bullets-- because I can no longer think in larger chunks of focused prose

• Today is my last day teaching this semester. Usually about this time of year I'm feeling relieved. This time I dn't feel much of anything. Now that D. is here, so much less of my energy goes into thinking about work (or doing work).
• Saturday we're taking D. to my parents' for a few days, and then it's off to Central American Country where we'll spend Christmas and the new year with P.'s family. I'm excited about getting down there, but ashamed at how bad my Spanish is.
• I spent much of the weekend making cookies and putting together a Christmas care package for my brother, who has been deployed in African country since October. I was about to make a third batch when P. asked me if maybe I was overdoing it a bit. It was a lot of cookies-- but I figure he'll be able to share them this way. And really, I just don't know what else to do. I hate that he's over there and not at home with his wife and beautiful little girl.
• After several days of agonizing over whether or not I'd be offending or hurting the feelings of P., who is an atheist, and whose toleration of all things Christmas seems to have lessened some now that D. is in the picture, I finally put up our tree. The tipping point? P. brought home an ornament for me from the ubiquitous Dunkin Donuts. D. was fascinated for quite a while, touching the branches, playing with (and gumming) the ornaments, blinking at the lights.
  
• I guess that fourth point really merits an entire post of its own-- htat is, something on the subject of how to negotiate the holidays when the two people involved come from different traditions. I guess the truth of the matter is I'm still trying to think that through.
• My birth grandmother had open heart surgery on Friday. I tried calling my birthmom's place to find out how she's doing, but I haven't been able to get any information yet. Still worried.
• Very ashamed at how poorly I write. Consider destroying the blog.
  

Zombie

Mannnnnnnnnnnnn, I'm tired.

and my baby's pajamas are suddenly too small.

I haven't finished preparing for the class I need to teach tomorrow, and so will have to finish pulling it together tomorrow morning when the baby's mostly awake. I just can't think straight anymore. I'm not sure it's going to get better, either.

Okosama

Last night, after a particularly hard day, P. and I were sitting in the living room when I had to get up to go to the bathroom. I planned to try to put the sleeping D. in his crib on my way (he'll usually sleep there for a few hours, but always ends up in our bed eventually), but P. stopped me and wanted to take D. with him instead.

When I came back, a noticeably calmer and blissed-out P. said to me, "isn't it amazing how just holding D. like this can make you forget about all the stress?"

It is amazing. As exhausting as this full time motherhood can sometimes be, the most peaceful moments of my day are spent with D. There's nothing like holding a sleeping baby. By being with us (and not lying elsewhere on his own), D. also seems to be more at peace. Usually when I put him down, he squirms quite a lot, twisting his body from side-to-side, flailing his limbs. When we pick him up to sit with him, or bring him into bed with us, he almost immediately calms down, and snuggles in closer. When he wakes, up, he is a sunflower reaching for the light: he turns his little face from side to side, gradually tilting his head further and further back, his eyes still shut tight. When he opens them, he'll look at us seriously for a moment, and then he smiles a smile that lights up the entire room.

In her novel, The Character of Rain, Amelie Northomb describes the Japanese belief that until he or she reaches the age of three, a child is a little god, an "okosama." It's not hard to see where this idea comes from. Moments like these (watching D. asleep on my lap) can feel intensely spiritual. There's surely a piece of the divine right here.

Happy Halloween

He's too small to go trick-or-treating, but we couldn't resist getting him a costume. This past weekend we took D. to a Halloween party at the hospital where he was born. It was a reunion of sorts-- for other preemies and the nurses that cared for them.

Those first ten days that D. was at the hospital were some of the most stressful of my life; but they were also some of the most special. We spent so much time in the special care nursery that P. and I got to know the nurses on every shift. It felt good to see them again under less stressful circumstances.

He's so alive! now, and well! So it's a very happy Halloween around here, indeed.

