More (Extremely) Random Thoughts

I've come to rely heavily on the effectiveness of breath mints.

:::


Bella is, for the most part, doing ok with all of this. We have some extremely typical behavior: when people come over to see the baby (or hell, to drop off the mail or fix the gutter) she all but pulls out a microphone, cues the spotlight, and starts crooning "Don't You . . . Forget About Me." She started talking in baby talk. Which was at first, was so completely psychologically appropriate as to be hilarious; then it was annoying; and now it's downright rude and unbearable. We had a talk last week after she started in with her violin teacher using high pitched monosyllables. We've had a few more outbursts than usual, a few more efforts to stall moments when she has our attention. These are, however, interspersed with excitement and interest and outright love for her brother. She loves holding him (and is very good (anal?) about making sure you have his head steady before she lets go). She's helped with diaper changes. She kisses him on the head at bedtime. She is desperate for him to start talking ("I'm pretty sure he just said 'Yeah'!") She's starting to take it in stride when we read the comics at breakfast or I read her book at bedtime with a baby attached to my breast. She's taken to calling him by a nickname I was aware of but didn't think we'd use and it's just so effin' cute that I've caught myself saying it too.

We're all getting used to the new being.

This is, frankly, the area where I feel the least amount of good. I miss my unscripted Bella time. She is presently sporting a wide gap where her two top teeth used to be, and when she puts in ponytails and dons her t-ball outfit it's all I can do not to eat her up. I haven't taken nearly enough pictures of her in this place, and her adult teeth are already punching through. I try -- but sadly, some of my limited one-on-one time comes at bad opportunities. Like violin practice, which may in fact be a victim of this whole little brother experiment. We practiced juggling a soccer ball yesterday while I held a milk-drunk infant (it can be done!). And I tell her as often as I can, for my sake as much as hers, that it won't always be like this. Yes, now there will always be another family member to coordinate around, but he won't always be glued to my breast, my patience won't always be so thin, I won't always be such a tired bitch. I don't want this point to be the nascent beginnings of that mommy/daughter conflict that runs through history. I tell her as often as I can that I love her. I spend as much alone time as I can afford with her, even it means giving up my shower (or worse, taking my unshowered self to pick her up at school or take her to ballet).

And I realize, I felt all this before, but couldn't articulate it, couldn't bear to let the words leave my lips lest I burst into tears (again), and she most likely wouldn't have understood anyway. We weathered a massive maternal distraction before, and by gum, we'll do it again.

:::



Dude, I LURVE having the new baby around, why do you ask?

:::


I am not fond of this stage. And let me say up front, I also don't believe that infertility or a deadbaby precludes one from complaining a bit about how hard live babies can be. I believe you need to vent that steam valve, people, or else the guilt and the hang-ups just build until you're one weirded-out mama. Motherhood is complicated, what with the cute and torturous sleep-dep, the cuddling and the stench of 72 hours sans shower, the first smiles and the shrug when he cries because you really just need to go the bathroom. NOW. Yes, you can be grateful and happy and at the end of your rope and fucking bitchy all at once! Come, let me show you!

My point was . . . oh right. This stage is not my favorite. So. Going through old clothes, I saw that someone had bought Bella a onesie that said something to the effect of "If they could just stay little." No. Just, no. I like my kids walking, talking, and using the toilet. Dressing themselves is also a big bonus. I gave the onesie and a diaper to Bella so she could practice dressing her bear.

The fussiness reached fever peak last week with a long scream session and I was convinced that we were dealing with reflux and decided right then and there to chuck dairy. Which is taking a few days to thoroughly wean from my diet (and I guess takes a week for my system to axe anyway) and yet boom, everything normalized within 12 hours and baby is fine (going on day four of fine), showing moments of happiness during awake time even. I was actually able to get a picture of him smiling, and not from gas. So now I'm thinking probably not the dairy, but I'm going to go ahead and ditch it anyway and slowly intro back in just to see if it helps. He's also that mystery age where "colic" (boy, that's a loose term if ever there was) begins to dissipate. Who the fuck knows. Babies cry.

