Owie. But also some stuff to be grateful for.

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

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

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

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

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



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

Caring more than I should.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essie is more of a mellow yellow kid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wait, wait!

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

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

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.

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.

Glimpsing the bottom of the well.

I'm so thankful that I told the nurses that it was OK to bottle feed Shaughnessy. Since the night before last I've had a scratchy throat, sinus pain and an on-again, off-again slight fever. It doesn't feel all that serious but the presence of symptoms like this keeps me out of the nursery where my daughter still lives and that makes me very sad. Even worse it keeps me from breastfeeding my girl, but at least she's being bottle-fed which keeps up her practice at suck-and-swallow.

They did make some worried noises about how much breastmilk they have on hand and feel that they're running low. I wouldn't be overly concerned but my milk supply has decided to get less plentiful over the last week and I'm not quite sure why. If it does happen that they find themselves out at some point I'll give them permission to give her formula, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that. She's never had formula and the sudden switch would probably give her gas for miles, not to mention worse constipation than the poor little bug already has.

Mostly it's a selfish worry, though. She's at what is considered full-term with regards to her gestational age. Drinking formula is pretty much a non-issue at this point. Being able to express milk for her and know that all of her sustenance came directly from me was a major source of comfort for me during the time when there wasn't anything more concrete I could do for her. I couldn't cuddle her, I couldn't comfort her, I couldn't even really touch her much, but by golly I could pump! Even if I hated physically doing it, I was glad to do something so maternal for her.

Now that I can hold her, interact with her and even breastfeed her directly it's not as emotionally necessary, but I'm still a bit freaked out. I didn't have to put much effort into keeping up my milk supply, and suddenly it is betraying me! The nurses at both hospitals were/are very pro-breastmilk and although they're not explicitly anti-formula (and I am decidedly NOT anti-formula) I have overheard disparaging comments about it. I don't want to be disparaged! I'm already paranoid enough about seeming like I'm not a good enough or caring enough parent.

Anyhow, it's just something new for me to freak out about and poke at with my brain. I'm stepping up my pumping/expressing a bit to try to stimulate more milk production but if anything I've seemed to be getting even less as a result. I do not know what this is all about. What up, boobs. I'll have to chat with the lactation consultant at St. Mike's, someone I have not yet met. Reports to follow on whether she is terrifying.

Suckle THIS, smartypants!

Since I'd gone in earlier in the day I called the nursery at around midnight last night to check on Ms. S before going to bed. The call went really well until the end, when things degenerated for me. Here's how it went.

NURSE: She wants to suckle.

ME: Oh, I know. We had a great session with the lactation consultant today. She's really getting it.

NURSE: No, she needs to do it more than that!

ME: Well, I try to do it every day. It doesn't always work out.

NURSE: Every day! More times a day! If you don't she won't nurse later on. She won't know how!

ME: (Getting a bit defensive.) She had an eye exam today. She was too exhausted for more than the once.*

NURSE: Well she really needs to learn this. More times a day!

Now I am all agitated by the thought that due to my negligence my daughter will never really learn to nurse, even though that's bullshit of the highest order and we'd made real progress earlier in the day. I was feeling great about it, really encouraged by the experience and glad that the lactation consultant had helped me out so much and now I am trying to hang on to that and not feel like I'm failing her in some way.

To me the true point is not that she's breastfeeding, even if I've talked a lot about how much I want to be able to do so with her. The truly important thing is that she's getting my breastmilk and the how of it getting inside her is secondary. If she never takes to nursing and we have to bottle-feed her while I continue to pump then that's how it'll be. Ideally I want her to do both so that Andrew can also feed her and so that we can bottle-feed her when it's less convenient to nurse. I am not stuck on her ONLY breastfeeding and nothing else. I think it would be irrational to feel that way, and potentially crazy-making. I don't want to set myself and Shaughnessy up for disappointment and difficulty. I just want to do what works best and makes us both comfortable

I am doing my reading on all this, believe me, and even if it takes time the majority of babies, preemie or otherwise, figure it out and end up doing fine on only nursing, or a combination of both. I wasn't even planning to breastfeed in the first place and had fully expected to formula-feed her with bottles but the fact of her prematurity threw a wrench into those plans. So, this has been a pretty major adjustment of expectations for me and that's probably why I'm pretty flexible about the idea of bottle vs. breast since either is a vehicle for her to drink my breastmilk. She'll be in my arms, alive, not dead due to undiagnosed preeclampsia. I'd rather wake up every day happy about those things than stress out about whether she'll be a perfect breastfeeder!

