Discovery: I still really love Star Trek: Voyager.
From the very first, I loved Janeway. She was tough, she cared about her crew and wanted to hear feedback that she could act on even if it challenged her expectations. She was openminded while maintaining focus.
Over the years, I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to punch your way through. – Captain Janeway
There’s a time for tact, there’s a time for getting shit done. The trick is knowing the difference.
Did you ever consider allowing the Ocampa to care for themselves? … Children have to grow up … It’s the challenge of surviving on their own that allows them to evolve. – Captain Janeway
This is the fight I’d had with my parents since I was 14. I don’t pretend to have all, or most, of the answers when it comes to parenting but when it came to my sibling, I was pretty sure I knew what was more likely to work with him. In the few years that they stepped back and left the handling of him to me? He came closest to being an adult, earning some kind of living, and not being a complete utter leech.
He soon reverted to form, though, so maybe I don’t know anything.
Misery loves company, Tuvok.
A thing we would do well to remember when miserable people are dragging you down with them.
“A daughter? I don’t have anything to teach a daughter.” – Neelix
“Why would it be any different for a daughter than a son? … I have three sons and one daughter. I can assure you she benefits as much from my presence and guidance as my sons do.” – Tuvok
I don’t unequivocally love the newborn phase, it’s so much work and exhaustion it’s hard to remember your own name. But this is an amazingly cuddly period, punctuated by the squeaks, peeps, squawks, whirs and chirps that are precursors to speech. There’s almost nothing so simultaneously heartwarming and terrifying as looking down into those almond shaped grey-black eyes of your own child. Who is clearly, by that unblinking stare, awake again.
Some things are universal
They come with teeny fingers and toes, and correspondingly bitty nails which are terrifying to cut.
Some help is essential if you’re anything like me and need 7-8 solid hours of sleep but are lucky to string together 4 hours in one-hour increments. It revives your ability to gaze at the microface with compassion and amusement as you rock the warm bundlet back to sleep at 3 am, again.
The world seems cold and cruel after the 16th diaper change and 10th hour of feeding in 23 hours.
In a month you go from having a bread loaf sized critter to a tiny person whose actual tears express astonishment and dismay at your lack of mental acuity, you heartless and negligent parent! Feed me, dammit! (How did ze turn into a teenager so quickly?)
Breast is best, the hospital chants. And they’re quite good at supporting with lactation consultants but it also supplying formula upon request if you hit a tough patch and eating hasn’t happened in too many hours. It’s a bit surprising when the delivery method (breastfeeding) gets prioritized over the actual eating. In my book: feed the baby! Worry about “how” only when you have the luxury to, not if the kid’s wasting away, 2 days old and five hours since the last feed.
Formula is expensive, running 50¢ to $1+ per ounce, depending on the sort you get. When you need at least 2oz per feeding every 2-3 hours, you’re pretty DARN motivated to breastfeed. Plus it’s good for hir. I didn’t work this hard at having hir to give up now. (Give up= quit without trying. I know plenty of people who can’t/couldn’t BF and I have all the empathy: that could have been me. But I have to give it a real try before stopping.) As with most things, it’s an exercise in loving bonding and serious pain. LB is a vengeance angry nurser. Sure, take your time figuring out that’s a hungry cry, go on. Ze will clamp down in a punishment latch like a terrier capturing prey and shaking it to death for a minute before settling into a proper one. “Well,” you’d gasp through clenched teeth “I deserved that.”
PiC is supportive, of course, buying armloads of lactation teas (confusing the hell out of the cashier at Sprouts), brewing a cuppa nonstop, refilling the water bottle, making sure I’m eating. Grimacing with empathy when Angry Latch happens.
Costs
Formula, $35
Bottles (we like glass, used for both formula and pumped milk), $22
Breast pump, covered by insurance
Recovery and healing
I don’t know how one does this but surely it should involve less pain?? At some point? But not without loads of pain meds so far.
It was a rather traumatic delivery and my body didn’t cope well with it. On that note, f*ck episiotomies and scar tissue.
