Julia

Quaternary Care

I had to deal with four doctor's appointments in the past two days: there was my annual OB/Gyn (hey did you know that this is pronounced Obee Gine-rhymes-with-wine-and-Caroline? I have always said O-B-G-Y-N, five separate letters - my doctor said this indicates an ana... a meticulous personality) visit; Patrick had a six year well kid check, Caroline and Edward went in for their six month appointment and then for a surprise second encore I took a cat to the vet. So in case you are wondering, yes I have read this month's issue of everything.

1. I finally got a chance to ask my OB about the pathology report on Caroline's placenta. As you may recall she was 4lbs 2 ounces at birth which is just not normal for a 36 weeks (and six days. and 21 hours) fetus. As you may also recall I was injecting blood thinners on a daily basis for nine months because my OB was convinced that even a single gene MTHFR mutation can lead to clotting issues. So I suppose she can be excused for being ghoulishly pleased by the pathology report that showed a compromised placenta (infractions? villi something? and something something else?) that was a little less than half the size of Edward's. She opined that without the heparin Caroline would not have survived to be born.

I never really believed some of the stuff I did with the pregnancy. Every night I spent hooked up to monitors in the hospital I was like, "Really? Isn't this a little dramatic?" I injected the blood thinners because I was afraid not to do it, but it felt more superstitious than medical. The terbutaline pump certainly helped keep the contractions down but I was never certain that the contractions were doing anything anyway; until I went off the terbutaline and delivered within fourteen hours. It was a bit sobering to reflect back on the things I thought were optional overkill and realize that they probably saved Caroline and Edward's lives.

I thanked my OB but in retrospect I should have offered to detail her car. With my hair.

2. I switched Patrick from his old pediatrician (who was fine) to the pediatrician Caroline and Edward lucked into (same practice) and with whom I am madly in love. What is it with women and their doctors? I cannot count the number of females I know who have one-sided attachments to their physicians and yet I have never once met a man who gushed "Oh I just adore my cardiologist."

Patrick is tall'ish, lean'ish and he has a spider angioma where his lip meets his face.  This is a benign lesion that looks like a small cut from a distance and like a possible little tumor if you are his freak of a mother and study it very very closely for over a year. When asked how he liked the new babies he replied, casually, "Pretty ok, I guess." When asked how the babies are doing he became animated and said, "Caroline is a MENACE!" Then he laughed merrily and told stories about all of the things she gets into that make me blench.

This is an aside:

I have a plastic bin under the couch that contains diapers, baby nail clippers, diaper cream etc. I also have a tub of wipes stashed under there. The first time this happened I thought it was a fluke but by her fifth time I realized that she was doing this intentionally - Caroline likes to roll under the couch, knock the wipes tub over, click open the lid and pull all the wipes out; possibly chewing on one for good measure.

One of the problems with having a six year old is he is privy to all the family secrets and he has absolutely zero discretion. Let me assure you that I had not planned on telling our pediatrician that I have carelessly let Caroline get into the baby wipes on more than one occasion.

3. After Patrick yammered yesterday I took the babies in for their appointment today. The doctor said, "What was it Patrick called Caroline? A menace? I have never heard a six month old baby described like... ."

Then he said "Oh my!" as he realized what we were talking about. I wrote about that appointment (hmmm, at considerable length I see) here at REDBOOK. Oh, before I forget, as he checked her eyes I asked him - in his professional, medical opinion - to tell me what color they are. The question was subject to considerable debate while my family was here and I wanted an objective, expert opinion to confirm that I am right and that everyone else is wrong wrong wrong. Green, he said. Possibly gray-green. Not brown? I clarified. Oh heavens no, said the good doctor. So. There. Certified green.

4. Darwin and Rusty were very close. They slept together. Rusty always groomed Darwin (although we never saw him return the favor - there is always a Giver and a Taker, isn't there?) When Rusty died I was worried about how Darwin would handle the loss. Cats are very sensitive; so I tried to make sure he was given lots of extra attention and I think he was ok for about a month. Then about a week ago he peed on the couch. Twice. And the rug. Last night (morning?) at 5 am I was on my way back to bed when I heard that tell-tale sound of covering (paw scratching rug) that makes every devoted cat owner turn cold and pale. I went in search of the sound and found him in the playroom, having just peed in poor Patrick's Lego bin.