Having said that, he still refuses to be put down to go to sleep and ergo is spending inordinate amounts of time in the carseat (the preferred hands-free place of recline), the front facing sling, and on my chest. And before you start the chants of "Swaddle!" I just re-read an email I sent to someone my second night in the hospital where I pointed out that even in his super-industrial hospital swaddle enforced with duct tape that he began to fuss and cry the millisecond someone set him down horizontally in his bassinet. I'm thinking he's just a fusspot who likes his parental contact.

Which means I could be in serious trouble here.

:::

I must have been HIGH (HIGH!) to think I could've dealt with an infant and a 2.5 year-old. (HIGH!) That age gap (two and a half) was not really my preferred choice, but Bella was so late in coming (two years) that I figured we'd better start in with the second before my already slow-to-eject eggs became scrambled. Mr. ABF wasn't a huge fan of the close age gap either; he and his brother never really clicked (and woo boy, look at 'em now) and I remember some testy conversations about making sure the kids got their space and weren't forced to do activities together and share friends and whatnot.

And look how that turned out.

So now we're dealing with a 5.5 year gap and it's STILL really hard, but ohmygod, how nice that she can get ready for school by herself, and feed herself, and brush her own teeth, and GO TO SCHOOL and leave me with a few hours to deal with Mr. Fussybritches. It's a dream to know she can get in/out of her carseat without help. She can get her own drink at dinnertime, help set the table (albeit with a sidetrack of whine), and help water the garden, and what was I thinking that I could've done this when she was a toddler? A toddler who still couldn't use the toilet and didn't go to school? A toddler who DIDN'T NAP?!

I shudder. I realize that part of my zen about this era of sleeplessness is that I've been through it before and know it will end, but also that I can often deal with baby one-on-one. And I feel . . . well, not sure how I feel. I'm not big into counterfactual history and sitting around wondering what would have happened if the South had won or JFK survived, so I'm also not big on wondering what would have happened had a terminally ill child somehow been born healthy or otherwise have lived. It didn't happen that way. It happened this way. So I guess I go forward, thankful for the small things time has afforded me.

I wish it afforded me a shower more often, though.

:::

Mr. ABF pointed out that there are two types of congratulations; there are the ones from people who know the backstory, which are met with exhales and smiles when I proclaim myself to be "tired yet relieved." And there are those where we simply say "thank you," and the other person has absolutely no idea what mental gymnastics we went through to get here. To them we are simply another couple who had another baby which is obviously the most normal routine thing in the universe.

I have been invited to join a new and soon-to-be parents group on the street in back of my house seeing as come fall there will be six new babies including my own. While I rejoice in the ease of future playgroups and playdates, I admit to being a bit nauseated when faced with the prospect of frequent brunches with a group of parents -- some who know, some who don't -- who want to chat baby exclusively.

Truth is, I'm still really squeamy about babies even though I have one.

I'm not sure what it is -- like I said above, I don't deny parents the right to bitch and moan a bit about sleeplessness or their birth experience or the pros/cons of cloth diapers, regardless of their live/dead baby ratio. I can't really go through life with the mindset that I will only ever be comfortable around other parents who've experienced similar -- hell I've already become great friends with parents who haven't, and I'm not going to deny my child friendships because I've got a hang-up. Maybe it's a bit that I don't want to rain on the parade, maybe it's the whole optimism of new life that I can't relate to.

Maybe it's that they're firmly here, on this side, able to move forward through the maze of first-year issues while I'm still getting banged on the head with a frying pan of reality: it worked. He made it. He's here. I'm not here yet, but he is. Breathe. Just breathe.

