The Grass Is Always Greener...

You know, sometimes you really do wake up and it's a better day. It's sunny, 70 degrees out, hardly any humidity. I have a belly full of blueberry pancakes, a napping son and husband, and I even got a little work done this morning.

It is a better day today.

Last night, my mood was downright black. For the first time, I genuinely would have loved to have had a babysitter on hand so the Hubby could maybe do some adult things. In a way, I'm surprised that it has taken me this long to yearn for a babysitter.

But all I wanted was to watch TV, to eat some food, to watch a movie.

Yes, yes...I know all of the parents out there are just throwing back their heads and laughing maniacally at my "first time feeling this way" blog post, so ready to toss out a hearty "YOU WILL FEEL THAT WAY FOREVER, IT'S HYSTERICAL THAT YOU EVEN **THINK** ABOUT WATCHING TELEVISION!!!"... ready to toss that on my pile of guilty feelings that I'm vaguely harboring for being ready to pawn Monkey off on the nearest transient that might stumble our way. And by transient, I mean grandparent or other responsible adult. Or stray dog. Not sure yet.

KIDDING...

Last night though, my mood was decidedly foul. I was feeling tired, frustrated with work, frustrated at just having to be back at work, and frankly jealous towards anyone who might be able to stay home all the time with their kiddo.

This week was my first week back at work. It was long and tiring, and though I have a nice telecommuting arrangement two days a week (yes, I am genuinely happy about that, and yes, I do realize that I'm lucky to even have that option), by Friday, by last night, I was just feeling "done." I felt drained.

Let's face it, I'm not used to dancing like this. I'm not used to dancing at my job all day, and then dancing at home with the baby. Dancing being a figurative term, you could use the term juggling or the concept of keeping the balls in the air applies too.

By the end of the week, I felt really ground down. Then, as if I didn't need any more reason to be cranky, I saw that one of my friends is going full-time stay at home Mom.

I couldn't even be happy for her in that moment. I was simply pissed. Pissed that I don't have that. Pissed that I don't have a lower mortgage. Pissed that I don't have a big yard. Pissed that I have to listen to the asshole with the crotch rocket whiz down our street several times a day. Pissed that the city replaced the street lamp outside our house with a lamp that I frankly don't like the color of. Pissed that my cat wont listen to me when I say "no". Pissed that I still can't fit into my regular clothes. Pissed that I am not independently wealthy. Pissed that my feet are still a little swollen from the pregnancy. Pissed pretty much just at the world and everything in it.

So what changed this morning? Did I win the lottery? No. Does Oliver suddenly listen when I scold him? No. Do my clothes magically fit today? No.

I slept. The hubby slept. We all had a decent night's sleep.

And the world seems better today, and the grass doesn't seem quite so green everywhere else but here. In fact, the grass looks pretty green right here right now.

And that's worth smiling over.

Things I’d Really Like to Not Think About Anymore or… Being Ahead By A Head

This is the continuation of my previous post: “Isn’t This More Fun Than a Barrel of Monkeys?”

When we left off, we were on our way home, Monkey’s hardware in place for our home administration of the IV antibiotics. I want to point something out. I’m actually a very stalwart person when it comes to medical stuff. I don’t get ooged out quickly or easily, in fact, I worked for a year as a veterinary technician. I clearly can handle things like blood, poop, pee, I don’t get wierded out or scared about anything like that without damn good reason.

This is a general rule. However, I really, REALLY understand now why they don’t allow doctors to administer to their own family. It’s a completely, utterly different story when it comes to your own flesh and blood.

We had the choice to stay in the hospital, and we chose to go home, and to try to have confidence with the daily IV administration, the flushing of the line every eight hours so that we could be in the comfort of our own home. Hospitals are wonderful places for what they are, but emotionally I think they are a nightmare, and overall they are not restful or relaxing in any way. Monkey of course doesn’t give a crap, but I do think that they can sense when you (the parent) are really not doing well emotionally. They are learning facial cues very quickly, and they do understand the difference between a happy face and an unhappy face. To me, it is more recouperative for him to be at home, regardless of the ooginess of having to maintain an IV line an home for Hubby and I. The hospital staff REALLY agreed with this stance, which is why they wanted to get him home as quickly as they felt he could go.

So what we went home with was basically a port in his arm, secured by this big clear band-aid looking thing that covered the entire site. Then the IV port itself came out from that. He wasn’t hooked up all the time, this port is designed that he only needed to be hooked up for the actual administration of the medications or the flushing of the line. We would be getting all of the equipment delivered to our house, including the pump for the antibiotic administration. Rather than just a quick shot into the IV, they hook them up to a pump which slowly depresses the plunger of the syringe over a half hour’s time. He had this in the hospital as well, and we were going to be getting a portable version of it at home.

I also should mention another huge part of this story, which I’m not going to talk at length about, but it was a big thing. We had the Hubby’s parents visiting at this time, they were here for almost three weeks. Yeah, talk about stress, but at the same time, it was a wonderful thing. We have been trying to get them to come visit (especially Hubby’s Mom) for YEARS. The baby was finally the carrot that worked. It was a damn shame that all of this went down right in the middle of their visit, and at the time the strain of also entertaining family while caring for a sick baby was almost more than I could take. But we made it through, and at the end of the day, it was a really special and I’ll even go so far as to say, this was a precious time for all of us. Precious because it was so important that it even happened.

