a second line

left behind

2012-03-09T22:59:00.000-08:00

I am continuing to read this absolutely wonderful book, Knocked up, knocked down by Monica Murphy Lemoine. It speaks to me on so many levels that I need to slow myself down in order to digest my feelings, lest I just glance over them and keep on devouring page after page. She inspires me to write about similar thoughts and me-too's that I don't want to forget, but at the same time I don't want to put the book down and write...so much for compulsory therapy :)

She writes about being left behind by her pregnant friends, due at the same time as her, when she lost her baby at 8 months gestation due to hydrops fetalis (fetal heart failure). Here's the excerpt:

"Nina and Carrie (...) would-in all likelihood-go on to have their babies, and continue to have a special, new-mommy friendship together. Without me, that is. (...) There was simply no end to the possible ways in which I could be left behind."

For some reason, this left me thinking about the feeling of being "left behind" when unable to conceive, or when miscarrying, or when having a stillborn baby. We all know what I am talking about. Your friends go on having babies, some conceiving on the first try, others on their second or third try, and nobody but you has any problems carrying the pregnancy to term. Their babies are born within days of your due date, the date when you were supposed to have the baby that you miscarried. By the time you have the third failed IVF, their babies are already one year old and cruising. Heck, they are talking already and you are still struggling to conceive. In the meantime, you miscarry the second time and they are pregnant with number two, safely around 32 weeks, blooming and happy.

Life is happening for them. They are raising families, and are fulfilled, fertile, reproductively prosperous, financially comfortable, educating their children on how to say bye-bye and how to use a spoon. Is life happening for you? Hard to tell, since you are sucked in the middle of a grey vacuum of depression and emotional exhaustion, no end in sight, and frankly if this is life, it sucks. On top of that, you have to figure out how to pay for your next IVF and you don't have time to contemplate the meaning of life too much because you are working two jobs, instead of being off on mat leave like you thought you would be by now, changing poopy diapers and watching your baby crawl on the kitchen floor.

Not to mention that you are lonely, and that is not helping the feeling of being left behind. The other ladies your age are talking about their babies, attending baby showers, lending each other baby bouncers and sharing tips on how to deal with teething. They try to include you. They shower you with sympathy. They do not have any intention to harm you with their successful lives, and they would like to see you join the ranks, but the truth is that you have less and less in common with them, you and your childless life and your blanket of grief. A sore thumb in the middle of this lively bunch of cheer and fertility.

I don't really have that much in the way of solutions to this situation. All I can say is that I have been there so much that it has become part of who I am. Even though I have joined the ranks of parents, I still feel very acutely that fear of being left behind by life. What does that even mean though? Left behind by what? Whose life am I racing to keep up with? Is that what we are supposed to do, keep up? Why? Thwarted desire is not the same thing as failure.

Anyway, if you do find yourself there, this is what I found helpful:

1. have an ally. A good spouse, a therapist, a friend going through similar stuff. Several allies are even better. Complain to the ally but don't complain so much that you wear him/her out. That is why several allies are better than one. By the way, feel free to wear out your therapist, that is what you pay her for.

2. belong to some group, just so that you don't feel completely alone. A volleyball team, a quilting club, anything. Involve yourself in some sort of group project, preferably something relatively simple that you enjoy, to feel like you belong to some extent.

3. feel alone. Feel the depth of that aloneness. Feel the emptiness of it. Feel the weariness that it brings. Become familiar to it to such an extent that you recognize instantly and you can immediately say "that's that alone feeling again". That way it will not take you by surprise at a baby shower or some other social function where somebody announces a pregnancy.

4. either avoid completely baby related stuff (like baby showers for instance, or other people's children born around the time yours should have been born) or choose to expose yourself to baby-situations so often that you become de-sensitised. I chose the second one because of my job, which involves being present at deliveries and following babies as they grow. I had no other choice than to quit my job (but given that I needed money for another IVF, that was not a choice). It is easiest if you take a stand one way or the other. There is a middle way, but then you perpetually have to keep choosing your stand. I chose to force myself to grin and bear it, and I became so good at it that it was only lately that I realized I had completely turned off any feeling towards newborns and babies in general. When this has changed (recently) I realized that as soon as I did not need to be numb anymore, my brain turned the numbness off. I now love holding babies and want to smell and hug and caress their soft heads and generally experience a flood of feelings towards them that I had previously been completely cut off from.

5. life has not offered you the baby yet. But that does not mean that you will be left behind by life. Something good will be offered in the end. Perhaps that something good is a baby, as it usually is. Or perhaps it will be a fantastic marriage. Or a very successful career, where you feel you have made a meaningful contribution to the world. You might not feel like you belong in that particular pack of women, but you definitely belong in the human race.

6. make new friends. Find people that you have stuff in common with. Having a miscarriage or infertility is a bit like moving to a new city: you have to make a new life. A life that will suit you best.

I want to write more on this topic, because I have struggled with it for years, and I have thought a lot about it. I am having trouble organizing everything into coherent information though, and it might help if people write specific instances in which they felt alone or left behind, or some personal experiences with the topic, in order to jog my memory and bring out exactly what I felt at that time. I am pretty sure that we have all felt similarly at one point or another (raising the question of how alone are we, really?).

other people have penises

2012-03-08T21:26:00.001-08:00

I am reading a book about a lady who had a miscarriage at 16 weeks. She is describing everything very well, and I feel like I have so much in common with her... up until the point where she describes how the baby was conceived.

She and her husband had sex and she got pregnant.

Wow. Picture that.

I am sitting here, on my floor, amid toys scattered around me, reading this book about complex emotions that I understand so well, and realizing that after all this time, the only thing I have NEVER done is have sex with my husband and get pregnant. Get pregnant from sex. In my current state of tiredness and daydreaming, I have a hard time picturing what that must feel like. No doctors, no dildocam, no medications, no medical intervention at all, a completely personal and intimate affair. Like I said to MrH, I am devoid of any envy by now, I just feel the same as I would about the fact that other people have penises: I am just noting the difference and I am in awe.

I probably need some sleep :)

breastfeeding thoughts

2012-03-07T22:45:00.000-08:00

When I do have a moment to write, I lately write several posts at once, but that is because I have things I wanted to write about and just did not have a moment in the past, so I figure I had better go for it now while I get a chance, you never know when the next chance will come...

I was thinking about my breastfeeding journey. Emma is now almost 7 months old, and she is still breastfeeding. This is, in itself, a small miracle. I have come such a long way with the struggle, that I am almost not realizing anymore what a struggle it has been, and continues to be. To recap events, I was very intent on breastfeeding from the beginning. In Canada we get pumped full of information about the benefits of breastfeeding, and we feel like failures if we don't succeed, or like small criminals if we don't attempt it. I can only speak for myself, but I have noticed the guilt that comes with not breastfeeding in today's climate. It is simply not the "right" thing to do.

However, I really wanted to do it. Before I even got pregnant with Emma, I would have dreams in which I was breastfeeding a baby. Those dreams made me happy, and I wanted them to come true. At almost any cost. I ignored the excruciating pain of the first few weeks, thinking that it was supposed to hurt, not realizing that Emma was very hungry and that is why she would cry and latch and cry all night long, instead of taking a few hours' breaks in between feedings. There was no milk, and when the milk did come, it was very little I think. Finally, towards the second week post partum, I think we were doing well, with the milk supply a bit better, and Emma gaining weight but still not up to her birth weight. Then I had the massive bleed, and was in ICU, and lost all my milk supply. I realized that I did not have any milk left about one week after I bled, when I was at home trying to recover. Emma was four weeks old and still not back to birth weight. She was looking more and more skinny, and one night she kept on pulling off the breast repeatedly. That is when the moment of truth came, I tried to express some milk and there was nothing. I booked an urgent session with a lactation consultant, and started supplementing right away. I used a rudimentary self-made SNS-like contraption, which allowed me to supplement at the breast. It was additional torture. (A lady I know tried the SNS and threw it against the wall!). I was (and still am) on lots of domperidone to augment the milk supply. Eventually, both Emma and I settled into a routine where we would use the SNS much easier, and I would pump, but the most I ever got was 1 oz. When she turned 6 months, she learned to suck through the tubing and spit out the breast, so I gave my SNS away to a lady who adopted a baby and wanted to breastfeed.

At the moment, she breastfeeds with the same dedication and skill that I would expect from any baby that was exclusively breastfed. She gets way more nutrition through the bottle than from the breast, and she knows that the breast is slower, so when she is hungry, she refuses the breast. I know not to push, I give her the bottle, and then when she is no longer hungry, she uses the breast as a pacifier. She gets all the closeness and some breast milk (at the moment I am making about 2-3 oz three to four times a day), and I got to breastfeed up to now. I don't have my period yet, and my prolactin is as high as anybody else's who breastfeeds, giving me all of the usual breastfeeding bodily changes, with the only difference being that my production is very limited.

It took a lot of struggle, just like anything else to do with my body and pregnancy-related stuff, but as usual it worked out somehow. Not exactly the way I was dreaming of, but hey, we are still doing it, so we must be getting something good out of it. I am just writing this because when I lost my milk I was devastated and I really would have liked somebody to encourage me, to tell me that it is still possible to breastfeed, and to have both a satisfied mom and a satisfied baby at the end of seven straight months. I felt like a failure. I still do when I read about how much milk other women are producing, and I worry about having had to give Emma formula, but this is the hand we both got dealt, and we played it to the fullest. (Yet another exercise in letting go of visions of perfection :)

exhaustion

2012-03-07T22:11:00.000-08:00

I have had some very exhausting days over the past two weeks. Between teething and stuffy nose, Emma had a bunch of nights in a row where she would wake up every 20 minutes. Nonstop. I was going absolutely crazy from the lack of sleep. I did not recognize it as being a temporary problem, and in the madness of the moment even considered putting her in her own room, in a crib, and shutting the door so that I can get a bit of sleep, since I had several nights in a row where I simply did not sleep much and was so extremely exhausted. I thought that I am doing something wrong with my way of night time parenting, i.e. that co sleeping is causing this problem, and that all the attachment parenting stuff is creating this problem. Other people (whose kids sleep on their own in their crib) tell me that their babies sleep 12 h straight, without any awakenings, but I would have been happy with 3 straight hours. This is what led me to believe that perhaps it is something parenting-related.

Fortunately I got help from MrH and from my mom, and between the two of them I got a bit of sleep in the mornings, from 6 am until about 9 am, and those 3 hours uninterrupted have helped immensely. A few nights later, Emma started sleeping again as usual, with her one to two feeding breaks between 11 pm and 7 am, and I cannot complain about those. I am a normal person again. I have (once again) cancelled my plans to buy a crib. It is not the attachment parenting, it was a bit of discomfort and a virus that caused the change in her sleep pattern. I am so satisfied with sleeping with her, and I really think that she likes it as well, that I am very happy to have hung in there and not thrown in the towel.

I am curious if anybody out there co-sleeps, and if so, does your baby sleep through the night? Is it a feature of co-sleeping that babies wake up to nurse at the all-night-diner since it is so convenient?

When enough is enough

2012-02-23T22:12:00.000-08:00

I got a very kind comment on one of my older posts from someone who is going through one of several failed IVF/ICSI cycles, and thinking about whether to go on or what to do next. This is a very difficult scenario, and one that we encounter in life many times: the question of when to stop, compounded with its sister question of what to do next.

Hmmm... I know. Give me a call and for a small fee I will tell you what to do :)

But I don't want to be held responsible for the outcome.

Sorry, I am just trying to make light of a very heavy, very serious topic. I have a couple of thoughts on this topic and I am just going to type them as they come to mind. Life seems to come to points in the road where you can swear that you have met a fork: a place where you must make a decision, to go left or to go right, and once you have made this decision, there is no turning back. However, I think that when it comes to IVF, this isn't necessarily so. You might decide to stop now, but unless you continue to decide that same thing every day for the rest of your fertile life (and even later, if you are open to gamete donation/embryo adoption), this stop might just be temporary. Yes, it would be quite a change of heart, and you will need to talk your partner into it again, but say you have decided to stop, and in a few months you feel that you must give it one more try, or ten more tries, who's to say you can't change your mind? Be flexible. It's not now or never.

In the same vein, if you absolutely have no clue what to do and have the luxury of time, do nothing for a few months. Wait. When you are burned out by depression and hormonal imbalances and unfairness and financial stress (all of which come with failed IVF's), you might go through a stage when you feel NOTHING. I did. I felt nothing, including no idea what I wanted to do next. I go by feel, so if I feel nothing, I am blind. If that happens, you have two choices: one is to wait if you can, and realize that eventually you will get a feeling for what you want to do next. The second one is to try and remember what your old (now comatose) self would have wanted, and to act accordingly. Presumably you remember some of your old values, and so you could make a decision for yourself the same way you would for a comatose spouse, according to what he/she would have liked to do.

This might sound strange, but when I did not know what to do because I had no feeling for the future, no feeling for the present, and truth be told I really felt nothing at all, I remembered that I am the kind of person that would go on until I die or there is nothing left to try. Hence, as long as the clinic would continue to treat me, I would keep on going. So I would just go on in a state of haze and numbness, until either they told me to stop, or I got pregnant and had a baby, or I got the very sharp realization that I can no longer do IVF/ICSI, and that I want to stop. I never got that though. I did go through a comatose 10 IUI's until I decided all of a sudden that I wanted to move on to IVF, and at that point I stopped in the middle of a medicated IUI cycle, just suddenly stopped injecting the medications, and made an appointment with the IVF clinic. Just like that. Up until then, I had been deathly afraid of IVF (something about the dildocam with the long needle in the wrong place...). At that point, it was suddenly IVF or nothing else. Go figure.

If it is time to stop, you will know it. There will be a voice (either a real one, like that of several doctors telling you so, or an inside voice of your own) telling you in no uncertain terms that the chances of success are too small to be worth the time, money and emotional investment, or that you would rather move your resources to pursue other avenues. These other avenues are suddenly going to feel like relief, or maybe they will suddenly start to seem more and more appealing. I remember thinking of surrogacy with great relief at one point, when I thought my incompetent cervix would make it impossible to carry a pregnancy to term. Before that point, the though of surrogacy felt like a personal failure and loss. At that point, suddenly surrogacy seemed almost ... chic, if not the greatest invention on earth. Listen and watch for this change in nuance, it is your brain sending you clues of what it wants you to do next.

So, to sum it up:
1. realize it is a difficult situation and allow yourself some time to think
2. most decisions don't have to be final.
3. it's ok to change your mind
4. decide based on what you feel that you want to do
5. if you don't feel anything, decide based on what you think you would have felt if you could feel something
6. watch for a sudden change of heart towards an alternative (like embryo adoption, gamete donation, surrogacy, adoption, living child free) that you previously thought unacceptable.
7. if you still don't know what to do, send me a cheque and I'll tell you :) But I might have to read your energy field first, and visit with your ancestors.
8. if you have to chose between doing too much or regretting not doing something, always chose doing too much. Regret is the shittiest thing to live with.

the man's role

2012-02-22T20:59:00.000-08:00

Just a brief post about the man's role in infertility/pregnancy loss. We need our men to do a lot of things: to be strong for us, to share our grief, to express their grief in a way that we understand, to understand our grief in the way that we express it, to take out the garbage and clean the house when we can't, to give us flowers and a back rub and be our best friend when we hurt, and above all to hang in there.

Except girls, we can't drive them crazy, you know. To be able to go on and try to conceive again, or try for another pregnancy, or try for adoption, or whatever plan we are hoping for next, we need them to be on board. If a man is run off his feet with crazy demands, like read my mind, and make me happy, and make this pain go away, he might think twice about going down that road again. I'm just sayin'.

I realize this post might sound harsh, but please, take care of your wingman. No nagging. Don't expect too much either. He will give you what he can, and no amount of nagging will make him give you more, 'cause if he could, he would have. If your man loves you, he will give his pinkie finger to see you happy. Believe me, if he could, he would have, whatever it is that he didn't. And if he doesn't love you, what are you doing trying to have babies with him anyway? Get an anonymous donor, much less hassle.

I am writing this post because I remember a time when I wanted my husband to feel my misery and hence I would unconsciously/carelessly try to make him feel it. Don't. Let the man be happy if he can be. Even if you are not. Let him have his alone time, his time with his buddies, his gym time, whatever, let him be happy without you. You are the one who will benefit from it. He will find that living with infertility or recurrent pregnancy loss or whatever is not such a hard life, and it can be done, and he will want to go on. The last thing you want is for a man who loves you to leave your life because he can't breathe in it.

I am not talking on my soapbox. OK, maybe I am a little, but I am both on the soapbox and in the audience. These are things I need to remember often, and apply often, and so far I got good results, so I am sharing. MrH is wanting to go for another IVF, despite the absence of any urge to procreate on his side, so I must be doing something right. We all know he is special, but being allowed to live has helped.

acceptance as gradual process

2012-02-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

I used to think before I would write. I used to have time to think. Now, I barely have time to write. This is why a lot of my blogging is about mundane things, rather than well thought-out topics. If I were to wait until I actually had something well articulated and well formulated to write, there would be no blog at this point. So, instead, I just decide to write, I wait until Emma falls asleep, then sneak out like a bandit with my laptop and just write, whatever, hoping that my brain will stumble upon something wise, but mostly just taking snapshots. My blogging has become snapshots of my life, whatever goes through my mind at a particular time, with very little synthesis involved, and mostly painting the picture-of-the-moment. If I am smart at that time, something smart comes out. If I am my usual sleep deprived and not particularly intelligent self, then...you get the drift.

Today, I was thinking about how acceptance is a state that comes and goes. I was trying to breastfeed Emma and, like so many times before, I had no milk, or I had too little to interest her. I got her a bottle of formula, and fed her, as I lay next to her, as my useless breasts kind of sat there, doing nothing. I felt useless myself. As much as I have embraced the concept of having semi-barren breasts, I still have moments where I am not accepting the truth about my lack of milk, and try to breastfeed her, sometimes succeeding in pacifying her, but mostly not. I am thankful about all the formula available to us, and I am impressed and thankful for all the donated breast milk that we have received over the past six months, but I am still in pain about not being able to feed her myself. Most of the time, I suppress that pain so well, that I forget all about it. Have I really accepted the situation? Partially, yes. But I still have work to do.

I don't know that we ever really accept something. Particularly something big. I think that a very primitive part of our brain responds first to things like being infertile, having a baby die, or even small things like having no breast milk. The acceptance part is the work that we do to quiet or disarm that primitive voice that starts the "why me, I'm no good, I'm damaged, what's wrong with me" chorus. With time and practice, the wiser self gets faster and better at quieting this voice, to the point at which we don't even have to work at it, it happens almost automatically, and perhaps we are not aware of it.

Acceptance is a process. It takes work. Initially, the response time is slower, then we get better and faster at it. Eventually, it becomes automatic, and we forget that we are doing it, until the day when we are tired or upset and the acceptance part takes more time and effort, or maybe doesn't happen at all. That is the day when the old chorus starts again, and the useless/damaged/wrong feeling comes back. A day like today, when I realize that I wish my stupid breasts would do their job.

I am a bad babyloss mama...or am I

2012-02-18T22:53:00.000-08:00

I am a bad babyloss mother. I admire with all my heart the tenacity with which the other babyloss mothers write on their blog about their lost babies, even after they have had the rainbow baby to distract from the topic and to cut their writing time available into shreds. I have not written about Adrian in a long time. On January 2 of this year, I almost forgot that it was his anniversary. I write this with great shame, and I am afraid of being judged and scolded by the other babyloss mothers, just as I am also afraid of being dismissed as not deserving of being part of the babyloss mama group. In fact, I have been removed off a couple of other women's blogs because, I guess, I don't really write a lot about my grief, and hey, I honestly don't become aware about my grief all that often.

Except you know what? I carry this grief in my own way. And my way might involve not bringing the pain to consciousness all that often. My way might be different. My baby has died. I have another one, and that brings me immense joy, and fills up a void that would otherwise suck my life in, and leave me devoid of energy, just like it did for one and a half years. But my first baby, Adrian, is dead, and his death is there, in my mind, forever. It comes up at times, often without much pain, but occasionally with heart-stabbing soreness. I suppress a lot of it, I know that. I become aware at how much I suppress at times like that. But maybe that is what I need to do. There is no telling of what is right and wrong, and I have felt a bit let down by the community when the links to my blog disappeared after I had Emma and stopped blogging so much about the loss of Adrian. I guess I felt less "accepted". That is not what matters the most, though. What matters the most is that I accepted myself less. As if I must be conforming to a certain pattern of behaviour, of blogging, of feeling, of remembering.

Yo, I do things my own way. I am saying this for my critical self, the one that chides me for being an inferior babyloss mama. I love Adrian with all my heart, even if sometimes I forget to dust his urn. I wish for him to be here just as much as always, even though I am so profoundly happy that Emma is, that I sometimes forget to be sad about the fact that he is not. And, if on the anniversary of his death I nearly forgot to light a candle and say a prayer, it is because I was to busy being happy and living my life, the way he would have wanted me to, the way I would have wanted him to. It is a fine balance between living on and remembering, and sometimes we do one better than the other, but nobody (lest of all ourselves) should be critical of how we handle this fine balance. It changes daily anyway. There will be days full of living in the present, and days of waddling in the past. We do the best we can. And we all deserve love, understanding, and the space to be who we are.

Now if only my critical self would listen and learn...

working mom advice

2012-02-18T21:33:00.000-08:00

I would like to write a post full of helpful advice for working moms...but I am not the guru of the topic, and in fact struggle quite often, so I will rather write a post with what I found that works for me. Pick and choose what might seem helpful.

I went to work when Emma was 5 months old. I work in the afternoons only, from 1 pm to about 4:30 pm. Sometimes I run late and stay until 5 pm, and sometimes I get called out during the night, but that is no more than once every 1-2 weeks, for a few hours at a time.

The best thing that I did was to get Emma on a schedule. We had no schedule before, we would sleep in late, stay up late, and nap together whenever the urge struck us. Having a regular sleep-wake-nap schedule is extremely important, as it is the backbone of any activity done with a baby. Everything we do has to fit in between 10:30-1 pm or between 4-6 pm, her awake times. Evenings are off limits, as she is very cranky and needs to have me give her attention non stop, preferably at home.

The second thing that we needed was to have her take a bottle regularly. She does take the bottle and the breast with equal ease. At work she has one full bottle, and some baby mum-mum crackers. I breastfeed at 11 and then at 5 pm, with a six hour break, and this hasn't affected my production at all. Probably because she feeds every 2-3 hours all night long at the breast, so I only get one long break from breastfeeding in the span of 24 hours.

The third thing was to decide what to do about diapering. We use cloth diapers at home, but to carry the cloth diapers to work is sometimes difficult. So far, we had a couple of the hybrid G diapers inserts, which are disposable biodegradable flushable inserts that go in the G pants (the G pants are basically a cover and a waterproof layer, forming the outside shell of the diaper. The inserts go inside, and for G diapers the inserts can be cloth, which is what we have used so far, or this biodegradable flushable gel-filled inserts). I don't know if I should continue with that, or try to convince the nanny that carrying stinky poo-stained cloth diapers in the diaper bag is chic after all.

The fourth thing: get the baby used to the nanny. I was lucky to have my mom help so far, as Emma loves my mom. In fact, there are many days when I doubt she is clear on the fact that I am her mother, not her. Luckily, I have the boobs, so I still present some interest to the little lady, otherwise she would ditch me for my mother :) In two weeks, however, my mom has to go home and I need to introduce Emma to the new nanny. She cried the first time she saw her, and could only be in her arms for a second. I have a lot of work to do I'm afraid.

Fifth (in no particular order): decide on about four dishes that are easy to cook and keep in the fridge for up to four days (if they don't then get another fridge, most food should keep that long in a well functioning fridge). For us, they are: moroccan chickpeas (with coconut milk, yum!), salmon (steamed, a portion every day), beans with vegetables, and lamb or bison curry. I rotate through these every few days, having two at a time in the fridge, and eating one every second day (like this: cook chickpeas on Sunday, eat them, cook fish on Monday, eat it, cook fish again on Tuesday, as I like the fish fairly fresh, eat it, eat chickpeas again on Wednesday, then cook beans on Thursday but eat any leftovers from either fish or chickpeas, and eat the beans on Friday, cook the lamb on Saturday and eat it, beans on Sunday, lamb on Monday, cook something else on Tuesday but eat leftovers.

