One Year Ago and Today

One Year Ago -- A birth story
I wasn't expecting to go into labor for at least another two weeks.  I had my routine weekly OB appointment on December 17th and had absolutely no progress. I was horribly uncomfortable and hoped she would tell me something was changing.  The baby was still high up and cozy.  My doctor asked me about induction and I told her I didn't want to be induced without medical reason.  She was fine with it, and told me she'd let me go until 42 weeks, which would have put me around January 12th.  My original due date was December 29th, so I was at 38 weeks.  Despite my discomfort, I was going to let the baby come when he was ready, especially since he was predicted to be quite small.

I got home from the doctor and had a breakdown.  My hormones were going wild.  Every little thing made me cry.  A calender, a baby on a TV show, even my cats.  I went through work on December 18th with tears in my eyes.  My heartburn flared.  I was on an emotional roller coaster, and it was really the only time in my pregnancy that I was in that spot.  I was always so calm and cool, even when I was working 20 hours of overtime a week for months straight.

We made plans for the weekend.  The 20th was my husband's birthday.  We bought movie tickets and set a time to go to the art museum.  We bought groceries.  We sat on the couch and watched a movie and then went to bed.

I had woken up several times each night ever since I was 6 weeks along, so waking up in the middle of the night on the 19th was nothing unusual.  I went to the bathroom, and I wiped away a glob of goo and a little blood, again nothing too unusual, since it happened every time I was checked by the doctor.  I woke up a final time at 6:30am and when I stood up after using the toilet, a large amount of liquid ran down my leg.  I thought I might have urinated on myself, a common pregnancy problem, but when I shifted, it happened again and I noticed that there was a little bit of pink in the liquid.

I woke up my husband and he groggily rolled out of bed after I told him I thought my water had broken.  He has always been a really difficult person to wake up, so I think it took him a good 10 minutes to figure out what I was telling him.  Since we weren't expecting labor for a couple more weeks, we didn't even have our bags packed.  We got our things together and called the doctor.  My doctor wasn't on call on Saturdays, so we ended up talking to another in her practice.

We headed to the hospital at 9:30.  I was still only having light cramping instead of noticeable contractions, but since my water had broken and I had tested positive for Group B Strep, I was told to come in so I could start antibiotics.  The hospital we had chosen was a 20 minute drive and it was snowing lightly.  My husband made me sit on towels over a garbage bag because I was making a mess.

I had pre-registered at the hospital and we had called ahead, so they knew I was coming.  We walked to our L&D room and the nurse tested and confirmed that what I was leaking was amniotic fluid.  It took two nurses and an anesthesiologist to get the hep-lock in my arm.  I have terrible veins for sticking.  They are tough, roll, and have many valves that tend to blow.  It took seven sticks to get the hep-lock in so I could get started on antibiotics.  I ended up getting fluids at some point later because I ended up vomiting throughout my labor and couldn't even keep down ice chips.

I had a check and was only at 2cm and still wasn't having significant contractions.  At around 11am, I had my first real contraction, a ten-minute long tetanic nightmare.  I held onto a steady tone, a D-flat, and breathed through the contraction, but the monitor showed that my baby's heart rate had dropped as a result of the extreme contraction.  It didn't go back up when the contraction ended.  I got onto my hands and knees and the nurse gave me an oxygen mask and the change in position made his heart rate go back up to normal.

The doctor came in and told me that if it happened again and a position change didn't help, they'd be taking me for a Cesarean.  As it was, I wouldn't be able to use the jacuzzi tub because he wanted me hooked up to the external monitor.  I was still only 2cm dilated so the tetanic did nothing for progression.  The doctor wanted to give me pitocin, but I told him no.  I told him I wanted some time to try to progress on my own and only use interventions if absolutely necessary.