Sick

Yesterday we took D. in to the pediatrician for his 4 month shots. Ouch. I nearly cried when the nurse jabbed the needle into his little thigh, and then did it again! and again!! That sadly hasn't been the last or worst of it. Last night D. woke up and started screaming. Usually I'm able to calm him down pretty quickly, but this went on for at least 20 minutes. It sounded like no cry I'd ever heard before, and I can only assume the kid was in some kind of pain. He finally fell asleep nursing and did okay through the night... but this morning he had a fever, and when I tried to give him some tylenol in the eyedropper, he emptied the contents of his stomach all over his changing table. Minutes later, he threw up again on our bed. And then he had another screaming fit. And then he threw up yet again (all over me) a few hours later. Poor baby.


I cancelled my class so I could stay home and console him (and not subject him to the ride to campus where he usually hangs out with dad in his office for an hour while I teach). He has been in my arms or on my lap all morning. And every once in a while, D. will open his eyes, look up at me, and smile.

I think we'll survive this.

staying put

So it looked like we were really going to leave this place... I was ready to do it. But then P. started getting anxious about it. We talked some more about it. If we were to leave this place for Rural College, we'd risk not being able to get back here. So we're staying put. We've essentially chosen location over career, and that feels okay too.

When I was applying to graduate school years ago, one of my professors advised that I apply to places I'd really like to live. At the time I thought her advice was very romantic but perhaps a little impractical. Now, those words seem very wise to me. I love living here. Since the baby HATES riding the car (he cries his poor heart out every time he has to ride around in it), we don't get out much, but when we do, it's heavenly. I've always been drawn to water, and right now I'm actually living just minutes away from the ocean. So what if the jobs we're able to find aren't the ideal ones? There's so much more to our lives than that.

and just because, here's another picture of D., whose good moods (thank God) are getting more and more frequent.

decisions

I think I've just about talked P. into accepting the job at Elite but Rural College, which means we may be on the move again. It's taken quite a bit of effort on my part to convince him to take the job, but after a week of thinking things through, I think it's the right thing to do. It means putting my academic career on hold, but I feel great about not needing to send D. off to daycare before he can even tell us what's happening there. Elite Rural College has offered me part-time work, so I can still keep one foot in the academy door. And if I'm somehow able to publish more in the next few years, maybe P. and I will be competetive enough in two years time to go on the market again and find two tenure track jobs that are closer together.

When I was able to shrug off all the internal and external pressures I felt about my needing to have a successful career, the whole problem became so much clearer. Because the truth of the matter is that D. has become my world and my life's meaning, and I'm not ready to give THAT up for a career right now.

where we are

There's so much on my mind right now, and it's so hard to think it through. I'm torn, and to mix metaphors, feel like I'm being pulled in at least three different directions.

I am teaching one class this semester at the school where P. has a tenure track job, and it's a bit harder on me emotionally than I thought it would be. I gave up a tenure track job of my own, and an offer of an even better one, so that P. could take one of his offers, and so that I'd have time to spend at home taking care of the baby. I am still thankful for the time with D., but I was very naive in thinking I'd be able to get much of anything done while taking care of an infant besides taking care of the infant. I spend most of my time feeding, changing, bouncing, bathing, soothing, or playing with the baby. Very rarely will he nap anywhere except on top of me (he's on me now), and that makes it difficult to accomplish anything. The cleaning duties I do happen mostly after P. gets home and hold the baby for a while.

Prepping for class is a bit more difficult with the baby around, but so far it's been manageable (I've taught the class before at my old job). But working on that article that I really should be sending out to to a journal? That's been pretty much impossible. I need some space to spread out, and some time in which I'm not likely to get interrupted by D. wailing.

When we first arrived in New City, P. and I went to a picnic his new department was holding for its faculty-- both full timers and part-time adjunct people like me. I was encouraged; how cool to be at a place where adjuncts are really considered to be part of the faculty? But the English department doesn't operate in the same way, it seems. I have yet to meet one other person (even an adjunct) in the department. I don't know what my department chair looks like, and I don't even know where the copy machine is, and my chair failed to answer an email I sent weeks ago asking about office/desk space. I come in three days a week, baby in tow, to teach my class (P. takes D. for the hour), and that's the only time I'm even on campus. This is somewhat my own fault. If I want to meet people, I'll need to make more of an effort to get myself to campus sometime when P. can watch Bino. It means stepping out of my comfort zone, for sure.

