About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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March 18, 2015
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
March 16, 2015
By special request, more pictures from Italy! In no particular order ….
March 13, 2015
There’s a scene in West Wing when President Bartlet comes to the Oval Office, hopped up on narcotics that always cracks me up. I’m only like that on painkillers the first 1 time I take them, they just don’t seem to take after that, but I’ve definitely been at work on one of those woozy days.
All sorts of fun, lemme tell ya.
But that was me for a lot of years – I insisted that I knew myself, that I can do more. Sometimes I can. Evidenced by the times I powered through some pretty rough times. But for some reason, this led me to the conclusion that I’m just being lazy when I don’t want to do something, I didn’t trust that despite my track record, I would get back up again if I just let myself sit and be still.
Rest? What the heck is that?
I was certain as anything that because I wanted to sleep for a week or lay down forever, I couldn’t rest. If I let myself have a break, I’d never stop being on break.
Talk about underestimating and being totally out of touch with myself.
“Here’s what I think we ought to do… [long pause] Was I just saying
something?”
That distrust got even worse with pregnancy. What do you mean I need to rest? What do you mean I shouldn’t be lifting all those heavy things? What do you … oooooff. Oh. Oh that’s what you mean.
I’d thought that I’d accepted my limitations years ago, but really, I hadn’t. Or at least, I wasn’t at peace with it so routinely pushed myself too much, and crashed and burned.
It took being pregnant to finally respect my limitations at any level – there were days I simply absolutely could not do more than the bare minimum. It took the whole length of pregnancy for me to understand why things seemed to be different.
I was still living with the so-called invisible diseases: chronic pain and fatigue.
Meanwhile the pregnancy was a tangible and visible thing that also brought with it pain and fatigue. The key difference here was that visibility and subsequent familiarity.
People weren’t confused by pregnancy. This is a known quantity for the most part and the right questions were obvious.
The considerate ones paid attention to how long I could be on my feet, were conscious of the fact that I shouldn’t be lifting things, etc. These are same considerations that I’d need for my pain and fatigue but could never ask for because it’s simply not clear why I’d need them. Rather than explain and face skepticism and loads of unwanted medical advice from the uninformed nonmedical professional, I always just stiff upper-lipped it and figured out my own accommodations as best I could. Accepting help when pregnant was foreign and uncomfortable but I had to and the experience was so different from asking for help solely because of the usual culprits.
Having figured this out, I don’t exactly know what to do with the information. Maybe I will one of these days but, for now, I’ll settle for not being so hard on myself. Life has already got that angle covered, thanks.
March 11, 2015
As might be expected, the first week post-birth was a blur of sleep deprivation, oddly defined shifts of baby coverage where at least one of us would be found asleep with a happy sleeping baby snoozing away on top of us, and really strange conversations.
Bonus points if you catch all the references.
Precarious Road to Recovery
How’s your new pillow? Is it big enough? I’m not calling you fat!!
Uh. It’s fine? I think… ?
My body is broken.
Dirty diapers
Here, let me help you with that.
Jayne, this is something the Captain has to do for himself.
No, no it’s not!
No, it’s not.
[trying to fend off a screaming fit] You look SO relaxed, baby, you look SOOO relaxed.
BATGIRL!
[Me, waking from a dead sleep with baby on lap] MASSIVE POO WE HAVE A MASSIVE POO INCOMING
Crying Infants
It’s like Defcon 5. I’m not even sure if that’s how it works. The more serious Defcon.
Oh just set her down. With any luck…
Our luck? You notice anything particular about our luck these past few days? Any kind of pattern?
[frustrated] I wish I had breasts!
Oh honey, you sound like your heart is breaking. Did you pee?
Seamus, we didn’t break the baby.
Seamus, the chair isn’t ALWAYS the answer to LB’s crying.
Seamus, stop herding more responsible adults to the room to fix it. This cannot be fixed.
Nursing
You have TWO choices. Right or left. There is no other option.
Hey is the Milk Bar open yet?
The Milk Bar is open.
Child, there is no sustenance to be had from your hand. Stop eating it.
Child, Auntie isn’t lactating. You’ll get no satisfaction there.