I guess what I am trying to say about the food is: eat leftovers. You can make a quick salad to go with it. Even if you cook a dish one night, cook it after your child is in bed and eat it tomorrow. Do not expect to come home from work and cook dinner and then eat it. It is too much for the child. He or she wants you to give him/her attention after you come home, not to cook dinner. That is just my experience. Do the cooking while child is in bed for the night, i.e. after 8 pm. My leftovers are just as good or better the next day. The only exception is the fish, which I just plonk in the steamer and eat freshly cooked, as I am not a big fan of leftover steamed salmon. The second exception is the weekend, when I have time to cook during the day and we can eat right away.

Other miscellaneous advice involves: get someone to help clean the house. This is precious time you have to spend with your child, and it is worth paying for. I am going to add to my usual 3 hours of housekeeping a week a further 1-2 hours on the weekend. I used to think it is an indulgence, but I think it is worth the sacrifice. I just don't have time to clean, my life is really regimented and Emma hates it if I do anything that doesn't involve her. I barely have time to water the plants and change the pets' water. With all this housekeeping, you'd think you could eat off my floors, but actually there is still cat hair on the couch, dust on the carpets, and crumbles on the linoleum on a regular basis. (Part of the problem is that my housekeeper is old and really slow, hopefully she never reads this blog...).

Also on the miscellaneous list: get some kitchen gadget like the Thermomix that cooks for you so you don't have to sit there and stir the food. I just throw all the ingredients in and set the timer, after which it is all done. A crock pot might do the trick, I just don't use it so I can't give advice as to what to do with it.

I hope I haven't left out anything important, but if I did I am sure somebody can point it out in the comments section :)

on sleep, and hope, and fear

2012-02-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

I am practicing a form of attachment parenting I guess, not because I care to follow rules to parent by, but because I have recently discovered a book that described attachment parenting and became aware that, hey, that's what I am doing. It just came naturally. When you have a child that you have struggled for years and years to have, you naturally don't want to separate from him/her, so you carry the child everywhere, preferably on your body, and sleep with him or her, and breathe with that child, and do everything you can short of seeing clients at work with Emma in the baby Bjorn.

And I am enjoying it immensely. She is such a sweet, good natured child, talkative and full of life, with inquisitive dark eyes that seem so soft and velvety at the same time. I love her with all I have. And I adore sleeping with her at night, in our family bed. The only issue I have is that I would like her to start learning to fall asleep by herself. It is an important life skill, the ability to be quiet and put oneself to sleep. It also gives me a bit of a break to do my nails, and that is important ;)

I just have to decide how to do it. Should I let her cry? I put her in bed, and give her some boob, then she gets drowsy and often falls half asleep, after which I usually leave her in the room and go in the living room space just outside the door. If she wakes up, I don't go back in there unless she cries heart-fully, if she just whimpers then I leave her. She usually talks to herself, and plays with the pillows and bedspreads, until she falls asleep, when I go in and cover her up. She has fallen asleep quite a few times like this, and I know she doesn't like it, but she doesn't dislike it terribly either. She would rather just have me there, with the boob in her mouth, preferably the entire night. If I do go in and stay, then she plays with me and doesn't sleep, so I leave after five minutes of soothing, and try again.

This usually happens around 8 pm, and the whole process of her falling asleep takes about half an hour. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I go to bed at ten, so I have about one hour to myself, if I am lucky. I often fall asleep earlier than my usual bedtime though, because I am still quite tired, with the 7 am wake up call that Emma gives me. I am not a lark, by any means. I wish the world would stay in bed until eight, which is, as far as I am concerned, the only civilized wake up time there is. (If you guys have to get up at five or six to go to work, you have my heartfelt sympathy. I had to do it for one month when I was working on a surgical ward, and I gained 7 lb because of constant eating in order to stay awake). But I digress. There is lots written on sleep, both for infants and adults, and I am fascinated by all the reading material, however I still don't know if letting her cry is helpful, and to what extent. So far, I guess I am doing a graduated extinction method, but if anyone out there has tried something different and it worked, let me know.

I have recently seen a few clients at work with infertility issues, and it makes me review my feelings about the topic, now that I have a child that is, thank God, alive and well. As time went on, I started to believe more and more that Emma is here to stay, and the fear of SIDS and other dangers has passed almost entirely. With that, I also have a deep contentment, that of having a child. She seems pretty solidly lodged in my life at the moment, and I have high hopes of having that oh-I-want-so-much ending of dying before she does. You know, that ending that we all deserve, of being outlived by our children.

My feelings about infertility right now are indeed still the same that I had before, namely isolation, inferiority, defectiveness, anger, unfairness, struggle, and also reverence, and awe, lots of awe, at how much is possible nowadays compared to 100 years ago for women like me. And gratitude for these possibilities that give us hope. I think that is the big difference, I focus on the hope instead of on the fear that "it won't work". Sure, it's easy for me to do that now, compared to before I had tried my first IVF, or before I had my term pregnancy. It's infinitely easier to hope now that I will be able to do it again, then it was back in time, four years ago, when I was getting negative after negative pregnancy test. If I could go back in time and talk to the me that was peeing on yet another stick with a single red line on it, I would tell myself to rather focus on the hope than on the hopelessness. I felt hopeless and that made me lose enjoyment in life, for months and years. Why? What for? Sure, I might have not succeeded. But then I would have had to deal with that reality at the end of a few hope-filled years, and yes, it would have been final and hard and sad for a long time, but being so scared for so long led to difficult times.

On the other hand, I was not completely hopeless, since I persisted with the treatments despite so many obstacles. I must have had somewhere in my mind the possibility that it would work. However, I can honestly say that I was on very familiar terms with future-childless-MrsH, while this mommy-MrsH is a foreign lady. She suits me just fine all the same though :)

I guess what I mean to say is that I have not forgotten the issue. I have graduated from the school of hard knock-ups, and learned too much to ignore. But other than the advice of clinging on to hope, I have nothing else to give to people. Cling on to hope. In the absence of guarantees, it's all there is. It is a gift you can give to yourself (and only you can choose to accept it). Accept it. It will make months and years of your life easier. In the end, you will be able to deal with the final outcome just as well regardless of whether you have hoped or feared. Fear does not help fill the emptiness that childlessness brings. Fear does nothing necessary, I am afraid (pun intended). It is safe to let go of it as often as you can, allowing for as much hope as you can muster.

I am sorry about rambling, I am aware that I don't make much sense when I am tired, but I am writing this anyway because I will be able to make sense of it when I need to re-read it. Which is going to be sometime soon in the future, when I am going back for more.

obsessed with sleep

2012-02-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

I have become very interested in sleep over the past two weeks. My own sleep deprivation might be an incentive to think about this captivating subject, but I think the main appeal for me to read extensively about sleep issues is Emma's previous problem: the frequent, frequent awakenings that were so uncharacteristic for her.

Well, I am happy to report that life is a lot better over the past few days. I started reading a book (GASP! I read a book) on child sleep issues (double gasp!! I read a book about baby stuff...I thought I could make it through parenting without ever reading a book on parenting/child rearing advice, but hey, I succumbed to the movement). Anyway, the book finally shed some light into how long babies should sleep for, and at Emma's age it seems that around 15 hours is the appropriate answer. The other thing I learned is that her sleep should be divided as follows: morning nap, afternoon nap, and a third brief nap before final bedtime that should be at seven pm. This gave me some structure on how to divide the day.

The problem was that I have to be at the office at 1 pm. She would sometimes want to sleep around 12:30, which would be a problem, since she comes to the office with me and my mom looks after her there. This was a big deal. Before, we had no schedule, and we would just sleep whenever the fancy struck us, but with the start of work, I began to make her nap at regular hours, and this has helped so much, I cannot recommend it enough. She is a much better sleeper now, not overtired, and she is so happy and smiley when awake. I can tell immediately that she is tired when she starts to fuss.

So, we wake up at 8:30 am or so, and she is fairly reliable in waking me up so I don't even have to set an alarm clock. We then stay awake for about an hour, me having coffee, her having some apple juice, and playing on the kitchen floor with books, blocks, and spoons. At about 9:30 I start to get her ready for the morning nap, and by 10 am she is asleep again, for one hour. This is the time when I can do my makeup, shower, empty the dishwasher, make phone calls, do my hair and get dressed for work. At around 11:15 am she wakes up, and we go for a half-hour walk outside in the sun. Even when it is cold and windy! she hates the wind, but I find that without some exposure to the elements, it is hard to get her to nap again in the early afternoon, and that makes it hard for her to be sociable when we get home from work, which is our best family time. Anyway, after the walk, we go to work, and at work my mom makes her sleep for two hours, usually 2-4 pm. At 4:30 I am done, and we go home, sometimes stopping to get groceries on the way, but usually not because I am in a hurry to get her latched to my bursting boobs. I still don't have much milk, but man, if I don't get that little bit drained, it hurts! So we go home, and spend 5:5:45 pm in bed, sucking on the boob, and then either having a brief nap or a cuddle. At 6 pm daddy comes home and we have dinner at 6:30, after which we play with her. At 7:45 pm we have a bath in the big tub (I find that bathing with her is so much fun, and it helps the eczema on her cheeks improve), and then we go to sleep at 8 pm. At exactly 8:45 pm she wakes up again, and takes another 15-30 minutes to fall asleep. This is the bizarre waking moment, but it makes sense being after one sleep cycle, and then she goes to sleep for the night.

Overall, I spend about two hours of my time during the day with the boob in her mouth putting her to sleep. But it is worth it. I have complete peace of mind knowing that she is at least very well rested, that I know when fairly well whether she is tired or not, and also knowing that I can leave the house at specific hours and she will take it well.

I used to think that schedules are restricting, but in this case my devoted observance of this schedule is what lets me do all the mothering tasks (feeding, changing, washing), all the household chores, and work at the same time. I feel pretty confident at this point in how I have things going. The only thing that I wish for is that she stay asleep when she goes down for the night, but that will probably come in time. She has achieved so much in just two weeks that I am shocked at how regular and trainable her brain is.

Please make suggestions for games to play with her. She will be six months old in about one week.

PS. We even went out to Boston Pizza tonight, and she had half a slice! she smells like cheese and tomato sauce, that is so cute. It was not my idea to feed her pizza, MrH did it, but I don't think he had a choice, given that she grabbed his hand with great urgency and started smacking her lips and salivating while looking at it. The healthy avocado/egg yolk/cottage cheese puree sat there, untouched, while my child ate pizza. I think my next reading will be on child nutrition.

If one can also tell me of good child-rearing books, I am in. I am sold. The wheel has already been invented, might as well use it.

sleep issues

2012-01-30T10:26:00.000-08:00

I think Beth has made a very interesting and insightful comment to my previous post: Emma might not be sleeping because of the fact that she wants to make sure I am still there. The previous time when my mom had to look after her for a few days was when I was transferred to Edmonton and was in ICU with the massive post partum hemorrhage. When I got her back we had similar issues: she would wake up to make sure I am still there. I think subconsciously she is worried that I might be gone for a long time again just because my mother is her caregiver for four hours per day. Unfortunately, there is no solution for this except for time to pass and for her to become accustomed to my still being here despite her fears.

With work come other issues, like having to normalize her sleep: she needs to nap 11-12:30 in the morning, because at 12:45 we leave for work. She also needs to take her afternoon nap at 14:16:30 or so. I am working hard to get her used to these times to sleep, as before we would simply nap together when she was tired. Now I cannot really nap with her :( except maybe in the mornings for a bit. It is definitely an adaption period for both of us.

I survived the first week!

2012-01-29T09:32:00.000-08:00

I am logging in to report that I have survived my first week at work!!!

Don't ask me how. On the one hand, my actual work was very much the same old thing, like riding a bicycle. So that wasn't hard. What was hard though was that:
1. the password to log into the computer wasn't working
2. we called IT, and they reset it, but it still wasn't working
3. the third time it worked.
4. the password to get into the software program wasn't working
5. we reset it as well.
6. once in there, the password to get into the clients' files wasn't working either
7. also another call to IT, who by now started to worry if we weren't calling them every five minutes and they were calling us just to check that I am still alive.
8. once all the stuff in the clinic was working, I realized that the software that connects us to the hospital imaging department was totally new, so my old password...DIDN'T WORK
9. call the hospital IT department, who asked who I was, and said they would reset my password.
10. then they called me again to confirm that I really was who I was, and asked me a whole bunch of verifying questions.
11. then they called my receptionist to double check that I really exist and am not a loser who wants to look at other people's xrays over breakfast.
12. by this time I was ready to go home and crawl under the bed for a week with a good book.
13. all this activity took place while I was seeing clients one after another.
14. all these passwords were supposed to have already been reset last week, when I have called IT and my workplace to remind them of it.

In the meantime, Emma did very well with my mom, who is absolutely wonderful with her. She did decide however to stop sleeping through the night, and she suddenly has a new wakeup schedule: 1 am, 3 am, 5 am, 7 am, 8 am totally awake with no hope in he!! of me ever sleeping again. And now I cannot nap during lunch time either, because I am working. So I am totally exhausted. And irritable. And I seem to only be able to write in short sentences.

Despite this, I have been able to do a fair amount of work, and to even go running twice, albeit only 5-7 km instead of 8-10 km like before. And I have put on two pounds because of the stress. Hopefully the next week will be easier and the weight will continue to go down, not up, as my goal is still to lose 10 lb more and I will keep on with it until it's done.

starting work

2012-01-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

I am going back to work on Monday. Emma is five and a half months old, and I think she is ready to stay with a caregiver for three to four hours a day, so that I can do half a day's work in the afternoons. My mom is coming up from Vancouver to help look after her for a month and a half, and then she will be with my friend's mom. All good in the world of wonderland.

That being said, I feel very sad about leaving her, even if it is not for long. She is becoming such a sweet, loving child, and I adore laying next to her for the afternoon nap, smelling her head, tracing the outline of her nose with my finger, breathing next to her little breath and letting her hand rest on my face. We are like a perfect unit, after so long we have become the perfect unit, and I hate to leave my place in the relationship, even for a very little while, to be filled by a substitute.

I do think it will be good for both of us though: for me, because I am a professional woman who needs to bring in some dough and exert her evil ways on people other than my own husband, for her because she belongs in society, and as much as I would like to keep her tied to my hip forever, I know that eventually she needs to form relationships with others, and take her place in society as an individual. Within limits, this starts early, and why not now?

I am toying with the idea of bringing her and the caregiver to my office where I have a spare room. I am fairly certain that I will do it, at least to try, and if it is too small a space, too stifling, then I will abandon the plan. But having her close to me will be such a wonderful experience.

She is a little girl now, no longer a baby. She still sucks on my boobs with aplomb, but now she can grab them and put them in her mouth as I am asleep. (Assuming that she is awake enough, most of the time she just starts making crying sounds with her eyes closed, and searching for the boob by just opening her mouth, as we all know that boobs just fly above our heads and will land in our mouths if we simply ask for them. She is too lazy to even open her mouth fully!) She tugs on my clothes when she wants me near (always, that is) and puts out her arms when she wants to be picked up (again almost always). My biceps are getting a daily workout, and it shows.

I did get back to my prepregnant weight, and fit into my clothes (yay! 166lb). I still have some more weight to loose in order to look very very good. And I will. Life is short. And going through infertility-childbearing successfully made me feel like I could do anything. Even though I know that it was not really that much me, and more God's will, nature's play, and the way the die were cast, I think the part that was a bit more me was the persistence. Surprisingly, it is the same tool used in weight loss! I lost 30 lb as of now with persistence, and will go on to lose a further ten or twenty, depending on how I feel and look. I am now venturing into territory in which I have not been since my earlier 20's, except for briefly after being medivac'd and NPO (nothing per mouth) for three days (that was when I got pneumomediastinum after a laparoscopy...for infertility. Gee, this infertility does help one lose weight, doesn't it...tongue-in-cheek).

minimalist? or not...

2012-01-11T23:39:00.000-08:00

I have always envied minimalists. They are disciplined people who can do without or make do with very little, and in the process have space, avoid clutter, and save money. I go through minimalist stages, at times quite successfully, but inevitably I slip, and end up cluttering again. Somehow I ended up in a cluttered stage this time too, although I was quite certain that I had plastered the less-is-more mindset over my frontal cortex in the past couple of years.

My family of origin is the same way: we try and try to declutter, but end up buying more stuff or amassing more stuff somehow (if we don't buy, we are given gifts, or find stuff or somehow attract stuff like magnets), and the previously empty surfaces, spacious drawers and closets, and breathing room that we had is gone, filled once again to the point where I begin to get uncomfortable. I laugh at my dad when he says that his dream house is a small apartment in a chic building, with a minimalist decor where a beautiful long legged architect woman arranges two forks and two plates on a black granite countertop in the kitchen and that is all you can see around. I love his vision. It's so not him, but you can see how we all have a penchant towards what we are not, trying to balance ourselves somehow so that we continuously refine our tastes.

For me, I know that I get uncomfortable when I can no longer open a drawer and see everything at once with one glance. That typically requires objects to be arranged in a single layer, nothing over anything else. That goes for socks, underwear, bras, and definitely makeup. If I have too much stuff, I need to "pile it" over preexisting stuff, and that is not good for my mental sanity. With the recent pregnancy and having gone from 153lb before pregnancy to 220 lb at the height of the 39th week to 165 lb now, I went through a lot of sizes, each requiring clothing space in the closet. In addition, Emma goes through clothes like the wind, changing sizes every second week almost, and hence we have boxes and boxes of stuff to store. I hate that. My dream closet would have two pairs of Lululemon pants, two running/exercise bras, two fitted exercise T-shirts, four bras with eight matching pants (some thong, some boy short style), three layering tops with lacy patterns, a lovely skirt suit (Chanel would be just fine :), a leather skirt with some ruffles or detail, an A-line skirt, two pairs of dark denim jeans, one slim fit and one straight cut, two light coloured cashmere sweaters from Brunello Cucinelli or Loro Piana, one long elegant cardigan for layering, one black or brown turtleneck sweater, and one pair of trousers in brown or purple with a nice pattern to the fabric. Then for shoes, two ankle boots in funky colours that match the trousers, three long boots (white, black and brown), two pairs of elegant shoes with kitten heel or a mid heel (black and brown), one pair of elegant sandals, one pair of runners, and one pair of flip flops. And two fabulous bathing suits, one for the pool and one two-piece for the beach. As for coats, I think an elegant one (like fur, hm), a leather jacket, a camel coloured wool and cashmere blend, and a trench coat.

I have quite a bit more than that, and each time I try to streamline to exactly what I have described above, I get so bored after about one month that I go stir crazy and start buying or acquiring again. I need A LOT of discipline to stay within the confines of a narrow wardrobe, but I am starting to realize that it is the same principle as dieting: it is for a lifetime, so one has to allow splurges within limits, and one has to have a bit of fun and flexibility, but at the same time not forgetting the original goal. I did stray quite far, but will get back to the principles, and work on it again and again, until I create my own comfortable definition of minimalism. Then, eventually, hopefully I will learn to discipline myself enough to stray less and less each time.

alright then

2012-01-10T23:03:00.001-08:00

I was so touched to see that people actually like reading my blog. In fact, I really was impressed that anybody at all would be entertained by my blabbering here. You guys have definitely encouraged me to continue, thank you!

Remember my belt obsession? I had to return the previously bought belt because it was the wrong size (I had bought it on the internet). But I finally think I have come to an endpoint of peace. I have been tortured by this belt story for one whole week. ( MrH is certain that I need to go back to work, since I seem to put too much energy into endeavours without purpose. But I digress). I have been very very obsessed with the Hermes H belt. I saw one in fuchsia colour at the Vancouver Hermes store (yes, feel free to ask what on Earth I am doing there in the first place). Sometimes I like to feel, touch and smell great craftsmanship, fabulous materials, and undeniable quality, and so I put a nice outfit and go browse luxury stores in Vancouver like I have some business being there. Occasionally I am very tempted, although if I really like an item, I will hunt for it on ebay and usually buy it used in nice condition, when it is out of season and all the japanese tai-tai's (ladies who lunch while hubby is working at well paid endeavour) need to refresh their wardrobe. By wise bidding, I have come to possess a Bottega Veneta purse, a Chanel purse and two Prada purses, one of which I have to sell because my conscience says so. Just not yet :)

Anyway, I digress. I tried on this fuchsia Hermes H belt, and I died and went to heaven. It was thin, buttery soft, flexible, gorgeous rich colour with extremely beautiful patent finish. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE. 700 $ before tax. MrH would divorce me if I spent that much money on a belt at this point in my life. I mean c'mon, I have a child, and I am working part time starting next week, having just ended a ten month pregnancy/maternity leave. Not wise. Don't do it. Don't go there. But it would be such a lovely accessory... it would immediately step up any outfit, etc, etc. Don't. But it is so lovely and well done and it would certainly last until I die. (Since we all know that a fuchsia belt is something that an old lady wants to wear). So my mind went into a state of obsession with this belt. I wanted it so badly I was ruminating a subprogram in my brain that analyzed the cost effectiveness of such a purchase.

In the end, Math is golden. This is how Fashion Math works: you calculate the price per wear for each item. A reasonable price per wear for a fabulous item is 1 $ for each time you wear it. It is the same price that I pay for my stockings, which tend to break in two to three wears, and cost 18$ for six pairs at Costco. So, since I pay that much for stockings, I figure the same price balance should be applied for other stuff too. So I would have had to wear this belt 800 times after tax to get the right price per wear. Since nobody in their right mind wears a fuchsia belt daily, unless it is their trademark (and I don't want that to be my trademark), say I would wear it once or twice a week. In about 10-12 years I would get my price per wear to be around 1 dollar. It is a bit much I think.

So I went to browse for another belt at Holt Renfrew, and as luck would have it, I stumbled upon a lovely, buttery soft charcoal Prada belt in the right length, on sale for 270$ (300 after tax). It was half price. I laughed when I told the saleswoman that we must be out of our minds if we feel that 300 $ for a belt is a bargain. But, here is the catch: the charcoal belt can be worn twice to three times a week easily, giving a nice glamorous accent to so many outfits. I only have one other nice leather belt, so twice a week is very likely. This means that in three years I got my price per wear. Knowing Prada leather like I know Prada leather, I am quite certain that this belt will live much longer than three years, likely ten or more. So it is a reasonable purchase.

And so I finally lay the belt story to rest. I would very much like to add to my collection, but I will not. The Prada belt is a nice all purpose belt, and I will be buried with it on at the ripe old age of 100. Amen.

should I pause this blog?

2012-01-09T23:47:00.000-08:00

I am toying with the idea of stopping this blog until I do another IVF. Part of me wants to continue writing about everyday life, and about Emma, and I am sure that I will continue, but I don't know whether to continue publishing or simply to keep the posts private, as drafts. Lately I have been mostly writing about stuff that is happening in daily life, and not so much about fertility issues. I have a feeling that is not very interesting for people to read. I haven't had any comments for the past few weeks, which is why I am not very inspired to continue sharing. I will have to make it out for myself why exactly I am blogging. I started out wanting to reach out and help, and at the same time wanting to be part of a community of people with similar issues. I am not of much help at the moment, given that I am mothering and not battling with fertility issues, and my own life is not that interesting to anybody other than myself.

So, having said that, I think I will stop here. I am going to restart when I am preparing for my next IVF, probably this year. I will post occasionally, mostly if I encounter anything that I find useful for the infertility issues that we face, or if I feel like writing about my stillborn son. Otherwise, I don't think I should bore people with my mundane life.

I wish everybody all the best, and thank you for the love.

milk, milk, milk...wish i had more

2012-01-09T23:26:00.000-08:00

I am still struggling with low milk production, but I thought I had made peace with the fact, and moved on. Today I realized that I might not be quite as "over it" as I had initially thought.