This lack of connection is pretty unnerving. I don't quite feel real, and I certainly don't get the sense that my work is valued by anyone. P. comes home talking about the goings-on in his department, about committee work and campus meetings, and I listen hungrily. I miss those things.

And so, the question at hand is what to do about all of this? There are three jobs in my area opening up within an hour of New City. I could apply for them, though the market in English is so tight I don't feel confident about my chances of getting any of them. I could also start looking for non-academic work in nearby Big City, a possibility that sometimes feels exciting, other times feels disappointing, and all times, feels terrifying.

But there's another new wrinkle.

Out of the blue, P. got a call from Very Elite but Rurally Located College. He was a finalist for a job there last year, but didn't get an offer. Seems they have a new opening for next year. No offer has been made yet, but it seems a very real possibility. It's a super opportunity for P., and I think he'd be really happy working there. The salary there will go a lot further than it does here, where the cost of living is extremely high. There are some good educational perks for D., too. It makes some sense to go there. The problem is that there aren't any jobs in my area anywhere remotely close to this place, and if I look for a non-academic job, I'm not sure what there is I can do in this new place. Surely I could find something, right? But it will be harder, and I'm worried it'll be harder to find something I might actually enjoy doing. I have tremendous respect (now more than ever) for stay-at-home mothers, but I feel I'm going to need something else in my life, too.

This puts us right back to where we were last year, trying to solve the impossible 2-body problem once again. I am spent. I don't want P. to lose a great opportunity because of me, and I want fo rus to be able to provide D. with the best life possible. What am I going to do, though? I'm lost. I want to be able to spend as much time with D. as I can, and to prolong taking him to daycare as long as possible; but I want to be able to do other things, too. I want for P. to have a happy and fulfilling professional life, but I'd kinda like one for myself, too. I'd like for us to be better off financially, but I wish we could stay in this part of the country, too. The bottom line is that I can't have it all, and that these tough decisions are just part of what it means to be a grown up.

Since starting this post, I've changed 2 diapers, given one feeding, and done several bouncing/soothing sessions with D. He's crying for more. Thanks for listening.

a fungus among us!

D. is at a point in his development where he appears to have multiple chins, but no neck. In fact, there is a neck there, but you'll very rarely see it, as D. has to be relaxed and leaning his head back just so for you to catch a glimpse. If you try to bend his head back to see it at other times, you're likely to provoke fussiness or at least a lot of wiggling.

A few weeks ago, I noticed some whitish buildup in the folds of D.'s neck that smelled a bit like sour milk. I figured it was, in fact, milk that had built up there from an earlier feeding with the bottle (when D. was actually still taking the bottle, those feeding almost always had spillage). Last week D. took his milk only from me, directly, and yet there was still whitish gunk building up even after I'd wash his neck/wipe it off as best as I could. It seems (says the pediatrician) that D. has a fungus as a result of moisture being trapped in the folds of his neck. We have some cream to use that will hopefully clear it up, but I'm also wondering how I can prevent this from happening again? There are so many neckfolds! It's hard to monitor them all when D. is so uncooperative. Am I just a bad mother?

In other news, in the past couple days, D. has really started looking at me, fixing his eyes on mine for minutes at a time. When I talk to him while he's doing this, he'll start smiling. It may be the sweetest thing I've ever seen.

restless

D. has been fussy much of the day, poor guy. He's finally sleeping, sweetly. I'm absolutely exhausted, and yet I can't seem to fall asleep myself. What's wrong with me?

Yesterday I took D. out to our first moms/kids group outing at this beautiful park on the ocean. We were late on account of my having to try to get D. calm enough to get into his carseat before leaving the house, then needing to change his diaper in the backseat of the car before leaving (and do requisite soothing). He amazingly slept all the way there, but started crying about 5 minutes after I got him up to the playground meeting place in his buggy. I fed him three times while there, and changed three diapers. It took me an hour to get from the playground back to the car since I had to stop 3 times on the way back-- once to feed him again, twice to change diapers. Then I fed him again in the backseat of the car before we left. And again, thankfully, he slept in the car on the way home... which made all that work worth it.

