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“oh yeh,” said i, back in those dim, fuzzy days before parenthood. “oh yeh, i’ll work from home when the baby comes. i can edit online, and maybe do some freelancing…it’ll be fulfilling, keep my mind sharp. i’ll just work when he naps.”

oh yeh. obviously, i spent most of Life Before Parenthood on crack.

my mind? sharp? i don’t even have the wherewithal to lament how blunt the instrument has become. naps? yeh, i’d love one, thanks. i drool at the thought. but i have this twenty-hour-piece of editing i committed to finishing up this week (errrr, well…last week) and i don’t think the child has napped a cumulative twenty hours all month. freelancing? right. unless The New Yorker is picking up my blog for syndication and has simply failed to notify me, i don’t think that will be happening until O starts writing columns himself.

apparently, i am not the born Mary Poppins cum intellectual wunderkind cum floor-polishing housewench i somehow once imagined myself to be.

i am okay with this, it seems. a little peeved, as i really did plan on getting more done with these days, but i’m genuinely okay with my own limitations and the priorities they reflect. Oscar? very important. laundry? a minor OCD i’m trying to work on. mindless internet surfing for at least fifteen minutes every couple of hours? hey, brains don’t just sharpen themselves, folks. they need input.

but this is all okay mostly because the fine Canadian government, in its rare but occasional wisdom, has seen fit to provide new parents here with what in other countries would be the equivalent of a bloody lottery haul. we get a year, more or less, of paid maternity/parental leave. not paid by our employers. paid by the government, in the form of what’s known as Employment Insurance. you work 600 hours in the year prior to delivering or adopting a child? you get approximately $1400 a month in EI for the year following, so you can stay home with that child. it’s not a fortune, by any means. but it beats a kick in the arse with a frozen sneaker, as Dave is so fond of saying. he’s freakishly fond of that phrase, actually…but that’s another post. this one is about the fact that i have approximately two months left of paid at-home child-minding, and then i need to figure out what i can do with myself to earn money while spending as little of that money on outside childcare. or i need to get a job and give up on the whole idea of working from home whatsoever. (other than that laundry compulsion, and the other little compunction about not letting dishes get moldy in the sink, and whatnot…the menial crap which makes households run without Children’s Aid visits.)

but writing/editing from home in twelve minute increments while Oscar peeps/whines/howls for my attention doesn’t seem to be working so well for me thus far. perhaps if he didn’t insist on getting new teeth every week his capacity for self-entertainment would be higher, admittedly…but he still has twenty teeth to go. sigh.

the work gets done, and i kind of enjoy it. i’m not doing it for the money right now anyway…just to keep my hand in.  but my hand feels…stretched.  it’s the kind of work that’s so much smoother when an unbroken hour or two can be dedicated to it…and by the time those hours are free in the evening, what’s left of my mind has disintegrated into a puddle of gray cabbage. such is my little problem. there are moments, at three in the afternoon when i am two paragraphs from finished and O is clearly two paragraphs past finished, when i would sell my mother for ten more minutes just to really focus on the task at hand and get it done and get that nice, rare little feeling of accomplishment that so seldom comes with laundry or bum-wiping.

and i guess that’s really where my little problem lies. i want it all. i want to be home with my child, and i want the ivory tower of an office to hide in and finish things too. i do, in the end, want to be the Mary Poppins genius prodigy TideeBowl queen. and i want more time, for all of it. sweet time, that once i squandered…this is a really nasty trick, this disappearing act of yours.

what do you all do, about time, and work, and juggling? did you go back to a job after your kids were born? did you stay home but do some paid work on the side? how’d you manage to carve out time for that work? (besides plying your offspring with crackers, which is my current, albeit only moderately successful, strategy) please tell. i need some help, here.

unless someone want to volunteer to nanny for the world’s cutest nine-month old (with a minor biting problem)? send resumes. :)

it is Winter Solstice.

our northern hunk of earth has tilted itself out into the dark, and this blinding, meltingly sunny afternoon is a brief blip of light in bleak midwinter, a short flash punctuating what Frost called the darkest evening of the year.

that phrase has always given me a thrill. it has a majesty and seriousness about it, like a grave announcement made by a butler introducing dinner guests. it is beautiful, too…though in a way probably only known to children of the northern hemisphere. it brings me to the still point in the turning of the earth, and the crisp and eerie quiet of standing in a snowfall, mittens wet, cheeks stinging with cold. the phrase calls to something solitary in me that loves the starkness of winter, and longs to dig down deep and hibernate, as Frost’s woods fill up with snow above me like a blanket.

of course, last night, at 1 am and 2, and 2:20 and 3:30 and 5, because Oscar is teething again – like he NEEDS more teeth? – all the phrase called to was my bitter sense of irony, for i was indeed having one of the longest nights i’ve had since O was a newborn. poor wee one, eight months old today and seven teeth. and poor me! no blanket of snow, nor cotton, nor nothing…just bleariness. when do mommies hibernate?

