The Fourth Trimester

2005-11-29T17:07:00.000-05:00

From: Chris
Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 10:08 AM
To: Binky
Subject: Don't be a blob, blog!

I think you should start a new blog right away. This is BS that you're not writing just because Tolby turned 3 months. If you act swiftly, you can carry your existing audience with you instead of losing them to the morass of the internet.

My literary life is a void without your musings in it.

-Chris

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The things I do for love.

www.8hours.blogspot.com

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2005-11-12T16:08:00.000-05:00

Those with a keen eye for detail are no doubt aware that the swift passage of time carried me out of the fourth trimester several weeks ago. I've held out this long simply because I'm at a total loss for another title. But enough is enough. The Fourth Trimester is hereby disbanded. Now the hiatus. Time will tell if it will be of Soprano-like scope or a shorter vacation. Tune in next time...same bat internet, different bat blogspot.

2005-11-09T17:43:00.000-05:00

A SHOUT OUT

Here's an ode to stain removers and explosive poo,
though it pains me just to write it.
See, I've got to give credit where credit is due,
and it's due to Shoutin' out baby shit.

It's the kind of Shout with the stain lifting brush,
a fine, plastic, bristle-y tool.
It's akin to the magic of a good potty flush
when it comes to getting rid of old stool.

I'm not sure that Tolby's clothes would be wearable,
if I was left to my own devices.
The wreckage left in her ass path is terrible,
and only Shout is worth the rising prices.

Following my advice is easy,
next time your child grunts out a nasty stain.
Plug your nose, put on gloves, don't be queasy--
and Shout it out with this simple refrain:

When these endless diaper days have you flustered,
know that on one thing you can rely--
whether that poop is thick, sticky, or like mustard,
there's no bowel movement that Shout can't defy.

Thanks to www.rhymezone.com for making it all possible.

2005-11-07T18:39:00.000-05:00

THE BIGGEST LIE

Parents are liars. I got ahold of the job description and it was right there:

Incumbent will stretch the truth as necessary to ensure perpetuation and survival of the species.

The biggest lie, to which the title of this post refers, is more of a withholding of information than a blatant falsehood. The lie plays out day after day, from sea to shining sea, as men and women of all ages gaze upon the swollen abdomen of a pregnant woman and smile as if everything is going to be alright. It's the lack of truth inherent when they press their hand to her stomach and heap gifts upon her amidst a barrage of verbal positivity. The lie is all the good stuff they tell her because her pregnant glow can't withstand the bad.

I am pregnancy buzzkill. It's my new mission in life. No longer will a newborn's mother be able to say, in my presence, that "nobody told me it would be like this!" I know perfectly well that noone on the verge of impending motherhood will believe me, but I'm going to say it anyway. And I'm going to say it in allegory, 'cause that's just how I do.

Your life is a puzzle that your baby will not fit. Forget even trying to shove his/her cardboard curves into the 1000 piecer that was your old life. That puzzle is done. There's a blue light special in Fate's aisle five that has a brand new jigsaw with your name on it. No refunds, returns or exchanges.

I'm not sure that you're getting this. What I'm trying to tell you is that the old puzzle might as well be glued together, framed, and hung on the wall. You can't go back. I want you to know this.

You've got a million pieces laid out in front of you now in a puzzle that belongs to your baby, and your next baby, and the babies of your babies. It's not your puzzle anymore, but every time you snap a rounded tip into its matching cranny, you will feel more fulfilled than you ever imagined being. It's not at all easy and it's not always fun. Know this. It is brand new.

For all my talk of honesty, I see now that even I can't spell it out. I can't unleash this truth in the kind of plain terms you will understand. You will still come back here saying that nobody told you it would be like this.

And all I will be able to do is look at you knowingly, the newest perpetrator of the biggest lie.

2005-11-03T17:18:00.000-05:00

RANDOM RECOMMENDATIONS

Things that are good:

The new sitcom, How I Met Your Mother:
If you're a twenty-something, whether married, engaged or single, you'll be able to relate. It's filled with hilarious pop culture references and characters boiling over with modern day idiosyncracies. It's well written and well acted.

Edy's Slow Churned Rich & Creamy Light Ice Cream:
It's calorically light, yet rich and creamy. Need I say more?

Things that are bad:

Vonage phone service:
The fact that it's a new technology is very apparent. It will often ring once on the receiving end and then start blowing static into the ear of the caller. When a call actually gets through, reception is iffy. My husband made a few adjustments with the set up that helped a bit, but I am still far from loving it. It might be a good option one day, but not today.

Huggies diapers:
Hate 'em! See below post about the great diaper debacle. That is not the only problem we've had, either. Excrement has been known to escape from the scratchy plastic indiscriminately. However, I realize that diaper preferences are strangely subjective, and that what binds one baby up but good could leave another baby sitting in a brown puddle. Sorry, I call it like I see it...and occasionally feel it.

2005-11-03T16:34:00.000-05:00

COMMENTS ON AGING BY THE NEWLY INITIATED

As evidenced by my chin hairs, I am getting old.

I'm not old when compared to octogenarians, or people my parent's age, or even those in their 40s (sorry, guys). I'm on the tail end of being truly, undebatably young, which is a strange place to be. The late 20s and early 30s are filled with wistfullness for the days gone by and nervous anticipation of what's to come. It's when you realize you can actually remember things that happened 20 years ago, and when you begin to see how the landscape 20 years from now will be completely changed. People you can't live without today will be gone, and people you haven't yet met will be fully grown.

