Category Archives: Babies

Welcome to the world!

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I have a brand new niece! She was born yesterday and although I haven’t met her yet, her pictures are pretty cute! My mother informed me today that she thinks the baby looks like me, when I was a baby, and I am both flattered and deeply skeptical. I mean, she’s one day old. Most one day old babies look pretty much the same, colouring and the existence or otherwise of hair notwithstanding. Also, I am completely skeptical of family resemblance claims unless those claims come from some non-emotionally invested third party. I don’t know how it is in your family, but in mine, discussions regarding who the baby looks like are wrought – wrought! – with emotion and bias. Similar features can be imagined, or, alternately, refused to be acknowledged, depending on the family member who shares said features.

I have a very bizarre example. My older son is the spitting image of his father. This is universally acknowledged, with the exception of one member of my husband’s family, who did not see the resemblance at all. Instead, this person persisted in comparing my son to another family member, at every single opportunity. I cannot say why, but this bothered me to no end. I have since made peace with this irritation; children look the way they look and that has nothing to do with the little people they are.

That said, I just got grumpy thinking about it.

But back to the important news – my new niece. I’m very excited she’s here, and I’m looking forward to shopping for baby gifts. Do you think she’s too young for a bikini?

(Bikinis are size 0-3 months, from Gap and Old Navy)

Stroller-free

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We sold our stroller this week and although we haven’t used it for many months – I can’t even recall when, exactly, we used it last – it feels strange that it is gone. For the first time in six years, I am stroller-less. At one point I actually had four strollers of varying child carrying capacities, weights, and wheel sizes in my garage. And now the fact that I have none feels like an era has officially ended.

I read this post about knowing when your family has maxed out on members, about knowing that there are no more babies coming down the pipe, so to speak. I knew I wanted two children, no more, no less, and I after I had my second healthy baby boy, I knew I wanted to stop. I recall clearly that when Mark was a baby, a small baby, maybe only a few months old, that I was already thinking ahead to the next baby. When Jake was a small baby, I knew, without a doubt, that he was the last.

I am starting to see that this viewpoint may not be typical.

More and more I speak with women who have pangs to have another baby, who perhaps wish to have another one and can’t for varying heart-breaking reasons, or who continue to add to their families with joy and happiness. Sometimes, and this is a confession, I wonder if there is something missing in my maternal being that I never, ever have pangs for another baby. I don’t even really enjoy holding other babies, and that is a difficult confession to make.

My grandmother, among others, would frequently advise me that I had better get pregnant, soon, with the infuriating advice that I should really try to have a girl. “Girls are different”, she would say, “Wouldn’t you like to have a girl?” And, my distaste at the thought of trying for a specific gender notwithstanding, I would reply mildly that girl or boy, I do not want any more babies.

A few years ago, when the boys were still very small, my period stopped for a few months. This was after we had taken permanent birth control steps, so pregnancy in this case, while not unheard-of, would be pretty much a medical curiosity. Still, I worried. I took test after test and they were all, of course, negative. But one day I was in the car with the two of them, driving and listening to them complain about dropped sippy cups and snacks, and I thought, what if the tests are wrong? What if I actually am pregnant? And the panic and anxiety that filled my being was such that I had to pull over so I could collapse in a sobbing puddle of tears.

Soon after that incident my period returned, and it was clear that our decision to have only two children was the correct one.

Meanwhile, each time Jake passed through a trying stage as a baby – a tiring one like teething, or a gross one like potty training – I would think well, I don’t have to go through that again. And now we are past, long past, the stroller stage and although that certainly wasn’t trying or difficult, it was a stage and now we are in a new one. I think about the hundreds of times I would tuck them into the stroller, with blankets and toys and snacks, and I think about those days with affection and also sadness, that the time has gone so quickly, so quickly I didn’t even notice.

I think I just slept too well.

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I am aware that many of my readers are chronically sleep-deprived, so I don’t mean to brag about what I did Friday night. I slept – get this – ten and a half hours. I know! It’s remarkable, really. I woke up feeling groggy and my body was stiff from so much sleep.