Recordkeeping
I’m seeing a lot of poo here.
Well, you’re not wrong.
Family Integration
Mmmm… I love the smell of fresh baby in the morning.
Seamus, your sibling is fine. (Did you read the letters? READ THE LETTERS)
Seamus: *sniffs the baby’s head.*points at the rocker*
Seamus, LB doesn’t need the –
Seamus: *points at the rocker emphatically*
March 9, 2015
I think about homelessness a lot more than your average middle-class partnered person might.
We’re living my financial high point right now, why can I still taste tomatoey canned sardines and rice porridge thinned with water to stretch? True, the flip side might be that it’s all downhill from here but it’s also true that I’ve not been a slim paycheck away from Final Warning-stamped bills, rent going overdue, and making just the interest on the credit card bills for almost a decade now. Prosperity, not poverty, should be the reflex.
We weren’t always a nickel toss from disaster but we lived in the fire swamp, a wander into the lightning sandpit wasn’t inconceivable. In those days, due dates were more like suggestions. Good thing I didn’t apply that to homework or library books! My nine year old brain didn’t recognize the signs of juggling bills to avoid overdrafts, I just obediently post-dated the checks as instructed. Well trained not to ask questions, it was another 8 or 9 years before I grasped what that said about our finances.
Young adulthood was equally precarious. There’s a big gap in my memory of my college years because all I did was work, school, and take care of Mom. After hiding her diagnoses for years, she’d finally admitted she had serious health problems and when I was 17, it became my second job to look after her. (That had a lot to do with why I feel responsible for decisions made long before I was a competent adult.)
My parents faced incredible challenges immigrating to America and in some ways, there was absolutely nothing more that I could do for them.
I can’t help but feel for them. They struggled in a time where the kinds of debt reduction and financial information we now have access to simply didn’t exist. Before the internet? It truly seemed like the Information Dark Ages. If the internet and money blogs and forums were a thing when I was 13, rather than 17, I can’t help but think maybe I could have made a real difference.
But that is exactly why I am so fully aware of the consequences of failure.
Questions about homelessness and what we do about it, posed in SaverSpender’s recent post, haunt me. What more can I do?
It’s a seriously personal question as I do my level best to keep my immediate family off the streets. I am their last resort, the last one with any dignity or safety, that is. It’s neither an easy or a painless task, and I do get frustrated with failures to communicate or comply. But it still startles me when people feel it’s appropriate to respond, in the face of one frustration or another with my family, that they ought to learn their lesson, that Dad ought to be left to suffer the consequences of his actions.
Perhaps on the face of it, that is the most logical answer. But is that really so simple? Is it that cut and dried as a human being to say that another human, older and unable to get hired back into the workforce, should be taught that the lesson for irritating me is to lose basics like heat, water, and shelter? What lesson is that to to be teaching someone at this stage of life? And what kind of person does that make me if I’m willing to throw him out on the street? Not that I spend a lot of time mirror-gazing, but it would even more drastically reduce how much I could bear the sight of myself.
I’ve observed that not even my oldest friends, though incredibly conservative politically, have ever responded to my sighs over the situation that the “obvious” answer is to do anything but continue to treat my family with grace and take care of myself. Never have they suggested that I ought to abandon my family in some moral object lesson.
“There but for the grace of God go I” is always in my periphery. I’m chronically ill but cannot afford to rest on my laurels because I am their last line of defense. And my responsibility grows with each day.
I don’t know what the answer to homelessness is, other than making sure no one I care for has to endure it.
March 6, 2015
Change from Jan 2015: 3.8% increase
On Money
I’m working away at Swagbucks to earn Amazon money for household, Little Bean, and dog things we need. Feel free to join using my referral link if you like!
***
Since I’m down to half-salary, I’ve stopped my contributions to savings. Our cash flow is much tighter but we’re still sending some of PiC’s salary to savings so we haven’t lost all momentum.
***
My 2014 IRA contribution needs to come out of savings – boo.
***
It’s been challenging making the time to stay on top of the everyday stuff like our finances, writing, cooking. Short month, short notes!
*** (more…)
March 4, 2015
This post is part of Women’s Money Week.
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”.