I fed Emma some pureed chicken soup, and because she ate half a bowl (she has a very hearty appetite!) she did not want to breastfeed much before falling asleep for her afternoon nap. My breasts felt engorged, and because I am still trying to increase the milk production, every time I feel that they get hard, I try to express the milk, rather than letting it sit there. (I am also afraid of engorgement left alone, as I have unfortunately had two bouts of mastitis so far). So I expressed the milk manually, since I don't have a pump here in Vancouver. After about 15 minutes of squeezing my breasts, hunched over a baby bottle at the kitchen table, I got a total of 1.5 oz, which is about the usual amount that I can express, by any given means, including by electrical pump. My mom was cooking in the kitchen, and I was expressing milk right next to her. Food all around.

Just as I was done, Emma woke up from her nap and started crying. I went over to check on her, and by the time I got back, the milk had disappeared! I looked for it everywhere, thinking that I must be hallucinating, and in the end I realized that my mom had dumped it down the sink and washed the bottle!!! I nearly had a stroke. That milk was so precious, given that Emma gets so little of it, that I wanted to cry. I did cry actually when my mom told me that it was no big deal, in fact she looked at the bottle and the bit that I had expressed was such a little that she thought the bottle was merely dirty and washed it out, not realizing that it was milk. She never once apologized. It clearly was not a big deal to her if she did not even think about the bottle that I was expressing into right next to her in the kitchen. I mean, it's not as if I had done it somewhere else and brought the bottle in, I was doing it right in front of her and it did not even register!

I felt like precious gold was wasted, and she did not think anything of the event. The truth must be in the middle. I got upset by the waste, but also by the lack of respect for the "little bit" of milk, that little bit of milk is my effort, it is all that my body is capable of producing, and it is no small matter to me that Emma get every last drop of that. It is my gift to my daughter and I am working bloody hard to make it. It is not insignificant. And my mom treated it as unimportant, which is why I got so upset.

I know that she won't understand, even if I try to explain these things. How can anybody understand the frustration of having a body that does not work properly in just about any aspect of baby-making, the struggle to do every simple little thing, from falling pregnant, to staying pregnant, to delivering, to breast feeding. The sadness of hearing Emma cry at my breast because the milk is finished, the frenzied hurry in the middle of the night to prepare yet another bottle while she is screaming, because I just did not have enough to feed her like I thought I would. The importance of this little bit of milk is that it is my triumph over not having had any (after all my milk had dried up). To make this bit of milk, I have to take nine tablets of domperidone daily, not to mention the hours and hours spent pumping in useless frustration with nothing coming out. This is THE BEST I CAN DO, so damn well I expect some respect for it. Like the respect shown by apologizing for dumping it down the drain, as opposed to dismissing it because it was so little.

I am certain that my upset stems from much more than this event, that it is the pinnacle of years of frustration and struggle against a body that won't nurture a baby, in direct contradiction with my huge desire to do exactly that: feed and nurture and protect. So tonight I cried, and Emma got formula. I guess I have not made complete peace with the milk issue after all.

Shop much?

2012-01-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

I have gone through a bout of shopohoic behaviour this past week. I don't normally win the prize for the most restrained shopping behaviour in the world, but at the same time I am inherently careful with money. I never buy on debt, pay my visa in full once every three days (yes, I am that sick!) and try to save enough for three months' living expenses in case something happens to me and I can't work. All this qualifies as not overspending. I do, however, occasionally overbuy. And this is what happened this past week.

I have tried to behave myself well throughout the holidays, and succeeded, but during this past week I have been overcome by some sort of buying frenzy. I felt anxious and almost like I would never be able to ever shop again, I spent almost to the limit of what I felt comfortable doing, (i.e. any more and I would not have enough money for another IVF this year - yes, we are thinking, but this is material for another post). I bought a Tiffany's key pendant at a large discount, the mink coat from the previous post, and two cashmere sweaters, plus one leather belt. It might not seem like a lot, but it was all in one week, which actually is a lot for someone who is trying not to spend. Also, when I buy, I usually choose garments that are rather long lasting and good quality, and although they were all discounted except for the belt, they were expensive.

All in all, not so worrisome, but what worried me the most was the unbearable urge to buy ANOTHER belt after buying the first one. In fact, I wanted to buy TWO more, in different shades and different thicknesses. And I don't ever wear belts, it's just that I decided to upgrade my look and to start tucking in my shirts and tops, hence the need for a belt. ONE BELT. Not three. When I felt the unbearable obsession, urge, tension, and so on, I knew that I had to stop the hunting and the behaviour right then and there. Nothing good will ever come out of needing to shop with such an intensity. It was similar to a smoker's need for a cigarette I think, (I never smoked, but that is what they describe it as).

So I decided no more buying anything clothing or appearance-related for the next four months. Perhaps it is not long, but it is enough to get me out of this immediate frenzy and back into my wise mind, the mind that decides and carefully weighs whether something is needed, whether it would fit, whether it is a good addition to my wardrobe, whether I can afford it. I have done stints of four-months-no-buying before, and they have always been good for me. I have tried longer, but then I started needing too many things, and had to buy too much at once when I did eventually allow myself to buy, and it felt too much like a binge. Buying binges are not good for me I think. I have shopoholic tendencies, who would have thought! not me, not when I moved from Romania living on 50 dollars a day with my mom, dad and sibling.

In any case, knowing that buying anything would reinforce this behaviour, and not buying would cause discomfort but is the only way out of the obsession, I have kept myself in check today, but it was not easy. I had so much tension, that I was plotting ways to escape the house, to leave Emma with my mom, and to drive downtown to get the above-mentioned belt. I even had a plan in mind, to do it while picking up sushi take out and to say that it took longer for them to make it. How very weird! All at the same time wondering what exactly is going on with me? I DON'T EVEN WEAR BELTS!!!!! it is simply an inexplicable obsession.

In the end I told my mom and MrH about the problem, and about my resolution, and also I described in great detail the belts that I had in mind, so that I can not buy them and wear them without anybody else knowing. Namely MrH, who told me that the belts would end up in the garbage if he saw them on me. (And I would let him :). I think if in four months I still need a belt, I will buy ONE, not two. Then, four months later, a second one if I really really need a whole collection.

I now have an audience that knows my secret, and will write honestly about my struggles. I am sure that in today's society lots of the people reading this blog have the same buying frenzy/binging behaviour/tension/conflict/urge problem as me right now. If anybody wants to describe their struggles, feel free to comment. Also, if anybody wants to do the four month shopping free with me, let me know.

I have to go run on the treadmill now, hopefully letting out some steam, but I will write again perhaps tomorrow trying to explore what has brought this on.

PS. I just took a shopping addiction quiz online, and here are the results (suffice it to say, I did not get to run tonight, amid so much self examination, but will do it tomorrow).
Results : Not a Shopping Addict!

Based on your test results, you do not appear to be a 'compulsive shopper'. However some of your answers show that shopping may have a tendency to take control. If you are concerned about your shopping behaviour, it may be worth seeking advice!

mink coat controversy

2012-01-07T01:14:00.000-08:00

I did a very controversial thing today, and I could use some public advice, although if I might ask it is very controversial and I would appreciate it if the opinions could come in a gentle, kind way.

I live in Northern Canada, and as many people know it is cold here. Not as cold recently, with the general climate change, but still very cold. Canada has a long history of fur garment production, from farming to processing to designing and executing beautiful fur items. I bought a lovely red coat today that contains mink fur in its composition. It is not my first fur coat, it is my second one. The first one, my mom bought when she was young, and passed it on to me. It was made in Romania, from farmed sheep, and is still in use, as good as it was back in the days when I was born. It has kept us warm for three generations now, if we consider that it is the only coat I wear when I take Emma out at -20 C in the baby Bjorn. When I saw this coat, I thought that it would be my legacy to Emma. It is short and light, and made for a warmer climate than the one I have from my mom, although generally suitable for winter. However, once I brought it home, I got some hard questions from my husband about the ethics behind the whole thing, and I had to think and make it out to myself what my position on this topic is.

The company I bought this coat from is involved only in ethical farming of animals. I have asked before buying where the fur comes from, to ensure it is not from any endangered species or cruelty-linked. The mink was not trapped, but raised in cages on mink farms. The mink are solitary animals, hence they have to have their own space, which is why they have to be raised each in a separate cage, and not allowed to mix in packs of twenty. They are killed according to humane euthanasia methods, using carbon monoxide, a method that is much kinder than what is used to kill the chicken and the cows that we eat from the local grocery store. The whole animal is used, both for meat that is then fed to fish on fish farms, and for the fat that is used for leather shoe maintenance and other stuff. There is no waste. Even the bonemeal is used.

I don't eat meat or eggs or milk from the normal grocery store, and rather opt for the local farmer produced foods from animals that are raised free range and even known by name by their owners, in the case of beef (the name of the animal is often on the package). Or hunting meat, from deer and elk. None of them are endangered species, and none is hunted for trophies only, the meat is all used up.

That being said, the question of whether I should have or not remains. I did not really need a new coat, which makes the whole discussion sway towards the fact that I probably should not have bought it. But assuming that I did need one, should I have rather bought a non biodegradable plastic/synthetic garment that is sure to stay in the landfill for 300 years, and that my daughter will have no respect for or interest in? Or should I rather teach her the importance of using a coat as a family heirloom, the way I was taught, for as long as it is possible, and then know that it will degrade into the environment with ease and cleanliness? The fur is greener than the synthetics, and the appreciation of an item in theory should discourage overconsumption, which is a bigger problem at this point for all of us than any other problem.

All in all, in the end the fact that the coat makes my husband feel uncomfortable about the issue makes me regret buying it. (I don't know really how uncomfortable I should feel about the issue when we both wear leather without a second thought). However, now that I did, I plan on wearing it with respect for the animals that died. As in, I don't plan on discarding it in five years, the way people do with synthetic coats. And I plan on spending the money on alterations if needed, the way I usually do with all my garments. It is my way, I buy expensive durable things and alter/repair them just about forever. The last option, that of returning the coat to the store, is the most shameful of all. I think I made a decision, I should live with it and its consequences.

The controversy in my mind at the moment makes the whole purchase non-enjoyable, but I think there is no harm in thinking about a topic and making it out for myself, even if it will take a while to decide what the right way is for me in this context. Any help on making it clearer in my own head is appreciated. But please be kind. Don't call me names. I might not have made the best decision for lack of enlightened thinking, but I am not a cruel or mean person.

Adrian's day

2012-01-04T15:57:00.000-08:00

On January 2 of this year I contemplated the fact that it has now been two years since I lost my precious baby Adrian. I am staying at my parents' house, and do not have much privacy, my husband is away, and I spent my private time thinking about Adrian without really sharing it with anybody. I thought about his little body, how sweet it was, even in death, even limp and without movement, how his skin was so soft and still warm from my body. I think about that often. Over the past two days, I started wondering if maybe it was not him that saved me when I nearly died. I wonder if our babies in heaven do not become our guardian angels, and perhaps somehow intervene on our behalf when things get rough. I feel like after losing him I have had a lot of points in my life where things could have gone badly, but they did not, leaving me wondering if it wasn't that somehow Adrian had something to do with it. Like nearly dying but at the last moment stopping bleeding and recovering so fast from the brink of death.

Is it possible that he is now my guardian angel? do any of you guys think this way about your babies?

On a second note, I gave my blog page to a childhood friend from Europe and she told me that she is not interested in reading it because she does not understand how people can write such private things on such a public space. I have had this particular criticism often, especially initially when I first started writing. I thought I had worked through my own doubts, but sometimes comments like this still get to me. I don't write anything here that I do not feel ok sharing with the world. My struggles, although private, are very much the same as other women's struggles, and I feel that in writing about my thoughts and how I deal (or not deal) with my issues can help others feel less alone, maybe even get ideas. I also write for myself, as if it were not for this blog, a lot of events would go undocumented. I would simply not write a private diary, I am too lazy to do that. I have had nothing but pleasure from sharing with you ladies, and have felt a part of this online community for years now. I have never regretted it. Why do you, my childhood friend, now criticize me and try to make me feel inadequate and wrong? Is it rather that you are not reading my blog because it bores you, given that you have never been interested in having children and cannot relate to my struggles, and rather than admitting the truth you think this other reason will make me feel better? Is it that it is too hard to read in English and rather than cracking open a dictionary you found this excuse? Who knows. Why don't people mind their own business and stop telling everyone else how they should live is beyond me.

Back to the good news: I have lost another two pounds (that I had gained over the holidays) and I am shooting for 145 lb, which is quite skinny for me. That means another 24 lb to go. 21 lb down so far. I will be thin in by March. I am so psyched up that I am running daily now, and not deviating much from my healthy diet anymore. I feel like if I could make Emma happen, I can do this too. Yepeeee!

A Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T18:21:00.000-08:00

A Happy New Year to everybody here! What a year, so full, so good. The best year of my life without a doubt. This little thing that graced me with her presence, Emma, is the best present that life could give me, and the highest honour that I could receive at the same time. I vow to spend my next year and the one after that and so on perfecting the art of mothering her, working on striking a balance between work and time spent with her, working on myself in order to be a worthy role model, and continuing to enjoy every moment with her, just like I have so far.

Equally important, being now a mother and hence starting to direct a whole family in the emotional direction that I see fit, I realize what a huge responsibility this is. A father provides safety and security, but I get the distinct feeling that in my family I provide the emotional temperature. Hence a happy mother equals a happy daughter and a happy husband. Just like I was writing earlier, if I feel celebratory around a holiday, the whole family celebrates. If I don't, well nobody else notices Christmas either. And many other such things. I am the thermostat.

Ultimately, an even bigger goal is to start integrating myself even more in society. I have been a recluse (other than the bit about my job being very social, where I could not escape being integrated into my own societal slot), but overall once I had Emma (and stopped looking at everybody else with children as if they were from another planet), I now feel like a rightful member of society as well. I swear I didn't before. However strange this might sound, but being denied children made me feel as if the world did not want me to be here, and definitely not to reproduce, and hence I felt like I did not want to belong either, or even less so to give back to anybody anything. Now, I feel so full and blessed that I am spilling... without wanting to I talk to strangers, I am kinder to people, I am animated and full of life, and I consequently have no problem meeting new persons and making friends. As such, with gradually more time and as soon as I recover from the financial disaster called being off work for almost a year, I want to give more to society, more of myself, more in the form of donations, more in the form of emotional availability aka giving more of a rat's a$$.

That being said, I sign off for 2011 thanking everybody who ever commented on my blog: Thank you for making me feel heard. And a thank you to everybody who read my blog: you made this blog possible with your presence. All my readers so far have been kind, well intentioned people who either care about me or struggle with the same issues, and I feel a great deal of love for you guys. May the New Year be kind to all of us!

First Christmas

2011-12-26T16:28:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! This is the first Christmas spent with a baby in the family, and hence I was told that it should be special and treated as such. Not that Emma cares about anything other than having a boob in her mouth at all times... but in the end I felt appropriately guilty and decided that we did need a Christmas tree after all, since with a new baby we should join the rest of the Normals and behave accordingly.

We don't always have a Christmas tree. At my mom and dad's, we always had a real tree, because my dad loves the smell, and anything else felt fake to them. Here, in my married home, we usually have a fake one that somebody donated to us years ago. We keep it in the garage, in a large box, together with some decorations that I picked up on the first year I moved to SmallTown. We are lazy about putting it up, but we are even more lazy about taking it down. For example, in the year that we lost Adrian, we kept the tree up until March or April. I don't think it even registered with me that we should take it down. And I felt too tired to do it. We always work long hours, but at that time with the depression and the loss, I was utterly exhausted and could not see a thing around me.

After that year, we did not have a tree again. I was worried that I would have to put up with people asking me again why we still have the tree up in March. However, on Dec 24, a friend who came to visit asked me where the tree was, and looked horrified that I did not have one up despite the fact that we had a small baby in the house, so I asked my husband to bring it out of the garage. He set it up, and I decorated it. The only problem is that the lights on the top half of the tree burned out, so it looks quite schizophrenic with lights only on the bottom. But hey, we have a tree.

I guess I feel guilty that we are not more into the spirit of the holidays. Since we have no money, we did not make any gifts to each other either. I know that the woman of the house (aka me) is the one that dictates whether we celebrate a holiday or not, and the enthusiasm level associated with it, but for some reason this year I just felt like lying in bed with Emma and tickling her, singing carols to her, and doing nothing at all. And we enjoyed it a lot. Despite this, I think my next year's resolutions is to celebrate holidays with a bit more style, to decorate a bit more, to save money ahead of time for gifts, and to be more disciplined about living the spirit of each holiday as it comes. In particular I am thinking of our birthdays, Valentine's day, Easter, our wedding day (which I'd better find out if it was on May 15 or 17 'cause I forgot) and Christmas. This is so embarrassing to admit, but I am really lazy about holidays. But that will change. My new year's resolution. Is anybody else out there lazy about holidays?

catch-up

2011-12-22T11:40:00.000-08:00

Don't expect some brilliant writing here, I am just going to ramble.

I apologize for my extended absence off this blog, I was away in Vancouver taking a course in aesthetic medicine. That means Botox and fillers (the stuff that you use to make lips bigger, and to fill in lines on the face). This was a lot of fun! I wanted to take the Botox course for years, but never had the time, and now with my mom babysitting Emma, I was able to do it. I have used Botox injections for over ten years now for my TMJ pain and migraines, and I love the fact that my frown lines have also disappeared. However, it is expensive when I go to someone else to get it done, and after taking the course I now can inject myself at cost (ho ho ho) and anybody else who crosses my path. Like my mom. Or my husband. And all my friends. And the cat. The parrots are safe although tempting.

Emma is doing really well. Growing, growing...she is now four and a half months old, and is wearing six month outfits which are beginning to get a little tight. She can roll front to back, and sit with support. She babbles a lot, and makes sounds that show a lot of enthusiasm with life (yehee, and yahooo). She is a mountain of joy and fun for me. I cannot believe how much happiness she has brought into my life. Although I firmly believe that infertility can be resolved with peace and resignation, and filling one's life with other pursuits, I cannot see myself equally happy doing something else without her. I just can't.

I think very often of Adrian, of what he has missed in life, of how he is my little guardian angel, and Emma's too, and MrH's as well. I think of what he has done for us in his little life: made Emma's birth possible (thorough him I found out about the incompetent cervix and had the cerclage), made me want to live more fully, with more courage, and a more fulfilling life, in order to somehow fill out his empty shoes. I think about how his body was limp and I could see his long, fine, soft neck that I like to kiss on Emma, that I would have kissed on him. Then I remember that I have Emma to hug and I do it for both of them. I don't feel empty anymore, just sad at times, but never empty.

Emma scratched her cornea yesterday by poking her eye with her thumb in an overly enthusiastic movement. She was grumpy and cranky the whole day. The day before she touched a hot pot and burned a bit, but did not blister. Because she is older, she gets upset more easily and cries angrily, and it takes a lot more effort to distract her. Both times, seeing her in pain made me nauseous and weak at the knees. I hate it that pain has to be part of her life, but thinking of the opposite, the children who cannot feel pain and end up with limb amputations because of injuries that they do not feel, that lead to infections as deep as the bone that also go unnoticed, I can only thank God for her ability to feel pain. I still hate it and wish I could feel it instead of her.

As for the weight and fitness part: I have lost a further 5 lb since my last blog post, I am now 169 lb (started at 190 lb and end goal 155 lb). In another five lb I will be able to fit in all of my pre-pregnancy clothes, and then it will be time to evaluate whether I want to keep losing or whether it is enough. The scales are different, remember how I broke my previous scale when I stood on it at the height of my third trimester (yep, the scale CRACKED!) and I know for a fact that this scale shows more weight, probably by 3-5 lb, so 155 lb on the old scale would be 160 lb on this one. That is why 160 lb might be enough. I don't want to be too skinny for my old clothes, although probably the too skinny look only happens when one is more than 10 lb below usual weight. The clothes are the actual goal, since I have a nice wardrobe and would like to keep it. I also happen to be poor since I have been on mat leave for so long, so no money for another wardrobe anytime soon.

I am starting work Jan 23. I am not excited about it. I feel like it is too soon, but at the same time I feel that I need to make some money pronto, and go back to my practice. It has to be done. Four hours per day will be ok.

fear of SIDS

2011-12-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

Every day I am afraid that Emma might die. Every single day. I try to reason with myself, but there are not arguments that help: yes, SIDS is relatively rare, but so was the incompetent cervix that killed Adrian. Yes, two bad things are less likely to happen than just one bad thing, but I thought that after having infertility and having to do IVF I had enough of the bad thing. Then the incompetent cervix happened, and I lost Adrian, and I was convinced that I should be safe from harm for a long time. And then I nearly died from the delayed post partum hemorrhage, another bloody rare complication that happened to us. So why not more? Is there an end?

I sleep next to her, with my face right next to her face, so that I can feel her breathing at all times. If she takes a nap, I usually like to be next to her as well. I don't let her be by herself almost at all, although there are times when I rely on the baby monitor to tell me when she wakes up and I go downstairs, make myself a cup of coffee, and write on my blog. Like now. Without her. All the while hoping that I won't go upstairs when I am finished to find her blue and lifeless.

MrH is fairly certain that it won't happen, that she is a strong baby that has no health issues. But I have read enough blogs to know that it happens to strong healthy babies. I should stop reading SIDS blogs, but it is part of my blogging community, and I feel that in supporting each other we get better at handling grief, and hence I am not going to stop. Besides, the fear is my issue and mine alone, it is not caused by reading other people's stories, quite the opposite: I read other people's stories because of my fear.

Lately I have started wondering about the purpose of this fear. Could it be that in finding her alive and well every single day, multiple times a day, I get a jolt of happiness and relief? Could that be the contrast that my mind is seeking? Am I geared towards living life on a rollercoaster, and hence a period of relative calmness and well-being is too boring, too predictable, and I need to create some drama with my mind? ... you get the picture... The one thing that is for sure in my wild ride so far: the things that have happened to me have, without exception, been UNEXPECTED. I could not have predicted or thought out a single one of them. So is it that thinking about SIDS keeps it away? of course not. But my subconscious is a bovine place that does not know these things, hence it will do what it does best: illogical things.

Anyway, I was wondering if you guys also worry about SIDS, mainly those of you who had your babies after a long struggle, those of you who lost babies before. Even those of you who lost babies to SIDS, do you realize that the likelihood of it happening again is extremely low, and despite that do you worry anyway? How do you cope with the worry? Do you worry about the worry changing your relationship with your child, making you more protective, more paranoid?

I have TV again!

2011-11-30T22:42:00.000-08:00

In case anyone is wondering if it is possible to live without TV, the answer is yes indeed, but you will need to substitute with other addictions, like the internet, or reading, or knitting. In my case, I gave up TV out of necessity when I started going through my very expensive second university degree. I had no money left for anything after paying for the beans and dry bread for dinner. (Partially kidding about the bread, it was not dry, in fact I used to make it myself from scratch because it was cheaper than buying it. That's the stage in my life in which I learned how to make most things from scratch, in order to save money. Some habits die hard, and I still make my own bread and yogourt). Six years later I graduated from the program, and started making money. I decided that TV is a normal part of every household, hence I subscribed to Shaw cable and was paying 120 dollars a month for TV plus high speed internet.

I still didn't turn on the TV, despite the fact that eventually (after I paid my educational debt) I bought a flat screen TV on which I watched DVD movies on Saturday nights with MrH. At one point, I remember having decided that I must make myself turn the damn thing on, just to get my money's worth out of the cable price. After trying hard to have patience for TV but not succeeding (in addition, my couches in the living room are leather, hard and cold, not comfy for TV watching I'm afraid), I called Shaw and asked them to please remove the TV portion of the package and just leave the internet. I was paying 60 dollars a month for that, and had freed up sixty bucks to spend on skin care and make up.