I spent the next hour and a half bouncing on a birthing ball while playing Diablo 2 on my laptop and watching Kung Fu Panda.  My method worked and I progressed to 4cm two hours after the pitocin threat.  I didn't get on the bed until transition.  I spent the next 9 hours or so on the ball, standing and leaning over, walking, rocking in a chair, and in the shower when they let me go off the monitor for a while.  My baby's heart rate stayed up.  I rocked through the contractions.  Even when I was just standing, I was dancing, swaying side to side.  We listened to music, played games, and watched movies for distraction.  A friend came by to bring my husband dinner around 5, but other than that, it was just him, me, and the nurses.  The anesthesiologist came by once to tell me that he could give me a high epidural despite my spina bifida, but I basically told him off.  There was no way I was going to let anyone stick anything in my spine.  I was handling the pain really well and I didn't need anyone trying to tell me that I should just take the drugs.

I'm not sure when I hit transition, somewhere around 9 or 9:30pm.  At that point, I couldn't stand up anymore because the pain was constant.  I kept humming my D-flat while lying on my side, rocking front to back.  At 10:20 I was ready to push.  The nurse told us the baby had a lot of dark hair.  I never felt the crowning or the "ring of fire".  I pushed with each contraction, which greatly relieved the pain.

At 10:49pm on December 19, 2009, my son Rowan was born and was placed on my chest while my husband cut the cord and I was stitched up.  He had a full head of black hair and dark blue-indigo eyes.  He was a hairy little guy.  He even had fine, dark hair on his forehead, ears, back, and arms.  His hairline and eyebrows were connected.  He was a tiny guy, weighing in at 6lbs 5oz and was 18.5 inches long.  He had quite a conehead, which resolved over the next 12 hours.  He had an incredible set of lungs, which he still likes to demonstrate.  He was extremely alert, active, and rooting like mad.  We had a little trouble initiating nursing because his mouth was tiny, but he got it after a while.  He kept looking at me with those big bright eyes.  He was absolutely beautiful.

I had such an endorphin rush that I couldn't sleep for 12 hours after birth.  I was out of bed 30 minutes after being stitched up and was able to take a shower an hour later when my husband went with Rowan for his first bath.  I turned the bathroom into a crime scene, but getting on my feet so quickly was definitely a major perk of natural birth.  Rowan was brought back to me in the room we'd be staying in and we snuggled up for some more latching practice while my husband slept.  I think he was far more tired than I was.

My regular doctor came to visit the next morning.  She kept calling me a "rock star" because of the way I handled my labor.  I was always calm and in control.  She was surprised that I was out of bed and moving around when she came in.  I guess they don't get many unmedicated births, even though it was a low-intervention hospital with the lowest Cesarean rate in the area.   He ended up going to the nursery for a couple of hours because he had trouble maintaining his body temperature even with skin-to-skin contact, but he was completely healthy.  He was better able to maintain his body temperature and we were home 36 hours after he was born and on to our great adventure.

Today I am nursing a toddler
The in-between matters, but this isn't about the year, it is about a year ago and today, so that is what I will observe.

My little boy's first birthday is today.  Instead of a helpless itty bitty baby, I now have an independent-minded tiny tot who asks for milk, and eagerly crawls to me to get it.  Our cuddle time is better than ever, since milk time is the only time he wants to sit still.  Rowan is busy exploring the world, but always comes crawling back to me when he needs a little milk.  He isn't walking yet, but he makes up for that by being a very early talker.  He started asking for "nana" at 8 months, and now he asks for "meh".  His first three words were "mama", "dada", and "kitty", and now he has added book baby, yeah, hi, up, crackers, done, more, stinky, poopy, Loki, Rhappy (sometimes called Pawpaw by him... her full name is Rhapsody), play, my, and done.  He is extremely animated and only falls asleep on accident.  He is observant and doesn't want to miss anything.  I get comments from strangers all the time on how smart they think he looks.  There just seems to be some light in those gray-brown eyes (used to be blue, but not anymore).