My skin used to be smooth, and unencumbered by spiky black outcroppings. Now I need to go in regularly with a magnifying mirror and the tweezers. Some days it's annoying, on others disturbing, and if the hormones are in enough of a tizzy, it can be downright depressing. Like the gradual slackening of the skin and the fine lines that will become wrinkles, your body will remind you of the passage of time even if you manage to disregard all outside indicators.

2005-11-02T17:27:00.000-05:00

A NEW ENGLAND NOVEMBER

Today, as I crested Rhode Island's highest peak, I looked up at Connecticut and saw purple mountains hide the fat sun. Only moments before, I had seen a woman walking a rural road with a collection of pine boughs in her arms. Late fall in New England is filled with images made sharper by the cool, clear air, and November is when it's most apparent.

November makes you think of closed doors and well-lit kitchens, where families eat together because a) there's nothing else to do and b) multiple bodies in one room create heat. November is turkey in all its incarnations--from 18 pounder to leftover sandwiches (warmed) to a carcass melting into soup. November is a little calmer than December, a little warmer. Scarves and gloves are still a novelty. School has not yet become old hat.

November's not a bad month, as far as the cold ones go, in New England.

2005-11-01T21:55:00.000-05:00

OH, THE EMBARRASSING THINGS I WILL POST ON THIS BLOG

2005-11-01T21:20:00.000-05:00

TOLBY AS THE GIRAFFE

2005-11-01T21:18:00.000-05:00

MY PUMPKIN

2005-11-01T20:18:00.000-05:00

THE ONE WHERE SHE IS A CAT AND HE IS A LITTERBOX

A close-up of Chris's hind quarters in the litterbox.

This Halloween, Chris and I were a litterbox and a cat, respectively. I am really pleased that he was secure enough in his manhood to willingly dress up as something. . .well. . .for me to poop on. The great thing about my husband is that he'll do anything for a laugh. Then there's also the fact that it was a heck of a lot cheaper to saw a hole into a plastic clothes bin than it would have been to purchase one of the ridiculously overpriced costumes made of synthetic fiber guaranteed to go up in flames at the first sight of a match, lighter, candle, or magnifying glass and light source.

The baby stayed with her grandparents on the paternal side while we indulged in Halloween revelry at Sean's house. After four trimesters of estrangement, Jim Beam and I were reunited, courtesy of Diet Coke. It was like old times, which is signficant when you consider that life is really nothing like it used to be.

Alright, I would write more, but there's a baby to be fed and a husband who needs to go replace the brakelights on my Cadillac Craptera. See ya tomorrow.

2005-10-29T11:38:00.000-04:00

I'm getting ready to go to a Halloween party where I will be dressed up as a cat and my husband will be a litter box. I'll be sure to post pics. In the meantime, here is part of the assignment I wrote for the creative writing class I take at the local art museum:

I can still hear Tolby’s cries the first time Chris changed her diaper in the hospital where we roomed for the first time as a family. The cold air hit legs that had been warmly cocooned for so long and Tolby’s eyes went wide, her lips vibrating in hysterical shivers. Maybe we were evil parents for having laughed, but the silly sound of her determination made us giddy. Chris swaddled her just like the nurse had taught him, and my baby was warm and silent when he handed her back to me.

I can still feel Tolby’s silk skin over the round rise of her tummy. She is smooth everywhere, especially where the skin stretches over the tiny ball of her heel. Chris is incredulous about her softness—he says it like this: “I can’t believe it.” He utters the words often, with a genuine wonderment that is antithetical to his usual jaded demeanor.

But I can’t see her. Not like she was in those first hours and days. At three months old, she is already so far removed from her original state that I have to look at photographs to remember. Her dark hair is now light; her black eyes, now blue. I’d be so sad if it wasn’t for the memory of her breath, her nascent cry, and the skin that her father just couldn’t believe.

2005-10-27T16:59:00.000-04:00

There's a mountain of laundry--clean and folded, but not yet shelved or closeted--in my bedroom that is threatening to take over the second floor. It has been growing steadily over the past month, and every night my husband stubs his toe on one of the baskets in the darkened room on his way to bed. Since so many other things I have successfully procrastinated up till this point are coming due, I figure it is high time to tackle this project as well. Today I will accomplish many things--some professional, some volunteer and some housewife-ly--but the creation of a thoughtful blog entry will not be one of them.

Hopefully this picture will suffice. A thousand words and all that. It's Tolby on the day she came home from the hospital, looking so incredibly small and frog-like. I love this shot for the way it captures her long, lean novelty. She is almost twice as big now, which blows my mind and makes me weepy.

Not only are there not enough hours in the day, but the ones we do have pass way too fast.

2005-10-26T15:53:00.000-04:00

Today will go down in household infamy as the day of the Great Diaper Debacle. It began so innocently as the playful yap of my daughter lulled me out of sleep circa 6:15 a.m. I heaved myself into the bitter cold of a house hell-bent on conserving its energy and hobbled into the baby's room, hunch backed and dragging one leg behind me. That is me in the morning. I catch no worms.