This week however, I got a call from Shaw that offered a special promotion: 39 $ a month for both internet and TV for one year. So, they would give me a higher speed internet at a lower price if I agreed to have TV installed. I told them that I don't watch TV and that at the end of the year I would ask them to remove it again. I told them that I am fairly certain that the TV part is not necessary, but they insisted that the package is, um, a package, and therefore I am getting the TV like it or not if I want the faster, cheaper internet.

So I have TV! In a surge of excitement, I turned it on and watched a show called What not to wear while exercising on the elliptical trainer. Then I remembered why I never watched TV when I did have it: every 5 minutes you have to suffer through interminable commercials. I will try to record some shows so that I can fast forward through the commercial breaks, but I have no idea what is good, if you guys like something on TV, make some suggestions!

blissfully happy

2011-11-26T23:52:00.000-08:00

OK, so don't make dulce de leche if you are trying to lose weight. It should be pretty obvious to anybody, but in my excitement to perfect the recipe, I made TWO batches, the first one was overcooked (but still good, just very gelatinous), the second one was almost perfect, I am quite certain that a third batch would be impossibly good, but fortunately I ran out of milk, and it is snowing outside so I am not going to buy any right now. I have decided instead to read about the Maillard reaction (the reaction that causes the milk to caramelize and become so delicious). Because I am that busy.

Emma has her three month appointment today. She is actually 3.5 months old, but I could not get in sooner. Her GP (my GP) was worried about her growth initially so he insisted that he must see her in between the 2 and the 4 month appointment as well. She has probably jumped from 50th to 90th percentile in weight, and she must be at least 75th percentile in height and head circumference. This is just from my estimations, but we'll see how accurate I am today. Too lazy to do proper measurements at home.

I have lost one follower on the blog, and I am actually becoming aware just how boring my life/blog has become. I am one of those blissfully happy people who worry about getting dulce de leche right, instead of whether I have enough money for yet one more IVF, or whether I will ever have a baby, or yet deeper existential questions about the meaning of an infertile woman's life. Etc. No doubt all of those questions have made me grow, and made me a much more interesting person, but I love being blissfully senselessly happy and droning on through diaper changes, drool and spit up, and daily walks with a gurgling smiling Emma in my arms.

Addendum: Emma is 90th percentile in length, and 75th in weight and head circumference. She will probably be tall like me and MrH. I was happy to hear that, although as MrH pointed out correctly, taller girls have a harder time finding a mate. Yes, I agree, but we can reach the top shelf by ourselves, and gracefully carry 20 lb extra, and when we do find a mate, he is usually tall and well built.

Addendum no 2: I weigh 173 lb. Not much progress, must step on the accelerator and lose some more. I can almost fit into all of my clothes, I can zip them up but not breathe, which is a bit of a problem, so probably another five to ten pounds later I will be able to wear them AND breathe. Bonus!

thermomix

2011-11-24T16:19:00.000-08:00

I am in love with this kitchen gadget called the thermomix. It is made in Germany I think, and the idea is that it's a mixer/blender/food processor that also heats up the bowl in which it is blending, hence it can also cook things. The moment I heard about it I felt a huge gap in my kitchen arsenal, and hence went to work to hunt one. First I contacted thermomix Canada, who informed me that it would cost me 1600 dollars or so to get the new model. There is an older model, made up to 2004, and I tracked one down on Ebay for 500 $. The problem was that it was from France, and hence the voltage was different (220V) and the plug as well, so MrH had to spend the weekend rewiring and such (adventures involving the crawl space of the house always impress a lady) and now I have a working Thermomix. I am in love with this machine. I have had it for less than one day and I have already made: split pea and deer soup (deer meat was the only thing I had left in my freezer), custard cream (delicious), chocolate from scratch (with cacao butter and cocoa nibs), almond and rice milk, and now I am making dulce de leche. Yum.

Pictures

2011-11-21T23:23:00.000-08:00

I finally got the pictures from my pregnancy and 1 week after delivery with Emma. I would like to enlarge one of them, if you guys can make a suggestion as to which one (Emma's I mean, not mine).

funeral home

2011-11-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

Winter is really here to stay. It is below -20C (-4F) all the time now. Yesterday it was -23C and I took Emma out for a little walk in the baby Bjorn. I wore two coats, one that has a double head opening for baby carriers (it is called a baby papoose, if anybody wants one in large I will be selling mine very soon for half price, since I bought it too small and when Emma grows a bit I will need the xl size). On top I wore a fur coat that is as old as myself, it used to belong to my mom when she was young. We looked like two eskimos. Whether she enjoyed it, I cannot tell, because she was very quiet the whole time (probably instinctively knowing that if she opened her mouth, her saliva would freeze, haha). Later on last night my mom called wanting to make sure that I am not crazy enough to take my baby outside in this temperature (she saw the temperature on TV). I said of course not, absolutely not (insert devious smile). This is the first year that mom actually cares about what temperatures I live in. So far she could not care less, even if I told her on the phone - she would not register the reality - but now that it comes to Emma, it is suddenly important. Well, if mom had listened in the previous four years that I have been here, she would know that to avoid -20C is to stay indoors all winter, and that cannot be healthy either. A child needs to get outside daily I think. She needs to see the sky and breathe some fresh (frozen) air. And she needs to adapt to the surroundings. I have adapted better and better with each passing year, to the point that now, all I wear when shovelling snow is my yoga pants, a T-shirt (sleeveless) and a light down jacket. Plus hat and mittens, those are mandatory. Especially the mittens, always thick, or else my fingers could easily get frostbitten.

This is the second winter since I lost Adrian, and every time I walk or drive past the funeral home where we cremated him, (which is really all the time since the home is right next to my house), I remember that morning in January when his body evaporated into the sky. I was also walking past the funeral home then, knowing that he would be cremated that morning, and I saw the smoke and vapour go up into the blue, clear sky, and felt a lot of longing but also a lot of peace, knowing that he was with God and with me, surrounding me at the same time. I miss Adrian just as much, but I don't feel the emptiness anymore. I wonder if he would also be as soft as Emma, if he would also lay his head on my shoulder and collapse into my neck, if his baby chub would be as delicious to kiss as Emma's...and I miss him every time, but Emma fills me up with so much love and is such a pleasure to be with, that I am profoundly happy and fulfilled. It is not the absence of longing for Adrian, it is the happiness of being with Emma that makes my life so much better.

winter

2011-11-17T23:33:00.000-08:00

The baptism went very well, although I think that being surrounded by so many people in my immediate family (plus the godparents, and a whole lot of friends) has been very exciting and stimulating for Emma and she has a hard time falling asleep at night now. She is very talkative, and has great control over her hands, which reside deep in her mouth most of the time.

The moment that we arrived back home from Vancouver, winter came. First thing off the plane, Emma decided that -20C is too cold (that is -4F) and she started crying. She has continued to cry every time she sticks her little nose outside, even if she is warmly dressed and in a bunting bag. This morning we woke up to at least one foot of snow on our deck and a completely snowed in driveway. MrH walked to work, I tried to shovel with Emma in the baby Bjorn, which soon proved not to be her favourite activity, so I stopped the madness and waited until it was nap time to shovel. I shovelled for two hours straight. Once I was done, I realized that despite the fact that I had a clear driveway, I still could not get the car out because the garage door was not working and got stuck in a closed position. (Among other things, because it was cold while I was shovelling and I had to have the patio door a little open to hear the baby monitor, the ice that formed made it impossible to close the door back. I had to use a knife as icepick to chip away at the ice on the door frame.) Anyway, deciding that winter is not going to keep us indoors, and really wanting some milk for my tea, I put Emma to sleep in the bunting bag, and covered the stroller with a transparent plastic cover for the wind, and off we went to the store to buy milk. HUH. The driveway was not shovelled-nor was the neighbouring driveways-nor was the street-nor was the store's parking lot, so I was pulling the stroller through deep snow deposits for half the time, and pushing it for dear life the other half. She didn't even wake up until we got home, and she was warm the whole time (I checked her hands and head and they were warm, plus she lets me know if she is not warm by screaming her head off). All in all, I have used up more than 1000 calories today just for daily activities, and that was without even trying. (I got the milk by the way).

Ugh. I wish we had enough money for a snowblower. I don't want to do this again anytime soon. I am sore all over, my back hurts, and Emma is bright awake and won't let me sleep, despite the fact that it is well past midnight.

Chanel lipstick disappointment

2011-11-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

I bought a Chanel lipstick at The Bay (a large department store in Vancouver), one of the Rouge Allure collection. The lipstick goes in and out with a spring loaded mechanism, and something happened to the spring near the beginning of my usage of this very expensive lipstick, because it no longer pops out. Hence it is unusable.

Today, celebrating my newfound freedom (I bought a second hand stroller and car seat-both Graco...but I finally have mobility and a sleeping infant transitioning flawlessly from the car ride to the shopping trip), I went to The Bay to show them. They asked for a receipt, which of course I do not have, since no person in their right mind keeps lipstick receipts. Even the store does not keep a record, why should I. I was told that they cannot help me. I asked for a Chanel customer service number, they don't have one. I asked for a manager, and was told that he is in a meeting. I was asked to wait. I asked for how long. They said they had no idea. I gave them my cell number to be called when the manager is out, and never got called. It is now the end of the day, and I have two words of advice: do NOT buy the Chanel Allure lipstick with the spring laded mechanism, and definitely don't expect any customer service from The Bay.

Other than this bit of frustration, life is great with a stroller. Emma thinks so too. She grabbed my hand with both her hands today while I was feeding her, and my heart melted. Ooooohhhh. It was worth it :)

on vacation

2011-11-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

I am on vacation in Vancouver, and have not had a chance to post since my hands are forever busy with holding Emma. At home, I have all sorts of devices to entertain her, including the absolutely necessary device for regular blogging: a baby hammock. I put her in the hammock, and move it up and down with my left leg, while balancing the laptop on my right leg. This allows me to blog and work on my left hip flexors at the same time. (I tried to change legs, but I can't balance properly the other way around). Here, at my parents' place, I don't have a single place to put her down safely, so I have improvised one out of a plastic bathtub with blankets on the bottom, and now we also rented a car seat that I can rock her in - Graco again :( but at least this one has a button to fasten the straps. Next time I am bringing my own stroller and car seat, I realize that I might be charged an arm and a leg to bring them, but I need them for my freedom of ...expression...makeup...washing my hair...making coffee...eating with two hands.

Emma is an absolute pleasure though, she has good control over her hands, which she puts in her mouth at every given moment, not realizing that if you shove them in too deeply they make you gag. She still hits me and herself once in a while with her flailing hands when she is too excited, but this does not happen as often as before. Her hands are warm, and she hugs with them nowadays, which is the best feeling in the world! Her diaper rash is gone, and I have found a good diaper cream that is ok to use with cloth diapers (when using cloth diapers, they recommend that no zinc oxide be used since it creates a waterproof barrier on the cloth, defeating the purpose of the diaper). She has clear skin and bright eyes, and generally is a beautiful, happy little girl. And she talks up a storm. I have figured out the meaning of "nga" which is "food", and "na" which is "I told you so".

As for myself, I am also doing well. I had a couple of fights with my grandmother when I first got here (my grandma is staying with my mom until the end of November, visiting from Romania). Grandma has fixed ideas about what is food and what is not food. Apparently, my breakfast consisting of cooked rye kernels or steel cut oats, banana and walnuts, or my lunch made up of almond milk+banana+protein powder+spinach+berries smoothie do not constitute food, and I will become anemic, or die, plus I don't need to lose weight, why am I losing so much weight, women are more beautiful fat, etc, etc... I have endured this for two days, gently telling her that people eat differently, and that I am still very far away from fitting into my normal clothes, but she got more and more vocal, and even mean, telling me that that's why I am not making milk for Emma, as in I am irresponsible towards my daughter. In the end I snapped at her and told her that I am eating whatever I want, she can eat whatever she wants, and that if I hear one more word about my food I am leaving back to my house. That shut her up and life is good.

I have lost two more pounds since I am here. I don't know how much I actually weigh, since mom has two scales, one shows 180 lb, the other one 170 lb. The one at my house is right in the middle, at 175 lb, or it was before I left. I guess scales really differ a lot. As long as I am not gaining, that is all that matters. I was very worried about being out of my own element and not in control of what is on the table, but I told my mom before I left home that I am only coming under two conditions: one, that no pizza be made in the house while I am there, since I cannot help myself it it smells so good in the whole house. Two, that my grandmother leave me alone (because I knew that her favourite obsession is with what I eat). I solved that problem myself. In fact, this morning my grandma had the same breakfast as me, at her request: rye kernels with milk and banana. I guess the curiosity killed the cat.

Our priest came to the house to read a prayer for Emma and myself, so that I can enter the church at the time of the baptism. I did not know that I was impure and unclean after giving birth, especially since I have showered daily since, but hey, if that is the tradition, that is the tradition. Orthodox religion is very old fashioned, and tradition is deeply rooted in the ceremonial parts, so if you want the sandwich you have to like the bread as well. The good part is that he left us with some holy water that I can use to wash her face with in the morning, and also to drink for myself, and I like to believe that it will increase my milk supply. I do believe in holy water since I was three, and that is not about to change anytime soon.

Yesterday I went to Lululemon (my latest obsession) and got my pants hemmed (I buy online, extra long, and hem them myself until I can get to the actual store and get them professionally hemmed). I left Emma with MrH at the bookstore, and had half an hour of freedom. I bought two pairs of tight pants (the kind that are tight all the way to the bottom of the leg, hence you must be skinny to wear them, which I am not but I will be) and a pair of shorts. I must have tried on everything in the store, because one of the shop attendants looked at me and said "you're still here? you have a problem...". I thought, yeah, my problem is that I live so far away from any real shops and I can only buy stuff online, hence when I get to a place where I can touch the stuff and feel it, it is like I am living in a three dimensional world again (instead of my usual two-dimensional one).

Well, Emma is awake from her nap, so I got to go. I promise to blog daily for the rest of the week, in order to atone for my absence.

my mother, myself, my daughter

2011-10-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

I am reading "Found: A Memoir" by Jennifer Lauck, and I am finding the book very emotionally charged. I am loving the way she writes, very deep and heartfelt, and the story makes me see Emma in a whole new light. Babies seem to come equipped with a lot of pre-determined similarities with the biological family, and a very strong need for their biological mother, not just any caregiver, although the book does make me wonder whether a different adoptive mother would not have made a bit of a difference in Jennifer's life. I have not finished the book yet, although I will finish it in the next hour or so, and so far I can warmly recommend it. It will strike a cord with any new mother, and it will definitely strike a cord with any adoptive parent or adopted child.

Emma is a very happy baby. She smiles almost all the time (except for when I do something she does not want at that moment, like putting clothes on her after a bath, or strapping her into the car seat, when she screams bloody murder and makes me into a nervous wreck). Her smiles make me forget for the moment about any problems that I might be having and absorb me completely back into the mother role. She has a way of drawing me into her world, into the bond that we share (which is my world in any case 99.9% of the time) just with her bright eyes and her wide, toothless smile. She melts into my neck when I walk around with her. She puts her hand on my boob when breastfeeding, or purposefully grabs my finger, as if she is so intensely wanting to have me all to herself for that moment. Not just the boob, but my whole being. She even looks into my eyes and has the same intense look that I have. I see so much of myself in her nowadays, while as when she was born she was mostly MrH. (Not to worry, she still has his hair...which means she is still somewhat bald :).

In all honesty, she is much more than I thought she would be. She is more of a person than I imagined she would be. She has likes and dislikes, and a voice to show them. She makes me even more happy than I thought possible. I knew that being her mother would be a full time responsibility that I would have to assume, as everyone EVERYONE constantly reminded me. In particular my own mother, as if I was a burden at this age and she had to look after me. So I was prepared for the burden, the inconvenient awakenings, the constant responsibility that would stun my own life into narrow boundaries. What I did not expect was that I would WANT that responsibility, that I would love being constrained, that I would love waking up at night to see her face and live another peaceful moment with her on my boob, that I would gladly renounce all of my other worldly pursuits to dedicate myself to her WILLINGLY. This burden of mine, she is all light and sunshine.

I might be the same as my mother, but life has taught me differently, and hence my perception of the world is different. Yes, our voice on the phone is identical, and we wear the same size clothes, and do the same athletic activities, and have the same hair colouring and both like makeup and skincare and cooking, but my daughter is a privilege to me, and I was a responsibility to her. Not that I was not desired, quite the opposite. But I came quickly, within the first two months of trying, and there was never in her mind the possibility that I might never be. From that point of view we are worlds apart.

on men, part two

2011-10-27T16:42:00.000-07:00

I am adding another short post to this topic that I have started a while ago. I was planning on writing more, but life got in the way. I was inspired by a recent conversation that I have had with a friend on the subject of service. Service to others is an awesome, powerful way to enhance our lives. We learn to share of ourselves, which makes us more open, more vulnerable but also more connected with the world around us. The time when I was the happiest are also the times when I connected the most with others. In fact, if I don't connect with someone at least once a day through a conversation, a shared moment, a cup of tea, then I am prone to anxiety and sadness. It is my social life that gives meaning and purpose to my existence.

Service to others can be difficult when going though infertility. I remember being very unhappy, very closed off from the world at the worst times, and the last thing on my mind was giving, when I felt so dry and empty that a whole river of love could not fill me. Sometimes giving was difficult. Sometimes even impossible, or so it felt. But the one person that I could always give to was my husband. I wanted to be open and vulnerable to him, because it felt right to me, and service to him included many things, but in particular it included forgiveness. I forgave and forgot my anger a lot of times. I was often under the strong impression that I was right, in a discussion, or in an argument. He was at times unfair, impatient, inconsiderate (but not very often really, just when he got tired and worn out). My service to him consisted of forgiving and being the first one to make up, to say I'm sorry. I still am the first one to make up most of the time. I have noticed however that I am reaping the benefits of this behavior as well: our fights don't last long, our sullen silence moments are very brief, and sometimes, more and more often, he even says that he is sorry (whoa! score!).

Men like a woman who serves them (yes, women also like a man who serves them, but I am willing to bet that men don't read my blog so I will leave that part out for now). And women like having a man worthy of serving. Serving is not about fairness, quite the opposite. It is an action born out of the willingness to forget about what is fair for a moment, and focus on giving, and on the end point. It is hard, and it feels unnatural the first hundred times, but it leads to a better relationship, and to more openness and vulnerability in the relationship. And it invariably leads to the man wanting to serve back (chuckle...that is just a side effect...don't serve to be served back or you will often be disappointed).

Does this make sense to anybody? I realize that in the age of equality of sexes, it might sound dated and wrong, but if your relationship is feeling strained and cold, and you are willing to try something different than usual, why not try this?

bison having sex while smelling rose otto

2011-10-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

First off, I will share something that I found insanely hilarious: once in a while I check for "traffic sources" that lead people to my blog, in other words I look to see what search words someone typed into a search engine to lead onto my pages. Occasionally I will publish the funniest ones. Today's keyword/phrase is "bison having sex". Yep, someone typed that into google and my blog came up as a possible answer. If anybody has an explanation for this, please go ahead and post it in the comments.

Jumping ahead to the post: Rose otto is the essential oil of rose (rosa damascena, or Bulgarian rose). It is insanely expensive. Which is why I just had to try it. I bought a minuscule amount online from my usual essential oil supplier, and put one drop in the diffuser tonight. I was shocked how far one drop can go: it smelled throughout the entire bedroom and upstairs, not strongly, but distinctly. Will it make the bison have sex? who knows...

Because of Emma I am limited in the kind of oils I can use, as well as the quantities, but if chosen carefully even with a small baby I can still surround myself with heavenly smells. At least good thing MrH likes the smells in the house, which is nice. I don't know how I would deal with a husband who does not like smells, like my father, who has a very sensitive nose and will protest if I wear hand cream at the table. (I think him and I share the same genes as far as the nausea factor goes, except for me the sensitivity only kicks in when I am pregnant, and for him it is all the time :).

On the good news front: the appliance repairman showed up today to fix my dishwasher. This is record time. Normally people wait for one month at least. I know that because my friend is waiting to have her oven fixed for over two weeks, and she is booked with the same (only!) company for the end of November. I must have been quite convincing on the phone yesterday. In any case, the guy found a date pit in the pump that empties the dishwasher. That would explain it. It was a 100 dollar date pit, or at least that is how much it cost for me to find out about its existence. If only I had known, I would have removed it myself. Embarrassing to say the least... But because I know him from an exercise class that I used to attend regularly, he taught me how to open the pump for future reference, so it was an expensive lesson but not all is lost.

On the weight front, since tomorrow is weigh in day, I am barely going to scrape by with 177 lb (one lb down for the week). I have had a couple of days of anxiety and tiredness, and with the sprained ankle I took a break since Saturday from all forms of exercise, so I have not been as focused. I am however starting to focus again, and the ankle is improving, so on we go. I need to lose at least 2 lb per week to reach my goal by January, when I am going back to work. If I don't reach my goal weight of 155 lb, I am not likely to fit into any clothes for work, and that would be a problem, a big problem, since I cannot show up at work in Lululemon yoga stretch pants, however comfy they might be.

I need some advice: what to wear at Emma's baptism. I have a top that fits but only goes with pants, so I will need to buy some pants, or wear my old maternity pants which look nice but not extraordinary. I also have a skirt that I am five pounds from fitting into, but no top to match it that is festive enough. The last option is to spend some money on a new outfit, or on a new pair of pants, but I find that a pricey option because I don't think I will be ever using the outfit again. If you have attended a baptism or have baptised your child, what did you wear, or what did the mother wear: skirt, pants, or dress? or a suit (gulp! expensive option).

PS. I googled "bison having sex" and my blog did not come up in the first couple of pages. It must have been a different search engine. For a fun assignment, since you all have ample spare time (why else are you reading my blabbering?) try to type "bison having sex" into various search engines and see which one leads you to my blog :)

frustration about my dishwasher

2011-10-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

At least my post titles give you a fair warning about how boring my blog has become...but boring is good...(for me, not so much for entertainment readers though). Anyway, if you want to hear me ranting about service in Northern British Columbia, feel free to keep reading.

My dishwasher has died. He/she was very young, only 1.5 years old, just barely out of warranty. I might have ridden my poor slave too hard, who knows, perhaps one load a day is more than Kenmore has designed their products to handle. Perhaps other people do their dishes only once a week for all I know. In any case, my poor dishwasher has one day keeled over and infarcted its pump (the thing that pumps the water out after the dishes are done). I will not describe here just how much fun MrH had cleaning out that dirty water from the bottom of the dishwasher (which I have named Splashy in this tale, in order to protect his/her privacy. The real name will not be revealed).

So, Splashy Kenmore is dry and alone in my kitchen for eight days. The very next day after Splashy got sick, I called Sears and asked to have it fixed. I was given the good news that the warranty had just expired, but I said breathlessly that I did not care, I just wanted my dear Splashy back. So please send me over an appliance ambulance complete with resuscitation kit. I was assured that I would be called within two days by the service doctor.

A week has passed, and nothing. I loaded Emma on her stroller, did my hair and make up and went over to Sears to seduce the manager in order to save Splashy. I gave him my best smile and asked what the F$#% is going on. I was told to call the service place myself and ask them where I was on that list. Which I did. And found out that I wasn't ON that list at all. I then called the service dispatcher in Ontario (at least it wasn't in India!) and they put me on hold for half an hour, after which they confirmed that indeed I was not on that list, because the service request had been rejected. Rejected by whom? I feel like Splashy is on the list for organ transplant or something.

Back on hold, forty five minutes later after I had my breakfast, my latte, my second latte, my third latte and my tachycardic spell from too much coffee, I was assured that I am now back on the list. SAVE MY DISHWASHER I feel like yelling in the phone. Not only that, but apparently there still is warranty for parts and electronics, and the pump is an electronic organ, so hopefully my wallet won't be gutted by the end of the week. As we all know, I need the money to buy makeup.

musing about work

2011-10-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

I am feeling worn out for some reason. Perhaps I am coming down with a virus, but most likely I am overtraining, like I was suspecting initially. I started thinking about what it will be like to go back to work, and how I will cope with knowing that Emma is with someone else, a stranger to her. I think it is going to be hard, and the anticipation of that is saddening me a little. Even though it is only going to happen in mid-January (and for the first month I am hoping to convince my mom to come and look after her), I have already started to worry, MrsH-style. I am pretty sure that if I get a good sleep tonight I am going to wake up and feel better about the whole thing, but tonight I am mopey. It helps that I love my job, and that I am a social person that likes to communicate daily. I know that going back to work from that point of view will be good for me, since it forces me to be social and to be involved in things other than my own life/problems. But...leaving Emma...even if only for four hours a day...bahhhahhhahh...