We're halfway to my vague goal of two years for breastfeeding.  The dynamic of our nursing sessions has changed considerably, even just in the last month.  He's faster now because he wants to get back to playing.  It is a huge change from the 45 minute marathons of even 3 months ago.  Our positioning has become acrobatic as he first learned to hold his head up, then sit, then crawl, and now stand.  The teeth weren't even a challenge after the initial problems I had with severe engorgement that lasted for over two weeks and Reynaud's phenomenon vasospasms.  He's got 8 teeth now and the points of a couple molars are starting to make an appearance.  He only nips when he's falling asleep, and only once did he nip hard enough to draw blood.

We've dealt with RSV/bronchiolitis (and a 4 day hospitalization), coxsackievirus, and gastroenteritis, but Rowan made it through his first year without an ear infection, diaper rash, or food allergy.  The last one was a huge concern for us, since DH and I both have food allergies, mine multiple and severe.  Rowan is vegan and loves to eat beans, tofu, leafy greens, tempeh, and mushrooms.  He chowed down on a pineapple cupcake at his birthday party, and followed it up with a few minutes of mommy milk before he went back to being overwhelmed by wrapping paper, sparkles, bows, and too many toys.

All the nursing pain I went through at the beginning was worth it just for this moment.  Rowan sprawled on my lap, napping off his party, a drop of milk still on his chin.  He is worth the hours and hours I spent pumping at work before I left my job.  He is healthy and intelligent and fantastic.  We are heading into unknown territory with toddler nursing, but I decided a while ago that I absolutely do not care if the ignorant criticize my parenting style.  I look down on my lap and see not an infant, but a little boy who still has a lot of growing to do, a little boy whose future is still forming, and I am only writing the prologue. 

Synesthesia 2

 Just a little bit more on my auditory-tactile synesthesia.  It came up on a message board recently, so I'm mostly just doing a copy-paste and adding some more detail.

I can't remember not feeling sound, and I used to think it was normal until I was in high school and wrote some descriptive poetry that the rest of the class thought was absolutely bizarre.  I had childhood epilepsy, which my neurologists think probably triggered the sensory crossing.  There are some sounds I avoid because they are physically painful for me.  The absolute worst are waterfalls.  We went to Niagra when I was a kid and it was like a full-body migraine.  There are some people I avoid talking to because their voices are like scratches, slaps, or cheesegraters destroying my face.  Words like 'reticulate' and 'purse' are an insult to my nerves.  

Synesthesia does have its upsides.  Some sounds are silky, cottony, or warm.  I have near-perfect pitch because I can feel it when an instrument or voice is out of tune.  I'm a classical percussionist.  Playing my instruments can be a touchless massage.  Piano and harp illicit a similar response  Cellos and basses are wet, like swimming, but violins itch if they start to go up into a more strident range. Plucked strings are a totally different feeling, a tickling tap that travels around my body. Steel guitars are spiders walking over my arms and legs.  Trumpets and piccolos/flutes can leave me with spinal headaches.  I would rather be in the band then listen to one.  Most recorded music doesn't bother me.  Rock concerts are quite a sensory overload, but in a good way.  I usually come away from them refreshed and euphoric.

I have played clarinet on and off since I was seven because we had one in the house.  The sound is hollow, a breath against my skin. Saxophones have a somewhat wet quality, which varies depending on the register. It's actually a tingly, refreshing feeling, like putting a touch of Vick's Vapor Rub on my chest and standing by a humidifier. The lower the range, the warmer it feels, and when it gets toward the soprano sax range, it gets icy, like the feeling you get when you suck on a mint and then take a swig of cold water.  Trombones, baritones, and tubas are a thud in my chest.  Cymbals are a full-body vibration, not much different from sitting by the engine on a small plane.  Oboes and Bassoons are like being breathed on and pinched at the same time.

Festivus preparations underway

I'm not a Christmas person.  I'm minimalist when I can help it and have a general disgust for commercialism.  Christmas is unavoidable from before Halloween until after New Years and it annoys me.  I've noticed so many people giving gifts as a substitute for showing love, and most people end up with a lot of stuff every year that they enjoy very briefly and then forget about.  I'd much rather get one small and inexpensive gift that actually means something to me than a whole assortment of expensive presents in throwaway wrappings and sticky bows.