PiC literally did all the heavy lifting as I’m not allowed to lift more than LB. We were incredibly grateful to dear friends and family who came to the rescue, covering baby butt patting shifts so PiC could leave us for more than four consecutive minutes. Just born and the kid was already attached to him. Poor guy. He had a newborn and basically invalid wife and we didn’t know up from down from right or left.
My will is strong but my core is weak. No wonder my back hurts so much. I’m not allowed to work out yet but strengthening the core and my arm muscles lest all the fingers in my hands dislocate are priorities one and two. I need those squeezy ball things you use for hand exercises. (Any recommendations?)
Favorite moments
Waking up to chirps rather than crying for the first time. I was so confused I thought ze had to have been crying.
Sneak attack diaper changes- when LB is in deep enough sleep to overlook the wet diaper (almost never) I try to change the diaper without waking hir. Then do a victory jig when it works.
When I think ze is done eating: eyes are closed, all movement seems to have stopped, breathing is slow and steady. Then ze opens hir eyes and looks directly at me like FOOLED YOU.
We don’t lullaby
We can’t remember the lyrics to kid’s songs so we just improvise unless an old song crops up.
Edelweiss
The Halls of Montezuma
The Heart of Texas
Once Upon a Time in China
I have countless birth announcement emails from friends. They’re all cuddling their freshly born babies, sleek hair framing a tired but smiling face (is that MAKEUP??), painted nails, even classy jewelry.
Me? If I wasn’t already flattened I’d have collapsed into a pile of jelly legged oh my GOD is that over, really? face haloed by a wild nest of hair that could substitute for Medusa’s wig. Hands clasping the new LB that had been too swollen to wear my rings for months. Elegant, not so much. But realistic.
~~~
Our whole experience was surreal. Normal people race to the hospital when they’re told to come in. Us? Panic-repack and take hours to leave the house. Our hospital bag was already 95% completed the week before but going into labor triggered a squirrel-like need to have everything. In the end we hauled enough stuff to camp for five days and barely touched any of it.
Our doctor was right, we only needed one change of clothes each. There was no time or brain or energy to shower or change daily, and no point. We weren’t getting visitors and I had nowhere to be presentable. My job was recovering/pain management and taking care of Little Bean. I lived in hospital gowns and PiC was in charge of everything I couldn’t do: making phone calls, walk-soothing LB, changing diapers, leaving the room ever.
We went in exhausted and hungry so the conditions were sub-optimal. We did have a birth plan but only stuck to maybe 10% of it. That wasn’t a bad thing, they warn that might happen, but it was a little unsettling.
I wanted to manage without an epidural because frankly a needle in the spine and holding still during contractions just sounds like a recipe for disaster but the progression of labor was 0 to 60 once things got started so that intention went out the window. Never mind, I live in enough pain daily not to need to justify myself taking any pain management as needed, so I did, and I think it’s what enabled us to make it to the end, safely.
There were lots of times we felt like we were improvising throughout the long hours in an unfamiliar place and with only each other to lean on. In the end, I still think that was a good thing. I don’t like feeling crowded or too much unsolicited input, it often gets in the way of my best decisions and work. I needed everyone but PiC to just shut up with their “encouragement” during actual labor and I hurt one person’s feelings a bit asking her to not cheerlead because it was so distracting.
After many hours of pain and work, Little Bean joined us in the outside world, rather grumpily. Little did ze know that further indignities were to come: a bath, medications, ID bracelet, the works.
~~~
Hospital Costs: delivery, $150
We have an HMO which is considered either bottom or middle tier insurance from our employer, but I was really happy with it for prenatal and labor& delivery care. This isn’t the case for everyone, I’ve heard so many bad birth stories I was rather nervous, so we’re really grateful how it all turned out.
Our copay covered a three day stay in the hospital, all my meals, a celebratory meal for PiC, and all the medication and medical supplies I or Little Bean needed. Also diapers, wipes, a few other odds and ends.