You know what I mean.

On the other hand, I cannot believe you gals in the US have to go back after three months. That must be so hard. How do you cope?

The Milk Cow

2011-10-23T19:17:00.000-07:00

If you have been following my story, you know that after the post partum hemorrhage that almost killed me I lost my milk supply. Initially I had NOTHING (at about three weeks post partum). Then, I managed to pump 1 oz from both breasts combined for the longest time. We are now at 2.5 months of age, and I am starting to notice that Emma does not require as much SNS supplementation as she used to. For the past week, I have only given her about 300 ml (10 oz) from the SNS, as opposed to the usual 20 oz that he would require. Last night she did not need any supplementation. This morning again. I started thinking that she might have indigestion and maybe her appetite is down. This afternoon, I went for a long walk with my friend and left Emma at home with MrH. He had to give her 90 ml (3 oz) of supplement, then I came home and had full breasts, so I started pumping. I pumped 3 oz and at the same time fed her I guess about 1 oz. I made 4 oz of milk!!!!!!!!!!!! This is such a huge achievement for me, I cannot even begin to describe it. It makes me happier than the weight loss even, and that should mean a lot for whoever knows how obsessed I am with my weight at the moment :)

Jumping around to another idea, I had to ask this question that popped into my head last night. For those of you who have or have had babies, you might identify with this dilemma: when your baby wakes you up at 5 am to feed, and your bladder is full and bursting, which do you do first: pee, or feed the baby? If I feed Emma, I am rather uncomfortable to put it mildly for the whole 20-40 minutes that it takes her to eat. If I pee first, then Emma fully wakes up and starts screaming, waking up MrH who has to work in the morning. So far, I have been able to either hold it until I feed her, or carry her to the washroom and feed while on the toilet, but she is getting rather long and heavy and I don't know how long she will be manageable to carry around, especially that the toilet is in a narrow spot in our bathroom.

That is it for deep thoughts. Please let me know what you do/what you would do in this situation.

beauty therapy

2011-10-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

During ICLW I try to post every day, because it is an important way to meet new people in the blogging world. However, I must say that I have nothing intelligent to write about lately. I think I am keeping myself too busy to think. I sprained my ankle running, and today re-injured it a bit during jazzercise, so I really will have to take it easier with the exercising. That should give me more time to just be and feel and think and write.

First I will start with a resolution: no more baking while I am trying to lose weight. I baked banana bread yesterday, and despite the fact that it only had two tbsp of sugar and two tbsp of oil for the whole loaf, I ate too much (three slices? with peanut butter and honey... instead of dinner, ouch) and woke up weighing 179 lb. I know we should not weigh ourselves daily, but heck if I don't see every single mistake on that scale if I weigh myself daily. I mean, I never gain 1 lb after eating my usual meals. So, no more baking. No more anything that will put me out of my routine, other than one meal: Emma's baptism. It will be on November 12, and I plan on eating a little more freely then. But not overeating. I have to get it in my head that overeating is out of my life for good, and that if it shows up again uninvited, I have to assess why and do my best to avoid future situations where it is likely to happen.

I was doing my hair with hot rollers today, and I came up with another observation: hot rollers take time. Five minutes to apply, and two to remove, to be more precise. They do create a nice wave and lots of volume that stays the whole day, they are more gentle on the hair than a curling or straightening iron, but they take more time. So, the truth is that at least in my life, with limited time for self-grooming, I will have to chose one aspect of my beauty routine that I want to emphasize and spend time on, and be more minimal on the other aspects. In the past I used to chose my make up as the part to emphasize, and do my hair pretty much in the same way daily, using a curling or straightening iron for variation. (BTW, within the make up routine, one can spend more time and money on products for the face, or for the eyes, or for the lips, so in there too there is a way to break it up in order to spend time on the one feature that one wants emphasized. Lately I have been focusing on creating a flawless complexion, which takes quite a bit of steps since my complexion is not flawless, given my lack of sleep, hehehe...). Now, I want to create a voluminous hair, so I have to limit something else in order to steal the extra four minutes for the hair routine. (I kid you not, my self care is THAT regimented. I have OCD). So, the extra time is coming from clothing (with only two pairs of pants that fit me, and both of them jeans, I don't really have to spend too much time choosing or ironing:) and it will probably also come from skin care. I have simplified my skin care regime a lot: wash, remove makeup, add vitamin C 20% serum, add lactic acid/salicylic acid gel, and some basic eye cream. When I want pampering, I also add some herbal recovery gel from Jurlique. (If you think this is complex, you should have seen what I was doing before: cream for face, cream for neck, cream for boobs, cream for butt, cream for waist, cream for hands, cream for feet. That was before I had a child. Now it's one cream for everything, and I make it :).

Anyway, I am blabbering. I had better stop for today. If you want more random wandering thoughts then stop by tomorrow. I might blabber about cooking. I wish, really, that I had some deeper thoughts, but I just don't. I am very superficial at the moment, so on we go.

Thursday check in

2011-10-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

I am a little late for the Thursday weight check-in: Emma has been fussy the whole day and I did not get to the computer at all. The dieting is still going, (for those reading from ICLW, I am in the process of losing 35 lb after giving birth to my daughter Emma on August 10). I weighed 178 lb this morning (start weight 187 lb) so officially breaching the 180's barrier, and nine pounds lost since the start of my diet. My husband is full of praises for how I look, which helps me a lot to stay motivated. I find that once I lose some of the weight, I am tempted to stop or to slack off (which in the world of dieting is bad). I still have 23 lb to go, so I must not stop.

I became interested in aromatherapy again (I was always into perfumes and smells and the chemistry behind it, but during the pregnancy I became intolerant of most smells, so I had to stop using fragrances and essential oils). I am building my collection of essential oils, and experimenting on my husband with methods to induce deep sleep (and sneaking in an aphrodisiac here and there, but he does not have to know, haha... maybe that is why the parrots are pecking each other). I am getting an ultrasonic diffuser by mail sometime next week, which should make the process more efficient. I also made a solid perfume this week, using 1 tbsp beeswax, 1 tbsp coconut oil, melted together, and when cooler I added bergamont and grapefruit essential oils (about 25 drops total). It smells lovely, and I use it more as a hand and foot cream.

I will try to write a longer post this weekend about Emma's development. She is smiling all the time, and "talking to us", this week she has also tried to help MrH open an envelope, reaching for it interested. We dance every day to Alicia Keys in the mornings and generally have a fabulous time. I am still the happiest mom on the planet :)

The October 15 candle for our babies.

2011-10-17T11:35:00.001-07:00

setback

2011-10-17T05:31:00.000-07:00

As far as the weight loss goes, this weekend I had a minor setback, and did not lose any weight. In fact, at one point I had gained 2 lb. This probably was due to salt and water retention, which usually happens when I start eating more than usual. I did not eat insane amounts, actually I only ate enough not to be hungry, but the truth is that in order to lose weight, one has to be hungry, so the extra food that consisted of 5 oz of salmon, 100 g of pasta and one cup of lentil soup (in addition to my usual calories) have stalled my progress and made me put weight back on.

I had to reassess the situation: why was this happening? I think the main reason has to do with the fact that I am exhausted. Losing weight is hard enough, but I also exercise daily, running about 5-7 km, doing pushups, sit-ups, planks, etc, or hiking up and down the hills for one hour. Once a week I go to an exercise class as well. The other thing is that I have to get Emma to come with me for the almost daily hiking, and that consists of hurrying to feed her (she takes forever still to feed) and then fighting with her to put her in the car seat, fighting with her to let me put a hat on, and struggling to convince her that the Ergo carrier is a fine place to be in for one whole hour, which my active little girl does not always believe. There are many days in which I get there late and stressed out, and often think that I should just stop making plans with other people, because I am never on time, even if I start to get ready one and a half hours prior.

So, after realizing that this is the case, I am going to allow myself days off from exercise, and even from meeting other people and going out for walks. I am going to let myself spend whole days just doing nothing other than the basic housework and caring for Emma. I also need to spend more time sleeping. And, finally, I need to cut back on the exercise, although this might sound counter intuitive when we are talking about weight loss. The truth is that exercise is only 20% of the effort, 80% of weight loss is the diet, and if exercising too much makes me eat out of tiredness or frustration of not having time to just vegetate and relax, then the exercise is counterproductive to the final goal. (The final goal is to fit into this red Chanel skirt that I bought while I was pregnant, measuring 100 cm in the hips and 75 cm in the waist - as far away as the moon really).

As soon as I made this decision, I have begun to relax. I still ran 6 km last night, but I enjoyed doing it because I chose to, not because I had to. I also took a long bath with essential oils (I chose lavander, frankincense, geranium and rose of Maroc) and in fact took out my collection of essential oils and expanded it by adding three more (lemon, cedarwood, and a blend called "appetite suppressant " that has rosemary, fennel and peppermint I think). Lastly, I started using my cellulite cream again, not so much because I think it works, but rather because it makes me feel pampered.

So I am back on the right track, I was hungry yesterday and I am sure that I lost one pound of water. Will check in on Thursday. BTW, if you are doing the weight loss with me then on Thursday post your weight (yes, you G!). This will keep you on the right path and encourage you not to stray, at least not on Wednesday night...

October 15, Remembering- Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day

2011-10-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

Thinking of all of our little ones that we lost: Adrian, Olivia, Lillian Grace, Julius, Wendy, Rowan, Levi, Ayla Joy, Juliet Grace, Bayli and Thomas, Caleb Anthony, Aidan, Valentina, Baby M, Baby C, and I deeply apologize for anybody that I might have left out accidentally. I have lit a candle today for all of them, as usual, and I will post the picture in a little while.

I sometimes have the impression that I think of Adrian more than usual, and sometimes less than usual. Watching Emma grow and become her own little person has me wondering how would Adrian have been doing going through the same steps. The other day, a little boy asked me if Emma has a brother, and I told him that she did, but he died. He looked all serious and asked me why, and I smiled and told him that he was born too small. Because I was loving and light-hearted about it, which I truly am at this point in my life (given how blessed and happy I feel), he accepted it and moved on, with no fear about this information. He was actually quite sweet. I don't hide Adrian's loss from anybody. All who ask get the truth from me, since I don't feel any reluctance to disclose Adrian's existence. I have not had many people be inappropriate about it either. I accepted it as part of life, I let people know about him with love and peace, and they probably feel safe and don't need to block out the sad story.

Adrian is resting in a small urn on my night table, and I say goodnight to him every night. It is for him that I have had the courage to go on living, and eventually got Emma. It is for both my children, but particularly for him, that I want to live my life to the fullest, just like I would have liked him to do. It is the only thing a bereaved parent can do for their child, live as if his or her days have been passed onto us. May we all make the most of our days, for us and for them.

life is good

2011-10-12T17:06:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update before I dash to the indoor running track: I have lost a total of 7 lb since I started the diet, currently being at 180 lb. That is 2 lb in the past week, which included Thanksgiving (I obviously have behaved :).

Emma is more and more entertaining. We run daily, her in the stroller, me pushing her (one day we'll change places). I love the Stokke stroller for its height, as Emma is feeling much more secure close to me than she would close to the ground. She laughs often and enjoys the speed. She cries if I slow down, so honestly she is my best training partner, pushing me continuously. She also loves her baths, kicking her little legs when we bathe together, almost daily. She screams my head off when I take her out, even though I try to keep her warm. She is such a lovely little girl, and I feel immensely blessed to have her EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Yesterday I was running outdoors on a path on which I run every summer, and I have suddenly had a flashback to one of the numerous times that I ran to forget about infertility, either before an IVF or after an unsuccessful procedure. Every step on that path has memories of infertility, dashed hopes, pain, impatience, doubt. And now I ran it with Emma. This was an immensely healing experience for me, and I have ended up thanking her out loud for choosing us to be her parents. What a difference she has made to my life, how much happier and brighter I feel! Thank you, thank you, thank you little girl for being brave and taking a chance on us. We will do our best not to disappoint :)

blogging

2011-10-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

I must confess, I love the blogging world. I love reading other people's blogs even more than writing my own, and I like it a lot when people comment, because it makes me feel like someone out there is actually reading my blabbering. Oh, I know I can use the stats and see if people click on the pages, but when one actually writes a comment it means a lot to me. It is like a conversation, and that is what makes us a community. Which is why I am going to sign up again for the International Comment Leaving Week (ICLW), see the link on the right hand corner in brown for this month. Who knows how I will find the time, between exercising and caring for my newborn daughter, but we shall try.

I found some interesting blogs lately, one of which was about how to have great legs. I believe it is called the Great Legs blog or something like that. I am sure if I search for it I am going to find a blog about how to have great abs, great breath, and definitely I know that there is one for shiny long hair, 'cause I used to read it. Anything you want, you name it, someone else out there is obsessed with it even more than you and has become expert enough at the issue to write about it. I LOVE THE INTERNET!

Speaking of great legs, I am going on with the diet, I weighed 181 lb this morning, which is fabulous! I cannot believe what a long way I still have to go until I can fit into my large size clothes, not to mention the medium size. It is a slow process, but I am concentrating on it, and it is going on. This morning I have tried a jazzercise class, which reminded me of hi-low impact aerobics that I used to teach at some point when living in Vancouver. I enjoyed the group, and the opportunity to show off my lululemon top (I am going through a lululemon stage, a couple of years behind the rest of Vancouver, but hey, I was piss poor at the stage when lululemon became the mandatory gym wear in Vancouver so I used to work out in my old beat up t-shirts and my dad's pants. I think I looked quite sexy though, in a carpenter-girl sort of way.

I am nervous about Thanksgiving dinner. Similarly to many people, I like to eat more than my diet allows when I go out, and we are going out to someone's house who is a good cook. If you have any tips on how to stick to the diet while at the same time not making the host feel uncomfortable (as I would feel if someone refused to eat my pumpkin pie) please share.

So peaceful

2011-10-06T08:11:00.001-07:00

8 weeks old. Her crying makes me soft.

2011-10-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

Emma is 8 weeks old and I weigh 182 lb (down 2 lb since we started the diet last week).
Yesterday I was hungry and cranky, and I bet Emma is picking up on that a bit, because she just had a lot of cramps and was cranky herself. We had a nice bath in the big tub, and she splashed around with her little legs, but as soon as I took her out of the water she started crying, and worked herself up into a hysterical mode. I soothed her as best as I could, but she did not want the boob (that is a first for Emma!) and at one point I had to get dried up and dressed myself, as I had just gotten out of the tub with her. After dressing her warmly I put her on the floor of my walk in closet, where I was getting dressed, and she started crying very angry, and thrashing around with her little legs and arms, and I felt so bad that I just had to get dried up and dressed, and could not pick her up. She was just lying there, helpless, and my heart really melted out of compassion for this little body that cannot do a single thing for herself and is so incredibly dependent. I cannot imagine the frustration! Good thing she doesn't know any better...

There was another magical moment last night, when she grabbed her daddy's finger, looked at it, then tentatively stuck out her little tongue and slowly brought her head to the finger (instead of the other way around :) and first tasted it, then started chewing on his knuckle. It was so sweet to see her explore. I am used to her playing with my boob, chewing on it, grabbing it with her hands, checking it out with her tongue, whenever she is not hungry and feels like having fun. But I have never seen her doing it with anything other than my boob or her hands, so this was definitely a first.

As for my own progress, which I will probably post every Thursday, I am doing well...except for the irritability :( which hopefully will get better. I feel tense, probably because all I can think about is how to get my hands on more food, so I can't concentrate on anything else. I have good results though. Down 2 lb, and stronger in the core exercises (I can now do the plank for one minute, while just one week ago I had to struggle for 30 seconds). I can even do it on one leg at a time, for 10 seconds each. I just got my gymboss interval timer, and my workouts have gotten harder, since the timer beeps each time when I have to increase the intensity, and measures out my breaks. I use it for everything, including the elliptical workouts, which I do 50 sec hard, 10 sec break, repeat times 20. Yesterday the sweat was pouring off me like rain.

I like interval training, it is way less boring than regular 20 min of elliptical at the same pace. The other way to spice up training is to get some new and exciting exercise clothes. I just splurged and treated myself to some lululemon pants and jacket (the thin one that matches the pants in both colour and material, like a track suit), two bras (identical black v-neck) and one white hoodie. My bank account is groaning in pain. But I need some comfy exercise clothes, and I stick to that excuse.

flattering comments...NOT!

2011-10-04T21:18:00.000-07:00

On the plus side, I weigh 182 lb, which is very good. Two pounds down in one week. MrH thinks I am an irritable bitch when I lose weight, but he is willing to put up with it so on we go. I went running today for my current 4 km distance at the indoor running track. It is a beautiful building, with two hockey rings on the first level, a speed skating ring on the second level, and a walking/running track overlooking all the other levels. The lady who was supervising was someone I knew from work, and she had not seen me for about two years. She did not recognize me! we had a long chat, and at the end she asked me where I am from. I told her I am from Romania, and it then clicked to her who I was, and she said the first thing that came to her mind: oh my God, you used to be so skinny and pretty! (as in now you are not!!!). I would tell my husband about you and how good you look, how nicely your clothes fit, etc. She went on and on. Like I destroyed some kind of monument. Ahem.

True enough. I am not skinny. But I will be. I told her that I am running and dieting and that I have already lost 5 lb, but hey, she could not shake the disappointment off her face. Hey, lady, I just had a baby, get over it. But it was shocking for me to realize just how different I must look, with the extra 30 lb on board (probably the lycra pants did not do me any favours either). It was also shocking to see how she did not believe, not truly believe, that I could lose this weight. Puh-leeze. Who do you think you are talking to, lady, do you have any idea how much harder having this baby was than losing 30 lb? How much deprivation and frustration I have had to endure? I think I could have lost 150 lb in the time that it took me to have this baby, and it would have been an easier journey. That's the thing, surviving infertility and somehow resolving it puts one in a position of power, whether one has a baby or not at the end of it, there is no way not to look at the usual everyday problems and not shrug, as in "whatever". It is nothing compared to what I already did. It takes time and determination, but at least the result is pretty much guaranteed. While as I cannot say the same thing about the IVF, or the end of a high risk pregnancy.

BTW, does anybody want to join me on this weight loss journey? If so, post your goal in the comments section. Once a week, let's check in. Say on Thursdays, my usual weigh in day.

men and infertility

2011-10-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

I read this article just now, after being directed to it by www.alittlepregnant.com. I felt that it was written with incredible sensitivity from this man undergoing ART and finally IVF with his wife for a total of three years, without a positive result, and without great chances. It shows just how heart-wrenching this process is, and how from the man's perspective, he is able to take other people's jokes and crassness in stride on the surface, and yet...it still affects him. It makes me wonder if men are perhaps not less sensitive than us, but rather less likely to complain. Less likely to share. More likely to just "take it like a man". I don't want to generalize, but his style of thinking and writing reminded me of my own husband, the man I know best in this lifetime, and I felt deep tenderness towards the strong male who seems that he is just "tagging along for the ride" and in reality experiencing everything just as intensely as the woman. Including the experience of having a wife who desperately wants children and cannot have them. (If men want children as intensely, they are better at hiding it from us than we are from them, thus the additional stress is still on them).

I did not think that IVF was a lot harder on me than on him. We both had our share of stress, and overall it was a pretty pleasant experience. Not as pleasant as fucking each other's brains out would have been, of course, more along the lines of a root canal, but the doctors were nice, the clinic was comfortable, and we got to travel to Vancouver where I had a wonderful time. Not much to complain about in my case. Plus I had some pregnancies coming out of it, which is probably what colours my experience in retrospect. What I did find very difficult was the infertility itself, the not knowing if I would ever have a child, the incompetent cervix on top of all that making me wonder if I would have a preemie with disabilities to raise and if I was strong enough for that as well. That is still an issue for us of course, especially now that I have lost the TAC and I will have to get a regular McDonalds next.

I feel blessed every single hour of every single day for having escaped the hell called infertility. I only now know just how closed I was to the world, how much isolation and hurt I struggled with every day. I feel like I am filled with light. And in addition to this immense relief, I have this wonderful baby to love, whose hand right now rests on my breast like a butterfly touch. And let me tell you, going from hell to heaven without transition is a wild ride.

And from the side

2011-10-03T21:28:00.003-07:00

As promised

2011-10-03T21:28:00.001-07:00

My name is MsH and I am overweight. Big time (literally)!

2011-10-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

I calculated my BMI this week, and it was not pretty: 28. That officially places me right in the middle of the overweight range, close to obesity (obese would be 30). I have NEVER been this fat in my whole life. I have also never carried a pregnancy to term before either, so there we go. I cannot fit into any of my previous clothes. If I squeeze myself into a pair of exercise pants (we are talking about the stretchy black lycra type) I need to hold my breath and avoid sitting or else the industrial strength seams might crack. The other day I tried on my previous bathing suit for the pool (size 10) and I could not get it to slip past my knees. I called the triboutique company from which I order my swimming gear, and gave them my measurements: 41-37-44. They said that they don't carry anything in stock for this size (slightly larger than XL) but that they will order it in for me from the company that makes them. Sweet, but very embarrassing conversation indeed.

And while I am aware that I have just had a baby which I am currently trying to at least partially breastfeed with my limited milk supply, this cannot go on any longer. It is eroding on my confidence. I am going back to work in January and would like to have some clothes to wear other than my two pairs of size 12 jeans that barely zip up (optimistic recent purchase). I need to lose weight as much as I need air at this point. Hence I have declared the situation a state of emergency, at least until I lose enough to fit into my priorly fat clothes. This means that I am currently very strict with my diet, not having any sugar and limiting the fruit/grains to only one serving per meal at most. I also have small portions. I am hungry most of the time in the evenings. Starting from about 4 pm, I am hungry almost non stop until dinner, and then hungry again half an hour after dinner until I fall asleep. I hate being hungry all the time, but I know from previous experience that the hungry stage only lasts about one week, then the stomach shrinks to a smaller size and does not need to be fed every five minutes.

I also exercise every day, some kind of cardio (either running or elliptical) for 30 min and do the bodyrock.tv workouts. They are tough, but I can feel that they are helping build up my strength back quite quickly. I am already pleased with my abdominal muscles, I think that they will come back to their usual position and strength in the next month. Ditto for the quads. The only problem that I really need to work on lots is the upper body strength. I have never been able to do a proper chin-up and probably never will be able to due to the fact that I have spaghetti arms. But at least I wish I could go back to doing pushups. And that will require about one year of work, I am afraid. And on a more achievable level, I wish I could haul around the car seat with Emma in it without feeling like my forearms will fall off.

That is the current situation, and what I am busying myself with. The strange thing is, I have no self-hatred during this whole thing. Before I would have felt like I am a useless piece of sausage with no will power and would have kicked myself in order to motivate the change. Now I feel like I am doing it out of love for myself and for Emma (I want her to have a fit and beautiful mother that she is proud of, just like I did - my mom was my number one exercise partner until I moved to SmallTown in the North). And I feel like the effort to lose the weight is part of the small price that I have had to pay to have this wonderful baby. She is worth every bit of effort indeed, and I remember that each time I look at her (which is constantly).

I will post a "before" picture in my exercise pants and bra. And then, on the first of every month, I will post the "after" pictures.