Happy Solstice to all, and to all a good night. in the long dark of this one, i am hoping for some stillness.

Oscar spent his weekend in the hospital.

and i spent much of it feeling like the world’s most horrible mother…because i almost didn’t take him there.

The Boy woke up with a cold early Thursday morning…by Friday evening, it had drooled its way into my system too. we tag-teamed our way through the night, O & i, coughing like smokers. by the time his mid-morning nap rolled around on Saturday, my little bunny was sounding pretty snuffly and breathing hard.

maybe it was the cold meds i was on, but my response to O’s nap-time rasps was NOT to worry about his breathing. oh no. i figured he was stuffed up and overexcited – he tends to get agitated around nap-time and pant a little in protest, even on a healthy day. or so i tell myself. i did worry, though, plenty…i worried about whether he’d actually sleep. i worried that he’d get overtired if he kept fighting the nap with all this panting business. i worried that i might not get half an hour to myself to do the dishes. and i was so busy worrying about these stupid mundanities that it never once crossed my mind that he might actually be in trouble. so i soothed him to sleep, with great perseverance, and did the damn dishes.

and as i was bustling about the house in my cold-drugged fog, i thought “oh, he’s having a great sleep!” oh Pollyanna.

it was when he woke that i started to clue in. his breathing was still quick, and loud…so loud, in fact, that when i left him on Dave’s lap and went into the next room to get his bottle ready, i could hear his rapid-fire wheeze. it occurred to me that maybe i should take him to the hospital, just to be safe…and Dave, who i think was quite alarmed by the noises he was making, readily concurred. but i still felt like we were over-reacting.

i always feel like i’m over-reacting, no matter what brings me to the hospital. i was kind of a hypochondriac as a kid – hospitalization at the age of three for tonsilitis introduced me to popsicles, chocolate milk, and gingerale, so i spent the rest of my childhood hoping wistfully to get back to the paediatric ward. in fact, i spent much of my pre-teen career making up fake illnesses to try to get out of school and back into the hospital. it never worked, and i eventually decided it was embarrassing and gave it up, but it left its mark on me nonetheless. because even two decades after my last attempt to appear the victim of a dread disease, i’m still unable to completely trust my judgement when it comes to sickness. i’m not a very stoic patient, but a damn apologetic one. “who me? oh, it’s probably nothing…just this pesky little amputation, terribly sorry to bother you.”

i do not have the conviction that my judgment is worthy. even when bleeding copiously or coughing up a lung or two, i harbour a secret fear of being exposed as a faker. and my hesitancy, apparently, extends even to my child…i don’t want to be the mother who runs to emergency every time her offspring sneezes. i was scared they’d laugh at me, tell me he had a cold, and send me home.

but i was more scared, luckily, by his little peaked face than i was by the prospect of being suspected a Munchausen’s mom.

turns out he has bronchiolitis again…same as he had in September. turns out his blood oxygen level was down to 92 or 93, and his breaths per minute were up to eighty. turns out this can come on in hours, apparently, even in the absence of any significant fever. and it turns out we got whisked into Paediatric Recussitation within ten minutes of arriving at emergency, and Oscar got hooked up to a bunch of machines and masks that all scared the everlovin’ crap out of me.

he stayed in the hospital one night. he was a little trooper, summoning up smiles for all the strangers poking and prodding at him. i wasn’t nearly so brave, or so cheerful…i was in shock. it took me a couple of hours to come to terms with the fact that there had, in fact, been an emergency. that not only had we been right to take O in, but that i really should have taken him an hour or two before. that had i continued to listen to the voice in my head that belittled my concern and told me i was over-reacting, he might have been seriously harmed by his diminished oxygen levels. he might have stopped breathing altogether.

the responsibility of this parenting thing makes me stagger, every single time i come up close to it.

