Sleep

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life...

~ Hamlet, Act III, Scene i

Has it really been almost 4 months since I last posted? Sometimes this blog is just one more way in which I'm not living up to my own mothering expectations. But don't worry -- I'm not thinking about "ending it all" or anything. That's not what the quote is about. (Ok, yes that is what it's about for Hamlet -- just not for me.)

I miss sleep. Real sleep. Sleep for more than 6 hours in a row. Sleep where you go to bed when you are sleepy and wake up when you are not. Without sleep, everything else is harder. I don't even have the mental energy to plan how to get things done, let alone do them. My house is a mess -- actually, we still really haven't finished moving in, let alone renovating it. I'm cranky all the time because I'm exhausted. I have to grit my teeth and clench my hands some days to avoid screaming at D or laying my hands on him. I feel horrible that he sees me mad at all. I have a chronic pain condition (fibromyalgia) that acts up if I don't get restorative sleep for my muscles. I have never been a morning person, anyway. And I have a toddler that wakes up 1 to 2 times a night to nurse, and is often up for the day before 6am. The only reason I'm even functional is that as often as he can, my dear husband gets up with our son and let's me sleep another hour, or even another 20 minutes, before he showers and goes to work. And even then, there are days where I lock myself and the kiddo in the playroom, turn on PBSkids, and doze on the couch for a couple more hours. This makes me feel like a crappy parent, and doesn't really get me that much farther ahead on my sleep. I can relate a little to the "sleep of the dead" sounding appealing. Hamlet suggests the only thing keeping us alive sometimes is the thought that what lies on the other side might be worse. But some days a person thinks, "What could be worse?"

The speech quoted above is probably one of the most-examined passages in english literature, so we certainly don't need to pull it apart here. But it occurs to me that of all the reasons ever given to me as a student as to why Hamlet might say this, no one ever suggested, "He's clearly quite tired at this moment. Maybe he should've just taken a nap." No one ever suggested that rather than this being giant, deep, symbolic rambling, maybe the dude just needed some Nytol. It's not like he has a real job -- all the guy does for the first 3/4 of the play is wander around moping. And given what's going on for him, I bet he's not sleeping well, especially since the ghost of his father won't leave him alone. So, Hamlet, baby, instead of jumping straight to suicide, maybe you should make good use of all this free time you seem to have, take an afternoon siesta, and everything will look better. I would kill for your kind of leisure opportunities. Everyone thinks you're being a bit whiny, so how about some self-care, hmm? Before you do something you regret.

This week, I majorly dropped the ball at work by not showing up at a time I had promised. I simply forgot the appointment altogether. And I'm so embarrassed and ashamed that I'm having miniature panic attacks, because this is the particular thing that cuts me to the core: being not good enough. I'm afraid of the (unlikely) possiblity of being fired, or even of just "disappointing" my superiors. Of being rejected for making a mistake. Because my reputation is all I have, and I just tarnished it. Because my opportunities depend on people liking me. I want so badly to be good at my profession, and to be a good mom. When I have this many balls in the air, it's not even about one of them dropping every once in a while. It's about half of them being on the ground all the time, and just running around throwing them up in the air as fast as I can. And feeling like a liar when I tell people I'm a juggler.

No matter what I do, I'm am constantly not a good enough business person and not a good enough mom, albeit by my own estimation. And it sucks. D went down for a nap not even a hour and a half ago, and he's awake crying for me, and I'm down here crying for myself. He hasn't slept enough, and I need more of a break, so I'm letting him cry, and praying he goes back to sleep, and feeling like a bad mom for letting him cry.

Please don't tell me I'm "not a bad mom". Please don't tell me to call you and ask for help -- it makes me feel like a loser. Please don't tell me to go to bed sooner, or "sleep when the baby sleeps", or to take better care of myself. I don't want to hear it. The last thing I need is advice about how I should be doing things differently, because it just proves I'm not good enough. All I want is more sleep. And like Hamlet, I'm not going to get it, and I'm just going to keep going, because it beats the alternative.

Thanks for listening.

Rash & Sensibility

Dylan has had an ongoing battle with diaper and skin rashes. He has dry, rashy skin on his legs and forearms, and a persistant moisture rash on his butt cheeks. He can't stop scratching it, which of course, makes it worse. His arms actually have scabs on them, which is so disheartening for me as his mother. Poor baby! The diaper rash comes and goes, but almost looks hive-like at times. We're giving him a certain amount of "naked time" to run around after his bath, in the hopes that will help. He loves being naked, but spends the whole time scratching his hips and butt. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

Eczema is the obvious usual suspect. Dylan was wheat and dairy free for several months, but it didn't seem to help enough. I'm still limiting both in his diet, just in case. The naturopathic pediatrician says that sometimes an elimination diet can take 6 months or more to really work, and that I should really go dairy free as well.

Yeah... I don't think that's going to happen.