Anyway, back to the “A” storyline…

The first night back in the house was all snuggles and cuddles, and being astounded by how amazingly efficient the home-care company was. They said that we would have all of our supplies delivered at about 9pm. To me, that seemed really unlikely that they would deliver anything that late. Oh how I was wrong. At almost 9pm exactly, a truck pulled up, the delivery guy came in and showed Hubby all of the stuff and we were good to go. We unpacked the boxes like we were opening Christmas presents or something, it just represented things to make Monkey better.

In that package was the pump, the antibiotic syringes, a shit ton of saline and heparin syringes (for the flushing), alcohol swabs, three dressing-change kits, and a small number of other things, some of which we didn’t even know why we were given them (even the nurse wasn’t quite sure, for instance we also got a roll of this stuff they use for dressing wounds). I keep joking that we got extra stuff “for free!”. Heh, joke’s on us. That’s the most expensive roll of dressing stuff that we will ever buy, I’m sure. It’s like the big water bottle that they gave me when I delivered Monkey, at first I was like “look at this great water bottle that they gave me for free!” Ha. Free, my ass.

Here’s a funny side note about the pump that we got. It came in this box that was to be used when you return it. ALL OVER that box, in big red letters were warnings about not throwing away the pump. Now, this pump while not large, was pretty heavy-duty. It weighed probably 5-6 pounds, was clearly a piece of medical equipment, and looked in no way, shape, or form disposable. But you know that someone, at some time threw one of them away so now they have to put warnings on the return boxes.

The following morning, a wonderful nurse came to oversee our first administration of the antibiotic, hooking up the pump etc. No joke, essentially this was to gauge if Hubby and I could manage it, and from her assessment, we could be told to return Monkey to the hospital if she deemed that we weren't doing well with it. We passed with flying colors, and were pretty much sent on our merry way.

For the next 9 days, the schedule was antibiotic at 9am, flush at 4pm, flush at midnight. We had several phone calls back and forth to the home-care company. How big of a bubble in the line is dangerous? I got the entire dressing wet while giving him a bath, what do I do? The edge of the dressing is coming up, can I just tape it down? All in all, it wasn’t actually difficult, but it’s stressful and again, this is why doctors don’t administer to their loved ones, you can’t be as rational.

We had a follow up visit with the infectious disease specialist, she felt that Monkey was doing great, and a few days later, we had a follow up ultrasound and our first visit with the pediatric urologist. Right before the urologist appt., the PICC line was taken out. I’ve never been so happy to not have a baby with hardware attached to it. I jokingly called it his USB port, but really, it just stressed me the hell out to see him all rigged up like that. It’s a constant visual reminder that your baby is not well, and it’s hard to even think of him as anything even resembling a normal, healthy little boy.

Once that came out, I began to really be able to see him mentally as a healthy kid. I still however, am taking his temperature on a regular basis. I haven’t been able to let that go yet, even though the ID specialist said that I was essentially just driving myself insane. She’s right, you know. I am. Right now though, I can’t help it. Here is one minor factor to that which makes me not quite insane, not yet at least. I truly can’t tell very easily when he’s running a temperature. He feels warm to me all the time, so it’s really hard for me to gauge danger vs. okay. Besides my slow, steady quest to completely lose my mind, that is the main reason that I continue to whip out the thermometer.

Our visit to the urologist is where things look a little bit of an unexpected turn. We had been told basically a thousand times over that the circumcision question had very little to do with it. Every general practitioner pediatrician said this to us. Reassured us that we didn’t even need to consider circumcising.

It’s amazing how when you go see a specialist, especially one that actually focuses on kidney reflux, how the story changes.

Here’s the thing. That recommendation for not circumcising is based on an “all things being equal in a healthy, normal child.” This is absolutely true. The Academy of American Pediatrics states that there is no medical reason for circumcision. True. With one big variable in place: a healthy, normal child.

It makes sense that the pedes would be toting the line of not circumcising.

The urologist had a distinctly different take on it.

Monkey’s sonogram on his kidneys looked good, he has a low grade of reflux, which is also really good. We sat down to talk to him, and we began a long conversation about how to proceed with Monkey. His reflux is so minor that we had a number of options, but really it boiled down to three. We could keep him on an oral antibiotic long term, and not circumcise. We could take him off the oral antibiotics and circumcise. We could take him off everything completely, not circumcise and just cross our fingers, hope for the best.

The big thing at this point is simply avoiding another kidney infection. The reflux itself predisposes him to get kidney infections more readily than a child without reflux. So, the name of the game is maintenance, keeping the insides as clean as possible to avoid another kidney infection. The fact of the matter is that uncircumcised, there is a slight increased risk of bacteria entering the system. In a normal child, this wouldn’t make any difference, they would almost certainly never have any sort of issue, it doesn’t increase their risk because they don’t have the added bonus of not voiding the bladder correctly, they would just flush things out normally, and it would almost certainly never manifest. In Monkey, not being circumcised DOES increase his risk for subsequent infections because his bladder doesn’t void correctly/fully, so any added bacteria is an increased risk.