Oh.... cats.

Repeatedly urinating in the same wrong place is probably behavioral. Defecating, almost certainly ditto. But randomly peeing all over the place is usually the sign of a physical problem so I called the vet and they saw him this afternoon. Turns out he has a bladder infection, the poor thing, but I have never been happier to hear about a disease in my life. You can treat an infection, it's much harder to treat grief - particularly when it expresses itself in urine.

PS I should have said yesterday that the early bedtime is only relevant if you have problems with the way things are going. If your baby happily goes to bed at midnight and you happily wake up at noon, rock on.

Delay

Aw rats, I missed a day. You will be shocked to know that I place the blame for my inability to write anything yesterday squarely on Steve and his stupid deadline. He was hanging drywall last night until eleven and the bangbangbanging prevented me from being able to complete a coherent thought anywhere in the house. So I checked in with my fitness Mii instead - I love my Patrick's new Wii; remind me to get back to this subject - who gleefully informed me that after a solid ten days of running every other day (I am up to a mile and a half now) I have gained 1.3 pounds. It then marked this fact on my permanent Wii record and made me stamp it.

The question that I meant to get back to before I started blubbering like a wide-receiver was from Shannon who asked: "But...why is it better to put [a baby] down early? Logic would tell me that if I put the baby down at 9 pm rather than 6 pm that he will sleep 3 hours later into the morning."

Let me start by saying how much I enjoy being the lucky bastard who gets to pretend that her easy babies are the result of skilled parenting rather than sheer good fortune. The day after they were born I fed Edward, wrapped him like a buche de noel and then tossed him into the hospital bassinet where he promptly fell asleep. I goggled at him for a while and then started to fidget because surely any second he would start screaming? My previous experience with newborns was limited but unequivocal: from the moment he was born Patrick - oh my god Baby Patrick, what a nightmare - could not be put down without yelling his abnormally small head* off. He would nurse/doze/cry nurse/doze/cry in hour long cycles. This lasted for, um, a year? OK, maybe it was only six months before he would sleep for three hours at a time but it was the longest six months of my life. As early as nine days into it I turned to Steve (stop me if I've told you this before) and said, "I was happier before he was born." Steve agreed but assured me things would get better. And, sure enough, it couldn't have been more than 396 wretched, sleepless nights later that I stopped falling asleep while eating.

Where... oh right. Patrick was a terrible baby. But Edward was happy to sleep in solitary splendor right from the beginning. So I watched him sleep that first day until I started to feel at loose ends. I had brand-new twins for chrissake; shouldn't I have something else to do but read? I brightened when I realized that we could go visit Caroline in the special care nursery where she was no doubt in desperate need of me, poor little monkey. But no. If anything she slept more deeply than he did, sprawled legs akimbo like a frog in her super-heated incubator. I sat in a chair and watched them sleep while the nicu nurse told me lurid stories from her past (she eventually invited me to join her book club - I was touched.) And that is pretty much how it has been ever since. With the babies sleeping peacefully on their own, I mean, not the friendly nurse part. We have gone through stages where one or the other of them wanted to sleep on top of me, but for the most part both babies have always been pretty good about waking up, eating and falling back asleep again in their own beds. Now that I have moved dinner a little earlier ("dinner" being a couple tubs of pureed whatsit and a nice bowl of tepid grain-based sludge plus breastmilk and/or formula depending upon who it is) they don't even eat first. We do dinner, bath, pajamas, two books from Paradise Lost (I'm kidding of course; I hate Milton) and then down they go into their cribs. Edward always snatches his blanket and snuffles it before passing out; Caroline scoots across her crib to grab a pacifier, then she rolls over to whatever toy I have in there and starts to do a thorough examination with her clever little hands - pausing every so often to pull the pacifier out so she can turn it around to chew on the other side. Now that I think about it Caroline is a little like Kojak - with lots more hair and a pacifier instead of a lollipop. Uncanny.

