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.

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.

My first Mother's Day.

Mother's Day was pretty awesome. I kicked it off by getting up early and giving Essie a bath so she'd be fresh and clean for a day full of meeting people. Then I dressed her in the outfit I'd been saving for that day; one that her Grandma gave her. It's pink and brown with polka dots and a flower on the front of the onesie, and she rocked it with pink socks and her clean, fuzzy hair. I have a slight obsession with finding nice outfits in brown for her since it's not as usual, but they're hard to come by!

We stopped at TCAF so I could meet some of the people Andrew had met the day before, and specifically so I could pick up Meredith Gran's second and third published collections. I stuck Essie in the sling and she was snuggly and happy in there until we got to the webcomics section and I pulled her out on request. After she was out of the sling and in my arms she got a lot of attention and loving up from various artists and inspired Kate Beaton to create her comic about meeting her. It was a LOT of fun. This was Essie's first public appearance and she was totally cool about it. I got my first taste of the public appreciation for teeny babies, something that was kind of on my radar before but not something I've been on the receiving end of as a mom.

So after that we bombed off to Kingston as fast as we could, which was not fast at all due to insane traffic on the 401 and having to make a baby-feeding pitstop. It was also a parent-feeding pitstop since we desperately needed some lunch, so it was slow going. But eventually, eventually we arrived and LO, the Essie-loving did begin.

I gave her to her Grandma to hold first, of course, and I was thrilled to finally see my baby in my mom's arms. It had bothered me so much at the hospital that she couldn't hold her there, and if we'd spent longer at St. Mike's I had planned to pretty much just put Essie in her arms and fight with anyone who tried to stop me. What actually happened was a much nicer scenario, of course, so it all worked out in the end.

Then La and Mimi took turns holding her for the first time, and after that the cousins all got a turn throughout the rest of the visit. Essie was a superstar. She was calm and content the whole time. I mean, she did do her usual growling and groaning but it was all good-tempered and she was pretty alert for much of the afternoon, which surprised me. I think overall everyone thought she was a cute, yummy baby as evidenced by the threats to steal her and eat her cheeks off entirely.

In all the madness I didn't end up doing much reflecting on it being my first Mother's Day. Things were busy and hectic, but good. Which is fine by me.

I ARE INTERNETS FAMOUS NAOW!!1!

Holy crap! Kate Beaton drew a comic featuring me and Shaughnessy!

The poop that ate TCAF.

Since late yesterday Essie had been a bit fussier than usual. After eating she falls into a comfortable sleep and usually stays that way until she's ready to eat again. Since last night, though, she'd been squirming and complaining even after eating, throwing up a lot more than I'm used to from her and generally seeming unhappy. She's been pooping almost alarmingly well since coming home from St. Mike's. I was worried that she had something wrong in there, actually, since pooping hasn't always been her strong suit and she often had to try pretty hard to poop once a day. But no; she'd been pooping all day, every day and nothing solid at all.

I know. This is gross. IDWIYO has been all boobs and poop these days.

Anyhow, she hadn't pooped since sometime in the afternoon yesterday and as the night went on she got fussier and more complainy. I'd been planning to sleep at night since today was the first day of TCAF and we'd been planning to go to it. I really, REALLY wanted to meet some of my favourite webcomic artists in person and buy some of their merch. Instead of sweetly sleeping, though, Essie slept very lightly, keeping up a running low-grade grumble. I don't know about you, but running low-grade grumbles aren't exactly a relaxing sound for me so I was not really sleeping so much as trying to sleep and ignore the grumble. Then when she got hungrier she'd ramp it up to a squeaky growl, which is an even less relaxing sound.

By the time Andrew got up for the day I was exhausted and sad, having only managed to grab a few minutes worth of sleep here and there between Essie's feedings and diaper changes. I had reached the point of tiredness where nothing really matters but just getting some damn sleep already, so I was like, "TCAF or sleep? I choose SLEEP before I cry."