Anyway, so I get to Tolby's crib, where I spy a wide circle of wetness on the mattress in the rough vicinity of her head. What? Could she have been working on that thumb with such vigor that her baby-drool cast this inordinately wide swath around her? I scratched my head. One would not think so. Perhaps it was pee. But why, then, in the name of all that is holy, would she defile herself in this way and proceed to rotate so that her head is lying in the puddle? The girl cannot even roll over, yet she can spin on her axis like a globe on crack.

I ran my hands over her rear end in the fearless way that only a mother who has been shat upon multiple times can pull off and noticed that it felt dry. That didn't necessarily mean anything, though, since she was wearing approximately ten layers of absorbant fleece. I brought her over to the changing table. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw next.

I unzipped one layer, unsnapped another and removed yet one more on my way to the innermost layer of protection--the Huggie. BUT THE DIAPER WASN'T THERE! My eyes bugged out of my head as her girl parts winked back at me. Now, my first inclination (and this says a lot about me) was to doubt myself. Had I forgotten to put on a diaper when I prepared my darling daughter for bed the night before? Had I fallen so far into the insanity of the fourth trimester that I would never be able to extricate myself? Could my alcohol tolerance have been so depleted by pregnancy that one glass of wine turned me into the poster parent for unfit mothering? Yes. Clearly I suck. There was no other explanation. I stared at her nakedness for awhile before resigning myself to my incompetence. With a sigh, I began to scrub down her nasty ass with a wipey. It wasn't till I pulled off the left leg of her blanket sleeper that I was exonerated. There, in a reeking ball lined with fleece lint, stuck down where Tolby's foot should be, was the true offender--a Huggies diaper that had come undone.

Except for the fact that it was still ungodly early, all was right with the world. I was not negligent. I was not dirty. I apparently have some major issues, as evidenced by the fact that I was so quick to assume that it was my fault in the first place, but at least the truth had restored some of my confidence.

I went back to my bed, shoved a boob in Tolby's face, and drifted to sleep secure in the knowledge that it is Huggies that suck, not I.

2005-10-24T18:37:00.000-04:00

Today was productive and good for the soul. I ate both breakfast and dinner with friends, wrote half a magazine article, and mouse-proofed the kitchen (meaning I did the dishes). I admit washing dishes isn't the most effective extermination method, but it keeps the mice out of the sink. Usually.

The only thing missing from my life right now is money. If my husband and I had money, we'd be able to turn the heat up past 59 degrees. If we had money, I'd be able to take baths whenever I wanted, lounging wet and wanton in total disregard for the price of heating fuel. If we had money, I could eat Chinese take-out just like I used to. If we had money, I'd make like a good New Englander and drink Dunkin Donuts coffee with reckless abandon. If we had money, my husband and I would not fight when I turn up the heat, take baths, order Chinese and drink medium Vanilla Spice iced coffees (skim milk, two sugars) anyway.

On the other hand, we've discovered a $3/bottle wine that is really quite drinkable. It's called Lost Vineyards and as long as you stay away from the Malbec, you can't go wrong.

2005-10-21T14:48:00.000-04:00

"Mom and dad, if one of you doesn't turn the heat on in here, it's going to be POW! Right in the kisser!"

Tolby is three months old today. To exercise her newfound maturity, she slept through the night for the first time. Unfortunately, I could not reap any of the benefits. I was up at 3:30 a.m. anyway--sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy headed and engorged. The illness that started with Tolby spread like wildfire through the house, taking me as its ultimate casualty. My husband got it the worst of all, which was ironic when you consider that he fancies himself the Old Ironisides of viral immunity. His cheeks and ears were flaming as his cells fought the good fight and I administered tea-with-lemon-and-honey just like his mama used to do.

"I'm sad," he said when I came down with the same thing.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you were being so nice and taking care of me. It was schmoopy. Now you're sick and I have to take care of you. And I'm not even better yet!"

All this boo-hooing might make you wonder where my other baby was through all this. Don't worry, she was sleeping. Tolby may not look anything me, but there's one thing that made the jump from my gene pool to hers--the innate and powerful wisdom that sleep will cure what's ailing you.

2005-10-19T00:35:00.000-04:00

Tolby's got a very cute head, but it doesn't smell so great. I hear people rave about that cerebral scent peculiar to infants and I wonder if I'm doing something wrong. Like, is my daughter unclean? So I put her in the tub, scrub Johnson's Baby Bath into her tiny scalp, and press my nose to the fuzziness before the suds are even completely rinsed. Nothing. Sorry, guys, but I'm not feeling it. My daughter's head doesn't even make it onto the Top Ten List of Binky's Aromatic Pleasures.

What does make the list is the smell of Tolby's breath when she was just-born. Holding onto that memory is no mean feat, considering the amount of Morphine coursing through my veins at the time. Forever and ever, the scent of rubbing alcohol will make me think of pure baby girl. I didn't expect her to smell like that when I put my face to hers the first time. I hurt everywhere. The pain, drugs and lost time conspired to take away all of the primal exhilaration that is (supposed to be) childbirth. But then I saw my husband's tears, and I smelled my daughter's breath like muted isoproponol on wet, red lips, and I knew that something monumental was happening. I knew it, and I almost felt it. But mostly I felt bad, my arm limp around the swaddled mass that exuded perfect newness. I couldn't stop shivering. I was glad when my husband took her away so I could lose consciousness again.

