something bad and that there's a reckoning coming. I did it wrong. I didn't carry my baby until she was ready to come out. My body was so inhospitable that I couldn't make it a safe place for her to stay. I FAILED her and she has to suffer for my inadequacies. Isn't someone going to punish me for that?

It's been drilled into me by many people (doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, nurses) that these feelings of guilt and shame and self-blame are normal, that every mother who suffers from pre-eclampsia has the same thoughts. Intellectually I am thankful to know that. Emotionally, it's hard to hang on to it. I know that my part in this wasn't easy, that it wasn't my fault, that I could have died from the pre-eclampsia as well and that having Shaughnessy when I did saved both of us. But I visit the websites that tell me how she should be developing in my womb, still safely tucked away in a warm, pain-free environment until being born a fat, healthy full-term baby and I mourn that for her. And for me. And for Andrew, who has had a painful few weeks and has had to juggle work, illness, worry and stress around all the hospital business, not to mention having to quarantine himself away from his brand-new daughter almost this entire time. He hasn't been able to comfort himself with sitting at her bedside, giving her hand-hugs, holding her from time to time. He's had only pictures and my reports on her sweetness to satisfy his paternal instincts and it's just not enough.

I know this will all get easier. We'll look back on this time as difficult but necessary, and it'll seem like such a short blip in the bigger picture of her life. Right now, though, it's fricking hard.

WCH Rocks!

While being in the hospital is never FUN, it does have nice moments. I suspect that the Women's College Hospital has some sort of rigorous testing system in place to make sure that all the medical professionals working there are part guardian angel or something because I've never in my life experienced so many indescribably kind people in one place. Most all of the nurses who took care of me babied me extravagantly, bringing me countless cups of ice water and apple juice, chiding me about eating my meals, tsking over the state of my poor, swollen, scabbed-up, bruised arms (from all the blood-drawing and the bandage tape that ate away my skin) and generally treating me with more compassion than I'd ever expected. There was no sense of it being anyone's job; they were genuinely caring.

Of course, they were also doing their jobs, as evidenced by the carefree way in which they regularly walked into my room and demanded to see my crotch or boobs or incision. The most amusing thing to me was Fart Watch 2009. They were very concerned about my first fart after surgery and every time anyone entered my room the first thing out of their mouth was, "Have you passed gas?" I wasn't allowed solid food until that happened, so by the end of Fart Watch I was eagerly anticipating it as well. It finally, finally happened at 10:43 a.m. on Wednesday the 5th. I farted. And it was awesome.

I think this is possibly the only time in my life I will ever openly and publicly admit to engaging in that particular bodily function, so write down the date or something.

The people who have made the strongest impression on me were Maja, the nurse in charge of me from the minute I was admitted to the high risk delivery unit, and Beverly, a lovely nurse in the NICU.

Maja really did remind me of an angel, which is SO cliched when it comes to nurses, I know, but she was an incredibly solid rock of support and comfort during a time of shock and fear for me and Andrew. We were being swept along on this unstoppable tide of sudden major surgery and our daughter coming into the world three months early, and Maja very calmly explained everything to us that she could. She also had no compunction at all about physically comforting me, putting a hand on my shoulder or hand whenever she could just to remind me that she was right there beside me. When I was getting the epidural injected into my spine she stood in front of me with her hands on my shoulders and reminded me to breathe whenever it seemed like I was getting panicked. She told me afterward that there came a moment when she herself got overwhelmed with everything going on and head to leave the operating room for a moment to breathe deep and calm down, and I have to say that I didn't even notice, she was just so ever-present and reassuring.

They delayed moving me to the recovery part of the floor long enough that Maja couldn't come with me to see Shaughnessy for the first time and she was visibly upset about it, telling me that she'd been looking forward to sharing that special moment with me and how disappointed she was that the nurse taking me was someone that I didn't even know. I was disappointed too and ended up having some separation anxiety over the abruptness of my move and being taken out of her care so suddenly. She was the best nurse I've ever had in my life, bar none, and I'm immensely grateful for her. We'll definitely be bringing in a major thank-you gift for her soon.

As for Beverly; she's a lovely, kind Australian woman who goes to great lengths to make sure that I feel involved in Shaughnessy's care and gives me as much information as she possibly can whenever she sees me, even if she's not assigned to Shaughnessy that day. She was the first NICU nurse to insist that I help her with Shaughnessy's 'hands on' care, when they change their diapers, feed them, give them a little break from the CPAP and do various other things related to their well-being. She let me pick my daughter up in my hands for the first time while she changed the bedding under her, had me wipe off her face and mouth of the bubbles they blow when they're on CPAP, take her temperature and just generally interact with her in ways I hadn't before. They do this with all the parents, yes, to ease us into taking care of a preemie, but Beverly did it with so much kindness and understanding of how I must be feeling to watch what amounts to strangers having so much more access to my own child than I do. You can tell when the nurse working with your baby actually cares about how you feel, and Beverly cares. A lot.

These are just the two standouts, of course. Like I said; almost every single person at WCH has been unfailingly kind and caring and genuine. HAVE YOUR BABIES THERE, Torontonians! I recommend it!

We had a baby.

I've been trying to write a weblog entry about the fact that yes, we had our daughter, we have a baby now, Shaughnessy Patricia Joyce Jeanes was born on March 3rd, 2009, at 1:35 in the morning weighing exactly one kilogram and breathing on her own.

Somehow, that weblog entry hasn't been coming out. I'd start it and have to stop really quickly. It wasn't flowing the way I wanted it to. I couldn't tell it the way I like to tell a story. It took me a while, but I eventually realized why.

Why? Because it sucks. I had preeclampsia. My daughter should not be outside of my body. She should still be in there giving me heartburn, kicking my bladder, bouncing my laptop at unexpected moments. I should still be carrying her and I'm not. I'm not happy about that in the slightest and wish more than anything that it wasn't this way. So when I try to write about the actual events and find the humour in them (of which there is some, believe me) it's just ... too soon, I guess.

This week has been the hardest of my life, probably the hardest of Andrew's life, and no picnic for Shaughnessy, either. Our families and friends have been amazing, supportive and right there for us from the minute we let them know what happened and we're unspeakably thankful for all of you.

I'll write about it. I'll write about it the way I want to, tell the story the way I like to, and it'll be REALLY LONG.