I shared most meals with PiC as it was a pain for him to leave our room often. I ordered the maximum calories allowed and supplemented with our own snacks. Our nurses brought us extra food and drink as well because it seemed like I was always hungry or thirsty at odd hours even though I hadn’t begun breastfeeding in earnest.
The staff were pretty great. The residents mainly stayed out of the way and treated us like actual people, the nurses were on top of just about everything we needed. One nurse was kind of a jerk but that was at the end of her shift so we didn’t have time to care. Despite arriving at a hospital we’d never had time to tour, we felt it was the best stay we could have asked for.
Discharge costs: meds and supplies, ~$300
Our last nurse loaded us up with all the supplies we could ask for but the projected 4-6 weeks of recovery meant we still had to get refills of everything. Damn good thing I figured out the FSA thing.
Some of the stuff that was covered:
Prescription pain meds,
Maxi pads,
cold compresses,
A donut cushion for my traumatized underside,
Topical witch hazel spray and pads.
~~~
We came home exhausted and elated, with a month of leave planned together with our newest family member, and looking forward to introducing hir to our second “baby”.
Is that it’s rarely ever useful to anyone unless maybe you’re a supervillain who relies on manipulating people and jealousy is a great blinder of common sense and makes people somewhat predictable. That’s not often the case, though, is it?
Lately I’ve been treated to a litany of “I’m so jealous!” from an acquaintance about the pregnancy and then arrival of Little Bean and it’s exasperating.
LB’s pretty cute, sure, but that’s not what the acquaintance, let’s call her A, was talking about. She was talking about the fact that we made the decision to conceive and it happened. But she can’t honestly think we got pregnant to spite her, can she?
I don’t even know what to say in response that wouldn’t be rude and snarky, and for once, “cutting” isn’t what I want to go for here. (Tonya’s perfectionism post suggests an answer though: no one’s life is perfect, so this comes at its own cost …)
Mind, I’m aware I’m incredibly lucky in some respects. Fantastic husband. Some wonderfully supportive friends. A few amazing family members. Seamus is the Mary Poppins of dogs: practically perfect in every way. And now a cute baby.
This doesn’t exist in a vacuum though. I didn’t just fall into a good-luck pit and come up Milhouse. I came by this honestly and worked hard, making the most of whatever luck came about, good or bad. I take nothing for granted. It chafes to keep hearing “you’re so lucky”. Yes, there’s joy but it’s 98% work and sacrifice. It’s weird enough being lectured by every parent off the street about how wonderful parenting is, it’s even stranger to hear about the magic of having kids from someone who doesn’t have them yet because she’s ” not ready to get fat and deal with the stuff you did”. (I promise that “getting fat” was the least of my pregnancy problems!)
My husband is naturally head and shoulders above the average husband in my estimation but he also has to be. He has to pick up the slack created by my chronic diseases that strike as and when it pleases. He has to accept that much of the time I’ll function at 40% of the capacity of normal people. He has to work around my inability to ask for or accept help like a normal human sometimes and not resent my turning into a resentful prickly cactus when I’m feeling extra useless and worthless for not being able to feed myself or stand up under my own power.
My closest friends understand me, misanthropic introvertness and all, and are wonderful company but none of them are in the Bay Area. None could drop by to lend a hand when I’m bedridden, I can’t run over to give them a hug on a bad day or bring them food or keep them company when they’re lonely. At best we’re an 8 hour drive or a 5 hour flight away from each other so the usual to and fro of friendship has to be adapted to long distance.
Cute child? Yep, I think ze is adorable. But LB hardly sleeps and screams like a pair of dueling banshees. I love the kid but no one would mistake hir for a fashion accessory or this experience a walk in the park. Ze has strong opinions and well developed lungs with which to express them.
And this person is familiar with the severity of my health issues, the huge toll I pay for this otherwise enjoyable life. My professional skills and personal wealth aren’t worth much in the face of debilitating illness. You can’t buy the absence of pain, you can’t negotiate away crap health. You don’t get to cherry pick the good stuff in life and leave the bad so what’s the point of envying the one thing in isolation?
