Mid-trip update.

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

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

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

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


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



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



Getting some morning cuddles on Grandma's shoulder.



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

Essie is more of a mellow yellow kid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wait, wait!

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

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

Out and about.

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

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

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

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

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

Good, healthy baby.

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

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

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

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

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

Dummy dumb dumb.

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

No? Just me?

Damn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

One month, baby.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All is transient.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nearly a sneeze.

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

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

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

Dressy Essie

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

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

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





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




This last one is my favourite.

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.