Just writing that reminds me of a beautiful woman I used to know. She had porcelain skin, shiny thick hair, and gigantic blue eyes fringed with the most amazingly thick, long, black lashes. If you happened to remark on those eyelashes, she would reply “Ugh. You know, I can’t wear mascara if I’m going to be wearing my sunglasses. My lashes end up being just way too long, and they hit the lenses.” In other words, don’t hate me because I’m beautiful – my eyelashes are really just too luxurious. I just got too much sleep on Friday.

My last post generated several comments about the horror stories foisted upon pregnant women, and while those about miscarriage, stillborn babies, collapsed uteruses and other horrifying endings are certainly the most disturbing and terrifying, stories about lack of sleep are definitely the most common. Enjoy your sleep now, the story teller will say with an evil glint in their eye, because after the baby comes you will never sleep again! And while there is a kernel of truth in this – my best friend, I’m sure, has not had a solid night’s sleep in nearly seven years, due to her four children aged six and under – this particular information transfer is not productive in any way. I don’t think there is a woman alive who thinks that the addition of a child to the household, whether by birth or adoption, will not affect her sleep in a negative way.

I myself expected to be essentially in a coma after each baby was born. I expected the sleep deprivation to result in my morphing into a babbling, drooling, incoherent idiot. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself actually functioning. Not that I was particularly coherent or intelligent, but I was functioning! Although comments from somewhat well-meaning older female relatives about other, ostensibly superior, babies who were sleeping through the night at two weeks of age and how well their ostensibly superior mothers were functioning would inevitably arise and destroy that feeling of well-being. Isn’t that strange? First people tell you how exhausted you are going to be after the arrival of the baby, then they tell you about amazingly rested and refreshed women and their angelic sleeping babies.

But back to the present. I have only this strange observation following my sleep marathon on Friday: I actually did not feel rested or refreshed. I was in a weird daze all day, rubbing my stiff neck and back. I felt actually less rested than on a usual night, when I get fewer than eight hours of sleep and am woken up a couple of times, either by Jake’s weird dreams – “I saw a baby elephant! And it sprayed me with water!” – or Mark’s “Hi Mom! I’m just going to the bathroom!” announcements. So, at the risk of offending my poor sleep-deprived readers, I will venture to say that ten and a half hours of sleep is, perhaps, not all it’s cracked up to be.

Time keeps on slipping

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It’s been a big week over here at Girl in a Boy House headquarters. Mark started swimming lessons at school, and it has been great. He loves it. I will admit right now that I fretted a lot – privately – about school swimming lessons, although that may be partly due to the waiver that the school sent home. Evidently DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, and INJURY are lurking everywhere, from the ½ block walk to the pool to the actual swimming lessons themselves. Of course, the same exact waiver was sent home when the kindergarten walked the ½ block to the library. “I absolve the school of blame for death, dismemberment, or injury from possible slipping on the ice/ crossing the street/ bleeding to death from a paper cut in the children’s book section”. I know they have to cover their bases but really. This does not help if you happen to be a nervous sort with a not-so-little phobia about public swimming pools and their change rooms. You might be thinking that I should probably tone down the crazy just a little, and you would be right.

So anyway, Mark is having a great time, swimming with his friends and reportedly doing just fine in the change room, unlike his crazy mother. The first time I enrolled him in swimming lessons, he was three years old and I ended up withdrawing him after two sessions because I just couldn’t take the crying any more. I also couldn’t take the other mothers, whose children were splashing and singing happily, who kept advising me to “just put him back in the pool, or he’ll never get used to it.” After withdrawing him, I fretted and worried and was convinced that I just contributed to a lifelong fear of water and that he would never learn to swim. I enrolled him again when he was almost five and he loved it, and he is learning to swim.

Is it me, or is our society programmed to start children in sports and activities too early? A friend was telling me about parents leaving their sobbing children on the hockey rink for an hour, refusing to take them off, because that would encourage a quitter’s attitude. These children were three and four years old. As my friend said, “Is that any way to introduce a child to a sport?” I vehemently spoke against starting a U4 soccer league in our community, for two reasons: a) we are constantly short of volunteers and a U4 league would require a high adult-to-child ratio, and b) if you want your three and four year olds to run rampant around a soccer field, surely you can do so in a non-organized way. I was reading that Olympian Chandra Crawford started cross-country skiing at age one, essentially as soon as she could walk. Well, I’m not too worried about quashing my children’s Olympic dreams; they are much more likely to be mathletes than professional athletes.