Seven week update

2011-09-29T00:15:00.000-07:00

Today Emma is seven weeks old. She is growing and getting substantially stronger, and I love feeding her. She eats with gusto. I still only produce about 30 mL (one ounce) of breast milk at one feeding, which amounts to about one cup per day, but I feel that it has increased a little, by about five mL each time, over the past two days, so I am happy and looking forward to it increasing even more. I know that I will likely never be able to exclusively breastfeed, but I feel that Emma and myself can call our breastfeeding journey an absolute success. Given what I had, which was a very limited breast milk supply, a willing baby, a lot of patience, and the random finding of the SNS idea in a book, we have struggled and made it work on autopilot. And we are both very happy, Emma because she is getting fed and she has her boob to put her to sleep and comfort her, and me because I get to bond with her in this very special way, and I have a powerful tool available to calm her down instantly. Plus I have enough milk to soothe her if I even get caught out of the house without the SNS/formula.

I had some worries about the soy formula, mostly after reading on various websites that its safety has been questioned in Europe (due to the phytoestrogens and also to the higher amount of manganese which can get accumulated in babies). So far however, she is doing so very well on it that it is hard for me to justify switching her to something else, especially since many many people have done well on soy despite the current concerns. Soy formulas have been around since the 1960's, and I think if something were terribly wrong with them, we'd have known it by now. I am occasionally tempted to try the lactose-free formulas, but I suspect that she is allergic to the cow milk protein, since her skin broke out in such a bad rash, which cleared almost completely since the soy. Again, I must make the best decision that I can given the circumstances, and after asking a pediatrician friend about it and being advised that it is considered safe, I will keep her on it. If any of my readers have been on soy or put their kids on soy formula, please comment, for some reason it makes me feel better to know that I am not the only one that has made this decision.

Emma is a very happy, very easy baby. She cries only if hungry, and that is easily rectified. She is finally starting to like the car rides, thank God, because so far we were avoiding the car like the plague since it was one big screaming match. Now we are doing very well. She loves to bath, and has a great time on Saturdays when we bath with her in the big tub. I only use infant body wash on her once a week, usually on this occasion. The rest of the week I find that baby poo and spit up are very much water soluble and do not require soap to clean. And I swear she smells good :)

For myself, I have started to exercise again quite seriously. I use the elliptical trainer for 20-30 minutes a day, or I run 4-5 km on the indoor track while pushing the stroller. (I don't have a jogging stroller, but the Stokke is very good on the rubber track, it maneuvers easily, and it has a car seat adapter, so I use the car seat with a sleeping Emma in it). I also hike daily for one hour in a nearby forest. In the evenings, when MrH is home and I can do my strength exercises, I do whole body stuff like burpees, pushups, planks, medicine ball exercises, step ups on a bench, jump squats and general plyometrics. I have found a great website with workouts already created, www.bodyrock.tv, and am following one workout daily, or I create my own. I used to be very fit, and am now struggling to do pushups, or the wheel (bridge) in yoga, or generally anything that requires upper body strength. I am improving though, and it makes it easier to do daily tasks like carrying laundry or lifting the stroller into the car. But I am about six months from where I used to be. I have to hold myself back and try to increase slowly, as I am prone to tendonitis if I go too fast, in particular with the running.

As far as weight loss, I am 5'9" and used to weigh 155 lb before my pregnancy. That was a great weight for me, easy to maintain and looking fab, in particular if I had a good muscle development. I now weigh 184 lb. I have lost about 3 lb in the past month, and am happy about that, it is not a lot but it is steady, so I am on the right track. I eat pretty much the same things every day: one cup of steel cut oats that I cook in a big pot once a week, with almond milk and 1/4 cup of walnuts in the morning, plus one cup of berries that I sprinkle on top. For lunch I usually have a banana, and two slices of manna bread (sprouted wheat) with almond or cashew butter. I snack on an ounce of cheese and an apple, perhaps another banana later on, and on carrots and celery sticks. In the evenings I have a glass of carrot and celery juice, some beans or chicken casserole or steamed salmon, always with steamed veggies (zucchini or broccoli or asparagus usually) and a salad made with tomatoes and avocado and spinach leaves, usually without oil if avocado is added, but with some balsamic vinegar. If we have desert it is usually tofu pudding or sugar free icecream.

I know that the first part of my day is heavy on carbs, but they are mostly the slow burning kind, and I compensate by going lighter on the carbs in the evening. We don't eat much meat or animal products, I have my homemade yogourt daily and the occasional boiled egg (MrH does not eat either), and I cook chicken once every two weeks for both of us (about four portions total), that's about it. That leaves us with beans, nuts, fruits and veggies, and grains. I don't intend to feed Emma a vegan diet, although she will probably eat much of what I am eating, so I don't forsee a lot of meat in her future. I think our diet is well balanced and I have never run into any health problems, despite having eaten this way for most of my life. In Romania meat was expensive, and always eaten in small quantities, mostly as part of a casserole dish, not as a steak or ribs or a hunk of meat in general. I got used to it this way.

I am having a great time so far, and am feeling very fulfilled. No complaints at all. People ask me if it was worth it, and I say of course, a thousand times over. I would do it all again in a second. Emma is so precious and makes us so happy!

first bath in the big tub

2011-09-25T13:56:00.001-07:00

IMG_2821

Still going with the breastfeeding. Except now we are holding onto the boob.

2011-09-23T15:12:00.001-07:00

soy formula

2011-09-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

It looks like the Similac is giving Emma bad cramps, she starts screaming out of the blue, she regurgitates like mad, and she has a fine rash on her face that looks like a heat rash. Her milk donor, my friend, is gone for a few days, and we are on all formula minus the amount of breast milk that I am providing (more on that one below). She is really suffering with the cramps. She is a very mild, gentle baby, with big attentive eyes, and for the past 24 hours she has been crying so much that we could hardly leave the house. The only way I got anywhere today was with her on the breast for most of the time, pushing the empty stroller while holding her latched on to pacify.

So today we decided to change her over to Isomil, a soy based formula. Because she is so young, and because of the SNS, I am using the concentrate, and adding filtered water. I don't know if I will be able to use powder formula in the SNS at a later date, so I might have to carry with me the cooling container in order to transport the concentrate whenever we go somewhere. That is ok. Everything is worth the fun we are both having "breastfeeding". I don't know whether to use the term or not, but she is literally feeding on the breast, it's just that she is getting formula more than breast milk. She loves it, and I love it, becoming more and more comfortable with the tubing and the container of liquid around my neck, the rest is like the old fashion way. I hope we can keep doing it for a long time, in any case for as long as we both enjoy it.

But back to the Isomil, she is really better on it, after the second serving she has stopped cramping, she burps much less, and seems calmer. It might be a fluke, so I will wait a few more days before I pronounce the verdict on it, but so far it is definitely well tolerated. As far as my breast milk goes...I pumped four times today, in between feedings, and I got a glorious total of 50 mL (just under 2 oz). I don't know how much of that she is getting in addition to the embarrassing pump output, but hey, any amount is good. I don't think it is decreasing, but I am not seeing a big increase either. I think that might be it, the cow is leaving...

On a totally unrelated note, this morning I had a whole hour to myself! I woke up suddenly at 6:30, remembering that I left the barbecue on with eggplants on it ... yesterday, at 4 pm! I went to check on the barbecue. The gas had run out (duh!) and the eggplants were carbonized, only the dark shells remaining. I cleaned up the mess, and then I got on with some things that require two hands, which I don't often have. I showered, washed and dried my hair with a hairdryer (!), epilated my legs, underarms and bikini line with the silk-epil, plucked my eyebrows, put makeup on, put lotion on, and then, being all done with my grooming, I started grooming the cat! I cut her clumps of hair, cut her nails on the front paws, and petted her a little as she does not get much attention from me lately, except when she jumps on the bed (and that would be the undesirable sort of attention). It was a much needed hour for both of us.

Baby paraphenalia

2011-09-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

I did not want a lot of stuff when I got pregnant, and as time went on, I tried to decide what was absolutely necessary, and what was desirable, from other people's experiences. I hope my experience will help others decide what to try and what to forgo. As a warning, I am not fond of clutter, I generally don't like garish colours and I absolutely hate plastic toys, and anything that is not environmentally friendly, so that should explain some of my choices.

1. cloth diapers. I wanted to write a separate post on these, but there is not much to say. I chose g-diapers because they were the only ones I had seen (here in my town, the cloth diapers are rare, and my friend had a g-diaper to show me, I thought it was ok and went for it). I wash them daily, one doesn't have to wash the whole diaper, just the cotton insert, but I wash the whole thing anyway each time. I bought eight pairs and it is enough. If you plan on doing laundry every second day, then I guess you'd need about sixteen pairs of all-in-one diapers, or about twenty inserts for the G-diapers, or twenty prefolds. I take the dirty diaper off, and rinse it if it is poop, then throw the insert in a bowl filled with water and a little nature friendly peroxide solution. In the mornings, I dump the water and do the laundry, including my clothes, my husband's clothes, and Emma's clothes and everything else in the house minus the towels around the bird cage which I always do separately every second day. I am not squeamish about baby poop, it smells clean (especially if breastfed) and they do not have much in the way of harmful bacteria at this point. When she starts on solids I will probably do the diapers separately, as it might require a longer cycle, right now I just do a rapid wash cycle with warm water and nature friendly detergent (we use Nature Clean right now). I line dry in the house most of the time, and if in a hurry then I use the drier and feel appropriately guilty. They always come out clean and smell-free.

2. cloth wipes. I use fuzzybunz wipes. I bought a packet of 10. I wash them, fold them in a little box on the changing table, and when I need to use them I wet them with water from a thermos (I like it warm for Emma's comfort, so I put it in the thermos hot twice a day), no soap or other cleansers, and wipe her with it, then put them into the bowl of water.

3. I don't have a diaper pail, I just use a large bowl filled with water, which I rinse out every day.

4. I don't use any baby lotion, potion or anything else. Everybody in the house uses the same kind of wash, which is Dr. Bronner soap, and I will soon change to Live Clean baby wash for everyone as well. It is much simpler than having a separate soap/shampoo for each person. I use cornstarch for her bottom if it gets red, but she has never had a diaper rash so it is more preventative. I store it in a glass bowl and apply it with a cotton pad.

5. We don't have a baby tub. I wash Emma in the sink every morning, or I have a shower with her. I wash the sink beforehand, and I don't use it for anything other than me and her. We share the same bacterial flora anyway.

6. A change table is a nice thing. She loves the change table as it has a plant that extends a branch over it, and she loves looking at it. I find it easier on my back than changing her on the bed, but I am pretty tall. I also needed it to store her clothes into, so I picked one with three drawers.

7. I have an Ergo carrier with the infant insert and I love it. I use it for walks, for housework, and for my daily exercise on the elliptical trainer which I have started last week. Emma loves sleeping in it, especially on the elliptical. If you like your hands free, get one.

8. I also like the Stokke stroller a lot, and use it for my daily shopping trips to the grocery store. I like to buy small amounts of food often, and the stroller has a nice bag on the bottom that fits all my groceries. I can also maneuver it with one hand and hold her in the other hand if she wants to breastfeed (or more like pacify on my rather underachieving breasts) or to be held. During the day I use the stroller's bassinet for her to sleep in. But I consider a stroller entirely optional, as the Ergo can do the job just fine.

9. A fleece blanket for the stroller, as it gets cold. I got a fleece sleeping bag, since it is quite windy here.

10. About four Aden and Anais blankets in organic cotton, they are soft and gauzy and amazing for swaddling, covering her against the sun, and using as a cover when breastfeeding if one feels the need to cover. I have about twelve of them, but I did not really need this many. I just love them.

11. Four onesies, three pairs of pants, and three long sleeve tops. Two pajamas or sleepers. I also found invaluable a fleece costume that I got for going out on windy/cold days.

12. Two hats, one in some kind of wool (I prefer cashmere or merino) for cold weather, one in cotton. Wash the cashmere one by hand or in the machine on cold/cold cycle and line dry.

13. Two pairs of wool/cashmere socks. Her feet were very cold in cotton socks, and since I got the cashmere ones she is much more comfortable. I keep them on her feet with hair elastics and make sure that the elastics are not too tight and do not leave marks on her skin. We don't use mittens yet, but will use thick cashmere/wool ones in winter.

14. I did not need a change pad so far, but I suppose that if you travel or are outside of the house for a long time you would need one. So far I changed her on her blanket, making sure to interchange the diapers quickly as to avoid her peeing on it.

15. I don't have a diaper bag. If I leave the house, I just take one clean diaper, one ziploc bag, one pair of pants, and the bottle or the SNS as I don't produce enough milk for her at this point. All of these fit in my purse.

16. I have six Aden and Anais washcloths that I use to wipe the burped milk off her face. I don't use bibs. If she gets dirty, I change her, but I find that if I hold the washcloth in front of her face when I burp her, she does not get dirty. If I get dirty I wipe the spot with a wet towel, and I wash all my clothes daily with hers anyway.

17. A car seat. We got a Graco, don't get it, it sucks. It does not have a button to loosen the slack on the straps so I have to use the metal belt buckles for that every time, which takes half an hour. That is why we walk and avoid the car like the plague. By winter I might inherit a Peg perego from a friend and be delivered from my pain. MAKE SURE YOUR CAR SEAT HAS A BUTTON TO LOOSEN THE SLACK ON THE SHOULDER STRAPS. THIS IS MY NUMBER ONE PIECE OF ADVICE!

18. We don't have a crib. She sleeps in our bed and will do so until she no longer wants to. MrH and I don't mind at all and in fact we like it. The two of us will have sex on top of the washing machine in the broom closet while she is sleeping. (If I had a dollar for each time people ask us this question!). We have several beds in the house anyway, if the need to be conventional strikes us.

19. We don't use a pacifier. She hates them.

20. If you breastfeed you don't need more than two bottles with nipples for emergencies. Heck, one would suffice. I use the SNS, and my two bottles, but have several bottles for transporting the donor milk back and fourth from her house to mine. If you are a good "milky" like my friend's daughter calls it, then a manual pump would suffice. Or even hand expression. I need an industrial strength double pump for my barren breasts.

21. Somebody lent us a swing, and I am very excited to see if it prolongs her morning nap time, so that I can get more housework done. I would not have bought one otherwise though.

22. A pair of nail clippers. Any kind will do, just keep them for the baby only.

That is it. I don't like baby toys, so I will let her have one rubber one, and up to three fuzzy soft ones, that is it. She can play with household items like we did growing up. I don't think I had more than four toys during my whole childhood, and I still remember them. I get terrified when I walk into someone's house and I see it filled to the brim with garishly coloured plastic toys. It cannot be good for the kid's attention span anyway.

end of list. let me know what you guys think.

Feelin' lucky?

2011-09-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

She has caught up in growth tremendously, being again on the 50th percentile for weight, where she started off. I have not measured her height yet, but she has already outgrown all of her newborn pants, and is now into the 0-3 month stuff, closer to 3 than to 0. Since I have started supplementing every feed she is content, alert, and smiles often. Today she smiled for a full minute at her daddy (she smiles at him much more often than at mommy, 'cause she's daddy's girl, although she melts into my arms so lovely that I still feel special :). She needs only one feed through the night, usually at 3-4 am, and sleeps well in between feeds.

Today she has discovered her right hand, studying it carefully, putting it in her mouth (sometimes missing the mouth) and trying to touch daddy's face with it. It is quite a different movement than the uncoordinated flailing newborn movements, this is much more studied and calculated. The most amazing part though is her attention span, it is longer than mine! She looks at our faces and listens intently for a lot longer than I would, even at my age. But the best part is her toothless smile, which makes me melt into a puddle at her feet. She is amazing. I cannot believe that I have carried this child, she is so amazing that I don't feel deserving of her, but am grateful to have her nevertheless. I feel like I have won the lottery.

Which is why I find it weird that people still tell me that I am unlucky, referring to all of the things that have gone wrong for me, reproductively speaking and otherwise (the unexplained post op pneumomediastinum after the laparoscopy, the incompetent cervix, the stillborn child, the cerclage that went through the uterine wall, the incisions that won't heal or get infected, and the near death experience with the hemorrhage, due to yet another unrelated complication, the subinvolution of the placental site, and now the possible Sheehan syndrome from the bleed). That was just a brief summary. And still... am I really unlucky to have gone through these things, or am I enormously lucky to have escaped at the other end with my life, my uterus and especially with such a beautiful, healthy and amazing daughter? People see me as unlucky, and one person even told me not to ever play the lottery (I don't anyway, but I probably should...)

My milk supply is staying at 1 oz per feeding, and I don't have much hope for it ever returning. I am so happy with the SNS system though, it allows me to breastfeed until she is full even though I only have a bit of my own milk, I just sneak in the tube when there is no more milk coming from me (with experience you get to recognize it, she gets frustrated and the suck/swallow ratio increases). She also feels safe at my breast and loves it. She is very comfortable with my body, just melting into me, while with other people she arches or stiffens. She is also getting very comfortable with her daddy, which is also nice to see.

I wanted to make a post about baby paraphenalia, and I will do that next. I have a minimalist approach to baby stuff, and hence I don't have many things. It might not even make for a post longer than one paragraph. I also want to make a post about my approach to weight loss, since I have about 25 lb left to lose. But all I want to do is to talk about Emma, so I never get around to these things... hehehe...

As promised here is the medela sns in action. Love it.

2011-09-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

new SNS just arrived

2011-09-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update about the Medela SNS (the commercial version), which just arrived today. I boiled the parts as recommended and used it with breast milk, it worked very well. What is nice about it is that I can hang it around my neck and the tube can be taped in place, so it leaves my hands free (except for the hand that i use to hold Emma with). The tubing is thinner than the 5 French so it takes longer to take in the same volume, which is a little time consuming and makes Emma fall asleep on the job. Then she wakes up hungry, and today twice I gave up and used the bottle to finish the feeding, as it was taking almost two hours to feed her and I got tired myself. I think tomorrow I will try the thicker tubing in the evenings, as she is more tired and is just taking forever to eat.

I don't know exactly if this is worth the time and effort, especially since she takes both the breast and the bottle very easily. But I will persist with it. I also don't know if my milk production has increased at all, since she is still taking sometimes 3 oz of supplement, which is almost a whole feed. But I have to keep trying. All I can say is that I am glad I don't have a full time job.

lactation aid how to

2011-09-10T20:07:00.000-07:00

Here are details of how I do the improvised lactation aid system. I got the nasogastric tube from the lactation consultant, and have ordered a more commercial version of the system from Medela, they sell it. In Canada I got it from weefeeds in Calgary (weefeeds.com or something like that), they order from Medela for me. But for now all I have is the nasogastric tube (5 French, 25 cm) and a syringe to clean it with.

So let's walk through a night feeding. I wake up when Emma starts fussing and looking for food, she is usually awake at 3 or 4 am for the first night feed (the last one is at 11 pm or midnight). I grab her, I latch her on the LEFT boob, and I go pee while breastfeeding. (Sorry, I can't hold it, and if I don't give her the boob, she starts screaming and wakes up MrH, who is working in the morning). I wash my right hand, and hope that the other one is clean enough, but I only use one hand for the materials anyway. I walk downstairs, open the fridge with the right hand, take out the milk or the formula, depending on what I have on hand (it is not my milk, it comes from a friend of mine who is a SAINT), and I grab also a clean bottle (for pumping afterwards) and the nasogastric tube and the syringe (I put some stuff in my armpit, and some in my mouth if I have to). Then I walk upstairs where I usually feed and pump, I sit down on my glider, I put everything to my right hand side on a little coffee table, and continue feeding from the left breast until Emma lets me know that the flow has slowed down (she gets angry and starts making funny sounds, while biting and pulling on my nipple). I then do breast compressions, to try to milk more, but I don't have much left usually. I switch her to the right breast, and feed from there using breast compressions as well. When there is no more milk coming, I put her back on the left breast, and let her latch well, then I take out the cap from the bottle with one hand (this is tricky, don't screw the cap on too tightly or it is almost impossible), put the nasogastric tube in the bottle (or bag, like here in the picture), and hold the bottle or bag between my legs as I am sitting. I put the other end of the tube in Emma's mouth trying to enter at the corner and aiming upwards so as to not go under her tongue. Sometimes it takes three tries, sometimes I get it right away, sometimes she gets annoyed with me poking her and pulls away, in which case I put the tube along the areola and nipple and let her latch onto both when she does. Then she starts sucking, and I use my legs to hold the bottle, my left hand to hold her head, my left armpit to hold her body, my right hand to hold her hands that sometimes fly all over the place, and if her arms are pretty quiet and she is calm, then I use my right hand to surf the internet on the iphone while she is eating, because once she starts sucking the high flow of milk, she goes pretty quickly and in relaxed fashion, and the whole thing is on autopilot.

I hope this makes sense, email me with more questions if you need to, I will post pictures of the commercial system which you hang around your neck so it should be easier (sometimes holding things between my legs means I need to bend forward for the entire feed, and my back hurts).

This is by far the hardest way to do it, with finger feeding being way easier. For finger feeding I just lay her over my legs, with her head on my knees and her legs on my abdomen, I put my right index finger in her mouth with the nail side on her tongue and let her latch, and the tube goes in the same way (corner of the mouth). You have the whole left hand to use to hold the bottle and it makes it easier. You can also hold the NG tube between the thumb and middle finger, paralel to the index, and insert both the index and the tube in her mouth at the very beginning, it is even easier this way.

Once the feeding is done, I burp her if I gave her formula, otherwise no burping is necessary for breast milk, I pump a bit with her on my knees, then I put her down on the changing table, I wash the bottles with tap water and rinse the tube with the syringe, then I change her diaper, then we go back to sleep with the boob used as soother. In the morning I take the bottles downstairs to the dishwasher and I rinse the NG tube again with filtered water.

The only trouble is that my daughter has figured out that the milk is coming out of the tube, and she sometimes spits out the nipple and sucks just from the NG tube. It is very funny to see. She does not do it often though, only when she is pretty full and has enough energy to play and explore. When she is hungry she just does the latching and feeding with no questions asked.

I rarely do give her a bottle, if someone else has to feed her or if I am out of the house in a place where I cannot set up my lactation aid. But I try to avoid it, although she clearly still prefers the boob, despite receiving several bottles so far.

One more from the top

2011-09-10T18:32:00.002-07:00

This is the improvised lactation aid setup

2011-09-10T18:32:00.001-07:00

trotting along

2011-09-10T05:04:00.000-07:00

The milk is staying at 1 oz per feeding session for now, or in other words about 8 oz per day. That is good, but she eats 24 oz easily at this point, trying to catch up, and so it is hard to imagine that I will ever be able to supply all that for her. The tube system that I use for feeding her is hard to use, much harder than a bottle, as it requires someone to hold the bottle and me holding the tube and someone holding her hands that fly all over the place (and I am that someone and the other someone too, but I only have two hands and two legs and one set of teeth, all of which are getting used in this process), and I often just want to pop a silicone nipple onto the bottle and give it to her the old fashion way. But I don't. Not because I am holier than thou, which I am of course, but because if I give it the old fashioned way, she tends to spit up a lot more, and FORMULA STAINS! I had no idea until I used it myself, but it stains and it reeks. The stains don't come out in the regular wash. Any spit ups just about require a bath and a full change of clothes, and I am lazy. So tube system is here to stay. But man, is life ever complicated! I just wish my freaking milk was coming back through my nose.

Got milk?

2011-09-08T00:53:00.000-07:00

On day 27 of Emma's life I have started supplementing her feeds with a combination of donated breast milk from a good friend (for which I have enormous gratitude!) and formula. I realized that I had no more milk! I put her on the breast, and she was pulling off repeatedly and crying, and when I squeezed there was NOTHING coming! I was shocked. I tried pumping for the next few days, and got a grand total of 5 ml (1/6 of an ounce) out of the morning pumping session, and NOTHING out of any of the other pumping sessions during the day. The milk had completely dried up. When I saw that, and I first supplemented her, and she took 120 ml (4 oz) in one feed, I realized that I had starved the poor baby for the prior couple of days, as the process must have been gradual. I did not know why she was crying and not wanting to latch. Now, after supplementing, she slept like a normal baby, and did not want to continuously be held and sucking on the breast every five minutes. She actually has 3-4 hours where she is content, awake and alert, looking around, chatting with us, and is a completely different person.