All of the options had about the same success rate, as far as the urologist was concerned. At this point, the management of this condition is just a matter of tactics.

We left feeling both optimistic but also unsure, because we had a choice to make. The urologist did a great job of helping us to understand what we’re looking at, and the choices, and of also understanding the long-term issues with him getting subsequent infections.

The follow-up ultrasound was looking for one thing. Kidney damage. This is the boogie man of this disorder. His kidneys are currently undamaged. We caught the first infection early and treated it aggressively. What we didn’t know before meeting with the urologist were the stats on additional infections. Each additional infection before a certain age increases the risk of kidney damage exponentially. A second infection? The risk of damage goes up. A third? We suddenly jump up to being incredibly close to certain damage of the kidneys.

This factor is what turned us around on circumcision. As much as we didn’t want to do it, we made the choice to not circumcise him because there wasn’t a medical reason to do so. There couldn’t be a more clear case of medical reason in our minds. We had to be okay with it, so it took a couple of days and we talked it over with some people to make sure we weren’t having some sort of knee-jerk reaction.

We scheduled the circumcision for two days later. The doctor was wonderful, he was not only a pediatric urologist, he is also a Mohel, which somehow made me feel more comfortable.

It went just fine, Monkey came through it like a champ. The doctor said that Monkey reacted more to the cold ointment than the actual circumcision. Of course he did. Again, a future of tattoos and piercings, I’m sure.

I’ll take a future of tattoos and piercings over a future of kidney damage though.

The only unsettling part about this entire process has been the fact that even with all of this, we still have a pretty hefty dose of simply hoping for the best. Maybe that’s always the case with kids.

Last week was the first week of having a “healthy” baby in the house. This entire process has taken about a month, start to finish. We’re not completely done, we wont be out of the woods entirely until they deem the reflux to have cleared up. So, in six months, we go back for another ultrasound and another VCUG to see what grade his reflux is at.

This whole episode has really deeply affected me. I have noticeably difficult time accepting that Monkey is okay. I’m working on it, but it’s hard for me still. I hope with time that I will be able to think that he is a healthy, normal baby and not that he is somehow sick, or on the verge of having to be rushed to the ER with a fever.

The other way that this has affected me is that I also really have a new perspective on what is major and what is minor. I realized when we were in the hospital that of all of the babies in there, Monkey possibly had the most minor issue. Monkey was going home in a couple of days, a lot of the other babies in that ward weren’t. The Big No-Joke Hospital treats a lot of babies whom were born addicted to drugs. When we were talking to the nurses, the told us that those babies are there for long periods of time, and they just cry non-stop because they are in pain. They can’t be comforted.

I have one friend who just had a baby 7-weeks premature. She doesn’t get to take her baby home for at least two months. She’s not the only one that I know in that type of predicament, who has faced or will face something like that.

It makes me feel incredibly lucky, and I don’t want anyone to ever think that I don’t know that. I feel lucky and grateful every single day. Scared still, yes, but more than that... Lucky... Grateful…

And joyful.

Profoundly joyful.

How Lovely To Be A Woman, aka "The Girly Quiz"

Inspired by Operawife...

1. Do you like to shop?

The simple answer is no. I love the idea of shopping, but once I start, I generally don’t enjoy it. I am a lot like Operawife, I have really, really bad buyers remorse, and I do the same thing, I’ll circle the store 8,000 times and generally talk myself out of buying whatever it is that I have in my hand. Now, sometimes, this is a good thing, but I’ve also talked myself out of things that I actually NEED many, many times. I also tend to put off buying myself new clothes until I am in desperate need of them.

And like Operawife, I don’t think this would be a factor at all had we a lot more disposable income. My dislike for shopping stems from guilt at spending the money, not at the actual act of shopping itself. Even my weight isn’t as much of a factor when buying clothes as the guilt.

This is why I very often only buy clothes when I’m given a gift card for my birthday or xmas.

2. How often do you wear makeup?

Sadly, I don’t wear makeup very often at all anymore, I used to NEVER go out of the house without makeup on. And not to sound really stuck-up, but I look pretty good with makeup on, so you’d think that I’d go ahead and just put it on, but to be honest, most of the time, I can’t be bothered. And a lot like Operawife, I actually look very different with makeup on, even not wearing a lot of makeup, I look quite different. Sure, I’ll go ahead and brush some pressed powder on my face and maybe a little bit of lip gloss, that’s pretty frequent, but the full war-paint treatment more and more is a rarity for me. However, I always wear makeup when on business trips, meeting new clients, going out, all that kind of stuff. But general day-to-day things, I almost never wear makeup anymore.

3. How do you feel about nail polish?

I love nail polish. I love toenail polish, I love regular nail polish. I love everything about it. I do not however love the dark blue and green nail polish that you see a lot now-a-days. I’m just not a fan. I don’t mind black (I’d personally never wear it, but it doesn’t bother me at all on other people), but something about blue nails is off-putting to me.

