Monday, November 20, 2006
I try to preserve my professional self
(And the owner's on the condo board, and the dog [who is admittedly very cute] is a birthday gift for her painfully adolescent son. Sigh.)
On Wednesday, I stupidly agreed to teach an SAT class on Thursday night. Some other instructor couldn't make it, and I want to keep my hand in so that I'll still have at least one of my jobs when I'm ready to go back to work. I envisioned going to the exercise class in the afternoon, and then teaching in the evening. Later that night I remembered that Thursday was the beginning of the TESL Ontario conference, and that the plenary speaker was Jeremy Harmer, one of the most well-known and respected names in the field. He wrote the book used in my TESL training course, and I'd been planning to go to the conference since... well, since last year's conference. (I have to go to these to maintain my professional certification, and anyway, it's nice to find out about what's going on in ESL-land.)
The realization that I'd overscheduled myself was enough to turn me into a sobbing wreck. It's too early. I can't have both a profession and a child. I'm a bad mother because I'm selfish enough to want stuff outside the realm of the baby when she's only six weeks old. Lizard Brain went into overdrive and I cried for more than an hour. Mr. K loved on me and told me to go to the conference and skip the class, but I couldn't back out: I'd committed, and like I said, I want to keep this job. Finally I worked out a plan: I'd go to the plenary speech on Thursday, register for the sessions on Saturday when Mr. K could look after the baby, and go ahead and teach Thursday night's class. Six teenage boys, a soccer team from north of the city. Bozhe moi.
On Thursday morning, though, the tide changed. At 9:30 the courier arrived with the package of materials that I was to teach from. Shortly thereafter, I got onto the streetcar with Clara and rode over to the hotel where the conference was taking place, arriving ten minutes before the speech began. I ran into some of my former colleagues, who were thrilled to meet the baby (and happy to see me, too). Clara was quiet as a mouse for the whole speech, which was more than worthwhile. I then had lunch with two of my friends, and went home for a few hours to prepare for the class.
Soon Clara and I were on the streetcar again and then the subway, heading up to the end of the line, where Mr. K met us and drove us up to York University (site of the class), stopping for subs on the way. (I had forgotten to factor my dinner into the day's plans.) The boys were 15 minutes late, so I had a chance to eat and feed the baby before they arrived.
I was on. I got through the assigned material at a good pace, adding stuff I think important at the appropriate places, and managed to keep them as focussed as anyone can when high school boys are punchy, pubescent, and tired. Even as recently as last year the prospect of teaching a class like this would have alarmed me, but you know what? After an unmedicated labour and childbirth, dealing with a few adolescent boys for three hours is nothing.
Mr. K brought the baby back at break time so that I could feed her, and then after the class was over he drove me home. Bless him. I married the right guy. Having to have a support staff in order to teach means that it's too tough for me to go back to it regularly at this point, but I am so glad I got the chance to do it for an evening. I remembered that I really am good at what I do, and realized that the confidence that's come to me from giving birth the way I did is going to affect the rest of my life. Can't ask for more than that.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Farewell to the midwives
Today we said our goodbyes to the wonderful midwives -- their scope of practice is only to the sixth week of the baby's life. You can see that Clara likes staring at Cynthia, whose face is the first one she ever saw.
I cried on the way out of the clinic, from sadness that they won't be looking after us anymore, and from relief that we've gotten this far and have a healthy, happy baby.
I guess the changes aren't going to get any slower.
Every day a developmental milestone
Today I put her on this mat on her belly, and she promptly rolled over onto her back. The intarweb sites about baby development say that this doesn't happen until the third month for advanced babies, or the end of the fourth month for average babies. She's at least a month and a half ahead of schedule. We're doomed.
Anniversary
Pictured is Ralph (also not his real name); he is, as you can probably tell, not so comfortable with tiny babies.
Clara is eating well and filling diapers like there's no tomorrow. Her weight gain is still slow but she's growing like a weed: she's almost three inches taller than she was when she was born six weeks ago. (Six weeks ago!)
Postings are infrequent because it's hard to type with one hand. (The other hand is usually holding Clara to my breast.) But things are good. The blessed thistle and fenugreek are keeping my milk supply up, and the occasional glass of stout helps. I don't have body odor anymore; instead I smell of fenugreek. It's weird.
More pictures soon.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Welcome to Titland
She is a great baby, minimally fussy. When she does fuss, she wants to be fed or changed or picked up and held, or she wants a finger in her mouth. (We tried a pacifier. "PIH!" said Clara as she spat it out. Oh well.) She has been to two Movies for Mommies so far: last week's The Prestige and this week's Little Miss Sunshine. It has been many, many years since I saw two movies in movie theatres in such quick succession. Clara was wonderful: fed or slept straight through, both times. Bless her. Today I was practically giddy at having gotten out of the house with her all on my own. I'm mobile again! Hooray! Calloo callay!