I fell into a sleep void of all senses except her breath on my face.

2005-10-18T15:01:00.000-04:00

I love my house but hate its environs. I feel like my life is a Billy Joel song.

"Well we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down...

And it's getting very hard to stay
living here in Allentown"

The only thing missing is a film of gray over everything and the stench of iron ore. You see, I live in one of the poorest towns in Connecticut. Perhaps you will mock me, and say that, if you have to be poor somewhere, it might as well be in Connecticut. Whatever. The point is that it sucks to have child sex offenders on one side of you and the department of public works across the street. The only benefit is that my street is the first to get plowed when it snows (which it does, a lot). But this is what we could afford in a state where any house under 200k is guaranteed to have lead paint, asbestos, a leaky roof and flying squirrels in the attic.

Still I am grateful for what we have, and the independence we are able to maintain. Our circa-1800 Cape Cod dwelling is full of well-maintained charm. The rooms are spacious. The windows are new. Our kitchen ceiling is made of barn doors and the ceiling in the den is tin. We have three fireplaces and a brick oven. Our basement is lined with trenches so the place doesn't turn into a pool when rainwater pours down the stone facade. My husband has a large garage space and there's the potential to create a writer's studio in the barn loft. I truly love the place, and would be happy to employ a moving company to pick up our belongings--house and all--and plop them down on a 10-acre property far away surrounded by nice neighbors and good schools.

Then again, why should we have it all right now? We're young still, with plenty of life chops to earn. The world doesn't owe us a thing. If we want to live in New England, with acreage and access to a premier education for our kids, then we're just going to have to work longer and harder for it. Thanks to our parents, we've got a firm foundation on which to build. We're solid.

That's a lot of be thankful for, when you consider there are people living in a double decker tree house next door.

2005-10-17T13:44:00.000-04:00

This is how Tolby was NOT feeling this weekend.

Tolby got her first cold this weekend. At first I thought it was good, old fashioned gas brought on by the pound of lime flavored tortilla chips I ate, but I came to realize that was only part of it. The rest of her discomfort arrived via the common cold. This is not surprising when you consider the runny-nosed toddlers who regularly get in her face at the various mother's group functions I attend. Other people's children are cute, and they are sweet in their adoration of babies, but it makes me twitch when their faces, hands and bacteria-infested toys are placed anywhere near my daughter. Such is life, though, and to sequester the baby (and therefore myself) inside the house from fall through spring just to avoid germs would drive me far more crazy than a few colds ever could--"a few" being 4 to 6 per year, according to the parenting books I ran to at the first sign of drippy mucous and the accompanying crying spells.

Tolby's grandparents visited yesterday, but she could only be consoled by her father or me (in my capacity as milk factory). It was so sweet to see Chris elicit a smile out of that red-rimmed and stuffed up face. When I asked him to grab a bib for her and to make sure it matched her outfit, he brought down the pink one that read "I Love My Daddy." And she really does. It's amazing to see the love one baby can have for another person with nipples that can't be milked (I have nipples, Greg, could you milk me?--Meet the Parents).

Anyway, she's sleeping now, and slept soundly through most of the night. Hopefully her immune system is kicking into high gear. You never know if those Asian birds will decide to fly West for the winter.

2005-10-12T16:32:00.000-04:00

Daddy's Little Girl

You know, I talk some serious shit about my husband. A lot of that revolves around the fact that I find strife and aggravation a whole lot more entertaining than romantic sap. He knows this about me and, to a certain strange degree, I think he likes it. We don't sugarcoat things. Not only are our drinking glasses half empty, but they're grimy to boot, on account of the fact that I can't wash dishes to save my life. We're straight talkers. We see reality, we report it, and then we tell you why we think it's completely f---ed up. So, I don't think it would really surprise my husband to know that I regale my friends with stories of his...well...peccadillos.

Not that I'm not going to report any of those personality flaws here. I mean, he reads this blog, for Pete's sake. Besides, he's heard it all before. What he hasn't heard with anywhere near as much frequency is how much I love him. This is what we call being "schmoopy," a bastardization of a Seinfeld episode where the term was employed to describe public displays of affection.

Chris is a Jack of All Trades, and a masterful one, at that. In his spare time, he replaces car engines, builds fences (slowly), exterminates rodents, sweeps chimneys, cleans furnaces, repairs busted pipes (that freeze because he keeps the house so damn cold), and does a host of other activities that keep the house running smoothly. He is determined and thorough, making other men seem like empty ball sacs in comparison.

He is sweet. He says he loves me, and he acts on it by always putting me first. He gets really happy when I laugh. He massages my head and back for hours just to get me to stay on the couch with him while he watches WRC Rally recaps on Speed TV. He cried when they wheeled me in from the operating room as he handed me our newborn baby.

I love my husband more than anyone else in this world, bar none. That's probably a dangerous thing for me to admit as a mother, daughter and sister with allegiances to so many more people than just him.

Just him. That's funny. As if he wasn't absolutely everything to me.

2005-10-11T17:55:00.000-04:00

FRIENDS

I don't have any close friends. That is not to say I don't have good friends--what I mean is that none of them live anywhere near me. Ranging from 40 to 1400 miles away, these men and women all have the good sense to steer clear of northeastern Connecticut. While I applaud them for their foresight, I can't help but wish I could have them all in close range like I used to. There was Kelly from the beginning; Jess, Sarah and Mike growing up; Sarah L., Jene and Amy at college; and all the friends I've made through my husband in those scattered, post-college years.