4. Do you consider yourself to be a feminist?

I love this question because I think it’s rather hard to answer. Operawife said that she doesn’t consider herself to be a feminist and added “not in the same way that a lot of other women would think that they are feminists”… I honestly think that Operawife is VERY much a feminist. She’s very into being a woman. And I think that feminism is something that is fluid, it’s mutable and it changes from person to person. The sad thing about feminism is that it’s almost become like a four-letter word. I’m absolutely a feminist in that I believe in empowerment for women, and I think that women should support other women in their lives and their choices. We’re not the same as men and that’s important. We are not equal to men, we are our own thing. I’m not advocating not treating men and women equally, but there are things that will just never be the same, experiences and challenges that men don’t face in the same way.

I will never be your classic “burn your bra” feminist. I have really big boobs and unless I want them to become a set of knee-warmers, I rather like my bras, thankyouverymuch. I also don’t generally feel put-down by “the man”… I do think however, that our culture needs to do more to recognize deficits in the way that really important things are handled for women. Sorry men-folk, you have your battle here too and it’s important, but this one is for the ladies, and that’s the incredible lack of cultural support for maternity leave.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, when I tell people that I technically only had 6 weeks of mat leave, no one hesitates to give me a big “that’s terrible, you poor thing” reaction, and yet our culture and corporate cultures have really scaled back on mat leave, regardless of the impact it has on the women or families. I’m not kidding when I say that physically, I’m not actually completely healed from childbirth, but I was supposed to be back two weeks ago. How is that right? And as women, once you have a child, unless you want to embrace the superwoman mentality (which I will get to in #5’s answer), your most important job is to be a mother. I’d stay at home with Monkey in a heartbeat, but I don’t have that option, and our culture does nothing to support those needs and desires, nor does it seem to be a priority of any kind for the decision-makers out there. Yes, I’m talking about the government kicking in for mat leave. Yes, I know, no one likes this idea, but shit, companies aren’t ponying up, and all over the world governments pay for mat leave. Like a lot of mat leave. Like 6 months at the least.

I think that classic feminism has betrayed us as women in a way. We do need help. We need there to be recognition that we can’t do it all. We can’t be everything to everyone, hold down the job, raise the kid, etc...

5. What’s your biggest challenge as a woman?

I struggle with this mentality of being a superwoman. Hear me out with this one. I think that we, as women and as a culture have set this really dangerous precedent over the past 20 years or so with basically having it all. Role models in the 80s were women like Claire Huxtable who were seemingly effortless at raising 800 kids, doing great at their job, keeping a beautiful house, being a wonderful wife and doing it all while looking like a million bucks, sad 80’s shoulderpads aside.

Women like me who were raised watching these women on TV, and seeing this influx of power-women in the workplace, the corporate women really became a huge thing back then, you really had this mentality of a superwoman drilled into you.

I struggle with knowing that I will never, ever add up to this. I will never be a perfect wife. I will never be the best employee ever, I will never be the perfect Mom. And knowing that at some point, I am going to drop one of the many balls that I am trying to juggle really tears me apart sometimes.

I can’t have it all,and that makes me really sad.

6. Do you wear skirts and dresses?

Yes, almost every day. My body type is practically made for dresses and skirts. I look way better in them than I do in some sort of tailored button down.

7. How do you feel about high heels?

I love them, but they HATE me. I have really crappy feet, and as much as I want to wear the wildest stacked platform Manolos, my feet just fucking won’t do it. I wear them at times, sure, but I hate pretty much every second of it.

8. Do you subscribe to magazines? If so, which ones?

I subscribe to Seattle Metropolitan Magazine and Parenting.

9. Do you shave your legs/wax/ use depilatory creams or go au naturale?

I shave my legs. Not all that often, but I do shave my legs. I am somewhat blessed that I don’t actually have a ton of hair on my legs, arms or really anywhere on my body except my head. So, I can go for a while between dates with my razor and I don’t look especially Wookie-esque.

10. What do you like most about being a woman?

I really had to think about this one. I realized as I was considering this question that I think far more about what I don’t like about being a woman than what I do like. I can rattle off scores of answers about what I hate about it, but naming what I LIKE the most, rather hard for me.

Then it dawned on me. I’ve never felt more like a woman than when I was pregnant. I felt acutely in tune with what I can only describe as “my purpose” for the first time, and possibly the only time. It was amazing and awe-inspiring to me that my body was designed to bring a child into the world, and it was humbling how little control I had over it.

I felt honored to be doing this; to be pregnant with my son, and I felt incredibly grateful to be given this gift. I really spent a great deal of time during my pregnancy, even when I was feeling awful, at the same time I didn’t want to trade it for anything, feeling so overwhelmingly blessed and, well, honored.

So, to date, this has been what I have liked the most about being a woman.