Oscar is home now, still stuffy but breathing normally. we’re giving him Ventalin masks four times a day. he’s fine, recovering quickly.

me? oh i’m fine…just hemorrhaging guilt, doctor, don’t worry about me. and don’t mind me if we show up again tomorrow…or whenever he sneezes next. :)

i just ate a chocolate cupcake for breakfast.

it’s ten am, and i’m still wandering around the house in bright red flannel pajamas dotted with snowmen, like a refugee from a tweenie slumber party in 1983. Oscar’s been asleep for half an hour, bless him, but i haven’t showered, nor have i lavished any much-needed attention on the laundry, the dishes, or the acrid kitty litter in the back corner of the porch. no, i’m not depressed. i’m just trying to deal with getting my resume in order.

this weekend an electrician came to install heat in Oscar’s room and managed to dust the entire house with nasty little remnants of wall and wiring. and summoning up the will to vacuum out – and thus confront and organize – the bulging horror that is our front closet, now home to the heating wires delivering warmth to wee O, filled me with despair. not because it’s really that much work, even in the nap-sized increments i have for working in. the despair comes because i keep wondering “if it’s this hard to keep things together now, while i’m at home with the baby, how in the name of god will i ever go back to work?!?”

i know people do it all the time. the how is the part i don’t quite get. i envision myself dragging my tail into some professional environment, wrinkled and spit-spotted, black circles under my eyes from a sleepless night spent trying to eradicate baby oatmeal splashes from my walls, pack the stuff to be carted to the sitters, wash the diapers, and hush Oscar back to sleep…not to mention shave my legs and pluck those stray hairs that have cropped up on my chinny-chin-chin. i envision myself falling asleep and drooling on my desk. in these visions, i look vaguely like a very old, washed-out Raggedy Ann doll in a power suit.

such waking nightmares of life as a supermom are the result of a fundamental contradiction in my person. i am compulsively tidy, craving organization and a sense of completedness in my environment. i am also pathologically lazy, with a deep embedded horror of work. it is, admittedly, a problematic combination.

it doesn’t mean i can’t work, or even that i don’t normally bustle about quite diligently, taking pride in my accomplishments. my abhorrence is reserved for the spectre of work, work in the abstract, the obligation to do. because once i commit to doing, my anal tendencies require me to do thoroughly, and to do well. i am doggedly loyal to my obligations, yet resentful and nervous of their claims on my time and energy…especially in my current state of constantly tired. thus, when i consider sizable or numerous tasks, a fluttering panic deep in my innards pipes up “you will never sleep again!” and, poor Pavlovian dog, i immediately lapse into grief and exhaustion and dauntedness, just considering the job(s) at hand.

i do try to hush this gut-bound voice of doom by burying it under chocolate. however, i’d need a whole Wonka factory to quell the overwhelmed feeling i get when i consider hopping back in the saddle of a full-time job. i haven’t actually had a full-time job in years, in the first place…i’ve done a lot of part-time work and sessional teaching and overseas contracts with twenty hour teaching weeks over the past few years. and juggling those things, even without kids at home, has kept me plenty busy, thank you very much. but once the Canadian government’s generously lengthy parental leave expires…well, i’ll need to bring in money, and i do kinda like the idea of doing something with all those degrees hanging in my mother’s basement. hence, the reason i’m tuning up ye olde resume. but i’m also dearly attached to the idea of someday feeling rested again…hence the reason i’m eating cupcakes for breakfast.

i’d like to find something part-time, something rewarding both professionally and financially, here in this small Maritime “city” famous for underemployment. i’d also like to win the Pulitzer for blogging, and win a Merry Maids spree. and lose twelve pounds eating all this chocolate, while we’re wishing.

in real life, i’m going to get that closet cleaned out, take a shower, and enjoy my boy. and perhaps another cupcake. and hopefully some of you can tell me how this job-parent-sleep balance thing really works out?

tell me the nice parts, mostly. i don’t want to have to go make brownies.

i’ve been trying to learn to play well with others.

not in person…though those lessons wouldn’t hurt. much. but despite the admittedly sorry state of my social life (i watched “Dancing with the Stars” the other night – and found it thought-provoking), it’s my blogging that’s really gotten lonely.