I also think it's the tricky ability to see the future. I have no idea how a pregnant woman can join this group (and a few have). I have no idea how you now look at an infant and think, "He could be drafted by the Phillies someday!" when I'm reluctant to buy clothes for him six months in advance. I think I'm ok with older kids, it's the babies. Babies don't do much, and they certainly don't reciprocate the love and attention dished upon them; parents instead do this themselves by projecting into that future where the baby smiles when s/he sees you, and hugs you, and presents you with hand-drawn artwork, and signs a major league contract. I'm having trouble projecting, I'm very firmly in the now having only just committed myself to coaching soccer again this fall -- the most forward planning thing I've done in over three years.

I'm having to drag myself kicking and screaming to this side. It's not that I don't want to be here, I just can't possibly think it will turn out ok. I got burned last time, and I've learned not to touch the hot pot. It's hard to deaden the nerves and go ahead and pick it up and splatter soup on the walls while laughing and screaming, "Who gives a Fart!"

Not there yet. But he is.

Voices Carry

I know my voice has changed over the years somewhat. And yet I feel as though the foundation of my voice is still visible, and it's what's getting me through the roughest patch of my life.

I have a post up today at Glow In the Woods.

It's a few days late. Sue me.

(And for Pete's sake, INDOOR VOICE, please!)

(Extremely) Random Thoughts

(mostly typed with one hand)

(over the space of about three weeks)


I only just called Children's to let them know. Part of this was because I was tired and busy, part because I didn't want to jinx anything by calling with good news -- and then have to call back the next day with a problem. I waited over a week, and through the second pediatric appointment.

:::

Last week, at some point in a 45-90 minute stretch of heavy sleep, I had a dream that Bella was obnoxiously and very purposefully keeping me up at night. He's here, and he's still not in my dreams.

:::

File under signs that my IRL personality is not so different from blog voice -- in case you were wondering:

(Midwife waves off anesthisiologist who apparently poked his head in the room too late to do anything, and says to no-one in particular but looking in the direction of my husband, "It's too late.")

Mr. ABF: YOU tell her.



(At some point following my involuntarily unmedicated labor and delivery)

Mr. ABF: I'm so proud of you . . . you didn't swear out a single person! You didn't even drop an F-bomb! I can't believe you made it through that without profanity. There is no way I could've done that without dropping an F-bomb.

:::

Why yes, he does nap fairly consistently every day at 10:00 a.m. Whaddaya know.


:::

My neighbors were overwhelmingly amazing after Maddy died, I think especially since we had only lived here six months. And so it is extremely satisfying to see just how happy they are for us now. The woman who brought us chicken dinners and dedicated a church service to Maddy, last week brought us dinner and begged me to now let her throw us a party. Another neighbor who wasn't here during the Maddy debacle but knows the whole mess, took a pajama-clad Bella at 6:00 a.m. last Monday brought me chocolate and visited me in the hospital (and then followed up with a dinner as well). The UPS man set down packages yesterday to hug Mr. ABF . . . twice. My fridge is full, there are homemade muffins by the coffee pot, but coming from people who not only provided for us once before but put up with my emotional distance then and for the last nine months . . . well, it's just all-consuming how lovely this place is. It takes a village, and I live in one of the best.

:::


I wondered if I would be a hypochondriac and to some degree I suppose I am; we're far more nervous about his swaddle encroaching on his mouth, and we both randomly wake and check him -- I caught Mr. ABF holding an iPhone for light over him the other night, just checking. And yet . . . perhaps after a healthy baby and a NICU stint gone to hell, we've seen it all. I caught myself the other day quickly strolling through the kitchen to let the dog in the back door with a six day old infant on my breast. Last night he suffered his first two hour crying jag and we both reminisced about Bella's first where we were sent into a full-blown panic. Last night we simply turned up the sound on the movie and took turns walking around so the other wouldn't get too tired. It passed, I'm sure it was gas.

:::

And yet. I was ordering summertime PJ's for Bella on an online sale, and promptly added a hoodie for the little guy a size or two up so it will be good for Fall. And I was flooded with that forboding, what if . . . should I really do this? Plan ahead like this? Jeebus, here I am introducing him to all these people, what if something happens . . . My finger hovered above the "Put In Cart!" button, as if it was Death himself standing there with his scythe proclaiming judgment right next to the "You Might Also Like" pictures of little swimsuits and sunhats.