Martha likes to sit on my lap pressed up against Clara as I feed her. Charlotte has finally, four weeks later, started to sleep on our bed again. She still doesn't like the baby, but she's seeming a little less freaked by the idea.
Mr. K has Clara in the sling right now, and she is sucking his finger for dear life. So I need to get some dinner together for him. Two nights ago I made a massive pad Thai (I make fabulous pad Thai, if I do say so myself), and last night we collaborated on a baked pasta dish with cheeses and tomato sauce and ricotta and the rest of the tofu left over from my mother's tofu cheese pie from the weekend. (My mother is a good cook. I wish she'd felt more like cooking while she was here. My dad, bless him, did the dishes several times and cleaned the bathrooms. Hooray for Dad.)
This time is hard, but also very rewarding. My love for Clara is sneaking up on me. I think that if it had hit all at once, my heart might have exploded. Sweet, sweet baby.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Life with baby
I wonder about such things.
Clara is a great baby. She gets fussy sometimes, as babies do, but she doesn't cry much at all. One or the other of us is holding her just about all the time, except at night, when she sleeps in her co-sleeper. Mr. K has been reading about all the great benefits of having the baby sleep in the parents' bed, but when she does, I don't sleep. If I don't sleep, I don't make milk, and baby doesn't get enough to eat. (Plus I get incredibly cranky during the day.) So into the co-sleeper she goes.
We went to the Canadian Car Seat Installation Centre yesterday and let them do their thing. Clara is still very small and looks pretty ridiculous in the seat, but it's nice to know that she's protected when we're riding around. I sit in the back with her and Mr. K chauffeurs us as we go out to buy things such as nursing clothes for me, baby clothes for her, and small pieces of furniture from IKEA, such as a little table and chairs for the nursery (the chairs to be assembled later, when she is old enough to sit in them) and a pair of lamps for the living room. I'm finding it pretty necessary to get out of the house every day. Yesterday we discovered the baby care room at IKEA: wow. Nice armchairs, changing tables, free diapers (which we didn't need, but still), a nursing pillow, stuffed animals lurking here and there, dim lighting, and a lock on the door. We took Clara in there to change and feed her both before and after we went shopping; this meant that we could spend more time out of the house without worrying that she wasn't eating enough. (I'm still working on mastering the art of breastfeeding in public.) Why can't more places have rooms like that?
Clara wanted to eat ALL DAY yesterday. Every time I took her off the breast she wanted back on. While I was getting ready for bed, Mr. K gave her an ounce of expressed breast milk through the feeding tube off his finger, and she finished the whole ounce in four minutes. (She's been known to take as long as 25 to polish off the same amount.) There must be a growth spurt coming.
My parents arrive tomorrow, and Mr. K goes back to work on Tuesday. Life goes on whether you want it to or not.
Update: I see I'm getting a few hits from an amusingly satirical blog. The more I learn about breastfeeding, the better an idea it seems: savings of thousands of dollars, no supporting incredibly irresponsible and soulless corporations, non-stinky diapers, reduced chance of ovarian and breast cancer and osteoporosis for me, a better immune system for Clara, less stuff to haul around, no worries about formula recalls, and lots of quality time bonding with my baby. Yeah, it's being tough to get it started, but I know it's worth it.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Progress
- Clara is feeding much better and is back up to her birth weight as of yesterday. Hooray. We went to the breastfeeding clinic again a couple of days ago to try to get her latch fixed, because my nipples were on fire. There was another couple there describing their experience having a baby at Mount Sinai Hospital. The doctors refused to give the baby to the mother for the first hour (critical bonding time) because they said her (the mother's) blood pressure was too low. Then the night nurse, when the baby wouldn't feed, laid a huge guilt trip on them about how the baby was STARVING and was going to get JAUNDICE and needed formula RIGHT THEN. What a great idea: actively discourage a new mother from trying to breastfeed. Grr. Hearing this made me nearly incandescent with anger. (Everything is very, very close to the surface right now.) If I hadn't thought before that we'd made the right decision to have midwives... This poor couple. We talked to them and tried to reassure them that yes, it's hard in the first week(s), but if they really want to do it they'll be able to feed their baby the way they want to. It was weird feeling like the grizzled veterans already.
- The family politics, never enjoyable even at the best of times, are taking their toll and, I suspect, are only going to get worse. Hint to everyone: now is not the time for deep discussions with me and it is not the time to grouse to anyone about my requests for only positive energy in the house. Sigh.