It takes a lot of shared history to cement friendships that can stand the test of time. Histories like this:

Reading Jess's diary without her permission and then telling her she looked like Medusa when she called me on it.

Fighting with Kelly, watching her throw all my clothes out her bedroom window, getting over it, and taking pictures.

Visiting Sarah in beautiful Troy, NY...seriously, I love that place.

Life on freshman hall 3B with Sarah L. (obviously a blog entry--or fifty--unto itself)

Dancing on the bar in NYC with Amy after the State-Troopers-cum-tour-guides dropped us off and before they picked us up again.

Getting kicked out of the bar with Jene on New Year's Eve after I decided that public bathrooms should not fall into the separate-but-equal category.

Challenging Sean to a race in Alex's algae-and-who-knows-what-else-infested pond (naked).

It saddens me to be so removed from the wonder and excitement that is my crazy group of friends. Settling into a new life has its advantages, to be sure, but the down side is that these old friends aren't right there with me. Instead of going down the hall, across town, or a few exits up the Interstate, I must make do with scattered visits that stuff a lifetime of memories into one or two days.

Back home, I think about how I really need to meet new people, and I wonder if there could possibly be anyone in this town as amazing and fun as the friends I've already made.

There probably is. I attract crazies.

2005-10-10T13:53:00.000-04:00

I would like to write about unspeakable things today. Since I am writing and not talking, they will remain unspoken, but at least they'll be out there. I am unleashing these beasts on the assumption that I am not the worst mother in the world, and that there are plenty of other women out there who have felt/acted the same way some time during the tenuous fourth trimester. I would hazard to guess that these realities are not only unspoken, but, like the pain of childbirth, soon forgotten. It does no good to dwell on the inconveniences or the blatantly bad times. If those memories stayed on the front burner, nobody would want to get close enough to the stove to put another bun in the oven. But it's important to know that being a new mother isn't all goo-goo-ga-gas and gummy smiles. In the sisterhood of mothers, anything goes. So, I admit:

--I've let my daughter "cry it out" for as long as an hour at a time when everybody knows that caring mothers aren't supposed to be able to tolerate a baby's cry (and even the cruel & unusual Dr. Ferber doesn't advocate such things before the baby reaches 5 months of age)

--I've accidentally knocked into doorjambs, staircases and various other immobile objects with her head

--I've imbibed three glasses of wine and have gone on to breastfeed the baby

--I let her sit in her swing or lay on her play mat while I surf the Internet

--I don't always eat breakfast. Or lunch. Or sometimes both.

--I've left her with my husband, parents or in-laws on several occasions and had no trouble whatsoever doing it

The perfect mothers out there will probably hate me, but hopefully the rest of you will understand and, maybe, realize that your own moments of imperfect parenting are par for the hazard-filled course.

2005-10-06T14:48:00.000-04:00

My little road warrior

Safely ensconced in her Britax Companion car seat, Tolby loves to travel. The confines of her seat must mimic those last few months in the close quarters of my womb. And, though it's no rival for the uterus, the cushy Companion's side impact protection is state of the art.

Tolby, Roxie and I paint the countryside red in scenic drives that relax and rejuvenate me daily. Living where we do, on a busy street with only a lumber company separating us from the Interstate highway, it's easy to forget just how beautiful my quiet corner of the state is. Hills roll through farms, antique homes and small shops. Fences, which make bad neighbors, are kept politely short in their rocky sprawl. The skyline is a backdrop to so many trees.

Roxie drools on the window as we pass horses and even the odd bison. Tolby sleeps as the sun seeps through the car seat's umbrella and warms her. I sail through curves and bump along dirt roads. This is the undiscovered part of Connecticut, separate from stereotypes of rich suburban New Yorkers.

It's just us and the open road. Till my husband gets the gas bill.

2005-10-05T14:28:00.000-04:00

As New Englanders, we've got one major thing going for us--the changing seasons. I'm not talking about the fact that we have four of them, or saying that they're all wonderful. I'm referring specifically to those few weeks every quarter when we transition from one season to another, when the steepled skies of our region cast a new and hope-filled light over our lives.

We're in one of those periods now, as the air turns cold at night and the leaves go brilliant. We look forward to apples, cider, pumpkins and seeds. We go leaf-peeping if we're not rendered immobile by the price of gas. We watch baseball and football. We fight traffic while high school marching bands hum in the distance. We wear college sweatshirts or quilted flannel as we rake leaves into multicolored piles, gleefully inhaling the chilled detritus. We are northerners, by God, and we think more clearly in the cold.

I think there is something portentous about the beginning of a season, as I contemplate everything that I can accomplish from this fresh jumping-off point: stories I can write, windows I can clean, friends I can call, and ideals I can instill in my tiny daughter. Of course, so little actually gets done amidst the living monotony that carries us through every season, unchanged from the last.

Then suddenly it's December and it is time to bunker down for the most northern of all seasons: winter.

2005-10-04T16:01:00.000-04:00

Nana and granddaughter

Motherhood gives you a new respect for...motherhood. What I mean to say is this: it has been a record 10 weeks since my own mother and I have had one of our typical falling-outs. It is not lost on me that this is roughly the same amount of time that my daughter has been on the earth. From the moment Tolby was born, I began to realize I would never be the perfect mother. In doing so, I truly understood that there is no such thing.