it’s taken awhile for me to notice. i started this blog almost six months ago, just before O was born. it’s basically been just a semi-public journal for me…a place to record bits of the path Oscar and Dave and i are trying to navigate. and a reason to keep using words with more than one syllable, which is a big deal, these days. :)

mostly, it’s been a replacement for all those mass emails i’d bombarded my dear, polite family and friends (hereafter referred to as “my fine readership”) with throughout my pregnancy and bedrest. with the blog, they could choose to learn the finer details of my cervical status, or not…they had options. and i love blogging. i’ve always gotten a sense of focus and accomplishment out of writing. having an actual audience, even of twelve (this means you, my fine readership) feeds my sense of creativity. my creativity, sadly, has always been suspiciously externally motivated. i am a wannabe prima donna of words.

but starting the blog didn’t magically turn me into a blogger, not really. it seems that participating in the grand social networking experiment that is the blogosphere takes more than just posting your own ramblings on a website…it’s an interactive thing. and i didn’t interact. i didn’t start to read other people’s blogs, or comment on them, or link to them…i stayed an island here in ye olde crib. i birthed a baby ten days after i birthed the blog, and most of my energy since has been honed in on more rudimentary yet rewarding tasks such as getting spitup off my shirts, and the like. i’ve been so tired i forgot i could read.

but, satisfying though a spit-free shirt may be, that learning curve does plateau, eventually. mercifully. and as the wild initiation into motherhood evens out a little, i begin to realize that there are other people out there chronicling the experience of parenting, too. and doing it really well, damn their jaunty turns of phrase.

in the past couple of weeks, i’ve become a blog junkie. Oscar happily playing with his toes for three minutes? his mothers sneaks into blogs. Oscar contentedly chewing on “Cat in the Hat”? his mother is trying to get the damn laptop to refresh, already. i’ve linked to a few of my favourites in the “baby stuff” category on the right sidebar. these women are amazing. they’re funny. they’re ruthless, and heartbreaking. they’re smarter than anybody on “Dancing with the Stars,” i suspect. and some of them write everyday. i am agog.

so now i want to join in the reindeer games, too. i want cribchronicles to actually have some kind of linked, searchable existence on the internet, and expand my fine readership to include people who don’t actually know me in person and know when i’m exaggerating. i want to join the 21st century and the community of other mom bloggers. i just don’t quite know where to begin.

now, Dave is a geek. he’s wired, and webbed, and self-taught, and amazingly good at problem-solving most things tech-like. he likes to call the net “the interwebs,” and then laugh maniacally. i can never remember exactly who it is he’s mocking when he says that. i think it’s one of those scary-funny DOPA-evangelizing politicians who’ve never actually used a computer and think the net is a series of pneumatic tubes…but i’m not sure. about the politician and the “interwebs” reference, that is, not the tubes.

i am not a geek. i am probably a nerd, a word i’ve always found perversely endearing, but i digress. i do get nervous when i have to learn to do anything new on the computer. but eventually i get over myself, and the new thing becomes a familiar thing…it’s just the transition that sucks. thanks to Dave’s capacity and willingness to fix whatever horrible technical mistakes i may make, like erasing the entire site, or linking to porn by accident, i do firmly believe that i could learn to make the blog all snazzy and hyperlinked and professional-looking. yay Dave.

i just kinda wish he could do it for me. because figuring out where and how to begin, by myself, is going to take time. time searching out even more blogs, and commenting on them, and hunting down the tags feature on WordPress…all those things. and time worrying whether my stats are going up, and whether i’m gaining in popularity, and how to enhance my assets so as to appear charming to a broad audience. it’s already 11:30 pm. poor Oscar is coughing in the next room, and my head should be on my pillow. i don’t have to time to fret myself into a lather about whether or not people i will never meet can find me charming in print. er…screen.

sigh. but i want them to. because i want to belong to a community, these days…i want a slightly bigger stage. i love my daily audience of one, more than i – word-focused as i am – had ever imagined i could love a human being who couldn’t talk out loud. but still. the sound of my own voice echoes, sometimes.

okay, i’m over the momentary yearning for another one.