- I need more sleep.
- I don't want Mr. K to go back to work next week, even if my parents are going to be here. He's my rock.
- For a while this afternoon, both Clara and Martha were asleep on my lap, baby's back smooshed up against the cat's. Hooray redux. (Now if only Charlotte would start sleeping at the foot of the bed again instead of spending all her time downstairs.)
- Right now my life doesn't seem to have changed all that much from the way it was in the last month of my pregnancy: I'm home most of the time, I screw around on the Internet too much, I watch some TV, and it's hard to move around. The biggest difference is that I'm a lot more sleep-deprived, and there's someone small around who likes to munch on my tits all the time. She's not very interactive yet and even though I love her, I don't feel as engaged with her as part of me thinks I should be by now. But evidently this is normal too: falling completely in love with the baby takes time. Hard to believe she's two weeks old already.
- I think part of me is still grieving the loss of the first baby two years ago. When I lost the pregnancy, we wrapped the pee test stick up with an amethyst (would've been a February baby) and a cotton cloth I'd knitted, inside a piece of paper that Mr. K had made. Something from his hands and something from mine. We buried the little package on A. Island, where his parents have a bit of property. (Our beloved James is buried there too.) Last night it occurred to me to put Clara's footprints on another piece of Mr. K's handmade paper; I mentioned the idea to him this morning. He said that he'd thrown the paper out during the Great Cleaning before the baby came. I went to pieces and cried for much of the day. Tonight, thank heaven, he found five pieces of it. Oddly enough, I don't feel that much better yet. Tomorrow we're going to hunt down some water-soluble ink.
- Clara is stirring. Titmunching time again, I guess.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Martha seems to have come to terms with the recent addition
Clara had a big day: her grandparents, Aunt Sheila, and great-aunt Mary came to visit. Grandma made lunch (her famous mac and cheese). The visit was nice and it was good to see everyone, but it seemed more exhausting for me and Mr. K than it did for Clara: it's still hard having extra people around, even if they're helping.
Clara has had lots of visitors so far, and more are on the way. Aunt Dori and her sweetie Melody blew through town on Monday night, leaving Dori's and my parents to be the last close family to meet her. They're arriving on the 21st and staying until the 31st. I'm a bit worried about this. It will of course be great to see them, but as I said, even the mere presence of extra people in the house right now is draining, and we're going to have to be crystal clear that there is to be no negative energy brought in. Certain topics (like family politics) stay outside, for example. If it gets to be too much, I think we'll gently suggest that my parents visit Mr. K's for a day or three.
In other news, Clara is feeding much, much better. She's not getting all her nutrition on the breast, but she's figured out how to nurse and will do it much of the time. (If only my nipples weren't so damn sore.) She had her first bath last night, going into the tub with me, and got through it by breastfeeding for dear life. Sweet little girl.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Feeding Clara; how to visit new parents; where we've found help so far
After we got home, Clara decided once again: screw you, nipple; I want the finger with the tube. So back she went to the clinic today.
Today's nurse watched what I was doing and said yes, you're doing everything exactly right; it's just going to take time for her to figure it out. This evening, Clara will go to the nipple without screaming, she'll get a great latch, and then she'll just hang out without sucking. This is a step forward, so we're happy about it. Each small step brings us closer to an easily fed baby. So many parents have told us that the first few weeks of breastfeeding their kids were sheer hell, but that they got through the rough patch, and the patience required to get things started is more than worthwhile.
How to visit new parents. Mr. K's sister Sheila is the queen of visiting new parents. She's in the first days of her student teaching, so she has plenty to keep her busy in her own life. But on Monday she brought us a full homecooked Thanksgiving dinner, spent some time visiting with the baby, and then washed all of our dishes. Washing the dishes seems like a trivial thing, but for new parents who are overwhelmed by everything, it's a wonderful gift. Every time she comes by she brings food and support and a sensitive ear, helping so much to keep a positive energy in the house even when she herself is exhausted. She puts her own stuff aside and just pitches in to help. Yay Sheila.
Moxie describes the first days at home with baby beautifully:
Amen, sister.[You] soon realize that you'll be attempting to nurse, changing diapers, attempting to nurse, changing diapers, attempting to nurse, changing diapers on a nonstop loop, spelled only by going to the bathroom to change your pad and looking at your partner saying "We have a baby!" with a mixture of wonder and fear.
When you're doing nothing but lactating and changing diapers, your partner has to pick up the slack by doing everything else involved in not only running a household, but changing your entire way of life. Plus fielding phone calls and dealing with a crying baby and crying mom (the hormones!). It's really hard.
You'll need help.