* The eye exams that the doctors do to check for ROP are very traumatizing and uncomfortable for the babies, so after they have them they're usually very exhausted and out of it for the rest of the day. They tend to sleep more and be more fussy when awake, so things like lick and sniffs aren't usually all that successful.

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. :)

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!

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.

Mother bear is gonna rough you up.

OK, so after singing the praises of WCH like I did in my last entry I will admit that there are a couple of nurses that I simply do not like. NICU nurses, specifically, since it really didn't matter if there was anyone taking care of me who wasn't sweetness and light all the time. Motherhood, however, apparently makes you very protective and the thought of someone not treating your fragile little premature daughter with anything but love and tenderness is awful.

Mom came to town again yesterday and we got to spend hours visiting Shaughnessy. The day nurse was nice, if a little bit less than self-confident about absolutely everything. I think she was pretty new, but it didn't matter because any time she second-guessed herself she got someone else to step in so there wasn't any reason for us to feel like Shaughnessy wasn't getting proper care. Shaughnessy's night nurse, though, was a nurse that simply rubs me the wrong way. I've seen her get impatient with crying babies before, and she just has a really brisk, clinical way of doing things that doesn't include the parents at all if they happen to be there.

Mom and I stood back and gave her room while she did Shaughnessy's hands-on care and even though she wasn't being precisely rough with her it still made me feel uncomfortable to see the way she was flipping my baby around like a rotisserie chicken, fast and not exactly gently. Shaughnessy didn't cry at all and seemed more thoughtful about it all than anything and she's not a baby that's afraid to complain when something's not right. I'm sure this woman knows her job and knows it well, but parents of preemies feel like their babies aren't getting enough affection as it is so to see their major caregivers dealing with them like objects rather than a son or daughter is upsetting, to say the least.

I asked her if she wanted us to leave the NICU entirely while she worked with my baby girl and her answer was, "Oh, I don't care what you do." All righty then. You don't have to be Nurse McFriendlypants, but 'I don't care' is not a helpful answer. I asked a few questions and made a few comments but she just wouldn't engage, so I pretty much gave up and went and sat in the waiting area since my back was hurting and I didn't feel good. After she was done Mom came and got me and we sat with Shaughnessy a while more until Mom had to catch her bus back to Kingston, but I felt sad that for the rest of the night my girl had this woman instead of someone more affectionate and interactive.

I was also starting to get a scratchy throat last night and when I woke up today it was even worse, so I can't go in to see Shaughnessy until it's better. I'm hoping it gets better with a quickness because it WILL break me if I can't go visit her. I don't know how Andrew's managed since this is the worst illness he's had in forever and it's kept him out of the NICU for a long time now. I called today to see how our girl was doing and as it turns out she got an IV burn from the IV line they put in yesterday, which means that the vein the IV was in got compromised and the IV fluid leaked out and damaged the surrounding tissue. I haven't seen it yet and they assured me that it was being treated so I'm trying not to assume that it's horrible, but it's extra-difficult not to be able to go see her now that I know she was in pain the night before. Poor little monkey.

I barfed a lot and it sucked. Let me have that, OK?

OK, so a real positive about this pregnancy has been fewer migraines! I've always been prone to them but for some reason instead of even worse migraines I've just been getting more of the smaller, more bearable headaches instead. I mention this because I had an actual migraine today and was reminded of how long it's been since I had to deal with one. Pretty sweet!

Uh ... perhaps I was a bit more of a baby about it as a result, but Andrew has skipped town until tomorrow night so didn't have to hang out with me for more than a couple of hours worth of pathetic behaviour.