It's a miracle on the Plains: two babies, neither of whom need to be nursed to sleep and neither of whom object when I put them down and walk away. This is not to say that I am not up all the goddamned time, I am. Between the two of them I get woken up anywhere from two to five times a night, but it's ok. It'll pass.

But back to the question, sorry. Why don't babies sleep later if you put them down later? Actually, I have no freaking idea but they don't. It is sort of like when you stay in a hotel and plan on sleeping in really late since you don't have to be anywhere specific until noon; only to discover that you are wide-awake at 6 am and the sheets are scratchy and you think you might have been cryogenically processed in the night and there is absolutely nothing you can do to go back to sleep again. Babies are like that. As far as I can tell they just come pre-programmed with a personalized wake-up time and although I have heard rumors that it is possible to gradually shift this time in a desired direction I have no personal experience with it working; hard as I have tried.

As I mentioned with my pathetic little sleep chart Patrick went to bed at 9:30 and woke up at... 5:45. I kept trying to put Caroline and Edward down at 8 despite much wailing and gnashing of the gums (a billion thanks to those who urged the early bedtime: you were right, you were right, oh you were so very very right) and they would wake up at... 5:45. Now that I put them in their cribs by 6 they wake up at... 5:45. Actually Edward does, Caroline will often eat and then go back to sleep again. A comment a few posts ago  (I am sorry I don't remember who said this) really resonated with me. The commenter talked about shifting her perspective so that she treated six like bedtime and the subsequent wake-up like a night waking, rather than thinking that six was the last nap and bedtime was at 9 or whenever. I had a bell go off when I read that although for me it had to do with their early morning habits. Since then I have been trying to treat the 5-6 am waking as a night waking and have put them back to bed again after they eat. Like I said Edward isn't buying it, but Caroline has been sleeping until seven'ish. 

In conclusion: although one might think that early bedtimes lead to anarchy lawlessness and rebellion all before dawn; the fact of the matter is that most babies do that all on their own regardless, so you might as well buy yourself a free evening and go with it. The End.

PS Speaking of a. l. and r. Patrick keeps encouraging Caroline in her waywardness while Edward tries to pretend that he doesn't know either of them

*Patrick's head circumference was in the 8th percentile when he was born. He turned out fine.

Of Course

I was trying to look back a few pages so I could properly credit this next question but I accidentally wound up in my archives. So I spent some time reading old posts about the beginning of my last pregnancy (the good one. see also: Caroline; Edward) and I got to the part where we had a suspicious looking nuchal translucency prior to scheduling CVS. I sat here and cried as I read it. I can remember having that ultrasound. I can remember the certainty that one of the babies carried an unbalanced translocation. And I can remember how stupid I felt for having ever dared to be optimistic in the first place; for somehow forgetting that I was doomed. And then there was the waiting - there was always more waiting - and finally the amazing unexpected unbridled joy of good test results and the hope which came crashing down like snow off a mountain. I just cried like I have not cried in... I don't even know how long.

If I have not said this before I should have: I would do it all again. I would relive every moment of the past nine years to bring Caroline and Edward into the world. No question. And I only hope that I would spend each second of that time recognizing how lucky I was to even try.

Two nights ago I had Edward's nice round head pressed under my chin; his long body curled on my chest. He was snoring, of course, and I fatuously contemplated what a sweet snore he has - part grunt part wheeze pure melody. Like the Country Bunny in my little gold shoes I have already decided that Edward will be my musical child and he will sing to me with his hands clasped together; soft, sad ballads in which the hero is pierced by arrows and the maiden throws herself down a well. As we sat there in the dark, Edward and me, I told him, "I waited for you I waited for you I waited for you ."

It took nine years. It was hard. You keep your head down; you keep your chin up; you remember that so many people are suffering more than you are and you feel ashamed; you learn compassion; you feel grateful and you feel anguish and you hope for better days to come.

My children are perfect and I would not change a moment that has passed.