No, not over it yet. It will be a while.

:::

I think I got breast milk on my iPhone.


:::


Mr. ABF wondered the other day if he, this little screaming creature (we got us a fussy one), changed how I thought about Maddy. That is to say, are the two children under our roof now the 3:4 roulette winners? Or was Maddy just doomed by something else shitty from the get-go? This guy's pregnancy tracked almost in every way with Bella's, which is to say: Normal. Maddy's was a trauma from the get go, with me bleeding out thinking I had miscarried about one week in. It went south from there. This healthy boy has been added to the file at Children's, no doubt a cute little male symbol extending downward from the symbols that represent us, right next to the female symbol with the line through it. He has been recorded on her tree, Children's will continue to look into it if opportunities present themselves, and we? Will likely never know.

:::

Sitting outside on a warm spring afternoon, Mr. ABF had just finished mowing the grass -- it smelled like early summer, and our house looked divine surrounded by late-blooming iris and dark purple veronica and the new shoots of lavender and the seedlings that finally got placed in the planter beds last week. The neighbor's drive was filled with contractors (new kitchen), cars puttered down the street, the dog went ape-shit over a squirrel.

It was perfect.

But it wasn't.

It was as if I had entered a time-warp -- this was the scene I dreamed of three years ago, new to my neighborhood but already loving the surroundings, sitting outside with a baby on my chest. It finally happened! The time was here!

But oh, what a cost.

I wonder if one could accordion those three years, not just the horror and grief and ashes in a box and depression and heartbreak, but the loss of hope and expectations, the year I zombie-walked through Bella's life, the destruction of relationships red-flagged by the people who have not contacted us, nor us them. Is it possible to fold this up, and imagine a smooth time line leading me here? Unlikely. I'll have to take what I can get.

:::

I owe you pictures, and I'm frequently too wasted to get them and then transfer them from camera to computer. We've been doing a lot of phone pictures, which I suppose is the degradation that befalls the subsequent child along with hand-me-downs and a casual attitude toward just about everything baby. Also? This child is a fuss-pot: His channels are: Sleep, eat, and cry. (Thank goodness for Bella, because most mornings I look at her eating breakfast at the counter after having dressed herself and think, well it won't always be like this. Except for yesterday morning when she pitched a fit because I made her use the toilet before heading off to T-ball. "I always have to do EVERYTHING!" she scream-cried. Phases people, phases.) Ergo, I haven't been terrific about pictures, and especially pictures when his eyes are open and he's not asking to be picked up and held by someone who directly contributed to his DNA. But here's a nice eyes closed one (he is alive, trust me on this) that we've been using to figure out who he looks like, exactly.

We've decided he looks like Harold, you know, of the Purple Crayon.

I also still owe you a name. Which isn't so much me being squeamish over internet privacy, but me being squeamish about certain relatives wondering if we've hidden a cache of pictures somewhere online without telling them and entering my children's names into google and winding up here in the land of cynicism and bitch-slapping. I am still pondering. I will tell you that it is Italian, and lovely.

Arrival

You'd think the picture in my head that I'd take away from all of this would be one of the classics: Baby swadled and lying sweetly (and may I just say I'm now a bit weirded out by pictures of live babies with their eyes closed. They look dead. And this has nothing to do squeamishness over looking at deceased children -- I just now assume any baby with closed eyes is dead. I recently looked at a bunch of Bella's infant photos and got a little unsettled); baby being placed on my stomach after delivery; mom holding baby in delivery room while midwife looks on proudly.

Instead the image that resonates in my head is passing through the hospital's revolving door into a bright, warm day with a baby in my arms. I didn't leave anyone behind. This time, we escaped.