The moms seem nice. There are about three in particular I'd really love to get to know better. No real connections made yet, though. I need to open up more, and be patient. And I need to get some sleep.

raspberry

D. has been laying in my lap and somehow rolled into me enough so that his mouth was touching my belly. He blew a raspberry on it. I can't stop giggling.

on our own

P. left today to go off and defend his dissertation back in Old City. That means D. and I are on our own until next Saturday. Yowza. The past few nights D. has been an absolute terror, crying or screaming for two or three hours with little reprieve. P. is very good at getting him to stop, at least temporarily, by doing these deep knee bend/bouncy kind of things. I'm very inept at them. Sometimes I can get D. to go down and fall asleep by nursing him in bed, but sometimes D. just gets so worked up there's nothing I can do. So I'm pretty nervous about how these next several nights are going to go.

It seems to me that D. spends a lot of time sleeping during the day for a newborn (but how am I supposed to know what's normal?), and maybe that accounts for him being so wakeful at night? I've tried to spend some more time engaging him today while he's awake. I gave him a bath, tried to get him to play on his playgym (he especially likes the mirror), took him out for a ride in the car and a walk by the shore... but when he's fast asleep (like he is again now) I have a hard time finding the heart to wake him...

Maybe the kid will take pity on me tonight? I'm doing the best I can.

fussy bino

Cute as D. is, and as much love as I have for him, I'm starting to feel pretty anxious about being left alone with him-- for an entire week(!) starting this Saturday. He's been fussy-- a lot-- and it can be pretty overwhelming, particularly when I'm running on not too much sleep as it is. He seems to calm down a bit with bouncing. P. is very good at it, but it's quite hard on the arms, and I can't keep it up for very long. There have been moments that my trying to calm him has brought me to tears, and I'm so grateful that P. has been here to provide some relief. Not sure how things are going to go once he's gone... it's not like I've met anyone else in this area I can rely on.

I did find a "mom's meetup group" online the other day, and I'm hoping to go to my first event next week when P. is away. But even taking D. in the car by myself is a bit stressful. Thus far, there have always been three of us when D. is riding along, and one of us always sits in the back seat with D. in order to give a pacifier or bottle in case D. starts screaming. I'm very shy around people I don't know (heck, I'm shy around people I do know, too), but I think that hanging out with some other moms could do wonders for my spirits.

How can anyone do this parenting thing alone?

all I want for Christmas:

detachable boobs. Actually, just one would do. Lately Bino has taken to nursing himself to sleep quite a bit. He hangs on and keeps sucking in his sleep (or so it seems). After 4o minutes or so of this, I will try to (carefully!) detach him... but sometimes, like this morning, he starts to wake up shortly after. The other factor here is that D. often has a definite preference for breast to bottle, so I can't always give a bottle of expressed milk to P. and go take my shower (or whatever). If I could detach just one breast, though...

Man, I'm tired.

world of pajama

Some few nights ago I was lying in bed feeding D. and contemplating his pajamas. They have a picture of a cat and, behind it, an outline of another cat. In my sleepy stupor, P. and I had a conversation that went something like

z: Is this supposed to be two different cats? or is it two pictures of the same cat?

p: It's two pictures of the same cat.

z: But in the world of the pajama, is there one "real" cat and one drawing of that same cat? or is this one cat having an out of body experience?

I can't remember exactly how the rest of the conversation went, but the phrase "in the world of the pajama" had us snickering for the rest of it. Who talks like this? And does it sound just as silly when I use similar phrases in class?

dream

There's a recurring motif in my dream world. It's happened twice now. In the dream I discover I have a second Bino-- it's always a twin sibling of D. In the first dream (a week or more ago now?) I felt very guilty and anxious for having suddenly made this discovery. I hadn't been paying much attention to D's sibling, and I had a hard time even remembering his name-- if I had named him at all. The brother was smaller that D., and thin. I hadn't remembered to nurse him or do much else with him either. I was torn between how to spend my time between nurturing D. and nurturing this new brother, too. In the second dream, the twin bino is even smaller-- about the size of one of my fingers! Same theme. I wake up still anxious.