I feel like such an asshole, for not recognizing that she was hungry all this time. I beat myself up tremendously for it, but in the end I did watch her much more carefully after seeing that she did not gain the expected weight. My doctor did not seem alarmed and told me to come back in 3 weeks, I am glad that I continued to weigh her and to worry. The supplimenting system that I use is actually a feeding tube (the kind that the hospital uses for nasogastric feeding of infants) which I sneak into her mouth while she is latched onto the breast, and put one end of it in the breastmilk or formula, and let her suck it up like if she were breastfeeding. I saw that in a book, and thought it was cool. She does take a bottle, but I wanted to have the closeness and the association of the breast with the food.

I did not lose hope though, I presumed that the milk dried up because of the hypovolemic shock that left my pituitary gland without much blood supply, and hence decreased the prolactin. I was not expecting that it would take a week for the effect to show, but it did. Hoping that maybe it is temporary, I keep on pumping, feeding, and taking domperidone (motilium) 80 mg /day, fenugreek capsules (12 per day) and blessed thistle capsules (9 per day).

This has been very stressful for me, not being able to feed my daughter, losing that bond, worrying about the effect of the formula as she seems to spit it up and get constipated on it, trying to find more donor milk (the Vancouver milk bank told me that they don't have any milk, and to try again in 2 weeks!), and feeling like I have failed Emma in a very basic way. I have tried to keep in mind that it is all about her though, and that she is lucky to have a live mother, the breastmilk vs. formula problem does not even compare to the immense luck that I have had to survive. (I found out today that I needed 10 transfusions in total, not 8 like I had thought, that makes me think of how bad the situation really was). She is lucky, and I am lucky. And c'mon, I mustn't forget that I am lucky to have her at all.

But sick with a mastitis of the left breast (from too much pumping) and worried about my daughter, and about my husband who is working way too hard, and about my bird who got a concussion that made him scary ill, and recovering after my blood loss (I am still very weak and tired), all of these burdens broke the optimistic camel's back for the past day or so, and I have been down. Today however, I went for a walk with Emma in my arms, and she latched onto my breast for comfort. We were sitting on a park bench, and the sunset was warm and beautiful, and I felt peaceful with her, I felt her precious body laying on my belly and realized how good everything is, how magical, how peaceful. Then I went home, and asked MrH to take me on a motorcycle ride, since my mom is still here and could look after Emma. We rode past wheat fields, past the river, and saw the moon starting to rise above the horizon, smelled the forest, and I felt really peaceful, really close to my husband, and felt like I was ok, like maybe I haven't failed, maybe it was just life, the way it is, imperfect, full of obstacles, but beautiful nevertheless.

Then I went home and pumped...and got one ounce of milk! That was enormous for me, especially at night. The mastitis suddenly improved, my breast started to drain, I pumped again another ounce three hours later, and felt on top of the world. Maybe my milk is coming back! Will watch and see. The important thing is that I have realized that there is much more to the bond I have with Emma than just the breastfeeding, and that I am sure we can be happy and peaceful no matter how the feeding goes. I am, however, certain of one thing: I will never let her be hungry again. I am going to top her off after every single feed, just to make sure. Even if my milk comes back. I cannot bear to think that she was hungry, and it will never happen again.

So much love

2011-09-04T21:47:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe how much I love Emma... I want to stare at her and kiss her scrunchy face the whole day. In particular I want to kiss her mouth when she screams like a lunatic. It is so sweet. She has increased periods of quiet alertness, looking around with her big soulful eyes, and today she grabbed my nose twice and I think she wanted to put it in her mouth. She is starting to reach for things, and I have the feeling that her arm movements are becoming more purposeful. She looks into MrH's face, and into mine when breastfeeding, and we feel like we are melting. The best way to summarize this is that it's much much better than I thought it would be.

I don't ever leave her alone because she does not like it, and at this point in her life I don't see the purpose in doing things that she does not like. This means that my day goes something like this: wake up at around 7 or 8 (today at 10, I got spoiled) when Emma starts making I-want-boob sounds, feed her while wondering how and when I will get to pee, decide to go pee while breastfeeding her despite how gross and unnatural this sounds like, then on and off feed her for about one hour. Ideally I feed her on one side, and pump on the other side, to have some pumped milk just in case the evening meal is not enough (I have a lot of milk in the morning, and less at night). The best pumping session so far with the home Medela-mini has produced only one ounce, so I am waiting for a better pump to arrive in the mail, in the meantime struggling with the mini which is probably fine for someone with abundant milk, but not very easy for me to use. While feeding her with one hand and pumping with the other hand, I also try to eat breakfast with my third hand, and drink coffee with the fourth. After we both get fed, I pass her along to my mom and have a quick shower and do my make-up and hair. What will happen once my mom leaves this coming week is anybody's guess, but I am hoping to be able to shower in the morning before MrH goes to work, or if that fails then at night. I can always do my makeup and hair with her in the sling once she falls asleep.

Then, once I showered, I wash her in the sink. She enjoys her morning bath, and only cries once I dry her and try to dress her. She does not like getting dressed. (Undressed is totally fine). So I stopped dressing her after her bath, I just slap a diaper on (we use g diapers, a type of cloth diapers, with cloth inserts made by baby.love, a company in Alberta) and then breastfeed her again while we are both naked, she loves the skin to skin contact. Finally though, I manage to dress her and feed her again, this time while she is in the sling, so that once she falls asleep I can do some stuff with both hands, like make the bed and do the laundry. So far I have not had to cook yet, but I will once mom leaves, and I am planning on cooking twice a week, once on the weekend when MrH is around to hold Emma, and once during the week, probably on a Tuesday, and probably a whole lotta beans and rice.

She sleeps for three hours in the afternoon, and I often take her out during this time. We go for a walk in the stroller, but she wakes up frequently and wants to feed, so I end up pushing the empty stroller with one hand, while breastfeeding with the other (football hold rocks!). If we had a rough night, we both take a nap though, and she sleeps quite well. She usually wakes up cranky and we spend the evening trying to soothe her, usually by swaddling and constantly feeding/soothing on the breast, and if that does not work then we throw in bouncing on the medicine ball at the same time. She is starting to take a soother, for little short periods, but that is definitely a success, and I need to keep going, as she only soothes on the breast and that is stressful for anybody other than myself who has no boobs to soothe her with. Then, from nine pm onwards she sleeps for a good five and even six hours, cuddled in bed with me, warm and comfy, and for the rest of the night she wakes up briefly and feeds with us both lying down, then goes to sleep again. Only once through the night I get up to change her, and to give her a feed where I am sure that she has eaten well (if I feed lying down, then I fall asleep and can't supervise her properly).

Overall we do pretty well, but she is constantly on the breast, and that means that there is not a single person in my town who has not seen my boobs yet. I don't use a nursing cover since I would have to walk with one around my neck all the time. It just would not be practical. I even have a hard time wearing a BF bra, since I have to open and close it thirty times a day. The easiest is to wear the Lillypadz and a nursing top, or just the nursing top. Next thing I am going to buy Birkenstocks and grow my hair in dreadlocks, all while wearing long floral skirts.

behind in growth

2011-09-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

Emma had her first checkup today, at three weeks of age, and she is not yet back up to birth weight. Her birth weight was 3.67 kg and she still weighs only 3.48 kg, about 200 grams below (7 oz). Theoretically she could catch up in one week. Practically, I hope she does. She has grown in length and head circumference, but the rate of growth is slower than expected in both.

Clearly this hemorrhage episode of mine has taken a toll on her. Her weight was about the same as it is now in week two of life, just before my bleeding episode, so for the past week she has probably done poorly, with me trying to establish my milk supply again. Not to mention that we had difficulties right after birth as well for a bit, with her losing almost 10% of her weight because I did not have much colostrum and then I took a while to build the milk up to meet her needs.

I did worry, and still do a little, but instinctually I feel that things are improving and that she will catch up. There is a big difference between the fussiness of yesterday, when all she wanted is to be on the breast, and the contentedness of today, when she slept for 3-4 hours at lunch, and had a bit of social time too. I think that the lack of gain is reflecting a past, not present, problem. That being said, I also struggle with the feeling that I am inadequate once again as far as reproduction goes, and that I am failing yet another basic human function, that of feeding one's infant. But those are my own feelings, and I don't plan on letting them interfere too much if I can. I know that supplementing would help with the growth in the immediate future, but I also know that in the long run it will deprive her as my milk supply will only go down once again, probably for good this time, and that she will not have the benefit of being breastfed like I planned for her.

I will weigh her again in one week. I am expecting a pleasant surprise.

settling in...again

2011-08-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

My miniature daughter is settling in again. She cried heartily last night, and was very fussy the whole day yesterday, to the point that I became worried that I would never shower/floss/get dressed again. I can do things with one hand while breastfeeding football style at the same time quite well. And she likes to latch and stay on the breast non stop when she is hungry or cranky. Both of which adjectives applied to her yesterday though, as my milk was still in pretty poor supply after my bleeding episode, and it took a while to build it back up. For the record, I am taking motilium (domperidone) which has never been approved for this usage (breast milk augmentation) but who cares, it works, and it has no side effects in me (it's supposed to cause diarrhea, but with all the iron pills I am taking, it balances out nicely).

Anyway, after a day like yesterday I was a bit worried about the future of my personal hygiene and also about what kind of food can I cook with one hand, I mean one cannot even open a can of tuna with one hand only. I was ready to google "how to go through life using just one hand" and join some one-handed support groups out there. Then, miraculously, Emma slept well last night (six hours straight), ate very well the whole day, my milk came in abundantly again, and she is a different child. She feeds, then she sleeps, we can go for a long walk in the stroller and there is minimal fussing. I even sorted out my cashmere sweaters today (with both hands!) and took them out of the freezer where I store them in summer, so that the moths don't get them. Winter is coming up here in the North :(

So that is when I discovered that she is not a fussy child at all, she is just not full enough, and if I don't have enough milk she will cry and tug at my breast like a little kitten until she gets full. I think it is an instinctual way of stimulating me to produce more prolactin, and hence more milk. I am so happy when I hear her little gulping sounds, there is nothing that relaxes me more.

I am less of a formula nazi but I still avoid it like the plague if I can. It constipates her, and gives her cramps, and it made her skin break out during the two days that I was in ICU and then recovering on the ward without her. On the plus side, it is so quick to feed her a bottle, OMG she gulps it down in three seconds flat and doesn't even burp! I can totally see the attraction of bottle feeding, especially formula which does not require pumping and takes one second to prepare. And then keeps her full for hours afterwards.

That being said, it is so sweet to see her sleep at night with her head between my breasts, and to wake up to her kitten face and lip smacking sounds, then to feed her half asleep and to snooze while feeling her tugging at my nipple. The closeness is unbeatable. Last night she once again latched on by herself, and I woke up because my nipple was hurting. I was ready to say to MrH to "stop that, it hurts" thinking that he was up to no good, but then realized that my daughter had found my breast while I was sleeping and was helping herself to a snack. That was so funny and sweet at the same time.

Life is getting back to normal. And I am happy to report that I have flossed tonight.

Dolphin face

2011-08-30T10:05:00.001-07:00

living with courage

2011-08-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

We are home at last! Emma is struggling to get full from my breast, and she is sucking almost non stop. I had a luxurious 5 minute break from her today when I could finally take a shower and put some clothes on, otherwise I spend my whole day and night continuously breastfeeding her. She is 99% of the time just sleeping with the boob in her mouth, occasionally chewing on it. I think she needs it for comfort and I cannot deny it to her, it breaks my heart to know that she was without her mommy for two days, and that she almost lost me.

This is a scary thought: I almost died. I am lucky to be alive. I look at my little girl and think of how her life would have been without her mother, and I feel so sad. I know that she would have had many good people loving her, especially her father, and that she would have been wonderfully taken care of. I know that she would grow up to be a quality person if that is in her, and with all my motherly instincts I feel that she is kind and loving and sweet-natured, and seems to be very smart. I am happy to die giving life to her, but nevertheless I feel so sad thinking that she should grow up without this deep bond that we are sharing.

I also feel very sad thinking of MrH having to lose me as well. The man has lost so many people in his life already, it would have been so cruel for him to lose his wife and best friend, especially now when it looked like we had a little break from trauma and worry and were finally relaxing and sleeping well at night. We were starting to feel safe. It will take a couple more weeks to get back there, I think, but we'll get there again.

I keep thinking about all the women who die from pregnancy and post partum causes, one per second in the world. About how dangerous this baby-making business really is, despite the fact that in my neck of the woods, complications are rare and uneventful deliveries are the norm. I phoned my retired OB and discussed this whole story with him, and he asked me "why risk your life again" when I mentioned another pregnancy. However, the risk of this kind of hemorrhage happening again is low, and if there is one decision that I have made after losing Adrian is that I would NEVER live my life in fear. (That is when I finally allowed MrH to buy a motorcycle, and we had lots of fun riding it. He still does).

Living life out of a fear place, out of a cautious place, will lead to living less than one is fully capable of. I do not want Emma to know that her mother has not tried to fulfill her dreams because she was afraid of dying. And she will know. I want her to live with the example of two parents who go for what they want, even when doing so is bloody scary (no pun intended).

I spoke with my OB in Vancouver as well, and he said that what happened is rare and unlikely to repeat, hence he did encourage me to go for another pregnancy if I want to. That is reassuring. Of course, there is a risk of further infertility due to Asherman's syndrome (a consequence of post partum D&C), but I choose to believe that I got to keep my uterus so that I can have another baby. Otherwise what would have been the point?

Emma, if you ever read this blog when you are older, first of all get a life, what are you doing reading my ramblings? Just kidding. I just want you to know you are worth EVERYTHING to me, that I would do it again in a heartbeat to have you. This road has been all my choice. And I would like you to live with courage, and make your own choices always out of hope, not out of fear. But you are NOT allowed to ride your father's motorcycle!

Sleeping next to the boob otherwise she is anxious and wakes up to look for it.

2011-08-27T07:36:00.001-07:00

Going home. The bruise is from the arterial line.

2011-08-27T07:33:00.001-07:00

discharge anxiety

2011-08-26T21:40:00.000-07:00

I am deemed fixed and ready to go back tomorrow. The attending has kept me an extra day just in case. Today I had some increased serosanguinous discharge, but they assured me that it is to be expected, and that it will fluctuate for a bit, given that the uterus is not completely healed yet. I have been told to go to ER back in my home town if I bleed bright red. Good advice, as really I was planning on just putting my feet up and watching some Oprah in relaxed fashion if that happened.

So yeah, I am a bit worried about going home from the city of all possibilities, Edmonton (and in particular the City of the Uterine Artery Embolization), but I figure that if I were meant to die I would have died already. Perhaps it is not my time yet.

bitches

2011-08-26T11:36:00.001-07:00

From the Merck manual of veterinary medicine:
SIPS is abnormal repair of the endometrial placental sites. This disorder is most common in young bitches (<3 yr old) after whelping a first litter. Bitches with SIPS are normal except for hemorrhagic uterine discharge passing from the vulva for several weeks postpartum. Diagnosis is by exclusion; differentials include metritis, vaginitis, and cystitis. Treatment is supportive. Ovariohysterectomy is recommended for bitches that become anemic enough to require transfusion and for bitches not intended for future breeding.

update from the land of the still alive

2011-08-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

Emma got here today and the poor soul latched on my breast at 1 pm and she has not let go until 6 pm, when she took an hour break for a nap, then back on. I was worried badly that she would not take the breast, since she was on formula for the whole time we were separated, but she still remembers how to latch, she does not mind that my milk is slightly bitter from the large doses of IV clindamycin, and I am still making enough milk for her (although of course what she used to get in 20 minutes she must now work for a couple of hours to extract...). My mom told me that yesterday before bedtime she took 150 mL. Well, on my best pumping sessions I was not able to express more than 50 ml in almost one hour. So, big difference.

She is also quite constipated, another side effect from the formula that I hope the breast milk will rectify quickly. My breasts are finally feeling empty and soft. The cracks have healed in the two days of pumping, and as a bonus I know now that she will easily take a bottle which I can easily pump for her, and then happily go back to the breast with no fuss. She does not seem to have nipple confusion. My mom also convinced her to take the soother for about ten minutes at a time, which is progress.

It is so good to be alive. I read more about this subinvolution of the placental site, there is an article that explains it as abnormal healing of the placental attachment, where the uterine lining should reform normal blood vessels but instead it continues to behave as if still pregnant and stays raw. Less than 1% of women have a delayed post partum hemorrhage, and of course a small number of these are due to this particular complication, more due to infection or retained products of conception. Half of all the women that bleed from this condition end up with a hysterectomy, because of the ineffectiveness of the dilation and curettage. I take the fact that I kept my uterus as a sign that am extremely lucky, and that perhaps God would like me to have another baby someday. First, I have to give the docs time to recover from the shock. Apparently when the plane came to get me they were giving each other a group hug and trying to recover from the mental trauma.

Holy Cow, I nearly died

2011-08-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

I nearly died of a very bad post partum hemorrhage on Tuesday. I am now in Edmonton, in the women's hospital (Louis Blot or something like that), and will try to tell the story as best as I can, but might give more details later, as I am still shell-shocked.

On Monday I remember having a gush of fresh blood on the pad, despite the fact that I had been without bleeding for a couple of days and was just spotting at that time. I had not had much bleeding after the C section, and in fact remember wearing white pants that day and going to the mall. While I was at the mall I bled over the white pants, and had to come home, and changed four more pads that day. Then, at night, another couple of pads.

The next day the bleeding had stopped in the morning, and I remember being happy about that because my hemoglobin was 94 when I got out of the hospital and I was worried about losing more blood. At lunch however, I was on the phone with a water filter company, trying to get a new filter for our ovopur system, and I felt a big gush of fresh bright red blood. I hang up the phone, grabbed two towels, and bled through both in what looked like one minute. I was gushing and gushing. I felt faint, and lied on the floor, with a third towel between my legs. I called my husband, who initially did not answer, so I called 911. Both my husband and the ambulance came at the same time. I was very hypotensive, probably mostly because of all the bleeding making me vasovagal at that point. I say this because my pulse was low, and usually when one is hypotensive because of volume loss, the pulse goes high in an attempt to compensate.

Anyway, I crawled to the door and waited for the ambulance, who took me to the hospital. Initially nobody realized how bad it was and they thought I had lost about three cups of blood in total. My hemoglobin was still around 90, but they had not given me any fluids yet, so the number was of course not accurate, since my blood volume was constricted. In the ER I continued to bleed, slower but passing clots the size of a fist. I had an ultrasound that showed that my uterus was full of clot. We had no OB GYN town at this point, so one of the GP's that does dilations and curettages agreed to take me to the OR to evacuate the uterus. I got a general anesthetic, went to the OR, got the uterus evacuated (mainly of clot, there was not much retained product) and got some misoprostol. When I came out of the OR, I started shivering and developped a high fever, which now we realize that was from the misoprostol, but at the time it looked like an infection starting to brew in my uterus. I got antibiotics IV (cefuroxime, flagyl and gentamycin) and we waited. I was getting sicker and weaker. My hemoglobin continued to drop to 65, my uterus filled up with blood again and was the size of a 20 week pregnancy. I had to go to the operating room again for a second evacuation. This time, once I got put to sleep, I did not wake up in my home town, but in Edmonton, at the Royal Alexandra intensive care unit, intubated. I remember trying to write on a piece of paper "where am I?" while I still had the breathing tube in. I also remember feeling very uncomfortable with the tube in, but I was very edematous (swollen) from all the resuscitation fluid and the multiple transfusions that I got (I received five or six units of red cells and two units of plasma in total, and would have needed several units of platelets too but my little hospital doesn't have platelets, so my coagulation system was a bit out of whack). Later, they extubated me, and told me what happened (part of the story I got from MrH who drove halfway to Edmonton and then flew the other halfway when he realized that he was a danger on the road from tiredness and stress).

So apparently they took me to the OR a second time and evacuated 1.5 liters of blood from the uterus, but the uterus would not contract at all and kept on bleeding profusely. The first GP called another GP in to help, and together they put manual pressure on the uterus for two hours, but it would still not stop bleeding. They were transfusing me and giving me fluids and the blood pressure would still not come up, as I kept on bleeding. At one point, they asked MrH if it would be ok if they did a hysterectomy. This was a last resort, both because I would lose the uterus, and because neither of the two GP s had done a hysterectomy in a million years. They both have the ability to do c sections, but a hysterectomy on a large boggy bleeding uterus is a difficult procedure, so I can only imagine how desperate they must have been that I was dying to prepare for the hysterctomy. In the meantime, they were also trying to organize transfer for me to a place that had platelets, and an obs-gyn, and preferably the ability to do a uterine artery embolization instead of separating me from my temperamental uterus. Edmonton accepted me, and they transferred me intubated, with the transfer team holding pressure on my uterus the entire time. By the time I got to Edmonton, I had stopped bleeding, and they put me in ICU and eventually extubated me when the edema got less.

I woke up in this gorgeous hospital, with no possessions or clothes or shoes, and a face that was so swollen that I did not recognize myself. My eyelashes were shorter than the thickness of my eyelids. I have not bled since, and gradually my face became more like my own. When the attending physician saw me this morning, she nearly did not recognized me, that's how much I had changed. I miss Emma and arranged for my mom to bring her today, as I did not know how long I would be in here. But it looks like I might be discharged tomorrow. I will stick around in Edmonton for the weekend, just in case, but they think that I will not rebleed. The ob gyn thinks I have a rare condition called subinvolution of the placental site, where the placental site does not contract properly. When asked her how rare, she said that she sees about one every couple of years at this large referral centre. Once again, I am left wondering why all these rare things are happening to me. But we'll dissect the philosophical details later, for now I just want to get better and am glad that I am alive, as I came very close to dying this time.

routines

2011-08-22T23:29:00.000-07:00

I am starting to settle into a nice routine with Emma and the rest of my family. She cluster feeds in the evenings, then sleeps very well, with two-three feeds at night evenly spaced. I wake up quite rested at 10 am or so, and feed her first thing in the morning, then bathe her (in the sink, we still don't have a tub), then feed her again, then I wash and have breakfast while mom holds her. I don't know what I will do when mom is gone, as Emma is little miss social in the mornings and will not simply sleep by herself. I have decided to take her out for a quick walk around the block every morning after my breakfast, as I need to get used to maneuvering her and the stroller. She starts out in the stroller, sleeps a little, then gets hungry (she cluster feeds in the mornings too) and wants some boob. So I end up holding the baby on the breast with one hand, and pushing the empty stroller with the other hand :)

Everybody is telling me that I am spoiling her because I keep her on the breast when she starts crying or is upset. But I think that there is nothing more natural. Why is it that most of baby rearing advice goes against the grain of what babies want to do? Babies know what is right for them, and Emma likes to snuggle up to my warm body and sleep with my boob in her mouth, then so be it, that is why I am taking time off work so that I can supply these basic needs for her full time. Hopefully by January, when she is 6 months old, she will naturally want some independence...otherwise I am in trouble, as I have to go back to work then, at least half-days.

The other issue is the introduction of bottles or soothers: I don't want any artificial nipples near her, as I struggled hard to forge a good breastfeeding relationship. She had trouble latching and I don't want to backtrack any of my efforts. The soother (pacifier) she spits out in any case, so I don't think we'll be using it anytime soon. The bottles are not necessary until I go back to work, and even then she will be eating some solids so it won't be all that needed for the brief time in the afternoons that I will be gone.

Little feet

2011-08-21T22:17:00.001-07:00

protective instincts

2011-08-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

There is a big difference between the iphone and the SLR camera after all. I am a big fan of iphone pictures, because they are so easy to do and to post, but hey, if I have the extra time, it looks like the SLR is awesome, especially when accompanied by the newly borrowed/hijacked 50 mm lens that was MrH's and still is but is now held hostage by my sweaty paws...