It's easy to think about how romantic the first few weeks after the baby's birth will be, when your cozy little family will be working things out. And it's true that it might be like that. Some people have a pretty smooth postpartum period. But it's also a possibility that you'll be either a little or a lot overwhelmed, the three of you, with odd sleeping schedules and engorgement and sore nipples and poop all over and dirty laundry and crying (all three of you) and friends demanding pictures and thank-you notes and it's-8-o'clock-what-are-we-having-for-dinner? and you're all just so tired. And it would be really helpful to have someone there who could fix you some food or take out the trash or even just smooth your hair and tell you you're doing a good job.
You need someone who will actually help you, not make you cook or make tea or have certain things on hand while s/he holds your baby and gets all the sighs and coos you should be getting. The only people who are allowed to come for more than an hour are people who understand they're there to help you, not just fawn over the baby.
Places where we have found help so far. So many people have been unbelievably kind to us. Andrea Page of FitMom kept me in shape through the pregnancy, gave freely of her endless knowledge and encouragement, and even lent us her handheld electric breast pump. Cristi and Ian got me through the pregnancy by giving me a huge stash of maternity clothes. My dear friend AM, who just had a baby herself four weeks ago, has sent us a shiny new double pump that her insurance covered but that she doesn't need; she's been checking in almost every day to see how everyone is doing. Cynthia, Melida, and Tia, the midwives: I can't say enough about them, especially Cynthia. Stephanie, our doula, coached us through an intense labour and helped make sure that the birth was exactly what we'd wanted. She's even going to give us boxes of baby clothes as she cleans out her basement. Moxie and her commenters have been lifesavers. The nurses at the TEGH breastfeeding clinic have given us reassurance and calmness. Mr. K's colleagues sent a huge, gorgeous bouquet that has been brightening the bedroom for a week now. Vik, those two blankets you guys gave us are in heavy, heavy rotation; Clara sleeps swaddled in one or the other every night. Everyone who chats with me on AIM (Krapsnart) or Yahoo (Knitchyk) is helping keep me sane as I try to adjust to this fundamental shift in my identity. (This will become even more important when Mr. K goes back to work and the midwives aren't dropping in every few days. I have a history of clinical depression and am doing my damnedest to ward off the PPD.) And so many our friends and family have offered congratulations and support: this is a wondrous time, but it's also very hard and we are vulnerable. We really, really appreciate your kindness.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Evidently breastfeeding has a learning curve.
Alternatively, we try to wake her up for a middle-of-the-night feeding (which she needs; she's lost more than a pound since she was born) and nothing will rouse her. Not tickling her feet, not swabbing her with a cold wet cloth, not speaking to her loudly, not changing her diaper, nothing. Except maybe another finger feeding, which means another missed opportunity to get her established on the breast.
Or: I let her suck my finger for a while, then try to move her mouth to my breast. She starts to scream. She seems to want to suck anything (finger, wet washcloth, her own hand) except what makes the food.
This morning she was busily refusing my nipple while Mr. K was downstairs getting me some breakfast, and the dam finally broke and I started to sob. When he came back up to report that the breastfeeding clinic at the Toronto East General Hospital was closed today (Canadian Thanksgiving), he started to sob too.
You know what? Sometimes the occasional sob really helps.
So we called Cynthia. She has been so great through this: she came over at quarter to ten on Saturday night to see what she could do to help, and she came again today with some herbs (fenugreek and blessed thistle) to get my milk supply going. She stayed for the better part of three hours and saw a whole attempted feeding, from the pumping, to the WAKEY WAKEY bit, to the tightly pursed little lips at the nipple, to the screaming, and eventually to the finger and tube put in frustration into Clara's tiny mouth just to get something into her.
Cynthia, in consultation with Melida, finally recommended that we do this:
- Boost my milk supply with pumping and herbs.
- Put Clara to the breast as much as possible, supplementing what she can get out of there with whatever breast milk I can produce plus whatever formula (sigh) is needed to bring the supplement to two ounces.
- Go to the TEGH clinic tomorrow.
Just sitting and talking to Cynthia for more than an hour, about babies, career choices, life histories, travel, etc., made me feel so much better. When she finally left, able to report that even with Clara's grumpiness she'd still gained two ounces since Saturday, I felt calm again. Mr. K and I have been trying so hard to stay calm and positive to keep a good vibe going in the house, but there's only so much we can do by sheer force of will. I know this will all work out and that I'll be able to breastfeed this baby, but oy, I can sure see how tempting it would be to throw up one's hands and just quit trying. And there are all those formula companies lurking and waiting to prey on exhausted parents who just want to make sure their babies are getting enough to eat, waiting to profit from people's misery. I feel very lucky to have so much support available to get us through this fiercely difficult stretch.