I can't quite figure out what's going on here. The tininess of the new sibling seems related to all the worries we had about D. at the beginning, though, when he wasn't eating well and had to get his food down a tube. Some of those worries definitely followed us home. In my dream, I'm doing fine with D. (most of the time-- when he's crying and crying I feel like a terrible mother). So why do I seem so afraid of neglecting him?

sweet, sweet bino

D. is 6 weeks old yesterday. He seems to be struggling some, having these fits of inconsolable crying, especially at night. We've discovered that music (he likes Bach and Vivaldi, especially) helps some... 2 nights ago P. danced around the dining room holding D. up near the stereo speakers, and D. quieted. His eyes opened wide, his head tilted towards the music, he was happy. We're making time for music and dancing more often during the day now. But music and dancing and bouncing won't always work. Last night Bino kept crying and crying and crying and crying until we were at wit's end. It's exhausting. During the night and into the early morning, he's really congested. His nose is stuffy and he makes all sorts of snorting and squeaking noises when he tries to nurse. Poor thing. I wish we could do something for him.

We've been having a lot of sweet moments, too, though, and D. is actually awake for more of them. It's lovely watching him take in things going on around him-- like the music I mentioned earlier. Friday night we went out together and found live music playing down by the harbor. We went back on Saturday for this maritime festival. I carried D. around in a sling, and he slept much of the time and was content for most of the rest. He seemed to respond to the music then, too, but a few times he was interested in taking a peak at the world outside the sling, too.

Everybody says your life will never be the same once you have a child. Mine bears very little resemblance to what came before. I look back over what I've written here, on this blog, and so little of it seems to fit anymore. More specifically, while before it seems so much of my identity came from my work as a professor, now that part of my life seems to matter very little. All my worries about my teaching & students seem pretty inconsequential now. Petty, even. My days revolve entirely around Bino (a better pseudonym than D., and an actual nickname-- short for Bambino-- what we called him when he was still in utero). Sometimes it's a bit exhausting. At times I wish I had more time to read/write blogs or go for a walk or cook or do something that doesn't require me having him attached to me in some way. But it occurs to me that when he gets older I won't be allowed this constant physical contact with him. For now, I want to be near him, just about every minute possible. He must be seven pounds, now. He's growing and changing so quickly. I'm so glad I'll be around for much of it. I'm teaching just one class at the college in town. I can't imagine what my life would be like this fall if I'd accepted the full time offer I had elsewhere and P. had followed me instead...

We gave Bino a bath the other day-- and he loved it! He nearly fell alseep in the water and was all smiley when I pulled him out and put him in his towel...

He makes the cutest faces when he's just woken up (he also moves his arms and legs around adoringly) and when he's just gotten done nursing. He's more alert now than ever, and sometimes his eyes are wide and just looking, looking, looking. His cry sounds like "Naaaaaaaaaaaaa Nnnnaaaaaaaaaaa Nnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" and sometimes "Nnwaaaaaaaa". Though something P. read says that babies can't suck and grasp in coordination, Bino routinely holds his own pacifier in his mouth. He doesn't mind poopy diapers, but hates wet ones. He likes to sleep on us, in his car seat & in our bed, and generally wakes up quickly if we put him somewhere else for a nap. He gets the hiccups at least twice a day and waits patiently for them to go away, even though his whole body is moving with them.

He's hungry all the time. Like now.

part ii

They kept D. in the ICU for about a week. Happily, P. and I were able to spend nights at the hospital-- gratis-- in this special room reserved for mothers who want to keep nursing their babies through the night. After 2 days of sleeping with D. in the room with me, it was hard to be apart from him even as much as we were. We spent days going to visit or nurse D. every few hours, and nights were much the same for me. We got to know the nurses on all three shifts. I've never had as much respect for the nursing profession (and I thought it was a noble vocation before!) as I do now. These women-- a few in particular-- were so patient, knowledgable, kind... they are the ones (not the doctors) who really seemed to pull D. through all of this. We had a few scary moments-- D. was put on a feeding tube for a little while, after still having erratic drops in his blood sugar-- & every time another baby in the ICU went home and D. didn't, I felt a little bit jealous. I didn't learn the names of any of the other parents we ran into, though there was communion and some conversation with them, but I remember the names of their children still.