My husband and I decided a while ago that we'd rather celebrate Festivus and the Solstice along side his and our son's December birthdays.  I don't like my son being called a "Christmas Baby".  I call him our "Birthday Baby" since we had our first prenatal appointment and ultrasound a day after my birthday and he was born an hour before his father's birthday.  This year, he can participate in feats of strength with the cats, something he has spent the last month practicing for.  I'm sure he'll air plenty of grievances in the confines of his diaper after we gorge ourselves on comfort food.  We are thirteen days from crossing over from "baby" to "toddler" and he seems to be on a mission to prove himself a big boy.  I'm a little sad that my itty bitty is growing up so fast.  He even got his first haircut yesterday so he no longer looks like the love-child of MacGyver and Bon Jovi.  He is big now and ready for some Festivus miracles.  My bet is this years big miracle will be him repeating choice words I yelled in the car earlier today.   Cat wrestling will commence after dinner on December 23rd.

We're having another vegan potluck, so I felt obligated to get a little tree.  I'm just going to put it on the table.  It's a living dwarf tree in a pot, so we'll plant it outside if it survives the cats this winter.  They ate the Norfolk pine my MIL gave us years ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if they nosh on this one as well.  I am fighting with bronchitis right now, and I really need to learn that I shouldn't go shopping when I'm sick.  The following pictures are my Yule tree...

A Thanksgiving Present

I'm not certain how much milk is in this standard-sized cooler, but I think it was around 400oz.  I just sent it off yesterday on a journey north.  It is being transported by a recipient's family member to a little girl just a month older than my son.  She is a tiny little thing who was adopted as a newborn and can't tolerate formula.  Thanks to her mother inducing lactation and a lot of donor milk, she is gaining weight and doing far better than she did during the times she ended up on formula upon running out of donor milk.

This was my 9th donation.  I've donated approximately 3700oz to 7 babies in 6 families since March.  In addition to my own little guy, I've fed three adopted babies, one baby with a low-supply mama, one baby whose mom was unresponsive to the pump, and a pair of twins who needed a little extra for daycare.  I am nearing the end of my pumping era after slowly decreasing sessions since I stopped working.  I only do it once a day now and don't get as much as I used to.  My son doesn't need what I pump except for a very occasional bottle, so almost all of it gets donated.  I still have about 150oz in the freezer, so I'll be donating at least once more. 

My son will be a year old in a couple of weeks.  He is talking but not walking.  We're not weaning anytime soon because it is important to me to nurse him until around two years for more reasons than are necessary to list on this post.  He has no food allergies so far even though he is predisposed to them.  My little vegan baby is full of energy.  He is petite like me, and will likely be a small adult, but he is very healthy and loves to eat everything from cranberries to grapefruit to kale.  His favorite is tempeh.  My milk is still about 90% of his diet, since he is a light eater and solids are just for fun and practice at this point.  We did baby-led weaning, so he has been on finger foods only for months.

He is growing up and getting into trouble every thirty seconds.  I do miss the 6-month old pre-mobile phase where he was interactive but not getting into everything, but he is so joyful now and so curious.  We are moving on to the next phase of his life and this phase is cycling into memory.  It feels like he'll be graduating from high school in a week.  I am so happy to be his mother.  I'm happy that my journey through the first year of motherhood also helped other families.  I give what I have where it is needed and try to live without regret.

Winter descends

The leaves have fallen, the flowers are dead.  The air is beginning to chill.  There is a month left until the solstice, but it is already dark by 5pm and the season has switched from transcendental color to monochrome grey.

I miss the pines.  I miss snow draped over cedars.  I miss the sandy crunch of fluffy snow under skis.  I used to ski for hours through the northern forests, but there are no great forests here.  There are no cedars, no pines which were not planted by humans.  This place is grey and domesticated.  Its winters are slush and fluctuating temperatures, naked deciduous trees, gloom, dormant hibernating death.