My mother has been trying to forge a stronger bond with me for years. I didn't buy it because I was too busy reliving past wrongs with a martyristic vengeance: all those naps she forced on me as a toddler; the incessant nagging about my messy room; blame transferred to me when she spilled her own milk; the groundings I endured as a teenager; the dinnertime discussions where none of my political beliefs were given any credence whatsover; the financial worries that hung over my head as I wondered if I would be able to attend college; and her disapproval of the man who ultimately became my husband. Now I realize that my childhood wasn't lived in a perfect vacuum, and that life didn't stop for my parents when my head hit the pillow every naptime and night. My mom isn't just a parent, she's a person. That means she's allowed to have faults, peccadillos, quirks and outside interests. These are things I've always accepted and even embraced in my friends but have never been willing to look past in my own mother.

Now I am a mother myself. In a way, I wish I knew how to make my daughter expect less of me.

2005-10-01T17:21:00.000-04:00

Other mothers will tell you that becoming a parent means you will instantaneously develop a fascination with infantile excrement. I know this to be true. It all started the day I brought our baby home from the hospital and sat down to enjoy an impromptu mid-summer barbecue. Trying to keep a satiny blanket from falling off my shoulder and exposing my newly-opened milk factory to our guests, I fed her in what had become an hourly fashion. Conversation and champagne flowed in a scene that seemed, on some levels, unchanged from previous barbecues. One main difference was the fact that even shifting my weight on the wrought iron chaise lounge made my mid-section scream for another Percocet. Then there was the squiggly form underneath the blanket, silent in her sucking until...the explosion. You see, breast-fed babies have explosive poops. I'm not talking fart noises that a grown woman might emit, causing her to blush and giggle; or the male kind that elicits proud grunts and pats on the back from impressed buddies. I am talking bonafide, rip-roaring, projectile poops. When you're lucky, they're confined to the diaper. When you're not, they shoot up the back or out a side pocket. When you're unluckier still, you are in the process of changing the baby, with a used diaper on one side, a clean one on the other, and your wipey-holding hand held up like a bulls-eye at the firing range. Anyway, this first time, I didn't know what babies could do. The hills were alive with the sound of shit. Conversation stopped as our friends looked for the source. Mother's Milk-duds. Breastfed Beefs. I began laughing and couldn't stop. It smelled like breakfast sausage. I laughed some more at everyone else's confusion. "It was her!" I roared, gazing in adoration at my dear, dear daughter as the blanket fell off, revealing one pale boob and a baby who didn't even have the decency to blush.

Both looking delightfully skewed, mother and daughter arrive home from the hospital after a
harrowing c-section.

2005-09-29T12:21:00.000-04:00

My first baby is a two year old American Pit Bull Terrier named Roxie Carol. Though details are sketchy, she seems to have been abandoned by her first family when they moved from their home in Providence, Rhode Island. This compassionate and forward-thinking family chained her to the fence and high-tailed it out of there. Neighbors saw her, but either through negligence or fear that calling the authorities would lead to euthanization (or both), nobody unchained her for two weeks. Finally, when her emaciated body and sad eyes must have been too much for someone to take, she was cut loose and, again, left to fend for herself. It wasn't until she was taken under the wing of a construction worker at a site she frequented upon her release from the fence that things began to improve for Rox. The construction worker knew of a woman named Sue in the Providence area whose calling was to rescue abandoned and abused Pit Bulls, and soon Sue had Roxie set up in a foster home with two other Pit Bulls and two loving foster parents. When her adoption notice was posted on Petfinder.com, I saw the ad and contacted Sue right away. The rest is history.

Roxie loves people with a wild eagerness that defies the fact she was once abandoned to the frigid March winds. Her tail wags ferociously whenever she sees old friends or potential new ones. My husband and I can already see the bond forming between her and our newborn as Roxie lays her head in Tolby's blanketed lap or stands guard next to Tolby's stroller on walks through the park. It breaks my heart to think of Roxie's rocky start, but I am so grateful to have the opportunity to make sure the rest of her life is comfortable--giving her shade when it's hot out, warmth and cuddles when it's cold, and all the dog treats and cheese slices she can handle. We would prefer that she stay out of the garbage cans, though, and ask that she leaves the breast pads and diapers alone :)

2005-09-28T16:05:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of new moms who speak about their baby with an adoration befitting the saints. While I admit that I do think my daughter’s poop doesn’t stink (too bad), I don’t consider her particularly saintly. She’s just a baby. My biggest thrill is watching her gain independence, as low-level as it may be at this juncture. Seeing her lift her head, find her thumb to suck—these little things are overwhelming when I think about how quickly they will be replaced with the next late breaking development.

Part of the whole “fourth trimester” thing is that baby’s aren’t fully ready to be born at the time they actually pop out. For the first three months of their real lives they are still a part of their mother, albeit a part that cries more and has no control over bodily functions. To fully buy into that theory, one would have to put aside any sense of a child’s burgeoning independence, and put one’s own sense of self on the back burner as well. I can see the necessity of the latter part to a degree, but I can’t help but wonder where that leaves the old ME, the one my husband married and agreed to have a child with in the first place. Where am I supposed to draw the line between being a mother and being myself? Perhaps it’s impossible, and counter-productive, to draw any lines through the haze of these new and uncharted post-partum days. Therein lies the difficulty of being a new mom when you also want to be a wife, or a professional, or anything other than a handmaiden to the household’s new ruling class.