:::



Early Monday morning, on the way to the hospital in a torrential thundershower, I told Mr. ABF I was glad I was in labor and wouldn't be induced. Turns out I had been a bit nervous about birth -- not the actual activity thereof, but the deja vu element. The whole waking up and calling the hospital early to check the induction schedule, saying goodbye to Bella, the anticipation of the first contractions, the probable wait through stages where my anxiety about the outcome could only increase. Instead, here I was timing contractions that had only just dropped from 20 to 15 minutes about two hours after a small leak of water.

Except they weren't. Turns out they were four to five minutes apart, but my body -- so used to giving birth by now -- wasn't even registering the tremors between the earthquakes. Until I got there, and perhaps psychosomatically after being told, they began to ramp up in speed, quantity, and intensity.

And suddenly . . . well, suddenly. It was as if a bizarre dream I had lingered over for nine months quickly morphed into a nightmare complete with dark skies and buckets from the heavens. Everything went so fast, there was nothing left but panic and sheer terror -- and honestly, for a number of moments, enough to distract me from what lay ahead. There was enough fear in the present tense to keep me well occupied from anxiety over the near future.

And maybe that's a good thing, that his entrance was so rushed, that nine months of anticipation boiled down to a horrific space of what turned out to be less than an hour. Suddenly, the nightmare stopped and the silence was punctuated by a baby's cry.

He was immediately plopped on my chest and under the small weight I did not feel love, or joy. I did not cry. I did however let go the mightiest exhale of unadulterated relief, for present and future and all the spaces in between.

:::

I've been having a tough go of getting the concept of time back under my feet this week. He was born 37w6d, a week and a day in advance of his planned induction, and two weeks ahead of his due date. I thought this week would be spent throwing things into the garden, making one last grocery run, and doing one last load of laundry.

I've been living a fair amount on Maddy time. Even right after delivery, there came a point when Mr. ABF and I looked at each other, looked at the clock, and said, by this point they knew something was wrong, that she would not be rooming with me. And here he was, still in our arms breathing room air, not yet taken away for his obligatory testing. It wasn't until Monday night when I decided to turn on "24" to keep me awake and occupied for half and hour until I knew someone was coming to run a few more tests that it hit me -- Maddy was also born on a Monday, and that Monday night I also turned on "24" in my hospital room for a distraction. We've done a walk through the week: Wednesday, the morning of Maddy's heart failure, I was this time instead discharged into a beautiful spring day. Today, I ambled around the yard with the baby in my arms, inspecting the iris that bloomed this week and contemplating how it was today, Friday, that Maddy was bundled up into her tin-foil microwave and transfered to Children's. Undoubtedly my checks on his breathing and temperature will only increase as we approach Sunday.

:::

The senior pediatrician came to give him one last check early Wednesday morning as she does with all the babies, and after reviewing his file asked about Maddy -- specifically, she used the term "etiology." I launched into the clinical story, stripped of emotion and full of medical terminology, for what seemed the thousandth time in just the hospital stay alone (nothing like a dead baby in your records to launch the "10 signs of depression" checklist discussion) and suddenly, in the middle of the spiel, grew weary.

I was finished with this. Not with Maddy mind you, but with this part of her. The medical is really her identity and though I'm happy to discuss it, I feel as though I've done nothing but for nine-plus months. And right now, what I want is to simply think of her as my daughter. I want to revel in her beauty, her strength, her promise. I wanted in that moment, talking with that doctor, to simply go home and study her pictures to see if her brother had her nose. If their hair was the same color. If what I remembered about their chins was indeed the same.

I want right now to bathe in all that is lovely and ugly, joyful and sorrowful, of being a mother to three.

Three.

:::

We do have a name for the little guy and I'm trying to decide if I want to nickname him obviously or not so very on the blog. We are home, he is under my roof and this morning after eyeballing Bella as she left for school, we went to inspect Maddy's lilac -- which needs deadheaded this week.

Schrodinger

From Wikipedia:

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, often described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. In the course of developing this experiment, he coined the term Verschränkung — literally, entanglement.