Maybe this acquaintance is just trying to (awkwardly!!) pay some sort of compliment suggesting that my life too is worthy of envy, passing over some validation to the hermit like a communal pipe around the campfire. In a odd way, that could make sense as she’s an extremely fit semi-jetsetter type who travels internationally regularly and on a whim. Her life adventures are neat, they’re things I couldn’t do anymore or maybe wouldn’t choose to do (snorkeling? never again!),. But I don’t need to covet cool things to admire them and especially don’t seek validation.
The only thing anyone has that I’d want is great health. For anything else, I could get off my duff and do something about getting some of that awesome for myself.
As I write this, Seamus is sitting on my foot soliciting attention, offering a pawshake in exchange for a real scratch. We know to ask for what we want in this family.
Bottom line: I’m happy enough with my lot in life and what I’m doing that I can be happy for others and their good fortune. That takes nothing away from anyone.
Is this a familiar phenomenon to anyone else? Do you have an envious friend or acquaintance?
There’s no time that watching a dog sleep isn’t funny and Seamus is no exception.
He curls up so tightly that his back legs are tucked under his chin;
sticks his tongue out while sleeping;
snores, sleep-growls and barks;
startles himself out of sleep and he glares like I did it;
is likely to be on his back with all legs waving in the air about 60% of the time.
Also, I love it when he’s on his back, rubs his face with both paws, then topples over.
Medical woes
A bit of waltz with this fella. Skin looks horrible, skin improves, skin gets bad again, skin improves. We keep experimenting to see what gives him the most relief for the longest period of time.
A Dog and Our Money
This guy eats quite a lot. Easily 30% more than Doggle did and he still acts like he’s starving before the afternoon is over. His bones aren’t showing anymore, seven or eight gained pounds later, so we’re being careful not to overfeed him since his activity levels aren’t very high. He obviously doesn’t much appreciate that.
I had some luck picking up his special grain free diet at about $1.50/lb from petflow.com with a 20% discount, but aside from those one off special deals, our best bet for this particular brand is the local PetClub store. With a minor sale or coupon, we can get pretty close to $1.50/lb from them.
In case the medications alone aren’t doing the trick for his health and we need to change his diet, we may try a Twitter recommendation of the Kirkland Signature Nature’s Domain which is apparently just a repackaging of the Taste of the Wild brand. This recommendation comes from someone who only feeds her dog the best so I’m reasonably certain that it’s a decent high-quality alternative that would be good for him.
Once, I thought, this pregnancy thing is tough!
Once, I thought, it’s so frustrating that I can’t get up without help, eat normally, see my feet or tie my shoes, lie down without getting heartburn or short of breath, or getting the crap kicked out of me by an (always) amped up LB.
Now, I know better. That’s all nothing next the cursed PUPPs. Every centimeter of my skin, from neck to toe, is covered. I am become a walking mass of lumps, bumps and rashes. I feel like a disgusting reptilian leper.
All the formal literature seems to be clear on what we know about PUPPPs, a misleadingly cuddly acronym for basically a skin plague (Pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy):
It “usually” strikes women in their first pregnancies, in the 35th week, 70% of cases are in women carrying boys or multiples, the cause is unknown and generally won’t go away until delivery. It’s not supposed to be contagious, and shouldn’t affect the mother or baby long-term or after birth. I guess the fact that PiC hasn’t caught it is evidence that it’s not contagious.
Basically, it’s nearly all completely useless information. I’m glad it’s not contagious of course and even more importantly that it shouldn’t hurt LB but otherwise, who the hell cares if it normally strikes people carrying multiples if you get it and you’ve got a singlet? Or if it normally starts at 35 weeks and you get it much earlier? The more pressing thing is that which we have no answer for: what causes it and how to deal with it!