Speaking of which, she is beckoning me now :)

2005-09-27T11:30:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my husband and I went to the Big E (or the Eastern States Exposition, otherwise known as the ninth largest fair in the USA, if you please). Because Chris would rather jump off a cliff than indulge in blatant consumerism, it was barely fun. He wasn’t always like this, but now that I am a stay at home mom (from here on referred to as “SAHM” in proper deference to Internet lingo) the lack of a second income has gotten to him. It was a shame, since I had been looking forward to a night out and a day at the fair for weeks. Despite some grumblings and the occasional “So, why do you want to go to this thing again?” he took the day off from work and we made arrangements for my mother to watch our nine-week old. We were off.

In one of the agriculture buildings, we saw a SAHP with approximately 8 out of 10 swollen udders and a pile of piglets basking in the fluorescence. She was beyond ugly, but the piglets were cute. It’s easy to become so enchanted with the wiggly lethargy of a baby piggy that you don’t think about the fact that it will soon grow to resemble Ted Kennedy and grunt similarly, too. I looked down at my own engorged mammaries and thought that I would never feel so connected to that pink, hairy and maternal swine as I did just then. It wasn’t appealing when I thought of it in those terms, so instead I pictured my own smiling baby, soft and cooing, separate from my breasts and years away from any possible runs for senate as a bulbous democrat from Massachusetts.

It was the chicks, however, that won best of show in the cute department. Row upon row of brown eggs incubated atop wire mesh as fine lines developed on the shells, hidden chicks pecking for their lives. The audience of fair-goers, peering in through the glass, were fixated on one particular egg as the crack grew and a few straggly hairs poked out and receded, poked out and receded. This went on for five minutes, then ten, till the girl next to me stated that she had been caught up in this chick’s fight for over a half hour. A woman behind us clucked knowingly and said that most of these little ones die of exhaustion if they are not able to extricate themselves from the albumen within 20 minutes. In the time that this chick worked spasmodically to break through one final piece of eggshell, another egg developed a crack, was pushed open, and heralded the arrival of a newborn chicken, all bedraggled and weak-legged. We were happy for this new little guy, but sad for the other fighter whose birth we were still all caught up in. While I didn’t know if the woman’s ominous foretelling was accurate, it was too depressing to find out. My husband and I traded the shit-filled dome of the agricultural building for the overcast September sky, heading out into rows of vendors hawking wares and fare that we couldn’t nearly afford.

2005-09-23T11:09:00.000-04:00

THE BIRTH STORY--PART II
Upon waking for another round of fetal monitoring around 5 or 6 AM, my husband began reading to me from Eleven On Top, the latest comedy-crime novel by one of my favorite authors. He had purchased the book, per my suggestion, as a little token of his appreciation for the work I’d be doing on our daughter’s inaugural birthday. That day dawned slow and hopeful as the hospital, too, came awake, carrying a chorus of nurse’s voices from the desk across the hall, along with the smell of slightly burnt bread in the toaster.
Exploiting all available forms of media, we took a break from the book to listen to a CD of Lewis Black’s comedy and flip through the television channels as we waited for the arrival of the midwife-on-call. The TV beamed over photos of a second round of bomb attempts, this time undetonated, that were wreaking confusion all over London. All around us, the world turned, but my husband and I watched each other awkwardly in a sterile pink room that stood still.

The fetal monitor, to which they hooked me up once per hour, indicated a low heart rate, but that didn’t come as a surprise. A week earlier, I had been sent by my midwife to the hospital for a non-stress test that showed the same thing. The midwife on duty that day was not concerned, saying that the baby must just have a low baseline by nature. Nobody seemed too concerned now, either; or, if they were, they weren’t letting on. So we waited, and the mood was early-morning quiet and anxiously reserved.

The midwife’s first order of business when she arrived around 8 AM was to approve breakfast. My little feast arrived in the form of gelatinous egg and cheese on a croissant. Chris took out the video camera and recorded for posterity my ruminations on whether or not the greasy slab would actually stay down when the contractions came on. I had every hope for an unmedicated birth, but the reality of the pain and each twisted turn of events was only naïve speculation at that point.

Our “birth plan,” was shot to hell almost the moment the midwife walked in and saw the results of the fetal monitoring for the first time. “This heart rate really has me worried,” she said as she rocked slowly and contemplatively in the wooden chair across from my hospital bed, watching the low line creep across the computer screen. “I think we’re going to have to put you on an IV and give you some oxygen. We’ll see if that helps the baby out. We’re going to have to keep you on the monitor from now on. You’d better put on a hospital gown.”

I looked down at my comfortable black nightgown and mentally crossed “No IV” and “Intermittent fetal monitoring only” off my birth plan. My husband asked if I could just drink a lot of water instead of receiving fluids through the IV, but that, apparently, was not an option. A cumbersome clip was attached to my finger to record my own heart rate as the IV went in and the plastic-y smelling oxygen mask went over my nose and mouth. This, I thought, sucks. The midwife’s internal exam put me at 2 centimeters’ dilation, which is roughly where I had been for the past couple of weeks.