Schrödinger's Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison and a radioactive source, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation, the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.

Back in High School, my boyfriend's cat had kittens and being the bleeding-heart animal people that we were, my family took one of them in. We named him Schrodinger. Which people in-the-know (quite a few, given my dad's job) thought was absolutely hilarious, and people who didn't probably figured it was a high-falutin literary reference or a little-known German composer. Schrodinger was big, fat, long-haired, entirely black, and very sweet but with chronic medical conditions involving his bladder and kidneys. Which often led us to perhaps wish he would undergo some demise in a box, just not by our accord. He survived a heart attack during an attempt to put him under for a medical procedure, and the decision was made to simply make him comfortable until he finally couldn't get up any more to go check out the birds in the yard. At which point my mom (I had long since moved out) determined it was time. Strangely, as much angst as this cat had given us, we were all quite sad at his passing.

Little did I know the significance of this theorem in my life.

I now see my womb as the box, the baby (Maddy or current resident or any baby for that matter) as the cat, with a random occurrence standing between the baby being alive or dead, none to know until it is removed. Of course the fun of the theorem is that you don't open the box, which turns a quantum mechanics principle into a philosophical one to some degree. Because while the box is closed, things can be either -- they can be both. But this box will be opened, the truth will out, and the world shall see the results.

I should name this child Schrodinger.

:::

I just got back from grocery shopping and I noticed putting a few things away that they had expiration dates beyond when this baby will be born. Which is just a really odd thing. I'm staring at a yogurt container as though it was an oracle: You must know something. You will still be here! Tell me what happens, yogurt!

But it's that odd sensation that so many of us got after the ugly: time stops for us, but continues on for everyone else, including my yogurt. Except now I can see it coming -- the seedlings that have sprouted will be put in the garden. Bella will attend a few summer camps, which will be good for her regardless. My house that I'm not preparing will look exactly the same. People who have offered to help will do so regardless of outcome, and they will still go to work and school and pick up kids and eat dinner per usual. Sure, if things go well I'm expecting a few "Well Finally!" Happy-Mongerers to jump out of the woodwork, but let's face it -- there are a good handful whom we've lost over the past three years that will remain silent, no matter what. The dogs will still need walked, the grass will still need mown, dinner will still need made. This yogurt will, according the stamp, still be good.

It dawned on me last night reading to Bella that unless I expire during this process too, I will be exactly where I am now in a few Sunday evenings. A few weeks from now, I will be right here, reading a story to her, or listening to her read one to me. Her room will be lighter thanks to the arrival of summer, but everything will be in it's place -- the fishtank, the bookshelf, the bed, the rug, the curtains . . . and what will we be like, us two?

It's what happens to us internally, that which will change us permanently -- again -- that makes me cringe. And I hate that something out there might know something that I do not. I'm tired of waiting. I want to know. But I fear opening the box -- because while the box is closed, things are alive and dead and I've grown quite comfortable with that 50/50 proposition. Entanglement has become my raison d'etre, and it suits me fine. For perhaps the first time in this pregnancy, I'm a bit afraid and am longing to be one of those things that will remain unaltered in the upcoming weeks. Oh, to be someone else, or a bookshelf, or a towel, or a container of yogurt.

Oh, to not have to open the box.

:::

Last week I was in the enormous store -- you know the one where you buy things by the metric ton? -- in large part because they always have nice (read: appropriate for actually swimming in) girls' swimsuits at ridiculously low prices. And there as I trotted down the kid's clothing aisle, was a table spread thick with Nice-Swedish brand-name organic baby sleepers for about 60-70% off what I know they retail for. Any other normal nine-month pregnant woman would undoubtedly pick one of each pattern and throw them into her cart. I would count well within the bounds of normalcy making scary claw gestures and cat noises at anyone who dared venture close to the table while she sorted through sizes. I held up a tiny 0-6m sleeper covered with animals and stared blankly at it, unable to fathom what could possibly go into that thing. I set it down, and walked away.