I mean, I used to be practically vegan, so I know how to do it and everything. And on my own I already tried cutting out dairy for a week, and it didn't make a difference. That's the problem with elimination diets for allergies -- if they don't help, you are supposed to just keep doing them. For eternity, it would seem. And frankly, I'm not up for it. If being a mother has taught me anything, it's that extremism in any form isn't worth the effort, and we'll all live if we compromise. So I get dairy, the baby gets a mini cupcake at his friend's birthday party, and life goes on, with occasional rashiness.

Right now, I'm moisturizing his extremities, and that seems to work a little. The dry, cold air probably isn't helping these days with the dry skin. I got a boric acid salve from a colleague of the naturopath (a ridiculous amount of money for herbs, beeswax, and olive oil), just in case the diaper rash was yeast infected. Like everything else we've tried, it helped a little.

We put him in disposable diapers for 2 weeks. Meh. I guess it helped, but not enough. Now we're back in the cloth prefolds, but I've cut up a bunch of polar fleece scraps I had on hand into "diaper liners", and that (combined with various moisturizers) seems to be helping the most. The fleece keeps the moisture away from his skin, and the softness is a lot more comfortable for him. He likes it better than the plastic diapers. And I feel pretty cool for having made them, even if they ended up involving no sewing whatsoever. Plus: some of them are green, and some of them are rainbow patterned, so it makes diaper changes that much more festive. :)

Maybe all of this will turn out to be a blessing in disguise, however, because I think it is making Dylan more eager to get changed in a timely fashion. This week, he started signing "change" unprompted, which is often followed by pointing to the upstairs and walking in that direction (the changing table is in his room upstairs). He first started doing it with my mom while she was visiting, and now he's doing it with me, too. And everytime, we go and change him, and he's always at least wet. At first I wasn't sure if that's what he actually meant, because sometimes he would do it a few minutes after being changed. But sure enough, he'd need to be changed again. It may be time to introduce a "potty chair" so he can explore that idea. He can walk well enough to use one, and he clearly has an awareness of his elimination happening, and a desire to not sit in it for very long. I believe in kids sticking to their own timelines for learning stuff like potty training, but he's a bright and coordinated kid. I think we'll just bring one into the house and see what he thinks.

Solo Oatmeal

One year.

Please pardon the radio silence for the past 2 1/2 months. In that time, we have bought, begun renovating, and moved into a new house -- our first. Dylan has had plenty of other firsts as well . He has learned to walk, talk, eat solid food with his own hands, and put himself to sleep in his crib. Life has been so jam-packed full of, well, "life", that I haven't had the time or energy to write about it. But today could not go by without recognition. Today, Dylan turns one year old.

When people ask me about Dylan's birth, many times I have stated that is was the worst day of my life. Not because it capped off 4 days and 3 nights of labor, including the 28 hours of REAL labor with no drugs. Not because of the excrutiating pain of transferring to the hospital, or the subsequent confusion when we got there that caused them to pump me full of 3 bags of fluid I couldn't expell, increasing my agony until I was catheterized with no anesthetic because they were afraid my platelets were too low to give me an epidural. Not even because I eventually had to make the heartbreaking decision to have a cesarean.

No, it was the worst day of my life because it was the day that my son was taken away.

He was shown to me for only a minute, held just up to my face, beyond the reach of my arms as I lay splayed open on the operating table. My heart leapt when his face registered hearing my voice for the first time -- he knew who I was! He looked in my eyes with complete amazement and curiosity. There was a flurry of activity, and I understood that Chris was going with him to another room while the midwife stayed with me. And then he was gone. I had just had my baby and he was GONE.

Through the drug-hazed next few hours I would come to understand that Dylan had aspirated meconium and torn holes in his lungs trying to breathe. He would be immediately transferred to another hospital with a NICU that could properly care for him, and that -- thanks to the insistence of my husband -- I would be transferred to the same hospital several hours later. The baby needed to be hooked up to machines to help him breathe and monitor his vital signs, but he was going to be okay. He was finally here, and he was being cared for. We were a family.

The next couple of days, my concerns continued to be softened by heavy narcotics and the joy of my new baby, even if I only got wheeled down to visit him a couple of times a day. By Day 4, I was ready to go home and take my baby with me. But then came Day 5, and then Day 6 ... I couldn't be discharged because I still had a fever, but as long as I was a patient I couldn't visit my baby without a nurse escort, or stay with him in the NICU for more than 2 1/2 hours at a time, because I had to return to my own room for care. I pumped my breasts every 3 hours around the clock and sent it by nurse to the NICU, so that Dylan would have my milk from a bottle instead of formula. I got fluid in my lungs from being in bed so long. Everytime I coughed, the abdominal pain was blinding.

I began to pace my room like a caged animal: visceral, primal. Every cell in my body was crying out that I NEEDED TO BE WITH MY CHILD. Instinct doesn't understand arguments about "the baby needs skilled nursing", or "you just had major abdominal surgery and will faint if you try to walk down the hall". All instinct understands is "My baby is not with me. I am not with my baby. I will kill you if you don't let me go to him. NOW."

They called in a psych consult.

*Apparently*, the nurses thought I might have a touch of the ol' "post-partum depression". Um, YEAH. The social worker they sent up was nice but awkward, though admittedly respectful when I explained that I am a therapist and did, indeed, know about PPD, and that there was nothing wrong with me that wouldn't be fixed when Dylan and I were both home where we belonged. But talking to her did help, if only because somebody was finally listening to me and validating my feelings instead of trying to placate me.