I find myself thinking a lot about whether these first few days reflect Clara's character: will she always be so impatient? What can we do to teach her patience, now and later?
I look at this tiny person on my chest and think: I cannot believe how much I love you.
Friday, October 06, 2006
There really is a baby here
I checked Dr. Jack Newman's Guide to Breastfeeding, which mentions that the second best choice for a newborn after pure colostrum is colostrum mixed with a bit of sugar water. So I hauled my sore self downstairs and made up a little shot glass for her.
Mr. K held her as I cup-fed her. We both got teary-eyed hearing her swallow. She calmed down immediately, and even fed from the breast for a while afterwards. Words cannot convey the relief we felt.
The midwives visited this morning, and Melida, the primary one, confirmed our decision, saying, "You have to go with whatever works." She and Cynthia, the student midwife who was mostly in charge during the labour and birth, gave us a piece of long, 1/16" surgical tubing. One end goes in the sugar water, and the other end goes right next to my nipple. This way, Clara gets her instant gratification, and once she's sucking, away goes the tube. This is a fabulous way to jump-start a feeding: she gets fussy, she gets a few drops of sweetness, she's on the nipple and happy. She's been drinking colostrum on and off all day, and the more she works, the sooner the milk comes. Melida says it will probably arrive by tonight. Yay!
Adam asks (hi Adam!) who does suturing at a home birth. If the home birth is attended by midwives, as this one was, they do. In Ontario, registered midwives go to school for five years and do at least a year of supervised clinical practice, as Cynthia is doing now. They bring a great deal of equipment to a birth: oxygen, a neonatal resuscitation unit, IV supplies, and so forth: at least 80% of what would be available in a hospital. They have to be recertified annually to do certain procedures, and often what they do is based more on evidence and research than what many OBs do. Plus, they don't limit themselves to what would be available in a hospital pharmacy: they use a lot of traditional herbal remedies such as black cohosh and blue cohosh (which brought on my labour like gangbusters after the water broke) and the aforementioned shepherd's purse, which is very effective at stopping bleeding. I suspect midwives have been using such remedies for hundreds of years.
Mr. K and I have both been so impressed by them and by the quality of care that Clara and I have received. They are far less interested in numbers than they are in holistic assessment, and this laid-back approach suits us all just fine. For example, they never asked once about my weight, because they don't consider it as relevant as the size of the uterus. They put Clara onto my chest as soon as she was born, and gave us well over an hour together before they even mentioned weighing or measuring her. Today they didn't weigh her or check her bilirubin levels (she's a bit jaundiced, as is common in breastfed newborns); Melida told us just to put her in sunlight, which has worked wonders already. Melida's quiet wisdom seemed a bit brusque at first, but as we've gotten to know her it's come to seem exactly the right approach. Cynthia's enthusiasm and love for her new work make her a wonderful complement to Melida. Cynthia's eyes were so bright as she talked about how exciting it was for her to watch the development of this baby in utero and then finally meet her on the outside.
They've shown great respect for the emotional and spiritual aspects of pregnancy and birth, as well as great medical knowledge and competence. I feel that they've cared for us as whole people, and that has been such a gift.
And now Clara Elizabeth sleeps on my chest, and all is right with the world.
P. S. It has taken all day to write this. The milk truck has arrived. My breasts are now bigger than Clara's head. Yow.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Meet Clara

She is alert and mostly very calm. She and I are learning how to keep her fed. I am sore -- I tore in a bunch of rather odd places and needed stitches, and oh my god the hemorrhoids -- and had a bad time yesterday a couple of hours after the birth when I got up to use the washroom. I ended up leaving a trail of bloody footprints from the bed to the toilet, and nearly passed out while I was sitting there. A big bottle of Gatorade, a shot of Oxytocin, and some shepherd's purse helped a lot; within hours I was feeling worlds better.
The home birth was exactly the right option for us. Surrounded by familiar things, able to move around as we wanted, into our own bed shortly after her arrival. I haven't been out of bed much since; she's been getting plenty of skin-to-skin contact. So far she's met Mr. K's parents and sister, who are somewhat pleased to have her around. Mr. K has handled all the diaper duty so far, which is more than fine with me.
She is here and I feel like a lioness.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Waiting
Sleepers and onesies and socks and diapers and receiving blankets are slowly accumulating in the nursery. We're going out tomorrow for a changing pad to go on top of the dresser that used to be full of yarn.