The grey buries memories of blinding snow.  It destroys hope with an unrelenting, undulating despair.  The winters here are two months under desolate skies.  There are nothing but death and waiting seeds upon the plains.  The leaves drop, the wind blows, and the winter falls heavy with silent gloom and dormancy.

Northern Michigan winters are a far different beast.  They are not cheery, but they are bright, and the whiteness of the earth competes with a blue-grey sky and the snow triumphs.  Even at midnight, the bitter snow is bright.  It reflects the light of the moon, and absent the moon, it mirrors the stars and occasionally the aurora instead.  You can find your way through the forest by the light of the snow and still view the spectacular glory of the Milky Way above.  I used to go stargazing on the most frigid winter nights.  The sky was always clearest then.  The moon would hang resolute above the pines and the aurora would streak kaleidoscopic across the northern sky.  Twigs snapped, owls hooted, and the symphony of life accompanied the brilliant cosmos in an ambient duet.

There is no music in the winter dark in Kansas.  Life hibernates and the few sounds are urban and incidental.  It is dark so early, but the darkness is not illuminated by snow and galaxies.  Instead, city lights muffle the sky, and only the brightest stars and planets are ever visible.  The visible Milky Way is a myth, and any moving lights are planes and helicopters instead of potential UFOs.  Imagination is lost on urbanization.  The beauty of the universe is packaged and boxed and shown only in school texts and television documentaries.

It is not much improved outside of the city.  There are no lights and the stars return, but the plains are desolate and dead.  Trees are scarce, and they are skeletons instead of majestic evergreens.  They die every fall and are reborn in the spring.  Everything does here.  It snows, but not enough, and the snow is gone quickly.  Ice is far more common, and every snowfall is guaranteed to blanket a substantial layer of ice.  The naked trees are weighed down with it and often break.  Broken, tired skeletons, longing for a spring not soon to arrive.  Everything is wet and dirty, tired and depressed.  Snow becomes slush once grounded, slush becomes ice, ice melts to become mud.

I miss the water.  I miss spontaneous hockey games and skiing through the forest at night to find the perfect stargazing spot.  I miss the thick blankets of fluffy snow that last for months at a time.  I cannot go back to those memories.  There is nothing for me in Michigan anymore.  Some family to visit, but there is no future there, only past.  My present is here in Kansas, but my future is to be determined.  For now, I'm trapped between desolate winters and scorching summers.  The unending flatness is my home now and for the foreseeable future.  I gave up beauty for stability.  I do not regret it, but sometimes I miss it terribly.  Sometimes I dream of snow-painted evergreen bows but wake up to bare branches perched on a lonely stretch of ashen earth.  The northern forests call to me, but I can only listen and not respond.  The calls will remain unheeded for now as I prepare myself for another Kansas winter.

Farewell, Bennu

I kill electronic devices.  No computer, phone, or watch battery has ever stood a long-term chance against my bad machine mojo.  My computers are named so they can be identified on our home server, and not just because I'm odd.

Bennu was declared terminal and Fawkes fell into a coma on the same day.  I haven't had such bad luck since the great Mac and SEM implosion of 2004.  Fawkes (my desktop) refused to boot up after a restart and became nothing but a blinking cursor.  My husband the computer guru still hasn't fixed it, so I've been without a desktop for a month.

Poor Bennu decided to hang on just a little bit longer.  My son has an electronics fetish and yanked on the power cord a few too many times.  My little first generation netbook just gave up on me.  Its power connection had loose and the battery would not charge properly.  It died a long, drawn out, agonizing death.  The last weeks with Bennu were tedious.  I never knew when I would lose power and be shut off suddenly.  I could not work on my book or anything else of importance.  The end had come for poor Bennu.  It finally died completely and I was stuck using my husband's laptop to check email and not much else.

Bennu was a good little netbook.  On its tiny keyboard, I wrote three and a half books.  I used it to play Diablo 2 while I was in labor.  Its screen was tiny and its SD card only 8Gb, but I had become attached to my useful little device.  It is sitting on my desk right now, a corpse of a machine, awaiting removal of its useful files to be transplanted into a living device.