On the morning of Day 8, I finally got my reprieve: I was well enough to go home. I had no plans of actually going home, of course. To me, this meant I could finally spend all day, everyday in the NICU until Dylan was released. Before I could give Chris the good news, he told me better news. Dylan would be home by the end of the week. I cried, shaking, I was so happy. And 3 days later, the day after Thanksgiving, Dylan was at home where he belonged. We were finally at the place I had originally envisioned when I planned my home birth months before. We were at home, all three of us together, as a family.

Looking back on it now, I could write a book about those 15 days. About the respectful distance you keep from other parents in the NICU, secretly thanking God your baby's hospitalization will likely be measured in days, not months. About trying not to cry when people unwittingly leave you phone messages about "how happy you must be now that the baby's here!" About how I still sometimes pine for the chocolate milkshakes you get in hospital room service (I ate them at every meal). I hope I never have a period of time that intense ever again in my life. And caring people ask me now if I'm starting to heal from the experience. And I am. It's no longer an open wound. It's more like a scar, not unlike the one on my abdomen, that still hurts when it gets poked.

And if Dylan's birth was the worst day of my life, it was also the most amazing. It is the pivot point in my personal history, which could rightly be labeled as "B.D." (Before Dylan) and "A.D." (After Dylan). I don't know what the "best" day of my life has been, because everyday since he was born -- including every one in the hospital --has been more vibrant than my life "B.D." Even the days of no sleep, the days of insistent and interminable shrieking, the days of back pain and tendonitis...

When people ask us if having a baby has made us "happier", Chris and I are never quite sure how to answer. Our life is just "deeper" now. The ups and downs continue, but our life has more meaning. It may be cliche, but it's like we weren't alive in the same way before. We look at him, and like all loving parents, we are undone by what we have created. He is wonderful. His birth may not have been the best day of my life, but he is the best thing I have ever done.

Looking at Dylan now, I am so amazed and so overwhelmed with thanks for the robust, exhuberant child he has become. Today I watched him run around the children's museum, exploring every part of every exhibit, more interested in befriending the "big kids" playing beside him than in the museum itself. Completely healthy -- not so much as a cold or sniffle ever in his life thus far -- he is apparently unphased by what we euphemistically refer to often as his "rough start". In another time in history, he might not be here. *I* might not be here. But instead we are a family, living in our first house, living the daily, un-extraordinary drama of washing dishes and washing diapers and waking up at 5 after going to bed by 9. And it's wonderful. Because we're at home. Together. As a family.

Daddy and I love you, Dylan. You are our Dylan, and we love you all the time, everyday, no matter what. Happy First Birthday.

Flour

So it has come to this. We have acheived full mischief-making status. I had no idea this was going on less than 2 feet behind me. Until I turned around. I'm glad I had the presence of mind to grab the camera before I cleaned him up.

I had been feeling so proud of myself, too. He is really drawn to our small, kitchen island-style cart, and I had found him, on more than one previous occasion, sucking on a dirty potato or onion that was stored on the bottom shelf. So I removed the produce and replaced it with all of our tupperware. How clever I am! I congratulated myself. He can play with all the tupperware and keep himself entertained while I'm in the kitchen. And I removed the glass jars containing my sugar and brown sugar from the above shelf. The only thing left on the shelf was all my different flours, but they were in screw-top plastic containers. Except for one bag. *sigh*

The 3 "C"s: Cruisin', Crawlin', and Crashin'

You've got to admire his form. Why crawl hand over hand when you can just launch yourself forward repeatedly? Today is definitely the best crawling I've yet seen. And as you can see, he still doesn't like it.

He'd rather be walking. He's cruising all over now. The other day I watched him cruise right across the closed front door, hands flat against it, holding himself up like a mime trapped in an invisible box. But he took a nasty spill today, where he banged his head against a desktop, and then banged it harder on the crossbeam on the way down. I collapsed in tears when I saw the actual DENT in his forehead. It's going to turn into a nice purple welt. If you look carefully in the video, you might even be able to see it there, over his left brow. He doesn't seem any worse for wear, though. As I type this, he's cruisin' around the living room, happily shrieking his head off. *sigh*

Swimming!

Dylan, age 6 months, at his first swim class:

Of course, he is much bigger now, not to mention an even better swimmer. Dylan favors a scissor-kick style of swimming. The little frog! I love that in this video you can see him really respond to Kira (behind the camera) when she talks to him. This was taken less than 2 months ago, and he already is so much more interactive in general, it's amazing.

We were really excited to do mama/baby swim classes for Dylan. Chris especially liked the idea of Dylan getting used to the water early, so that he wouldn't be afraid when he got older. Dylan really enjoys the classes, and has already shown improvement. I think that's partly due to his developmental growth, but he also seems to be learning some specific skills as the classes go on.

Here are some more photos from the first few weeks of class:


And one more video:

Look at that little kicker! Go Dylan, Go!