Now, I expected that with this pregnancy I'd be throwing myself headlong into some online communities of pregnant women and getting right involved with all that, but I've quickly discovered that I don't really have the urge to. I have a hit-or-miss relationship with online communities in general, preferring mostly to keep them strictly online and not have them encroach too much into my oxygen life. There are a small number of people I've met online that I'd made an exception for, but they are few. So, after lurking slightly and posting just a couple of times in a couple of pregnancy/parenting forums and whatnot I can say that I now have no real desire to do this.

Part of it is that on the one hand I'm just kind of a bitch, I think, and get easily frustrated when certain things start to look more like contests than sharing experiences. I'm not going in trying to one-up anyone or be told to just be thankful I had it as easy as I did. Y'know, the morning sickness sucked my will to live and it makes me seriously reluctant to do this ever again. Don't tell me I was lucky, k? I was not lucky. No one who experiences extreme unpleasantness during their pregnancy is.

On the other hand I feel like I have such a strong existing support network through my family and tons of friends who have babies and have experienced everything I'm going through that I don't really need to seek strangers online to get advice from. It's one of the reasons that not getting into a midwife group didn't break my heart too much, because I have the experienced feminine moral support thing built right in. Mom, sisters, cousins, aunts, friends, all kinds of people a phone call or Facebook message away! I'm pretty blessed and I'm reminded of it constantly.

I'm also pretty blessed to have Andrew right there with me being as supportive and involved and interested as he is. Love you, sweetie!

Started out good, but ended with rant.

It occurs to me quite a lot that even though I've moaned and complained variously about the discomforts of this process, I'm extremely thankful that that's all they've been: discomforts. I've had no pregnancy-related complications that threaten me or baby Jeanes and that's something to be grateful for!

Pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes are two things I worried about but so far, so good. The diabetes one wouldn't surprise me all that much but my bloodwork has been fine and I'm feeling pretty physically OK (for sickly ol' me.) I definitely need to be getting more exercise. That one is self-inflicted and not the fault of being pregnant, of course.

Last night Andrew and I went out for dinner and after we got home I was reminded of how much I need to start doing some more regular forms of exercise. Man, did my back ever hurt! Andrew is the one who nearly killed his entire self on some stairs while we were out, and I'm the one with the pain afterward. Unfair, I say. I had a bit of a preview at the One Of A Kind Show of the backaches to come, and I guess I'll just have to get Andrew to give me some nice massages or something (especially since La gave me that incredibly awesome Lush massage bar at Christmas.) But yeah; I do think that going for some regular walks will help, even if it makes it hurt a bit more at first.

Time is really flying now. I'm five months along and kind of in disbelief about that. It STILL doesn't seem entirely real that we're going to have a baby, you know. Yes, I feel like there's a human being growing inside of me but that isn't any kind of prep for what it's going to be like to LIVE with a TOTALLY DEPENDENT BABY. All my selfish ways and decisions are going to be secondary to making sure our kid survives each day. As a 34 year old with ingrained habits I think it's going to definitely be a rude kind of awakening! There are a few camps of parent out there. The kind that we have the most contact with, fortunately, are the kind who want to share useful advice and empathy, but there's another kind. The kind that like to maliciously shake their heads and say smugly, "Oh, you have no idea what you're in for. You'll see."

Yeah ... thanks. Does it surprise anyone that the first kid is a challenge? How can it not be? There was a time when I did not want to have children. I knew I could change my mind in the future when I hit my thirties, or encounter a surprise pregnancy and have to deal with that, but I really resented the idea that people saw being childfree as a negative of my personality. When I saw the kind of behaviour, though, where the parents seemed to relish the idea of someone sharing in what seemed to be their misery I felt a bit better about my decision. There are all kinds, of course, and even in the spectrum of the childfree there are wildly varying approaches and feelings about kids in general but I hope I never turn into the kind of parent who treats the role as a negative experience overall. Yes, there will be challenges and times when I question my sanity and the decision to have a child but I fully expect that overall I will like parenting and LOVE our spawn.

Seriously. My cats piss me off regularly (every day!) and I love and forgive them, so how much more am I going to love and care about a human being that's made up of me and Andrew?