Nature Vs. Nurture

My son is developing a really distinctive personality. As in, he clearly has things he really likes, and really, really dislikes. One thing that we’ve noticed all along is that if he’s cool, chilling out in his napper (napper being the soft bed-like sling sort of thing that comes with the playpen) or in his bouncy seat or on his changing table or in his crib and you decide that YOU want some snuggle time, he wants none of it. He cries almost immediately when you pick him up. This has always been the case, but it’s even more now that he’s really getting into playing and chattering with you. He strongly prefers to be in/on something (like any of the accoutrement mentioned before) and to look you straight in the eye and play. He really doesn’t care for playing while being snuggled.

I would normally think this is a real blow to my self-confidence, I mean at first it just seemed like Monkey didn’t like it when I picked him up, which was intensely upsetting. But I then noticed that when I pick him up when he’s crying or fussing, he quiets almost immediately and settles in for a nice snuggle. Sometimes there is some “hulking out” (when the baby arches their back, flails about, scrunches the face up like you’re obviously making them eat earwigs or something equally as harrowing. “Hulking out” is a totally accurate description, and I cannot take credit for it, that was what friends of ours would say when their newborn son would, well, hulk out…), but the hulking out is generally relatively short-lived and he settles pretty fast. He might not settle for long, depending on what mood he’s in, but it’s at least a clear settling down when in Mommy or Daddy’s arms.

So, it’s not me, it’s not what I’m doing, I haven’t went ahead and lined my arms with spikes or am picking the Boy up with a meat hook, he just clearly sometimes DOESN’T want to be snuggled. He wants to engage and that is currently invariably a way more fun time for him in some sort of “holder” (bouncy seat, napper, changing table, whatever…). He still wants to be touched, stroked, kissed, etc. pretty much non-stop when we play, it’s totally what he digs, so we’re not just standing there staring at him instructing him to smile, there is tons of contact and games that we play.

Interestingly enough, if he’s having a time where he doesn’t want to be snuggled, he is very happy to sit up looking over your shoulder, hold his head up and look around the room. I’ve taken to walking around with him and talking to him about the things in the room, or taking him outside to look at the plants in the yard. Monkey is perfectly happy to do that, and that gives me the Mommy snuggle time that I crave.

This has all led me to wonder about at what point you start to see traces of things that are personality-driven vs. environmental. In other words, what are they born with, and what ends up being a result of their environment? The classic nature vs. nurture.

How early is it that you could see whispers of things like a more independent personality, a more clingy one, one that is a good self-soother vs. one that can’t find their off-switch. This is a fascinating thought for me, and I am seriously endlessly surprised at how well, easily and happily our little Monkey seems to be at playing by himself sometimes. Mind you, we don’t leave him to his own devices for very long, we generally will let him play by himself for maybe 5-15 mins and then re-engage him with touching, singing etc.

I feel like I for some reason need to defend letting my 2-month old sit and entertain himself at times… Which is really just me being paranoid about being a good Mommy. I wonder how much of THAT is nature vs. nurture?

Isn't This More Fun Than A Barrel of Monkeys?

Speaking of which, a barrel of monkeys sounds AWFUL. Horrible, smelly, covered in feces and urine... worst barrel ever, really, stay far away from that barrel.

And speaking of barrels of urine, let me tell you a story. By barrel, I mean hospital, and by urine I mean, well, actually I mean urine.

This should be fun, huh? Doesn't it sound fun already?

Let's proceed into my world of urological wonders, one that I've been spending a ridiculous amount of time in over the past month.

It all started when Monkey was about three and a half weeks old (he's seven weeks now)... Hubby and I were sitting in the living room, watching TV, recovering from an evening of entertaining the in-laws. Monkey was on my lap, or on the Boppy really, but sitting on me and I had a blanket over him. Everything was hunkydory, except we had been thinking all day that Monkey was perhaps constipated, because he was making this straining face, followed by a cry right before we noticed his diapers were wet.

We typically notice those things pretty fast, especially since the newborn diapers have an indicator strip on them that let you know when they are wet. So, we generally catch a wet diaper pretty quick.

Everything else seemed fine, that night, we were getting ready for bed, I was changing him, and I noticed he was pretty red in the face and ROASTING. For those of you who have kids, you know what I mean, and for those that don't, when a baby has a fever, they are VERY VERY hot to the touch. They always feel warm in general, but a fever feels significantly hotter.

I take his temp with our forehead thermometer, and it comes back at 101.1. Oh shit. That's high. I take it like 50 more times (I'm not overly impressed with the forehead thermometer btw), and though I'm getting variations, I'm getting nothing under 100.6. They tell you right away on almost every piece of literature, in person, the local skywriter writes it in the sky, it's tatooed on the local jaunty hobos, that anything over 100.4 is considered a fever, and to take a baby under one month old immediately to the ER with anything over 100.4.

So, we pile into the car, I'm in my PJs (which being shorts and a t-shirt is not good ER clothing, since hospitals are always so damned cold), and we rush to the ER.

By the time we get there, Monkey's temp was normal. But they wanted us to wait 45 mins before the discharged, taking his temp one more time before we go. Before the pediatrician walked away to let us stew for 45 minutes, he told us that were this a real fever, they take it extremely seriously in a baby this young. The automatically admit them, start them on IV antibiotics and draw blood, urine and spinal fluid. Yes, Ma'am, we're talking a spinal tap.