Adarna arrived yesterday and I am still getting used to the larger screen and keyboard.  It's a pretty little thing, and I think it cost me half of what I paid for Bennu.  The keys are noisy and it has an actual hard drive so it runs a bit hot.  Of course, we immediately wiped Windows XP from it's existence and installed Ubuntu.  I'm unapologetic when I say that Microsoft is just not right for our family.  We run Window's partitions on the two desktops, but those OS's are only there in case of a dire gaming emergency.

Adarna still needs essential files pulled from the server before I can really get to work on it.  My goal is to keep my new shiny toy as far from possible from my destructo-son.  His birthday is coming up in a month.  I should find him a little baby laptop he can pound on and not destroy.  Now, I just need to be given a little time to write.   I can't do it while he's awake, which unfortunately is also the only time I'm awake.  The child only naps on accident.  Words are stewing in my mind and I want them out, but it will take a daddy-and-baby-go-out night for me to type out anything.

Stream of Consciousness

Can't sleep.

Too much brain working, too many thoughts.  About what?  Nothing, as far as I can glean.  I'm foggy and wander from one thing to the next.  There is a pile of freshly washed diapers on the floor.  The baby happily pulled them off the couch and I haven't gotten around to taking them upstairs yet.  The cat is sitting on one of them.  Strange little cat, waiting for me to go to bed.  She never sleeps anywhere at night besides on my head.  Has for years.  Furry, purring, obnoxious, kneading away at my pillow.

My family is sleeping.  I left them upstairs playing Angry Birds on the smartphone.  They are dreaming while I am downstairs absently staring and channeling words through my tired fingers.  Is it late?  Not so bad, just before midnight, but such a long day it feels later.  Fasting and blood drawn before I could finally eat, and I've been hungry ever since.  I've been awake too long, and hungry for longer.  I've never been as hungry has I have the last ten months, but still slowly the weight falls off and now my pants are falling off with it.  I need to find my belts again, or at least my smaller pants.

There are toys everywhere down here in the basement.  Drums and gear bugs and plushies and things that make noise.  I am surrounded by drummers and my son is already showing aptitude for the musical arts.  He beats drums, and taps at the xylophone with purpose.  Perhaps it is just me.  We took video of him last night, and he played something beautiful.  Sleepy Time for Solo Vibraphone, composed by a ten-and-a-half month old boy, perceived a genius by his tired mother.  Beautiful and haunting, you cannot be out of tune when you play the vibes and that is part of the reason I love mallet percussion.

I used to be a decent mallet player, but my myoclonus mostly stripped me of that talent.  I twitch too much to be consistent.  I still play, but as a perpetual amateur.  I left the semi-professional group this season.  Too much work and stress and all I had to practice on at home was a vibraphone.  The spacing is different on the others.  I can't play piano anymore either.  My fingers are slow and I can't straighten all of them out.  Damned nerves, damaged by years of self-abuse and a long-misdiagnosed mitochondrial defect.

I haven't slept much lately.  I'm not as tired as I should be, but I am weary.  I can't think straight.  I try to nap, but just lay blankly and enjoy the warmth of my little boy cuddled next to me.  I don't think he is the reason I can't sleep.  He's big now, and I'm not afraid of crushing him anymore.  My husband still is afraid.  I hear noises and they keep me awake.  I solve puzzles and math problems in my head.  I've always done that.  I've always swung between narcolepsy and insomnia.  I exist on my own clock.  I can dream without sleeping and sleep without dreaming because my REM stage is abnormal.  I can dream while wide awake and aware that I am dreaming.  I can sleep while conversing and remember everything I said.

My cat is looking at me with tired eyes.  She taps me with a paw, begging me to stop typing and go to sleep.  I want to, I really do, but my brain has not shut down yet.  I sit, accomplishing nothing, nothing at all.  I breathe, I blink, I type but my motions are meaningless and automatic.  I want to sleep, I want to dream, but mostly I want to wake up feeling refreshed after a good night.  That last dream has never happened to me before, and likely never will.