D. turns a month old tomorrow. He's doing well. He's gaining weight and inches-- he was six and a half pounds at today's doctor's appointment. He's a lot more alert than he used to be. I'm not getting a lot of sleep yet, and I'm getting very little done during the daytime yet, either. Occasionally we can get D. to nap in his playpen or (even more rarely) in his crib. Most of the time he wants to be held. There are few things sweeter than watching him veg out and drift off to sleep in my arms. And there's this thing he does with his head after nursing-- he leans it way back and looks up at me... adorable.

Today we finally got D. to go into his sling and we even walked around outside with him inside it. Hopefully that will make it easier fo rme to get something more done in the house during the day. I've also just found a way to type and check blogs with the computer on the coffee table and D. on my lap in this chair... so maybe i'll be able to check in here more often, too.

There's no easy way to close this. But I can't resist posting another picture. I love the way he naps-- arms and legs sprawled out like this.

how it began

Before another week passes, I need to write this down. There are so many things I want to remember about how D. came to us.

We'd only been in New city for 3 or 4 days-- and the movers had only brought our belongings 2 days before-- when my water broke in the middle of the night. I woke up, gushing, nudged P. awake, & called my mom as P. and I tried to figure out what to do. Back in Old city, I'd actually bothered to pack an overnight bag for the hospital just in case, but at the last minute, P. and I decided to pack most of what was in the bag in something else and use the bag for things we needed on the car trip-- we figured the baby wouldn't arrive soon enough to worry about it. The day before D. came, I'd thought about packing that bag again, but didn't get around to it. I jumped in the shower and P. tried to pack, hastily. When I got out of the shower and got dressed, I started leaking again, and wanted to change clothes, but P. kept rushing me, trying to get met to the hospital. We wound up taking an old towel in the car fo rme to sit on, and I kept leaking on the way to the hospital.

We showed up at the emergency room and someone wheeled me through this maze of hospital corridors to a different part of the hospital where babies are born. They confirmed my water had broken, got me settled into a bed, and called my OB, who I hadn't even met yet (I had scheduled an appointment with her for 2 days later). An incredibly nice and soothing nurse named Julie took down all my information and stayed with me while we waited. An on-call doctor came to do an ultra-sound and confirm that D. was still breech. Some minutes after he left, D.'s heart rate went way down, and suddenly my room was flooded with nurses-- at least half a dozen. I was given oxygen, told first to lie on my side, and then to get on my hands and knees. The nurses handled everything very calmly, but it was a chaotic and confusing few minutes. I couldn't see P., I didn't know what was happening... the heart rate went back to normal again, my ob arrived, and I was prepped almost immediately for surgery. Everything seemed to go incredibly fast.

In the operating room, a kind Indian woman anesthesiologist gave me a spinal. My nurse, Julie, was there, and told me to arch my back and lean into her, to hold her scrubs if I wanted to. I can't explain how nurtured I felt by this woman... I was nervous about the needle going in, but didn't even feel it. I started going numb almost immediately. I couldn't even move myself onto the table. The screen went up, P. was brought in to sit near my head, and D. came out of me, apparently urinating, minutes later. I cried.

They took D. away pretty quickly, and P. wound up going with him, and letting me get finished being sewn up and taken to recovery on my own. Eventually I was taken back to my room and D. was brought into me. I'm not sure I can recall getting to hold him for the first time, but I know that the first few days together with him were entirely bliss-filled. I stayed in bed mostly and held and nursed D. while P. spent some time back at the apartment trying to finish unpacking or hiding boxes to get ready for my parents' arrival. The morphine and other pain killers made all that time blur together. I felt like I was inside a dream.

There will have to be a second chapter here, about D.'s time in the special care nursery, but that will have to wait for a while as D. is rousing himself for what's likely to be a midafternoon snack.