But of course, he's thinking it's nothing, Monkey was probably just overheated, I had said over and over and over that I had him bundled up 6 ways to Sunday (which is totally true) and holding him.

So yeah, it's nothing, right?

We take his temp again: 101.3.

Shit.

No, no... really... SHIT.

The next thing I know, I'm being piled into an ambulance and rushed to the big, serious, no joke hospital. We were at the shits and giggles hospital before. Seriously though, it was the much, much smaller,quaint "neighborhood" hospital, not the big mammajamma "you're in the real deep shit now" downtown hospital.

It was very surreal. I kept having this running dialogue in my head for the next hour or so which went something like this:

"Man, this ambulance is really messy, you'd think they'd keep it tidier. Wow, this is where they take sick people. You guys sure are talking to me like we're all staying here or something. Huh, Dr. McHandsome sure is talking like we're going to be here for a while."

I get wheeled in, and wheeled up to the Specialty Pediatrics ward, (yeah, that was weird), they load me off the gurney, and they escort us into a room. The very, very nice nurse shows us around the room, where the bathroom is, how the shower works, how the TV works, asks if we need to feed Monkey, fetches is a bazillion little things of formula and a package diapers.

And that's when it really hit me. We're staying here.

The pediatrician comes in, whom I shall call Dr. McHandsome, and runs though what is about to happen. Just like the other pede said, blood, urine, spinal tap. They whisk Monkey away, and hubby and I are left there to wait, and for me to freak the hell out.

Monkey comes back, sleeping and has been outfitted with an IV for his antibiotic administration.

Which they do right away.

Monkey apparently FELL ASLEEP during the spinal tap. Yeah. He's a rockstar. Shit, this probably means that when he's a teenager he will get tons of piercings and crap because he's "okay with pain."

Anyway, the pediatrician comes in (I am going to abbreviate pediatrician as pede from now on, it's just shorter and easier)and talks to us how well Monkey did, and that they can almost certainly rule out meningitis, his spinal fluid looked good and clear. However, his urine was cloudy, so 95% sure it's a UTI.

Dr. McHandsome then talks to us about how long we will be there. This was very early Thursday morning. He said we would be there till Saturday at the EARLIEST. More likely Monday or Tuesday.

Holy fuck, batman...

As it turns out, infections of any kind in a less-than-one month old are incredibly serious. They take the "kill a housefly with a cannon" approach and treat it very aggressively, assuming the worst, hoping for the best. Now, I've had UTIs before, so I was surprised at this level of aggressiveness. But what I didn't know was that in an infant, a UTI and a kidney infection are the same thing, you never have one without the other, simply because of geography. The distance that the bacteria has to travel from the urinary tract to the bladder to the kidney in an adult is pretty far, so it takes a while. In an infant, there is almost no distance at all, so the bacteria become pervasive, very, very fast. Which also is a quick hop skip and a jump to toxemia a.k.a. bacteria in his blood, THAT is a whole different kettle of fish, and goes from "not good" to "really, really bad" in a hurry.

The main thing was to stabilize him, and get him full of antibiotics. One thing that Monkey really had in his favor is that besides the fever, he wasn't outwardly ill. He wasn't overly fussy or lethargic, and he visibly looked and sounded really good. So they were optimistic that it was very early as far as the infection goes.

Hubby and I settle in, and realize we need to go get clothes, toothbrush, you know, all the stuff you need when you're camping out in a hospital room.

The first night was pretty horrible. First of all, I was emotionally a disaster area, and I was FREEZING because the room was at meat-locker setting, and I was in my shorts/tshirt PJS. I didn't even have socks on. So I was pretty miserable. Hubby went home to try to get a little sleep, and I stayed there.

The next four days were all the same. Rinse, repeat of the following schedule: we hang out, take care of Monkey, talk to the nurses, they do the IV thing, we feed him, we take a shower, we meet with the pedes once a day. They ran cultures of his blood, it came back for sure as a kidney infection with a fine vintage of E-Coli running around in there. But as far as the infection went right now, it was definitely responding, he was doing well, no fevers, and we even got one of his first smiles from him... Right there in the hospital. What a little trooper.

Once the nature of the infection was determined and he was stable, we had to wait to find out if we could get what is known as a VCUG on Monkey. That's a test that determines if he has a form of reflux in his kidney. What that means is the same concept as acid reflux in the stomach, when stomach acid goes the wrong way back up the esophagus. Kidney reflux is when urine goes back up from the bladder, back into the kidneys.

This is relatively minor condition, and in babies typically clears up with age. But it needs to be treated long-term, essentially until it goes away.

Monday morning rolls around, and we go from "sit and wait" to "GO GO GO" in about three seconds. The people for the VCUG show up, he gets tested, it's determined that he does indeed have a very minor case of reflux, then it was all talk of discharging us, which was then dependent on us being able to get a PICC line put in to Monkey. A PICC line is an IV you can go home with, and Hubby and I would administer his IV at antibiotic at home. If they couldn't do that, then we'd be in the hospital for another 9-14 days. So, as ooged out as I was at the prospect of maintaining and administering an IV to Monkey at home, I was REALLY rooting for the go home option.