maybe in another year Dave & i will evaluate that option. maybe eighteen months…we’re starting to get five and six hours of sleep in a row here with Oscar, and it feels too luxurious to let go of, even in fantasy. i like the idea of another baby and a sibling for O…but for the moment, my hands and arms are full enough, methinks. and my eardrums, too, when Oscar has a morning like this one, replete with outraged expressions of frustration from a pre-verbal little person who doesn’t feel like napping. at those moments, the idea of two feels like sheer wanton insanity. :)

but, truth is, people cope…with two, with three, with four under four, even. and i probably could, though not gracefully. but i don’t want to, not yet. it’s not anything about O, even in his crankiest moments, that holds me back. it’s me.

admittedly, the overexposed train wreck that is Britney Spears, back-to-back baby machine, has reinforced my closet class prejudices about family spacing. i think two in twelve months is too soon, particularly if you can’t afford a manny (that’s a bodyguard/nanny/paparazzi blocker, in case you don’t devour People Magazine in the grocery lineups) to accompany you and your offspring on all your Starbucks’ runs. but i could suck up the raised eyebrows should we find ourselves expecting another soonish. what i’m not sure i could suck up is my own selfishness. much as i’ve enjoyed day-dreaming about dragging out my faithful baby-name list again since Angus’ little face kindled the old broody spark in me last week, i’m just not ready. me. myself. and the reason that realisation feels so weighty and serious is that i’m not sure i’ve given much thought to me myself in the months since O was born. amazingly, i’m still here…still a whole – if somewhat altered – person. but just the idea that i have agency in the decision about whether we have another is suddenly quite fascinating, because i’ve spent the better part of the last few months simply coping, taking what comes and trying to deal with it as efficiently and compassionately as i can. i kinda forgot about the larger picture, and that i get to make plans, have wishes, control some things. how neat.

so i’m going to start working towards a little goal of my own, in the coming days…just for me. after two births in a year, my body feels pretty worn out…like i can barely scrounge up the stomach musculature to stand up straight. i was never a bikini model, or much of an athlete, but i’m going to try to get in shape. i’ve suddenly gotten impatient about the post-partum muffin-top spilling over my jeans…and the weariness that settles in a body when it’s only used to push a stroller. so i’m making a change, for me. my stay-puffed marshmallow middle and i are going to start jogging.

it’s going to suck, in one sense. i’m not a natural runner, or an experienced one. the summer weather’s fading fast, and Oscar’s not old enough to run with yet, so i’m going to have to carve out time from my evenings or weekends to go out and get sweaty, when Dave or my mum can take the baby. but i think the payoff will outweigh the pain-in-the-ass factor – not so much in the physical rewards, though those will gradually emerge if i can stick with it for awhile – but in the very act of carving out that time for me. i’ve been feeling like it’s not there, like it simply doesn’t exist. i think i’ve been lazy, really. and i think that learning to value – and push – myself along with Oscar and Dave in this new family we’re building is a really important part of my learning to be a mother…as important, maybe, as learning to revel in five hours sleep, and learning to slow down enough to take delight in the tiny things that fascinate my son. it’s certainly a necessary thing for me to do before i leap into expanding that family in any way.

i’m only making the commitment to run for two months. i’ll see what i can do with myself – with my body and how i use my time and energy – before the snow flies…after that, no promises. but i hope i’ll be better for it. and if i am, i think O will be too.

Oscar has a brand new baby cousin. and he’s a boy, to boot…which delights me, in a brand-new kind of way.

i think his parents might have suspected a girl was waiting in the wings, as the family was statistically due for one, but Angus Phillip Joseph Lastnamehere made his grand entrance safe and sound on Thursday morning. he’s beautiful…in the two pictures i’ve seen, his eyes are huge and he has that wary hangover look that newborns carry off so much better than adults.

and he makes me want another, suddenly and fiercely. from another province, separated by four hours of driving and a sizable body of water, i pine to hold him. not because i’m short on baby-ness over here, but simply because he’s so new. even though Oscar is a wonderful wee snuggler and well within carrying size, he’s no newborn now…he’s a full-fledged person, with communication skills and wants and a will to see them served, if one takes the time to pay attention. and i love that…love watching him laugh and grow and pout and interact. in truth, he’s a hell of a lot more fun now than he was four months ago. but, looking at Angus, i realize how far we’ve come, and i miss O being new. and i long for that…that wondrous, momentary gift of holding such total vulnerability in one’s arms. until i had Oscar, i really didn’t realize how quickly that moment fades…and like all things fleeting, it glitters in the rear-view-mirror with a particularly palpable sheen.