Sometimes, It's Time

The lovely and enormously talented Kate is stepping down (back?) from Glow In the Woods. SweetSalty Kate had a big-hearted vision to start that site, and did an unbelievable amount of background work to get it off the ground, keep it running, and keep it running smoothly. She's kept the hecklers at bay, and the love pouring forth. And sometimes, you need to respond to the inner voice that says, "It's time to put the snakes in braids and view this get-together from the outside looking in, because the walls aren't comforting anymore." And I get that completely.

She also brought me on board in the original group of writers, and for that I'm forever grateful. Glow has been a lifeline-turned-confidence builder for me, in the writing and the reading and the commenting.

Please say goodbye to her over there, and make sure to keep reading her when she writes in her other space. Oh, and we now need a new writer or two at Glow. If you or someone you know is interested, please check out the submission details over there. We have a few ideas, but we'd love to hear yours.

How Not to Expect When You're Expecting

I can't tell you just how fucking liberating it is not to worry about being prepared for a baby. The annoying question de jour is "Are you ready?" and I shrug my shoulders -- I mean, I'll never be ready for delivering a baby that may or may not live, right? Who's ready for THAT? What exactly can you do to prepare? Put a casserole in the freezer? I suppose that covers you either way.

Oh right, I suppose there is one thing: I've called Children's back because my OB would like a 24/7 contact number in my file because he kinda made a funny face when I suggested that Hospital-Next-Door-NICU would promptly move a sick kid over. I think his underlying motivation was actually sparing Mr. ABF and me from rummaging through our wallets and cell-phone caller id's (in a sea of exhaustion after delivering said baby) to find names and corresponding numbers which -- Nice. Thank you. So I now have emergency contact information to load up into my file regarding how to get all the peculiar specialty fellows who are on call in the middle of the night. What, that's not in your birth plan?

This has left April free for doing what should be done in April: Finding summer camps for Bella. Oh, and we hosted a big neighborhood fundraiser last week which was an enormous time-suck but really tons of fun. And getting Max to rehab -- jeez, talk about one step forward three back. Every time I think he's looking great he wipes out on the hardwood or bolts off leash and pulls up gimpy for a day. And getting indoor seeds sowed and monitored for garden planting. All of which is super crazy when you're planning around two NST's and one OB appointment per week.

But in terms of the other stuff? The stuff that people think you should be doing? I'm ready, completely. Hell I was ready last September. Which is to say, I've done absolutely nothing and nor will I. I like to think of it as Un-nesting.

Here's a game I like to play: You know the whole "In Bed" add-on funtime feature for fortune cookies? When someone delivers a typical pregnancy declaration, I always add on "If He Lives." Usually in my head, but sometimes it slips. For example:

May is such a nice time to have a baby! If He Lives.

Haha, boy you'd better get ready for not sleeping for two years! If He Lives.

Bella must be over the moon. If He Lives.

Gosh, you guys must be going crazy trying to get everything done. We will. If He Lives.

Wow, summer is going to be nuts! If He Lives. Wait a minute . . . . .

:::

Ok, to say I've done nothing is a wee stretch of the truth. I have ordered precisely one thing: A "Carry On My Wayward Son" sling from C's old outfit. I figured at the very least it's a great donation to a wonderful cause in memory of someone I care deeply about. And if the sling goes to an anonymous mom at a shelter here in town, well, so be it -- that's not such a terrible thing in the big karma wheel.

I've also organized precisely one thing. An online DBM who I'll keep anonymous for the moment in the event that she doesn't want people to know (if she'd like to out herself in the comments, that's fine -- or if she's ok I'll out her in a future post) sent me "a few things" that she had purchased for her son who never wore them. She said she'd like me to have them, and I was so humbled and honored and touched I really couldn't say no even though the whole thought of fingering baby clothes kinda gave me the willies.