J., the aforementioned prenatal instructor, has picked up on the grief and fear that are still lingering from the miscarriage two years ago, and suggested an extra hypnotherapy session to help me let them go. I find myself awfully skeptical, and yet willing to grasp at anything that will make it hurt less. This baby doesn't deserve to have birth slowed or made more difficult by anguish about what might have been. So I think I'll take J. up on her offer, and see what happens.
In cat news, Martha has been unbelievably clingy the past couple of nights. bringing her snake directly onto the bed next to me, and spending most of each night curled up half on top of my belly and half on top of the body pillow. Yesterday when I was puttering around in the nursery, she and Charlotte both came tearing up the stairs and then spent a while running around the room, wild-eyed. There's a disturbance in their Force. Poor kitties. They don't know the half of it yet.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Thirty-nine weeks
I am still making it to my FitMom classes -- last night was yoga -- and this afternoon I'll be out of the house for quite a while, first for a massage appointment, then for some shopping, then for a haircut. (If I want a nap today, I'd better have one now.)
The painter finished last Thursday. The nursery is a nice cheerful yellow with red and green here and there. The master bedroom is a dark indigo-purple, slightly darker than before. It looks fabulous. The piles of crap are diminishing slowly; yesterday we got rid of the big pine table that had been my desk for years. I posted it on Freecycle.org, a network intended to keep stuff out of landfills by making it easy to give things away. Within a few hours I had a response; a single mother of three is moving out of her basement apartment and needed a new dining table. We probably could've gotten $40 out of it if I'd tried to sell the thing, but giving it away to someone who really needs it was much better karma. Now to move along the old CD cabinet, my old nightstand, and a box of tumbled marble tiles.
Mr. K is under the gun for a big deadline at work; he pledged that he'd be able to finish this piece of work before the baby showed up, and so he's really feeling a lot of pressure. I find myself getting nervous that the baby will come before he's had the chance to learn enough about labour and birth. I'm glad we've hired a doula.
Man. I am exhausted. I think that nap is a good idea. (Hello, baby. You sure are active today.)
(By the way, I did vanquish the bootie pattern. The results are ridiculously cute. Pictures forthcoming.)
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
There oughta be a disclaimer
Warning: not suitable for pregnant womenIt is way too fecking complicated for my poor shriveled brain.
I will vanquish it. I will.
Monday, September 18, 2006
The nursery
We spent yesterday evening mucking the room out (into the study, which was previously pretty much done and is now unusable), and also doing lots to move stuff away from the walls in the master bedroom. When my midwife told me to stay away from paint fumes, I decided I didn't want to leave all the painting responsibilities on Dave's shoulders. I also decided that it would be a very good idea to cover the flat indigo paint in the big bedroom with an eggshell paint, so that when the kid gets mobile and starts leaving marks everywhere we'll be able to scrub them off. And I didn't want the painting going on with a baby in the house, so I broke down and hired a painter. He will take three days to do the whole job, and it will look great, and it will be done.
He started today. The room in the picture is now almost empty, and it's a nice yellow with a red bulkhead and green closet doors. Tomorrow he'll do the windowsill, the door, and the baseboards, and then he'll get started on the bedroom. Nice guy, highly recommended by others in the building. So: yay.
My feet and ankles are sausages. I'm finally getting stretch marks across my belly. I grunt a lot when I move around. I'm glad I'm not working anymore, because it's so much effort to get anywhere, and I get exhausted very easily. But even with all the discomfort and unpleasantness, I've really loved being pregnant. It's amazing to know that my body can do this, can build a tiny person by combining two cells. I'm a little sad that this part of the process is almost over.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Thirty-seven weeks
Plus, we've made it to 37 weeks. The baby could come today and be considered full term. People keep telling me that first babies are usually late, though; we could be waiting for another five weeks. I hope that labour waits for at least three more, because the prenatal classes that we're taking end on October 4.
I'm not sure what to think about these classes. I've been very glad to be able to approach this birth with so much attention to its emotional and spiritual aspects as well as to its physical ones; the traditional medical model of care tends to ignore all the touchy-feely stuff (literally, with babies often being whisked away to warming units when they'd do far better to be lying skin-to-skin on the mother's chest). And even though I'm more than a bit of a hippie, I find myself oddly resistant to the idea of self-hypnosis, and I'm having a hard time achieving the deep relaxation that we're being taught. The classes are paid for, though, and I'm sure it'll be good for me to hold a lot of my fears about labour, birth, and being a parent up to the light so that I can try to let them go. It is nice to be in a class in which everyone has a midwife, not an OB.