Status of Gibraltar

If we were having this conversation in person you would find that I have a very hard time sticking to the point. One thing reminds me of another thing and even though I will waggle my thumbs at weird angles to mark the place - saying "Oh oh oh I want to get back to that" - the chances are very good that a discussion starting with "De vous, chez vous, sans vous" and leaping naturally to the Treaty of Utrecht will wind up on the subject of cats, their care and feeding, without ever returning to the reason I brought up proverbial sayings in the first place.  Steve finds this habit of mine very trying and frequently says, "Focus! Julia!" in an attempt to avoid the verbal maelstrom and figure out where, exactly, he needs to drive Patrick for swimming lessons before I wander too far off the subject and start telling him about the pony I rode the one time I went to horse-riding camp.

So although I frequently have responses to various comments here I rarely manage to get back to them before my attention gets distracted by something shiny and then enough time goes by that it no longer seems worth it - even if I could remember whatever it was in the first place. However, in my effort to set a goal and stick to it (the goal being to write here every day for a week) I find that I am sharp like a cheese and as dedicated as a drive. 

Thus:

To Lisa V, I nod and repeat, carefully, "water heater". A hot-water heater, she informs us, is redundant and silly. But, to mitigate my crime I would like to add: "You've painted up your lips and rolled and curled your tinted hair - Ruby are you contemplating going out somewhere?"  I sing this all. the. time. I think it got stuck in my head shortly after Steve's knee surgery when I found myself perseverating on the line "it's hard to love a man whose legs are bent and paralyzed." See how funny I am?

Speaking of how funny I am -

Anonymous asks if it is my intention to portray Steve as an asshole. I really like how this was phrased because it took me right back to my English major days. Depending upon the program an English major might be a writer; but at my college we were all literary criticism, all the time. Serious students of textual analysis understand that the whole point of reading anything is to suck the life from it, but they also know that you can ascribe to a few different schools of thought in order to do so. The formalists, for example, believe (or did back when I was a slip of a girl) that nothing outside the material can be considered. The answers to questions like what was the last puzzle that Frank Churchill gave to Miss Fairfax* were not only irrelevant, they were deemed frivolous. Bastards. But no matter. My point is that I like a question that understands that authorial intent and what winds up on your plate might not be from the same barrel. Or even a pickle.

So, is it my intention to... hold on how was this phrased exactly... oh, I was right, "portray Steve as an asshole"? Good lord no. Of course not. For starters Steve is terrific. I love him with a fervor that often threatens to unseat my reason. If anything I am embarrassed by how foolish I am about him. More than once I have come to a start from a daydream and found that I have written Steve + Julia with a heart around it. Why just this morning I woke up at 10:45 (TEN! FORTY! FIVE!) after a refreshing three hours of unbroken sleep to find that Steve had gotten up with Caroline and Edward, fed them, played with them, fed Patrick, put Caroline and Edward down for a nap, gotten them back up again, oh, and moved an exterior door all while I drooled peacefully in bed. And when I did finally stumble out of bed he made me tea. What's not to love? Also, why on earth would I want you good people to think that I was married to an asshole? How shaming for me. I do not mean to give that impression at all.

But - as I learned in college - beer, baby aspirin and a raw potato are not a balanced breakfast. Also, what a person means to convey and what can be interpreted are not necessarily the same thing. I have no doubt Shakespeare meant every one of his sly homoerotic thrusts (ha!) but did he intend to bury enough material to supply an essay entitled Castration Fears and Matriarchal Power in Macbeth with adequate citations? Probably not but hell that's 8 to 10 double-spaced pages right there, easy.        

In conclusion if it has been possible to read my descriptions of my husband as derogatory then I am truly sorry. I just thought that last story was funny: two differently compulsive personalities intersecting in a bathroom discussing a painted rock... hmmm. Yeah. I don't know. I still think it's funny.

*Jane Austen wrote in a letter that the puzzle spelled "Pardon". Which, ok, but it has always seemed to me that Frank Churchill behaved like a complete cad from beginning to end. Pianoforte notwithstanding.