The other big event this week was that I registered Jake for kindergarten. Let’s all just sit silently for a minute to absorb that information. I recall Jake as an infant in the Baby Bjorn, where he lived for months, as I chased around his not-yet-two-year-old brother. I think about the cumbersome double stroller, the myriad diapers and gargantuan diaper bag, the way I frequently envied mothers of school aged children. There’s no need to make children do things before they are ready, because the time speeds by so swiftly, even when it seems to be crawling. That period of my life that seemed interminable at times is now rapidly ending.

Drive Slow, Homie

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When Mark was two and Jake was seven months, I received “Late Registration” by Kanye West for my birthday, and although I mostly listen to a radio station best described as “oldies” – the kind that advertises for Grey Power Insurance and the benefits of getting your prostate checked – I really enjoy hip hop. I especially loved that album and I listened to it all the time in the car, with the kids. And – you can probably see where this is going – I didn’t at the time realize that the kids might be actually absorbing the information that was being presented in the music. I didn’t realize it until Mark – did I mention he was two? – informed me that he didn’t have no money, so he couldn’t get no ho’s. Nothing says you’re a good mother like having a two year old misogynist on your hands. Later, he told his grandmother that he wanted a prenup. At that point I put the album away, only to listen to it when the kids were not in the car.

In the past two days, there were over six hundred car accidents in the city! Six hundred! What could be going on, you may ask? What indeed but ten centimeters of snow. Apparently in this lovely city only one hour from the Rocky Mountains, in the Canadian prairies, snow is a new and novel concept. One that causes people to be in a perpetual bad mood and drive like lobotomized maniacs. As my yoga teacher said, “Snow is like death. We all know it’s coming, but for some reason when it arrives we are all still surprised and sad.” Yes, exactly.

So what does all this have to do with my wildly inappropriate musical choices? It’s my public service announcement for the day: DRIVE SLOW, HOMIE. Although you really do not need to “put your hazard lights on when you see them ho’s”. Really.

Labour Stories – Part Two, The Hospital

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I fully support women who choose to give birth in places other than a hospital – their own homes, a birthing centre, or, in the case of an amazing You Tube video I saw, the Mediterranean Sea. A Russian woman traveled to Israel to give birth in the Mediterranean and it was astonishingly beautiful, the woman the picture of grace and strength. I fully agree that pregnancy is not an illness, and childbirth not – in most cases – an emergency, however, a woman like myself, who makes fifty to-do lists a week and panics over the unlikely scenario of twenty people being simultaneously unavailable to babysit, well, a hospital is my birthing place of choice. I find immediately available medical attention and equipment to be as soothing as the sound of ocean waves. But that’s just me.

Also, I secretly love hospital food. I love getting food on little trays, everything in its own little compartment. I love that the hospital staff brings you a bedtime snack, even if it is a bizarre combination of bran muffin, cheddar cheese, and orange juice with Metamucil. After I had Mark, they brought me a tuna salad sandwich and let me tell you, dear readers, this was the tuna salad sandwich to end all tuna salad sandwiches. This was the greatest tuna salad sandwich of all time. When I was pregnant with Jake, I dreamed about one day getting another such tuna salad sandwich. Nine months, I thought about that sandwich. Then when I had Jake, it was egg salad day. Wretched egg salad. However, they did bring me a Salisbury steak (I still ate meat at that time). It was a tremendous Salisbury steak experience. Angels sang around that Salisbury steak.

Later, as I was recounting this incredible meal, my husband said “You know it’s just a hamburger patty with gravy, right?” Oh, but what a hamburger patty with gravy.

The downside of giving birth in a hospital is, of course, the possibility that you can spend hours in triage, which is precisely what happened to me. Triage was packed, packed with women with scheduled c-sections, women in the early stages of labour, and women in the “MOTHEROFGOD, MAKE IT STOP!” stage of labour. Those in the latter group were quickly wheeled into delivery rooms, prompting my husband to suggest that perhaps I should add a little, shall we say volume to my contractions and although I am capable of dramatic screaming, I felt unable to rise to the occasion at the time.