Plans for the next week: exercise class tonight at 7:30. Lunch with the old boss and his wife tomorrow at 1:00. (I have to figure out a nice gift to give them. Suggestions welcome. They've been very good to me.) Trip to the west end tomorrow evening to look at the contact sheet for the pictures we had taken last Saturday, and to pick up another dozen and a half cloth diapers. (Doug: we're planning to wash them ourselves.) Then back out east to greet Teezonk and two other friends who are coming for the weekend.
Saturday is the neighbourhood garage sale; if I weren't so lazy I'd have spent part of today making price tags for all the stuff we need to get rid of. Saturday night we're having dinner at the Thai restaurant owned by one of my former students. (I hope she's there; I'd dearly love to see her.) Sunday we see our friends off and then get to work moving furniture and boxes of crap so that the painter can show up on Monday morning to work on the nursery and the master bedroom for three days.
Monday is lunch with my awesome trainer, with whom I hope to start working again a couple of months after the baby comes, and then yoga class in the evening. Wednesday is lunch with my friend Mika, and then another prenatal class in the evening.
I write all this here mostly to keep myself from forgetting something. I'm looking forward to getting my brain back someday. It's not a bad brain, when it has enough serotonin floating around.
I'm going to go downstairs and get some more food and water, and put my feet up, and finish this second baby hat. I like knitting for babies: yesterday's hat took, yup, one day.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Baby-related consumer-based activities
*Our friend Steve K., lexicographer extraordinaire, calls it this because the backwards "R" is pronounced "wah" in the Cyrillic alphabet. I love hanging out with language geeks.
The other thing we did yesterday was go to a professional photographer who shot pictures of me and the belly (clothed and not), and pictures of me, the belly, and Mr. K. We've been together for more than 14 years and had never had a professional portrait taken before. We'll have a contact sheet (she uses film!) next week, and some prints sometime after that. I am very excited about this, and very happy to have found a good photographer on short notice. (Had tried Heather Rivlin a while ago, but she's booked at least eight months in advance.)
I feel like every step we take toward getting ready to have a real baby around will delay the imminent arrival that little bit more.
People have been asking where we're registered. This is a very good question. The answer right now is that we aren't. This morning I tried registering at the Sears Canada website. Feh, I say. Feh. The "Register online" page was nearly impossible to find, and once I'd filled out our information (which I hate sending over the Internet) I discovered that there seemed to be no way to add items from the website to the registry. So I called the 800 number and, after being talked at for ten minutes by a particularly loquacious CSR, confirmed that no, there is no way to do everything online; to add items you either have to go to the store and fire a scanner gun at the things you want, or sit at home typing in numbers from the (paper) catalog.
Grr. So much for Sears.ca, then.
(Martha is washing Charlotte's head as I type this. They usually have quite an adversarial relationship, so this is nice to watch.)
Even though we've bought some stuff there, I don't think I want to register with Babies-wah-Us because they seem to have been pretty crappy corporate citizens over the past few years. Amazon.ca doesn't have all the baby stuff that amazon.com has, and most things coming in from amazon.com would be subject to Canadian taxes and import duties on arrival. So I'm at a bit of a loss about a registry. It would be nice to have one so we could specify "no pink or blue pastel" (one of the biggest reasons we haven't been forthcoming about whether this baby is a boy or girl, even though we've been 95% sure for months*) and "no branding, especially no Disney." Much of what we're buying is in bright colours (babies see them better!), and, well, don't get me started about Disney. (They bought Pooh Bear, dammit. And never mind their stranglehold on the American media, and the sexism and racism in so many of their products, and and and... Like I said, don't get me started. I'll know I've lived a bad life if I die and find myself eternally trapped in Disneyland.)
*Recently I was talking to a friend about boy and girl babies, and mentioned that one of my cousins and his wife had been expecting one and been surprised by the arrival of the other. My friend's response: "That would have been such a disaster! We'd have had to redo the whole nursery!" I don't get it; I really don't. Everything we have so far is unisex.
And yes, I freely admit that my stances on corporate and personal social responsibility are inconsistent and even at times hypocritical. I could be far more diligent than I am about refusing to buy anything made in China; I could spend a lot more time researching the provenance of what I buy; I could get off my ass and actually move the money in my RRSP out of the big corporate funds where it lives now and into more socially responsible funds at the credit union. [FWIW, the bulk of my investments, made back when I was living la corporate vida loca ten years ago or so, are in ConglomMutualFundsCo's ostensibly "socially responsible" fund, which has done much better than many of their other ones.)
But: I live in a big city and almost never drive; I haven't eaten meat in 15 years; lots of my non-pregnancy clothing is made from organic cotton; and I do my damnedest to avoid buying anything made by Nestlé. I'm going to have to think about all this stuff a lot more so that I can explain it to our child over the next few years and provide enough education and facts to enable the kid to make her or his own decisions.