The very cynical part of me says there’s no formal research on this because it only affects women and has no mortality rate. Never you mind this occurs in 1 of 20 women and has driven those with severe cases to actually induce as early as is safe to seek relief, it’s not warranted a single published study that I could find.
So I’m left digging out forum after forum of anecdotal experiences which tell me that women are experiencing it when they carry girls, that some are afflicted as early as at 12 weeks all the way up to the “usual” 35 weeks, when they’re on their second, third, or fourth pregnancies, that it goes away after a week or two for some people and doesn’t until delivery for others. For still others, horrifyingly, it doesn’t go away for weeks after delivery and even more horrifyingly, some people are getting it after delivery and living with it for MONTHS.
I guess that last one mostly academically horrifies me because I’ve got it now. But as awful as this is now, my imagination is more than up to the task of envisiong being the one for whom delivery doesn’t clear it up and then add a helpless newborn to the mix when I myself am the next thing to useless.
Not so silent suffering
The itching is far more intense than chicken pox. I clearly recall being seven, left lying on the bed during the summer covered in lotion, and being sternly told NOT TO SCRATCH. I did NOT scratch. It was very uncomfortable but the lotion did help the itching, so of my “things that sucked” memories, it was just a crappy experience.
This has reached the level of Utter Despair. It’s comparable to those moments in my late teens where I was trying to get through college and working 100 hours a week. That in itself was crappy but it was the crippling pain in my hands that truly made it Hell.
For years, back then, I only slept a few hours a night because the pain prevented me from falling asleep or woke me from fitful sleeps. For an otherwise anti-emotion teen, more nights than I care to admit were watered by hot, angry tears, arms suspended above my head on ice packs in a futile effort to dull the pain.
At a mere 3, 4, and 5 days into the itch and pain dominated sleep deprivation, I found myself spiraling down that pit again.
ARGH.
My skin has became so sensitive that even air currents are uncomfortable. Most fabrics trigger the urge to scratch on contact, only the softest of cottons were tolerable, and skin to skin contact is the worst trigger of all so lathering the special soap and applying lotion is a special kind of teeth-gritting, do-it-anyway, torment.
Where there’s any skin to skin contact or pressure, say from natural weight from lying down, basically any place that starts to build up warmth at all, the rash flares up angrily. Basically sleep was out for a week while I figured out how to cope. One night, I resorted to standing outside during the storm trying to chill my entire body so that my skin would calm down.
Where LB’s weight presses down on my legs, those happy bumps have merged into MegaZord-sized masses that moved past itching to plain old pain. Minor consolation: it’s so bad that I’m not even tempted to scratch them.
I honestly look like I taunted a few hives of killer bees and hung around for their justice.
I’ve tried everything that the doctor recommended and everything eczema-experienced friends recommended; 3 kinds of antihistamines, 4 kinds of lotions, oatmeal baths, hydrocortisone, 3 showers a day using the anecdotally recommended pine tar soap. Even drinking V8 juice which I don’t like one bit because I don’t even know why that’s supposed to help.
None have brought actual relief, only the oatmeal lotion and Sensitive Skin Aveda lotion seem to keep the burning itch from getting worse. The hydrocortisone occasionally calms the worst on my hands, but can only be used sparingly and where my skin stays cool because it stays greasy and seems to conduct heat, exacerbating the discomfort. It also gets on everything since it doesn’t absorb. Because when everything up to my fingertips are affected, I really want to do a few extra loads of laundry!
My hands are afflicted with the smallest and most densely packed bumps so I’ve got quarter sized bump-clusters on the backs of my hands, on my fingers, between my fingers. This makes typing a hover-above-the-keyboard affair, exhausting to say the least.
The entire belly, Ground Zero for this nastiness, is of course thoroughly cloaked under bumps of all shapes and sizes, as is my back, so leaning on anything in any direction is strongly contraindicated. My legs flare up the most dramatically when they touch each other and that means always staying fully clothed, top to bottom.