I was expecting a few things in a padded envelope and received an enormous box with a wardrobe for a boy through about age two. It was so wonderful and heartbreaking to see all of these tiny clothes with the tags still on them. It was also really the only way I could receive baby clothes into my home. I wouldn't dare buy anything myself, and I think getting clothes from people who haven't been through the same would set me on edge. (I could see myself waving a onesie at some poor, unassuming person screaming, "What the fuck are you thinking?!") This for some reason seemed right. Or as right as it can be, touching soft clothing covered with puppies that were never worn by the intended. I like to think I'm remembering this baby because certainly if I have something live to put in them, I won't need reminded of my own. And I think that's lovely.

Bella and I went down to the basement and pulled up the bins with her things through the same era (for some reason I didn't have a downstream for hand-me-downs at that point) and we sorted everything by size and then by gender neutrality. Since we didn't know what Bella would be, there's a fair amount a boy can wear. I bought only a few things for Maddy, and I'm pretty sure I crammed them into a box of clothes a friend had loaned me when I sent them back seeing as she was now pregnant. I really only recognized two things that were expressly bought for her.

We repacked everything back into the bins including the lovely new boy's clothes; donated the girl's clothing; saved a few nice Bella items for some baby girls who might enjoy them; labeled everything; and then stashed the bins away again.

We'll pull them out next month If He Lives.

If not, all clothes, bins and all, will take a trip in the truck to the shelter.

I suppose that's something, but honestly that's where I'm stopping. There will be no painting, no changing table set up, no car seat purchase or even diapers. I plan on just going full-tilt boogie until delivery and dealing with the consequences afterwards.

:::

And the ultimate date of those consequences just got very tangible: At yesterday's OB appointment, I had a lovely midwife whom I've seen a few times before. She's now familiar with my past and my way of talking about it and like my high-risk guy, I appreciate her ability to balance affability and kindness without blowing sunshine and roses up my rear. She saw in my chart that a doc had marked "Patient will Not Go Beyond Due Date." And she gently segued into how I feel about induction (like all things birth now I could care less if they deliver this child through my left nostril), and then said look: why don't we pick a date the week before your due date? That way you'll know, we'll get it scheduled to make sure you're on the books, and you can even maybe pick your doctor. I asked when she was on (strangely, my High Risk guy doesn't deliver I found out recently; I guess he's all about the getting-you-there danger, and then hands off the ball. Which seems very modest to me), and it turns out she is with another hot-doc from the practice during the penultimate week. We put it in the computer.

Obviously this is one of those deals where I call in the morning to make sure they're not slammed and have room so it could drift a day or two, but we have a birthday. After trying to forget my due date (fairly successfully I might add) this one is much harder to blank out. I've told a few people and am equally relieved and nauseated, so I think I'll wait to set it down in print here. So you're going to have to wait. Mid May. Maybe a bit early-Mid-May.

:::

Baby's been cooperating with my attempts to change his schedule and I've been trying to ramp down what it is that wakes him up. Sugar does nothing apparently. And before you roll your eyes and assume that I'm some donut-eating-juice-swishing-fructose inhaler for whom a handful of chocolate-chip-studded trail mix and a frappucino has zero effect, I really don't have much sugar in my diet nor have I since Bella. If anything, I'm especially careful during pregnancies. So much so that an OJ and a banana should be like an electric shock to both of our systems and keep us humming for 36 hours, but not so much. Caffeine seems to do the trick, and although my high-risk guy gave me permission to drink a cup a day, I admit to doing a fair amount of half-caf and de-caf and even milking that down into au lait's which are barely brown. The first time I went to an NST after "my usual," the baby napped per usual. So I'm now trying to scale up the caffeine a bit on NST mornings but not so much his poor heart goes off like a racehorse.

This is my life.

In the fluid check yesterday he was sucking his thumb, and you could see his lips and cheeks moving and my head immediately filled with the Maggie Simpson sound-track. And I forbade my brain from taking the next step, which was . . . certainly a baby with a fried neurological system wouldn't be sucking his thumb, would he?

If He Lives. If He Lives.