This is the long-winded way of saying that no, we are not registered anywhere, and probably won't be. We really appreciate the inquiries, though. You guys are awesome. If you really want to send us something, drop me a comment or an e-mail and I'll send you our address.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Friday, September 01, 2006
Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes
I got up at about 7:40 and got into the shower. After I was clean and dressed, I came downstairs and had some breakfast: a scrambled egg, slices of cheese, and a pile of alfalfa sprouts on a wholegrain English muffin. Mr. K has become very efficient at making my little breakfast sandwiches. I put on a bit of makeup (concealer under my eyes, some definition for my eyebrows), poked around on the Web for a bit, and finally got out of the house just after 8:45.
The Pigeon Man was out this morning, lying on a small mound of grass in the little parkette he frequents, shaking out a bag of bread to feed the masses of pigeons and sparrows that were clustered around and on top of him. He always looks terribly unhealthy, just inches from death with his sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, but he's there almost every day, pulling on his giant foul-smelling stogie and letting the birds surround him.
As I walked north I didn't see the tall, nervous, thin woman who always seems to be in a rush to get to work. Nor did I see the squarish red-haired guy with the chinstrap beard.
The streetcar was relatively empty and I got a seat with no trouble. I'd forgotten the new September Metropass, but the very kind driver let me on anyway and even gave me a transfer so I could get on the subway. The chimes of the cathedral announced nine o'clock as we went past, letting me know I was on time.
I got onto the subway and rode to work. Took the stairs out of the subway station, and the two flights after I got into the building. Went into the tiny little teachers' room, chatted a bit with another teacher, gathered the books I needed, and went off to class, where I had one (1) student.
This routine, with minor variations (usually more students), has been my weekday morning for months now. Today was its last hoorah. I taught for a couple of hours, and then cleaned my stuff out of the fridge, said my farewells to my boss and his wife (they're taking me out for lunch next week), and left.
This is the seventh job I've left since I finished university. It doesn't get easier to walk away. This is the first time, though, that I've had someone kicking me from the inside to remind me why I'm going.
I've been thinking a lot about the work I do and about how it's compensated: even though there are more letters after my name than after Mr. K's, I make a fraction of what he does, and my jobs are far less stable. I discovered a week or two ago that I am most likely not eligible for any sort of maternity leave because I've been officially self-employed for the last eight months (read: working for a place that's too small to afford a payroll system).
The work I'm drawn to -- teaching English as a second language within the realm of social service -- is traditionally underpaid. There seems to be an assumption that because it's good, meaningful work, often in the nonprofit sector, those who do it shouldn't expect more pay. Aren't you committed to the cause? How dare you want more money? Shouldn't you be willing to make sacrifices for the greater good? (This hasn't been the case at all at the job I just finished, but then that job wasn't at a nonprofit.)
I find myself wondering about the degree to which the inequity of compensation between jobs I can get and the job that Mr. K has is linked with gender: when I go to professional conferences, I can't help but notice that 90% of my colleagues are female. Even the ESL jobs that aren't connected to social service are usually underpaid and unstable. (At one conference, the [male] keynote speaker noted that ESL teaching is "the armpit of academia." ESL programs in schools are often the first ones to be cut when budgets get tight.)
And the instability of my pink-collar job means that I don't get benefits when I have to take time off to do the unpaid work that women have been doing for millennia. This isn't what I had in mind when I finished my degree at a feminist women's college.
I'm feeling deeply dissatisfied by the lack of structural support available for women who find themselves in what are traditionally "women's jobs" and need to leave for a while to bring new people into the world. People keep telling me I'm lucky to be able make choices, but even if I had a job that guaranteed me a maternity leave, it just wouldn't make any financial sense at all for me to keep working and Mr. K to drop to only 55% of his salary so that he could take time off. For economic reasons, I have to make exactly the same decision that a working woman did 40 years ago.
So that's what's been kicking around in my head for the past couple of weeks. Kicking around in my belly is a baby, whose imminent arrival is freaking me out no end. Baby baby baby.
My parents are here, and they and Mr. K and I spent the afternoon poking around baby shops. We have bought almost nothing even though I'm due in less than five weeks. Right now the baby's possessions add up to this:
- a dark blue Wellesley onesie
- twelve small washcloths
- three receiving blankets (two of which were gifts from friends)
- a pair of soft-soled shoes (also a gift from friends)
- one pair of socks (gift from my parents)
- one bib (gift from my parents)
- a travel playpen (a gift from Pina and Ian, given when they visited and their then-13-month-old needed a place to sleep)
- a sling (also from Pina and Ian)
I am simultaneously equanimous and overwhelmed.