Clothes! Another huge frustration. Everything has to be smooth soft cotton, fit but not tightly so it doesn’t shift but doesn’t constrict, no elastic waistbands since the indents from waistbands just provided new tracks for new rashes. I own exactly two shirts that suit and have been trying every pair of pants and shorts in the house to no great success.
COPING
After ten days of trial and error, amid increasing desperation, I’ve found that I can at least sleep if I keep flipping over to the opposite side every 15-30 minute like a rotisserie chicken and “baste” myself with ice packs, tucking them into the sides that have accumulated warmth since the last flip. It means very short naps rather than actual sleep but it’s still better than sleep madness of working and functioning on 1.5 hours of sleep a day.
During the day, I sit incredibly awkwardly on piles of blankets covered with cotton sheets to protect myself and the furniture and am VERY aware of how long I’ve been sitting because of the pressure issue. It stinks.
And of course the regular pain hasn’t let up so I get this great combination of itching+pain+fibro pain and swelling. If I thought I knew what feeling helpless and useless was like before? Sure didn’t.
PiC has had to help me with the most basic of life functions, not just cooking but sometimes feeding me when the swollen from pain and swollen from rash hands were particularly bad. He’s learned the art of applying lotion evenly and keeps me supplied with fresh icepacks day and night.
Normally, by the time I write up something like this, I’ve achieved some sort of sense of positivity but nope. Not this time. Doing the best we can but mostly just trying to get by and leaning way too much on PiC. Poor guy.
And unlike my teen years, cooking is now one of my favorite ways to unwind. Normally this is a win win and PiC benefits from the messes in the kitchen.
I don’t want to admit that I can’t keep up with everything but let’s just pretend, as an intellectual exercise and a nod to moderation, that cooking after delivering Little Bean is not super likely. I used to cook most nights, now I’m down to 1-3 nights a week. Add a potentially squalling, but definitely feeding every 2-3 hours newborn to the mix and I think we all know the real end of that equation.
But who wants to rely entirely on take-out or delivery? It’s a nice treat on occasion but I get tired of restaurant food faster than it takes to outspend the grocery budget.
Like squirrels, we’ve been stocking the cupboards with the basics: pasta, rice, quinoa, boxed broths, and KIND and Luna bars for days when I just can’t face a meal or just need an easy boost. Flour, sugar and brown sugar goes on sale a lot around the holidays so I’ll stock up on that for prep as well.
We don’t have much storage or a very big freezer unfortunately, so my plans to prep/precook some food that should be easy to throw together later have to be modest.
I’ll be:
Poaching chicken thighs and freezing them whole,
Poaching whole chickens and shredding it for use in soups, quesadillas, with rice, whatever. I tend to throw together really haphazard soups so we’ll just prep ahead whatever of the standard ingredients freezes well. I know onions do fine, but I’m not sure about carrots, potatos and celery yet. I know for darn sure I’m not going to be up to peeling and cutting up potatos, though.
Attempting premaking pizza from scratch for freezing, toppings and all, and a lasagna recipe (also intended to be frozen). I always want lasagna and rarely make it so that’ll be really nice to have a few premade.
I’ve also written up a detailed list of our local restaurants that are good for either delivery or take out, including all our usual orders so that if it’s that dire, we don’t have to make any real decisions.
We tried Munchery.com for some real food delivery as we have mostly Asian take-out around here and most don’t deliver. They do more American style foods, though in smaller portions, but it’s a reasonable cost per meal with discounts so that’s on our list of go-to food choices.
This should be helpful to out of town visitors who might be here to help with LB too, they won’t have to ask or figure out what’s good that’s also nearby. While I’m at it, I’m including grocery stores as well. That bit’s purely for convenience.
Notes: I always crave cake and most especially cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes. Failing that, (anyone who really loves me and wants me to be stocked up on cake, take note) we’ve discovered the Super Lemony Lemon Cake Bites from Trader Joe’s and I nearly demolished the whole package in one go. They’re not the absolutely most amazing thing ever, but they are close enough for me. Yes yes, I should be eating my veggies but I also need my cake, y’all.