Today I got too ambitious and then got overwhelmed and then I cried. I went shopping to the local grocery store with the stroller and the baby. Emma wanted to eat the whole day today, and then she kept on falling asleep at the boob, so I think she never got full, hence she wanted to eat some more soon after. So I had to breastfeed in the store, and I get a bit stressed out because I expect of myself to be all natural and not embarrassed about baring my breasts in public (in BC it is legal to do it anywhere, and you don't have to cover up, which is why I have decided not to hide breastfeeding behind a screen like it is a bad thing), and then I had to push the stroller with one hand while holding Emma with the other and trying to protect her against the very fierce wind that kept on blowing the stroller off to one side and the blankets off her on the way back from the store. And, to top it off, one of the cashiers came to hug her/hold her, without asking for permission, she was going to grab her in the infinite excitement of seeing such a small baby, when I politely pointed out that she was attached to my breast. I felt ATTACKED! I keep on telling people that she is too young to be held by the whole tribe, at the moment I don't want to overwhelm her with smells and sounds and viruses from everybody, when she has a couple more weeks on board it will be a different story.

Anyway, I got home and cried and talked to MrH about how hard it is to go shopping with Emma as I don't have enough hands to breastfeed her and hold her and shop and push the stroller or the cart. So we decided that until she is quite a bit older, and does not need to be fed so frequently, I am not going to take her to the grocery store. I also feel like protecting her against people who are too excited and want to hold her, so I am going to only take her out around the block, not in very busy places, trying to avoid situations like today. I think my instinct is to bunk up and protect my baby at this point, so I am going to do just that.

Thankfully my mom is here for another three weeks, and she is very helpful. She can do the grocery shopping for now. I think I was expecting too much of myself. I am already making pancakes with one hand while breastfeeding, I think if it could be done I would have been able to do it, but it frays my nerves too much, so I will give both myself and Emma a break from the public places.

As far as day 12 of life goes, Emma is starting to treat me differently from the other family members. She stops crying when I hold her, and whimpers with a different tone of voice, like trying to communicate to me. She keeps her eyes open much more often and for longer periods of time while breastfeeding, and looks around interested. She also smiles a lot, but probably as a reflex, while as today I think she smiled on purpose while I was blowing raspberries on her soft belly.

And I am completely in love with her feet. They are so cute and tiny. I think I will spend a couple of hours photographing them (with the stolen/hijacked lens, of course).

day 11

2011-08-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

Life is so sweet and smooth. Emma is now taking the breast with very little fuss, and she sleeps well in between feeds. She is actually a very "good" baby by general standards, I would be happy with her anyway, but I am definitely a better person after a good night's sleep.

I sleep MUCH better now with a newborn than I did during my last trimester of pregnancy. The restless legs are gone, and I can fall asleep easily next to her. We are continuing to sleep in the same bed, and all three of us like it. If you remember, I had initially ordered a crib that I fell in love with, the Stokke Sleepi crib, and I had found a site in the US that was a couple of hundred dollars cheaper. This was in June. In August they emailed me to tell me that it will be another couple of months until they ship it. At that point I had decided to listen to MrH, who had prior experience with his offspring not wanting to sleep in a crib, and I got a king size bed (and cancelled the crib purchase). Then, for some reason, I got anxious about all the home renovations that needed to be done to accommodate the king size bed (aka covering some holes in the walls, getting matching paint, etc), and cancelled the king size bed, reordering the crib again from a site in Vancouver. Now, after I brought her home, and slept with her in our bed, and feel so very very happy doing it, I have decided that no crib is necessary, and cancelled the crib, then... bought another king size bed. This time I am not cancelling it. I actually just got an organic mattress and box spring, and because it was organic, it was expensive, and I don't have any money left over for a proper bed, so I am buying a metal frame, and the actual bed will come in time (like when I go back to work). I am only giving this detailed account to illustrate how indecisive my post partum brain can be.

Totally unrelated is the fact that I went to buy jeans yesterday, and I could not find anything in the regular store to fit me!!!!!!!!!! I had to buy a pair of stretchy high waist jeans from ... THE PLUS SIZE STORE. I am officially obese. And I don't feel unhappy at all. I just feel beautiful and normal. If it weren't for Emma and this insane happiness that I am floating in, I would have been devastated. But like this, I just shrug and eat less. And it's all going to sort itself out. I can't believe how relaxed about life I can be with my little kitten sleeping on my chest.

day 8

2011-08-18T22:36:00.000-07:00

I promise to never eat pizza again if it means that I will not have the night that I had last night with Emma. She cried and was cranky and had cramps until about 4 am, when she finally fell asleep. Then she woke up on the dot at 8 am, and we had an appointment for newborn pictures with our local photographer. She was fresh as a daisy and I looked like a truck runneth me over.

The first hour of the appointment we spent feeding, as she could not stop eating. The next half an hour we spent crying. Then feeding again. Somewhere in there, we snuck in some beautiful photos. My mom and grandma were there as well, and they were horrified that she was naked for so long (the place was colder than the house). In Romania babies are bundled up very well, with hats and blankets and swaddles, and definitely nakedness in baby is sure to cause meningitis or some other crap. So they spent the whole day giving me fleck for it. Such a difference of opinions and habits. I mean this baby lives in Northern Canada, I cannot fear cold all that much with her. I made sure she was not hypothermic, and when we got home I snuggled in with her warmly and we slept for a long time, but I don't think the session was too traumatic, except, you know, for the photographer who said she had not seen such a cranky baby in a long time. I think of her as feisty, and I told the photographer that she is not cranky, she just has a long long list of things that she does not like. And a short list of things that she likes: THE BOOB.

Will post pictures soon. They have turned out adorable.

Lillypadz are not perfect but we still love them

2011-08-18T17:08:00.001-07:00

This no crib thing is working out well for us. This is how we sleep. We love it.

2011-08-18T14:33:00.001-07:00

Day 7

2011-08-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

I am writing these blog posts as much for me and for the others, as well as for Emma, I want her to have it when she grows up in case she cares. I am also going to make a video of her making a fuss with the feedings so that I can play it at her wedding. She is so incredibly cute, making little angry kitten sounds and hitting me with her fists, bobbing her head into my breast, etc. Last night we had a 45 min episode of trying to latch over and over again, and I enjoyed it immensely to see how much more relaxed we both are about this difficulty we are having. I am laughing at her and talking to her, and she cries and "talks" to me back, in a sort of upset and pissed off fashion that I find hilarious, and happen to think would make very good wedding material later on. In any case, today she latched on flawlessly the entire day, and other than last night the rest of the time was spent in a way that really gives me hope that breastfeeding might possibly be pleasant after all.

Before I had Emma, in my last trimester, I was reading a lot of books on cosleeping versus crib sleeping, and of course know all the rules about avoiding SIDS, such as always put them to sleep on their back, sleep with them in your room until about 6 months, but preferably not on the same bed, avoid pillows and blankets that might suffocate them, etc. I was so paranoid when I brought her home that the first morning when I woke up I was half expecting to find her not breathing and suffocated by some pillow or other unknown danger in my bed. We have a queen size bed, and I lay her to sleep with us, as we still don't have a crib or a bassinet. Actually, the reason I do it is not that, it is because I cannot bear to be separated from her little body for so long. I think I am going to cry when she will demand to sleep in her own bed at the age of 20. Just kidding.

Anyway, so my habit is to lay her on my side of the bed, and then MrH and I try to squeeze ourselves on his half. Just so that I don't accidentally roll over her or something. Well, last night was different. I gave her to MrH to put her to sleep, as he likes to chat with her and kiss her and generally adore her from head to toe before bedtime. When she fell asleep, he wrapped her up and put her to bed... on her stomach! I nearly fainted. I told him about all the books on SIDS and the fact that putting baby to sleep prone is anathema, and he shrugged and said that all his previous kids slept on their tummies all the time, and that if she is comfortable there is no reason to panic about it. She had bad stomach cramps as her stools are becoming poopy, instead of meconium, and I must say that the stomach sleeping helped her with the cramps. Of course I looked at MrH crooked and I said "you do realize that I am going to be awake all night watching her breathing if you do that" and he informed me casually "that's your problem". That is when I talked to him about my fear of the pillows and blankets and all dangers lurking in our bed, and he said two things that absolutely made sense: one is that she needs a very small amount of oxygen, so even if our very light comforter falls over her face she will still have lots of oxygen left to breathe. The second thing is that if something bothers her, she will move and I will notice. Both of those things made sense to me, and I relaxed instantly about the whole blanket/pillow/rolling over her thing. Which lead to an excellent night's sleep for everybody: she slept with her head right between my breasts, and breastfed while I dozed off, she was nicely warm (for the first time she had warm hands when I slept with her glued to my body), and MrH had lots of room to sleep like a normal person. And we all woke up happy. Except, of course, I turned her on her side as soon as MrH started snoring. Hehehe (insert evil laugh).

The charm of a hat too big.

2011-08-16T18:22:00.001-07:00

Day 6

2011-08-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

How can I love this little soul so much? I love her so much that I want to sleep with her hand in my mouth to warm it up. I curl up like an animal around her and smell her sweet head for hours. I want to kiss her little scrunched up face when she gets pissed off and cries (which is with every feed when it is time to latch). I feel like my heart breaks from this overwhelming feeling of love and gratitude and awe, and I have spent many moments crying from this emotional mixture that feels so engulfing.

Today I started worrying about her future: will she be healthy, will she be safe? I think of all the dangers that lurk around and I so don't want to be that woman that stops her child from living because she is afraid. Plus really, we all know that if something bad does happen, there is no preventing suffering because one has done the work of worry beforehand. I remember that two days before I went into the hospital with Adrian I was thinking "another three weeks and he will be viable, what is three weeks, nothing much can go wrong in this time." I was so worried about the pregnancy the whole time, because of several episodes of bleeding. Well, all the worry beforehand did not help one bit when the disaster happened, and when I lost him I was not more prepared or more protected from suffering. I still had to grieve just as much.

Now, onto more mundane things: she really really does not like to latch. If anybody can give me tips on how to deal with this, please do. A feeding session goes something like this: she wakes up from her 3 hour sleep cycle, and starts to smack her lips and look for a boob. I notice it and pick her up as she is just waking up. I take off the lillypad and wash the areola with water, then express some milk and spread it over the area to make it smell more appetizing. I wait until she opens her mouth wide, and offer her the breast. She takes one taste of it and scrunches up her face, then pushes her tongue out and does not latch. I offer her the breast again, she refuses again, about six times, until she wakes up properly, gets pissed off, and starts to cry. I try to pacify here by walking, talking to her, etc, and she does pacify but she is hungry and keeps rooting for food. I give her the breast again. She spits it out disgusted again. Many many times. Then she gets annoyed again and cries, then I pacify her, then again we try. This goes on for what feels like (and sometimes is) half an hour. Then, for some unknown reason, she latches on (after I offer her the breast for the millionth time) and sucks like she is getting water out of a stone. I can hear her gulping and finally relax a bit. After she is done 10 minutes of sucking, she pushes out the breast, and starts looking for it again (for the same breast that she has just spit out, for goodness' sake!), and the whole half an hour struggle to latch begins again. The second and third time it takes less time to convince her to take the breast, but really, a feeding session lasts anywhere from one hour to two hours with all this spitting out the breast, then eating like a hungry lunatic for a long time. Today she ate so much that my arms were aching from holding her (when she finally latches, I am terrified that any movement will make her unlatch, so I hold her in whatever unorthodox position she is in at the time of The Latch. I am going to capitalize it like it is holy event really).

She eats well, and is filling in nicely with plumper cheeks and lips, but oh, if only she did it more efficiently!

That being said, last night I was up from 4 to 6 with one of these lengthy negotiations with Emma, and she cried, and she cried, and cried so much that I was sure that the neighbours would evict us from the strata. MrH had to work early this morning so I did not want to wake him up and ask for help. (Plus he has no boobs. Not the working kind anyway). I looked at my daughter's sweet face crinkled up in the middle of an angry-baby crying fit, and kissed her like I always do on the cheek, the lips, the eyes, the everything I can get to because I want to kiss her non stop especially when she is so feisty. And I told her from the bottom of my heart that I would sit with her no matter how long it took to help her fall asleep, or latch, or calm down and unwind, or whatever. I feel like for her I have infinite patience. I have had time to practice infinite patience throughout this whole wild ride to get here.

That being said, tonight she is sleeping and I was tidying up the closet together with MrH. We had such a nice time together, him and I, that for a moment I forgot that I had been pregnant and had a baby and it felt like it was just the two of us again. Then I walked into the bedroom and Holy shit, there was a baby on the bed. So there, I am at the same time capable of spending hours crying because I love her so much, and of completely forgetting that she is here. Demented, I say.

Outfit of the day

2011-08-15T13:18:00.001-07:00

This is the ?allergic rash? Most likely from the surgical tape. It is so itchy!

2011-08-14T17:40:00.001-07:00

Don't I look good in pink?

2011-08-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

2011-08-14T16:24:00.001-07:00

day 5

2011-08-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

We have almost made it through the first week! And I must say, things are improving a lot. The chills are more bearable, and I found that breastfeeding makes them almost go away. I wake up at night to feed, I am soaking wet (the chills come with cold sweating as well) and I quickly change into some dryer clothes, then I am off to feeding Emma, and the shivering stops completely. She is starting to sleep for four hours after each feed, and I can tell that she takes in a fair bit because I weighed her before and after the feeds, and she seems to be getting a good 100-200 grams sometimes, which is excellent (babies need 120 calories / kg body weight, which means 120 x 3.4 kg divided by 78 cal/100 ml = 510 ml needed per day, spread over about six feeds or more, so 100 ml is very much enough). Sorry about the math digression, I just figure some other person might want to use this information.

She cries a lot and gets angry when it is time to latch, I thought at first that she did not like the taste of the skin after I applied the Lilypadz, but I need them badly, so I persisted in using them, just washing the skin before a feed with clear water and spreading some breast milk over the areola to trick her. I suspect what she does not like is having to work for food. Eventually, after about half an hour of screaming like mad, she takes the breast and sucks like an industrial machine, so I just have to ride it out with her until she gets used to the concept that breastfeeding is a necessary job and no free lunch is provided here. Today she was so much better that I feared that the night fairies have substituted my baby for someone else's. She fed, then slept, then woke up, fed again, then was awake and looked around for half an hour, then went outside in the fresh air and a bit of indirect sunlight, then fed again, then slept some more. Almost no screaming at all. The household is so much calmer, my mom and grandma are happier and MrH, who is so amazing at calming Emma down when she is angry, is also feeling less tired after three four-hour intervals of sleep last night.

MrH does some sort of magic with Emma when she is very angry, I don't know exactly what, but he always succeeds in calming her. I have watched him, trying to learn his technique, and he is simply holding her and walking around with her on his forearms, with her head in his cupped hands, no jiggling, no bouncing, no swinging, he is just talking to her and walking very gently, and she is instantly calmed down. It is amazing amazing amazing. I have a real gem for a husband, I knew that, but Emma has a real gem for a father, which I was also suspected but now I can confirm.

I only feel like dressing her in pink, she looks so good in white and pink, and peach colours, which interestingly are also my favourite colours. We probably have the same skin tone, which is funny, since she has a bit of jaundice... I am enjoying this whole thing about having a girl immensely. This house will soon become the house of pink. Fortunately MrH is used to sleeping on sheets with pink and purple embroidery, and no protesting so far. He knows he is outnumbered...hehehe...

This is how I spend most of the day...when I am not screaming my head off!

2011-08-13T15:44:00.001-07:00

surviving the week

2011-08-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

So my goal for now is to survive the week. Hehehe. Not so funny. This morning I have discovered my Lilypadz, a silicone shield for the nipples, and they are so so so divine! they protect the nipples against everything, at the moment even the air hurts them. I am also starting to get The Chills. I don't know if other people get them after deliveries, but I definitely got them bad after Adrian, and last night while I woke up and went to the bathroom, I got my first episode of The Chills during this post partum period. It feels like ice is coming out of my bones, I cannot describe it differently. If anybody has ever had shivers because of fever, that is what it is like, and the shivers come in waves, for about twenty minutes or so. I used to take cold showers to soothe the restless legs, but this is a lot worse, it is like being dunked in cold water over and over again for several minutes. The first time I got it, I thought I had a post partum infection. I now know that is not the case, so I am more relaxed about it, it is still unpleasant but at least I know I am not dying from sepsis, like I initially thought...

In addition, my c/section scar has popped open because the guy assisting did not put the staples in properly and they were hanging only on one half of the skin incision in one corner. I need to get the wound re-sutured today, as it is open and draining a lot. Lastly, I got some sort of allergic reaction to something, I think it was the surgical tape used on my abdomen, and my trunk is covered in a red dotty rash. At least it is not itchy.

Considering my track record, I think I got off easily...(see bad post op infection in my very first post about the TAC). ( If I were an obstetrician, I would refuse to operate on me, really, given my penchant for every complication possible, and for even inventing new ones, like the pneumomediastinum).

I feel very blessed throughout all this. Last night Emma was crying for a good half hour and nothing much worked to soothe her. My milk has come in, thank God, but she was just gassy and upset, or something, who knows. I kept on offering her the breast, but she was too worked up to take it. Then MrH pointed out that she is anxious, just like her mommy, and I felt like a light switched was turned on. Of course, my child should be anxious. I am anxious and sensitive, and she has inherited my personality. I just love her to bits, and am so much more relaxed about her crying now that I feel like I understand her. I would be exactly the same in her position, newborn with an incompetent mother who does not know anything about why I am upset or what I need, and does not even know how to swaddle me properly so that I don't uncover during the night. Yes, that would piss me off big time as well.

I had another epiphany last night that has helped me immensely: I flushed the toilet and there was blood in the toilet bowl. For a second, I had forgotten that I am not pregnant anymore, and a flash of panic washed over me when I saw the blood. Just like it had so many times in both pregnancies, first with Adrian, then with Emma in the first trimester when I thought I was miscarrying. Then I realized that she is out and she is safe, and that I will never again have to worry about her being stillborn or in danger of being born premature, or a gazillion pregnancy related-worries that I had. No matter what, now that she is on the outside, she is safer, and she is so strong and healthy I cannot stop thanking God.

details

2011-08-13T00:17:00.001-07:00

So, let's try for a longer post, if I don't fall asleep in the middle of it.

The C section went well, however once he got into my uterus, the OB saw the TAC stitch sitting INSIDE the uterine cavity, and displaced to the right. It had migrated through the wall of the uterus as the uterus grew, and he said it was clearly a chronic process, since there was no obvious hole in the uterine wall, no bleeding, or anything to indicate a recent event. So the TAC held up to a point, probably up to about 32 weeks, when I had the last ultrasound and they had a hard time seeing it, then it started crossing over through the wall, to the inside of the uterus, and it became useless at some point in the third trimester. He had to remove it, which means if I want more children, which I do (only one more, I promise MrH!), I will have to get a new cerclage. He suggested that I go for the McDonalds (the regular transvaginal one), as my cervix is likely fibrosed enough by now not to move much, since it hasn't changed at all in the third trimester, even without the band around it. The bottom line is, I could have had a uterine tear, or a premature birth, and I didn't have either, which goes to show that sometimes things go well and we have no clue as to why.

I am quite swollen, my hands and feet, and my incision came apart in one corner and it is oozing bloody stuff all over the place. But for now, I will leave it, even if it heals funny it can always be redone with the next c/s.

Now, onto all things about Emma. She is incredible. I realize that I am biased, but she seems really strong for a newborn. She can lift up her head, and butt me in the breast with it when she gets mad. She also punches me with her little fists when she does not get milk fast enough for her liking. She looks at me, opens her eyes, grabs my hair, and generally does things that I did not think a newborn would do. And she has a very very strong suck. I could dangle her on my breast. The first night in the hospital was not too bad, I fed her twice, and we both slept in between (I lay her to sleep next to me, as I cannot bear to put her anywhere else, separate from me. The whole time I was in the hospital her bassinet was untouched). The second night though, I did not sleep at all. She wanted to feed every twenty minutes or so, for almost an hour each time, and was probably a bit dehydrated, had some brick stains on the diapers (the brick colour shows dehydration), so I fed her almost non stop. By morning she made some nice wet diapers, and my breasts lost a layer of skin and gained some groovy cracks in the nipples. I think my milk finally came in, but still no breast engorgement. I so much want to be able to offer her a full breast, and I think I am getting there, as she sucks for only ten minutes before falling asleep, as opposed to the previous hour after hour. She even had some milk in her mouth after I fed her, which makes me feel so much happier.

I should probably mention briefly how hard it is to get support for exclusive breastfeeding in my neck of the woods. The first couple of days are rough, since there is only colostrum, and while waiting for the milk to kick in, the baby gets mad, and sucks non stop, the mom gets very sore and it all overlaps with the day three hormonal storm that in any case makes one feel very sensitive. Thank God for my husband, who encourages me to survive, as everybody else thinks that formula is the way out. "Just give her a top up" I hear left, right and centre. I realize that doing that would make her sleep for four hours instead of cluster feeding for two days straight, but I still think breastfeeding is a naturally occurring skill and that patience and the instinct to survive for both of us will do the trick. Speaking of which, I have a lot of respect for her will to go on and on and not give up, she is only 3.6 kg but has more determination than a bull.

The hormonal storm of day 3 hit me last night, on the clock, and I am crying a lot. Mostly I feel happy, and blessed, and overwhelmed at the same time. I look at her and I cannot believe that I got to take her home. Like it did not register in my brain that she would survive, and I am somewhat surprised that after all she gets to stay with us. She is so beautiful, and strong, and that makes me cry as well. Everything does. All I want to do is to stare at her and kiss her little face. Will update as soon as I can.

Emma. Adorable. Details soon.

2011-08-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

tomorrow

2011-08-09T18:24:00.001-07:00

The C section is scheduled for tomorrow morning, and I am looking forward to it. I can't believe it is really happening! People ask me if I am nervous, I am definitely not nervous about the surgery, but I am in a daze about the whole baby part. I mean really, it hasn't clicked in yet. It won't until I hold her in my arms. Will update when I can.

Waiting

2011-08-05T18:01:00.001-07:00

false alarm

2011-08-05T17:40:00.000-07:00

I was so hungry last night, because I decided that if I go into labour it would be unsafe to have food in my stomach prior to the C/s, so I held off on dinner. I continued to contract throughout the night, and MrH who slept with his hand on my belly (my very own tocometer!) was quite amazed that I did not tip into labour. By 4 am, I was so hungry that I could eat a sheep, horns and all. I hadn't slept at all. I decided that I am going to eat, as I felt things were easing off, and afterwards slept and woke up still pregnant with not much happening today. If it starts again, I am pretty sure it will be more intense.

I had the preanesthetic appointment today, and laughed my ass off that they only give you two lines to write your prior surgical history. I had six surgeries so far, and only one was non-obstetrical/non-gyne. By the time I am done having kids, if I do have two, I will have had eight. And I will need to fix the surgical hernia that I got from my laparoscopy, so likely nine. Yes, they really need to revise that form to give more space to weirdos like me.

prelabour contractions

2011-08-04T22:15:00.000-07:00

I woke up with a painful contraction this morning. The whole day I had Braxton Hicks in large amounts, and a very very active Emma inside. I went to the hospital for an NST, and it looked good, she moved about fifty times in 20 minutes, my cervix is 50% effaced, and 1 cm dilated, mid position and soft. It hasn't changed over the past 6 hours, so I am not getting the C section yet, but I am continuing to have contractions, and some of them are hurting a bit, so I don't know if I will last the night. I am now in that unpredictable prelabour period, that can last days, but I doubt very much that I will make it until the 10th of August. In fact, I have my bag ready for tonight :)

So I have actually become a responsible mother and packed a bag. In my hospital, we are not given underwear, large menstrual pads, baby diapers, or wipes, so all of that is now in my bag, together with two pajamas, six onesies (three short sleeve, three long sleeve), a pacifier, a nail clipper (in case Emma needs an urgent manicure after birth), and a wholelottamakeup for me, 'cause I can't show my less than perfectly made up face in public, C/section or not. Plus a hair curler, 1.5 inch. And basic toiletries (baby soap, shampoo, conditioner, floss, hair brush, toothbrush, toothpaste).

We are all set and ready to go. And I moved mom's plane ticket to tomorrow, the soonest I could get. It is so exciting. I am making a big roast for my family to eat while I am in the hospital, and the house smells and feels like Christmas. Hope I get a nice present! (so giddy).