My doctor came by to check in with regards to what is euphemistically termed “pain management”. Since I had no drugs with Mark, I felt that I should do the same with this baby, not just to quell arguments and sibling rivalry down the road (“Ha ha, you made Mom get an epidural!”) but also because I had the well-authenticated concern that having an epidural would slow down my labour and I wanted to finish and have the baby quickly so that Mark could come and visit in the hospital after his afternoon nap. Yes, you read that correctly. That was my actual concern. Yet another reason to make up a birth plan: when you are in labour, you are simply incapable of rational thought.

Speaking of rational thought, here’s another tidbit: if they offer you a wheelchair, take the wheelchair. I speak from wretched experience. When I was assigned a delivery room at about 7 centimeters, I refused the wheelchair. It’s just down the hall, right? Twenty minutes, several very loud contractions, and 8.5 centimeters dilated later, I finally made it to my delivery room. Why, you may ask, didn’t someone bring me a wheelchair? After all, I was crawling down the hallway, shrieking with a contraction every couple of minutes. I do not know the answer to that. Maybe they thought I would rip the wainscoting off the wall and begin beating people with it? Or maybe the staff is just used to hormonally crazy pregnant women and didn’t notice. All I know is that I was about to meet Cheryl, my delivery nurse, and that is a story for another day.

Labour Day and Labour Stories – Part One

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Jake’s fourth birthday is less than two weeks away, which has had me reminiscing about, appropriately enough, his birth. I LOVE birth stories, labour stories, pregnancy stories. I love hearing about them. If you want to share, I promise to be a rapt audience. I love the ordinary run-of-the-mill birth stories, the grisly birth stories, the weird labour experiences, the pregnancy-related aches and pains. The only thing I do not like about labour stories is the term that is frequently employed, “birth experience”. I don’t know, that term conjures up the same feelings that “synergy” and “optionality” did in my long-ago working days.

You know when you see an enormously pregnant woman, and her behaviour is incredibly irrational and insane, and you know with the benefit of experience that any minute now, that woman will be going into labour, but when you are that enormously pregnant woman, you believe your behaviour is perfectly normal and reasonable, and everyone else around you is crazy? That was exactly my situation prior to going into labour with Jake.

The day before I went into labour I was at the hair salon, which was incredibly fortunate as I did not want to be an exhausted mother to a newborn and a toddler who was not yet one and a half with three inches of grey roots. I really needed those roots covered to rise to the situation. Thank you Dad for those genes. Anyway. In retrospect I should have guessed I was about to go into labour. I hated everyone in that salon. Every single thing bothered me but I had to hold everything inside because really, who wants to annoy the woman with the scissors? So I seethed on the inside. What is with the insipid chatter, I thought. Why is the smell so bad in here? This is an OLD issue of People! If they hadn’t been so behind, I wouldn’t be driving at this time of the day, I fumed in the traffic on the way home. I was so irritable and uncomfortable I decided to try to sleep on the couch. My husband checked on me when he heard my uncontrollable sobbing. He probably thought something was horribly wrong.

“WHAT IF NO ONE IS AROUND TO TAKE CARE OF MARK WHEN I’M IN LABOUR?” I sobbed. This was my fear: that I would go into labour and no one would be around to take care of the toddler. Side note: my parents live twelve minutes away, less if my lead-footed father is driving. My husband pointed out this fact, and also the fact that my elderly neighbour had specifically said she didn’t want to see me on the news as someone who had given birth in a taxi, so if my mom couldn’t come right away to call her. Also, I had been so paranoid that I had made up a list of people who could possibly look after Mark, starting with my best friend and my brothers and ending with almost every neighbour on my block and a couple of his co-workers. Still, I would not be dissuaded. I was convinced that everyone on that list would be unavailable all at the same time. Either I was going to go to the hospital by myself while Rob looked after Mark due to NO ONE else being available, or we would have to take Mark with us and he would be scarred for life watching his brother exit his mother’s vagina. There could be no other options. I cried until I fell asleep.

Then I woke up, at 4:30, to let Rob know we should call my mom to come over and take care of Mark.