So, I stayed home with our grumbly, poopless daughter, convinced that I'd never sleep and she'd never poop, that she'd forgotten how to do it and would require medical intervention every time poop needed to come out. Andrew went out to get some necessities, then came home where poop had still not appeared and sleep was still not succeeding, then went back out to see TCAF.

Mid-afternoon? She pooped. A giant poop, a triumphant poop, a poop that fulfilled the purpose of her diaper like no poop has ever done. So there was poop, there was a cessation in low-grade grumbling, and then after a bottle and some snuggling there was some sleep! I had to get up after some sleep because she yet again needed feeding and diaper changing and snuggling so was awake when Andrew came in the door, flush with stories of all my favourite webcomic artists and how nice and wonderful they are. I'd say a name and he'd be all, "Yeah, we talked. He/she is really nice!"

And they were really nice and a few signed some merch for me and my most favourite even said she'd send me some buttons as a Mother's Day gift! Of course at this point because I'd had some sleep and Essie was back to her usual mostly-content self I was petulantly sad that I hadn't been able to go to TCAF after all. So we're considering going for a few minutes before our drive to Kingston tomorrow so I can bask in the glow of the Dumbrella/Topatoco crew and probably buy even more merch. If you want your favourite webcomic artists to stick around making webcomics, you have to support them!

P.S. Notice how when she poops I'm worried that there's something wrong, and when she doesn't poop I'm worried that there's something wrong? Yeah.

Update from the trenches.

OK, so week one with an actual baby living at home with us is coming to an end! Craziness. It's been pretty fine, all around. Like I said before; the first 24 hours were a bit rough, and thankfully I got over the cold pretty quickly or else this whole week would have been horrid, especially since Andrew had to go away for three days on business.

I suspect some thought I might lose my mind being home alone with Shaughnessy so immediately after she arrived, but really it was fine. Before he left town Andrew did a big grocery shop and made sure we had everything we need, plus did some laundry, so we were set that way. All I had to do was continue to feed her, clothe her, clean her and make sure all her needs were met.

And seeing as how I've always been a poor sleeper the new Shaughnessy-driven schedule isn't quite as much of a shock to my system as it might be to someone who swore by a 'normal' sleep schedule before the arrival of their baby. If I depended on sleeping at night, getting up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning and couldn't function any other way then this would definitely be a nightmare. I've never taken to that sort of thing naturally, though, so this isn't as soul-sucking as it could be. I can adhere to that sort of schedule when I have to, don't get me wrong. I just feel gross about getting up early in the morning every time I have to do it. Every. Single. Time.

Honestly it was really nice to focus entirely on my girl and how she functions. We had real quality time together and it was nice to see how I work as a mom, too. I've found that using the sling that we got makes her a very happy baby. I wasn't really expecting that because I mostly wanted the sling so I could have two hands free when I needed them but still had to carry her around. It's a Hotslings pouch sling and the newborn carry means she's cradled inside it and carried nice and close up against me. The whole effect is very cozy and womb-like and she falls into a really deep, relaxed sleep and I even have to wake her up for a feed when she's like that. Not only that, I can even take a quick nap if I want to while wearing it and she stays comfy and settled without me having to move her anywhere.

So, I guess I'm a sling proponent. I've always loved the idea of them. It makes a lot of sense to keep your baby with you as much as you can when they're this young. I also love the design of this sling in particular. I may find I need to move on to a ring sling or something when she's a bit older, but for now the simplicity of this one is exactly what I want. I'm hoping that the various carries for this one will work as well as the cradle carry so I don't have to look for something else that involves dangly bits and adjusting and wrapping and ties and stuff. Me = Lazy!

So, to sum up: We've had Essie for a week. I did not throw her out the window or down the well or sell her or anything like that. Being alone with her for an extended period is not scary. Slings and baby-wearing are two thumbs up! Yet I want the simplest sling possible because dude, extra complication in my life is a no.

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.

Why cats approve when you make the bebeh:

Everything is cat-sized.