The fluids and oxygen seemed to help as the baby’s heart rate rose from the low hundreds to the 120s. The midwife was encouraged enough to deal another blow to my birth plan. “Since you aren’t really progressing on your own, I think we’ll start you on Pitocin to see if the baby’s heart rate can tolerate contractions,” she said. I sunk deep into the bed to which I was confined by needles, clips and tubes. My husband patted my hand. He knew my first love was the written word so he voiced his sympathy by picking up where he had left off in his reading of Eleven on Top.

The nurse hooked me up to a bag of Pitocin and upped the dosage several times before it had any effect. When the contractions began they came strong and close. The first two were less than five minutes apart. Each contraction was a long tightening with a distinct center that was almost separate from what built up to it and what came after. That center was excruciating but short lived. From the very beginning I wasn’t able to speak through the hard hills indicated on the monitor, cringing at first, then moaning. The contractions felt huge, but the jagged rise and fall looked so small on-screen. I knew it wasn’t going to get better, and I wondered how bad worse would feel.

The tension was in my shoulders and, strangely, in my ankles as I stretched out my legs and flapped my feet up and down as if trying to kick out the strain. I was further aggravated by the finger-clip that kept falling off and the tubes that made any movement more laborious and less rewarding. Despite the impediments, I took the midwife’s advice to shift from one side to the other and then to move to the chair beside the bed. My husband sat in front of me, taking my two hands in his. Occasionally he would massage my head or back, but it was never long till I would grunt my displeasure and he would have to try something different. We were two very talkative people with the sudden inclination to stay silent. The constant beat of the baby’s slow heart filled the room and made my head pound.

I didn’t necessarily want my husband to do or say anything, but I was fierce in my desire to have him there. When he got up to go to the bathroom for what seemed like the millionth time, I was the one who was pissed. “How many freaking times are you going to go to the bathroom?” I demanded. “Would you just stay here?” Though the bathroom was part of the labor room we were confined to, and was only about three feet from my bed, I couldn’t bear to have him behind closed doors. If he had a typically wise-ass response to my irrationality, it was lost in the wave of the next contraction.

2005-09-22T15:38:00.000-04:00

There's no going back as Tolby emerges unscathed from the third trimester and continues on her fabulous journey. I'm just holding on for dear life.

2005-09-22T11:50:00.000-04:00

THE BIRTH STORY

Unbeknownst to me, my water broke on July 20th sometime between lunch and dinner, somewhere between the Connecticut shoreline and my home in the northeast corner. I spent my last full day as a mommy-motel (womb with no view) taking my dog for a field trip. We went to a pond where she could swim and, hopefully, not ingest so much water that she would be peeing all the way home. I was nine days overdue at this point and the next night’s moon was going to be a full one, so there was something definitive in the air as I waited expectantly for my life to change. This breaking of the water was an unnoticeable trickle for awhile, becoming more pronounced but still not tell-tale as the day wore on. Don’t ask me what I thought it was or why I didn’t make the connection, but it wasn’t till ten at night that I mentioned it to my husband. He had more faith than myself that I didn’t just suddenly go incontinent and was relatively certain that my old amniotic dam must certainly have burst.

I phoned the doctor on call at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, who directed me to come in so the staff could assess the situation. Once the water breaks, he said, contractions usually begin within 12-24 hours. At the time, I was still contraction-less and feeling fine. My conscious self was a bit paranoid that maybe I could not properly recognize the difference between lax Kegel muscles and an actual rupture of the amniotic membrane; but, at a subconscious level, I knew very well that the baby train was barreling down the track and I was powerless to stop it.

The half hour ride to the hospital at 2 a.m. was black, peaceful and portentous. I was becoming more aware by the second that I was taking a one-way trip out of my old life. I was attuned to every shadow, every curve of the road, every shard of moonlight that lead the way. The Dixie Chicks sung “Landslide” on the radio and I was overwhelmed.

Then the hospital was on my right, and I looked at the elongated glass façade of the state-of-the-art facility that I had driven by so many times, never knowing when I’d end up inside, but always aware that I would not come out the same. We walked in the emergency entrance as directed by the on-call doctor and signed in. A Women and Infants nurse was dispatched as our escort. On our way to the labor and delivery wing, we wound through an emergency ward of moaners, pukers and passed-out invalids presumably drawn in by the pull of that full moon. “This is much worse than usual,” said the nurse. “I’m glad you’re not having contractions so we can just get through here fast.”

We did, and soon I was in my own room, in my own hospital gown, joined by a nurse, a midnight midwife and a medical intern of the Doogie Howser persuasion. The midwife did an internal, inserting a long cotton-tipped swab that turned blue in indication that my water had truly broken. She reminded me that contractions should begin within 12-24 hours of point of rupture (which I arbitrarily assigned a time of 7 p.m., though I was pretty sure the leak started earlier than that). The midwife who would take charge of my active labor was scheduled to come on at 8 a.m. Her name was Sue and she should not be confused with the midwife I had been seeing faithfully for the past nine months--who, of course, was on vacation. That’s life, I thought, and settled into bed per the nurse’s suggestion that I try to get some sleep. Soon the fat moon was replaced by a fat sun visible through frosted windowpanes.

TO BE CONTINUED...