“but if we did have another,” says me in my must-be-addled-to-even-be-considering-this mind, “chances are good it would be a boy.” this is simple fact. i’ve had two sons. statistically, for some strange reason, couples who’ve had two boys line up with a 55-60% chance of having a third. the Internet swears it. :)

even two years ago, if you’d told me i’d be happily considering having a third boy, i’d likely have spat, crossed myself, and tottered off to a corner to hide, perhaps permanently.

i mentioned months ago that i decided at the ripe old age of four that all my children would be girls. obviously, i neglected to register this decision with the Ministry of Storks, or whatever random power determines these particular matters: “all sperm vying for fertilization opportunities, please line up here…ys on the left, one cross each…”

boys scared me, to be honest. i secretly thought of them rather like viruses…something one might catch if one were unlucky. at my most generous i viewed them rather as a cat person looks at dogs…nice for other people, but an awful lot of unpleasant work for those who aren’t inclined that way. i really didn’t know any better – i’d never been around boys. i believed all the snips and snails stuff…i thought everybody did. then i had Finn – tiny, sweet Finn – and lost him. now there’s Oscar…who coos at me and delights in show tunes and has the gentlest nature i could have ever imagined in a child of my own, and yet is all boy and a bruiser for four months, and will likely play hockey before he can form complete sentences. and i wouldn’t trade him, or even change him, for all the girls in China. just the fact that he is himself trumps all my old prejudice and preferences.

but it’s not as if having boys has wiped all thoughts of girls from my mind. i still feel vaguely jealous of other people giving birth to girls, just as i feel envious of other people giving birth to healthy, full-term babies with no complications. to long for something that you cannot have, or at least cannot control, is like having an open wound that will not entirely scar over. yeti am blessed…and i know it. i wanted children, and was able to conceive them. i have held both of them. and i wake to Oscar – and his father, who is my friend and love and partner – every morning.

having boys, then, has taught me that it is babies that are wonderfully sweet and delightful…that their gender is irrelevant. an unavoidable part of life, yes, and something that gets read onto each of us with various sets of expectations, and then internalized and performed…i took my Queer Theory classes. but i really didn’t know how little gender affects love. and having Angus join the family has hammered that lesson home…because he is the fourth male grandchild born into Dave’s family, and yet – and this is what i really did not know could happen – he is just as warmly, excitedly welcomed as if he were the first girl. he is special, because he is himself.

god, i’ve been dense all these years.

welcome to the world, baby Angus. thanks for teaching me something so valuable, so early on in your career…may it be a long and wise one.  can’t wait to meet you.

i’ve started a mom’s group.

those words make me blush. rather self-consciously, like i’ve exposed a secret fetish for something turgidly wholesome. in my former baby-free life, i might have conjured up an image of a mom’s group founder as a rabidly perky, baby-obsessed keener, replete with matching tupperware and a “Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul” collection. which i swear i’m not. really. i own army boots. i wore them just last year. and i still have friends who don’t have kids, and i wouldn’t want them to think i’ve gone over to the Disney side entirely….hence the blushing. i do still read things other than “The Baby Whisperer”….in very short intervals.

but the fact is, i don’t really have friends who do have kids, at least not here, in the milk-stained, sleep-deprived flesh. and i’ve been feeling the lack, deeply. so this Wednesday afternoon mother’s group that i cobbled together with a few phone calls two weeks ago is actually something i’m kinda proud of. it’s the first time i’ve ever really been the one to take that first step with people i didn’t know well; the first time i’ve been willing to stick my neck out and try to make a group come together out of a scattered collection of individuals. i’ve spent the last twenty years or so letting people come to me…and i’ve been lucky. they’ve come – i am blessed in my friends. but asking new people to come, even just for coffee, sent me into paroxysms of adolescent angst.

the other mamas were acquaintances, mostly, or the friends of friends. i worried before i called them: would they think my mom’s group idea was lame? would they would think i was some kind of mom cheerleader, too earnest to hang out with? would they think i was deficient, eager to commiserate with other new mothers because of my inability to cope? was the city already clotted with groups, and was i advertising my sad isolation in not knowing anyone who’d invited me to join one? were their thighs already contracted to pre-baby size? would anyone even show up?