More waiting. Apparently only certain NICU nurses are trained in putting in a PICC line.

Then all of a sudden, they had found a nurse who could do it, she comes in, they get the line in, and the next thing we know we're being trained on how to do this all of this stuff at home. How to give our son antibiotics through the IV that doesn't just go into his vein, it goes almost all the way to his heart.

Yeah. Ooogy.

And then we're in the car, going home, with the baby complete with his new iPod hookup, or his USB port as I would lovingly call it.

There is more to this story, but I'm going to stop for now and reflect on this. I don't think that I ever felt like a worse parent than those first two nights in the hospital. There is no way to not feel like this is somehow your fault, especially knowing that in adults, you generally get a UTI because of things that have to do with hygiene, things like that. So, I couldn't help but feel like we had somehow brought this on ourselves.

Also, we had made the decision to not circumcise Monkey when he was born. This quickly felt like the worst decision that we had made, because everyone naturally thinks that it has everything to do with it. As it turns out, it has very little to do with it, because of the reflux he is far, FAR more predisposed to this infection, and in a baby this young, the foreskin is really a non-issue. We were reassured a thousand times over that the circumcision thing had very little to do with it.

I had to really come to grips with this unending feeling that I was a total shit parent.

Once we got the diagnosis of reflux, I really let it go, the feeling of being a horrible, horrible parent, that there is a condition that made this happen, not me doing something wrong.

There is more to this story, it's a second installment, the second chapter, which will be called "Being Ahead By A Head", or "Things I'd REALLY Like To Not Think About"...

You'll soon see why.

Got Milk?

Nope. Not really.

Remember when I said that I would go into just how much I am NOT superwoman? Here it is....

We're at day 13, and I'm about to pull the plug on my milk production efforts. Over the past 5 days, I have produced about a half ounce of breastmilk. No real improvement, and certainly not nearly enough to sustain him.

We've had three visits to the lactation consultants ...

The first two went from okay (that was the first one) to AWFUL (and that was the second one). I left the second one crying, and cried for most of the rest of the day. We were confused, we got contradictory information, and the method with which we were feeding Monkey was emotionally horrendous for me. They basically had me using the nipple shield over my nipple, and then we would feed a feeding tube into it, and give him food via a syringe. It was awful, and both the Hubby and I had to do this awful activity, because I had to hold Monkey while Hubby handled the syringe. It felt so wrong to be feeding a perfectly healthy baby through a feeding tube, and the only reason we were doing that was to help my milk come in. On top of that, I was pumping with every feed to also try to get it to come in.

It was beyond time consuming (Seriously, I don't mind that part) but more than that, for me emotionally, it made me a wreck. And when I'm a wreck, the baby is a wreck. The syringe feeding reminded me of death and sickness, and I couldn't shake it, no matter how hard I tried. We had a really bad weekend last weekend as a result. Plus the consultants wanted us to schedule him, which again, for a perfectly healthy baby, they should be able to eat on demand. Needless to say, Monkey HATED the schedule. And again, it was all for me, to try to get the milk to come in.

We had a third appointment on Monday with yet another consultant. I was dreading it. I brought my meager pumping efforts with me, for 3 solid days of pumping, 8 times a day, I had yielded about 11 ml. Not so good. So, I went in, and I had already decided that the syringe thing had to stop.

Thankfully, this last appt was worlds different. After seeing what I was yielding, and talking to me, she agreed that the syringe thing was not something to continue, and we then just talked about Monkey, and about feeding him on formula, and it was a wonderful visit. She started the appointment by asking us if we had any different thoughts about our direction with this, and then followed that up by saying that she's not the breastfeeding police, and she wants us to do whatever we feel is right for the Baby, and that she was there to help us fully with whatever direction that was.

It's been very emotional, on one hand, I do feel like I'm failing him a little, it's hard not to, really. But on the other, with Monkey on formula, and bottle feeding exclusively, it gives him more bonding time with Daddy. For instance, Hubby took the early shift today, and had about an hour of skin to skin time with him after feeding, and I think that's wonderful. I really also do believe in happy Mommy nd Daddy = happy Baby. I can't spend all of this time, which I will never ever get back, focusing on my milk production. I would love for it to happen, but I need to focus on keeping my baby happy and well fed, and keeping myself happy. The past couple of days have been great. We have spent our mealtimes talking and him staring into my eyes as he eats, and he's noticeably calmer and more sated in general.

Sometimes something is not meant to happen. This was my first real test as a Mommy (besides the whole giving birth thing... LOL), and I need to listen to my gut and my Spirit and if that's what it's telling me, then that's what it's telling me.

I'll tell you what I'm most nervous about. I am nervous about the judgement from other mothers. I know how strongly women feel about breastfeeding, and I've been warned from other women who have had problems with milk production that I will receive my fair share grief about this from other mothers. I'm trying to prepare myself for that, which is hard all on it's own, and to combine that with feeling badly and guilty that I don't have any breastmilk of any quantity for my son, it definitely makes me feel like a failure on a number of levels.

In the grand scheme of things though, this is such a small thing. It's a blip in his life, and in mine, and looking at the big picture, this is really small potatoes.

Sometimes you can and do cry over spilled milk. But then you step back and you look at exactly what you are crying about, and then you look over at your little boy and you realize, it's just milk.

Welcome Monkeyfeet!

Our little bundle of joy was born on 6/18/2011, at 7:03 pm, and he weighed 7.3 pounds and a healthy 20.75 inches long.

We have been calling him Monkeyfeet or perhaps on here "Monkey" for short, because he has his daddy's feet and toes. Long, long feet, and, long finger-like toes. He will sit there and spread them all out like in that picture, and it looks kind of like he is about to go swinging from the trees at any given moment by his toes.

So how did all that go, you know, the whole pushing a child out of your vagina thing?

Well, I did it au naturale. I.e. without drugs. Because I'm superwoman. Ha. In my next post, you will see how super, I am not.

Funnily enough, that wasn't my intention to go med free. I really thought that I would do an epidural, or some other analgesic pain med. But here's what happened.

As you know Monkey was over a week late, so they scheduled me for an induction. It's a bizarre thing, to kind of feel like you've got a date set for the most painful thing you will ever experience. So, 5am June 18 rolls around, and Hubby and I are on the way to the hospital. Monkey seems perfectly happy in there, he made no overtures as to his departure. We get checked in, fill out what seems like a mountain of paperwork, and answer about 80,000 questions and get me all hooked up to the monitors.

Monkey was doing the same thing he did the day before, which was that he decided to take a really good long nap while they were trying to monitor him. Now, in general, this isn't a problem, except that they want to see the heart rate accelerating and decelerating at regular intervals. Monkey was not really doing that.

To top it off, I was dehydrated and running a fever.

So they start pumping me full of fluids (fluids which I am still getting rid of about two weeks later, btw), and giving me juice, jell-o, popsicles, anything to try to get me up to snuff. They also turn on the Petocin drip to see if some contractions might make Monkey more alert.

As soon as my fever went down, and I had some fluids in me, Monkey started to behave himself, and then we started to rock and roll.

Here's what I can say about Petocin. All of the horror stories that I had heard: not true, at least not in my experience. It doesn't send you immediately into active labor, it doesn't make you see pink elephants, and it didn't make me feel sick. In fact, it was so gradual, that the first half, the early labor wasn't a big deal. It wasn't comfy, I didn't feel like I was at a spa, but it wasn't a huge deal.

Here's what I can say about having my water broken. All of the horror stories that I had heard: not true. Again, at least not in my experience. Truthfully, besides the whole gush of water and everything, I didn't feel a thing.

So I labored like that for a while. I took a little walk in the hallway, pulling my IV thing behind me.

Then Hubby went to get some lunch.

And I threw up.

And the nurse announced that was the start of active labor.

Now the rest of it, I do remember it, but the main thing about the rest of my labor, including the pushing part, I lost all sense of time. I really had no earthly idea how long I was doing any of it for, and the nurses were amazing at coaching me through it.

The next thing I knew, my nurse was checking me, I was at 10 centimeters and ready to go. And she told me that any time I get the urge to push to go ahead, and she called my OB. By that time, it was too late to get any drugs. It was go time.

So that's what I did. I don't really know how, but I did. I was told that I said almost nothing during the pushing part. For me, I was in an autopilot mode and really all I could do was push and rest. And so he was born at 7:03 that same day, after about 12 hours to the minute of labor.

We had to have a small army of people in the room when he came out because Monkey had gone ahead and pooped in utero. This isn't uncommon by any means, but it does mean that some people from the NICU have to come up and make sure he doesn't have any of that in his lungs. So, they whisked him over to a warmer, did lots of stuff, and then Hubby got to hold him for a while as they finished up with me. I didn't get to hold him right away, which was a little bit of a bummer, but at the same time, poop in the lungs is bad, so I obviously wasn't about to object.

When he was born, mostly, I was just shocked. I cried a little bit, but I more than anything, I was just shocked, I had this overwhelming sense of "oh my god, I can't believe that just happened." And I wanted to see him to make sure he was normal.

And he is.

He's a healthy baby boy.

And to this day, I still don't believe that this amazing little person is in our lives. It's beyond wonderful.

Induction

Well, my induction date has been set for June 18.

I'd be lying if I said that I was excited about it. I really did want to go into labor naturally. But they have assured me that I'm not in for the worst of the worst, as I'm already almost 4 cm dilated.

There is something about having the induction scheduled though. Besides all the awful things that they say about induction, I just had made the decision that I didn't want to be induced.

But they apparently don't want me to go much more than a week past my due date. We're now five days past my due date.

This is the point in the pregnancy, when you're past your due date that you just really want the baby out of you. Everything is uncomfortable. A lot of things really kind of hurt. A lot of cramping. But according to the doctor all very normal.

So that's the latest. I'm on maternity leave, waiting.