in the end, i got over myself and picked up the phone, four or five times over, and called them. and i noticed something that i probably would have noticed decades ago if i’d swallowed my insecurities and learned to initiate friendships better. it really wasn’t so risky, after all. they all came. they were happy to be asked. they, too, welcomed the chance to get out of the house and talk to adults. and they’re nice.

we don’t do much. we descend on a coffee-shop patio in the middle of the city and circle our prams like wagons, making ourselves and our babies a little oasis of shared experience. we talk. most conversations are erratic and unfinished: a baby cries or falls asleep or throws a rice biscuit into someone else’s stroller. the topics are mundane, mostly – sleep schedules, when to switch from three hours between feeds to four. how hurt and angry one of us was when flatly told not to bring her newborn to a friend’s wedding shower. how frustrated one of us (moi) is trying to find a foundation garment to wear under the bridesmaid’s dress i’ve got to squeeze myself into next week – who thought spaghetti straps were a good idea for a nursing mother? and how hard it is adding a second child to the mix of a family, and what babysitters come recommended, and how we’d really like to go to New York. not all mom stuff, just…talk.

the group is good for me. and i hope, as the babies grow, it’ll be good for Oscar too, in the socialization sense. but i think it’s already served a valuable purpose, in teaching me a lesson i hope i can pass on to little O, sometime before he hits thirty: it’s not so bad to reach out to people. and it’s much cooler to try to get what you want from the world than to freeze up and lament your loneliness.

if you try sometimes, you get what you need. trite, but true. thanks, Stones. thanks, fellow mamas in my group. see you Wednesday.

it happened again.

Oscar and i were at the pharmacy this afternoon, picking up some things we didn’t really need while my weary brain defiantly blocked all memory of the baby wipes we’d actually come out to purchase, when a sweet, blue-haired lady sidled up to the carriage and peered in.

“how old is he?” she cooed.

“three months,” i answered, hardly believing it myself. and then i added, because i could see the comment coming anyway, “it goes awfully fast.”

“oh, it does indeed!” she chirped. “before you know it, he’ll be off at college. enjoy every moment.” she smiled at me in a knowing way and took one last peek at O, breathing him in.
i watched her walk away down the aisle, and i stood there frozen for a minute, forgetting not only the baby wipes, but where i was. i had tears in my eyes, but they weren’t quite the tears of sentimental motherliness that the lady had likely been aiming for. they were tears of guilt, and frustration, and great sadness.

i love him dearly. and i did nearly melt down in motherly heartbreak the first time he outgrew a tiny preemie outfit, and i’m amazed by how big he is now, and sad in that beautiful, bittersweet way about the fact that every day that passes is one we can never get back. but enjoy every moment? the ones where he’s been crying for five hours and his little throat is raw? the ones where it’s three am and i’m stunned with exhaustion and seriously fear that i will never sleep again? the ones where i’m trying to shush him to sleep for the seventh time in a row and i hear my voice get shrill and i say “why can’t you just sleep, child?” in a tone i don’t mean and don’t want and don’t like. i can’t. i can’t enjoy every moment. and sometimes i feel like a failure because of it, because of the constant reminder from well-meaning souls out there that someday he’ll be big and gone and i will never have him to snuggle again.

one of the saddest things about life, i think, is that the capacity to be fully present in the moments we want to be present in sometimes escapes us. i want to take joy in Oscar’s daily growth, and most of the time i do. but sometimes i lust for sleep like a junkie in withdrawal, and sometimes i fixate on the piles of dirty laundry and can’t really get totally focused on my sixth chorus of “Mama’s Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird.” and sometimes i really wonder if i can do this at all, and if it’s fair to him that he got such an anal, impatient person for a mother…no matter how i try to improve myself.

i don’t know the answer to that question. i do know that the moments i’m asking it aren’t ones i’m enjoying, much.

those come, though. i spent an hour nursing him in the middle of the night last night, and in the almost-dark of the nightlight his downy hair glinted in soft spikes all over his head. and i nuzzled him, and smelled him, and allowed myself to really feel the weight of him in my arms and the heat of his small body curled into mine. and i felt complete, and present, and full of grace.

then i fell asleep on him, and woke in a sweaty, milky tangle with him breathing his baby-snore rhythm beside me. and that sticky, groggy puddle of us, i cherished that too: the reminder of our visceral human-ness. and i cherished it in part because i know, no matter how long these night wakings seem now, that someday they’ll be far in the past and i’ll miss that feel of my baby boy in my arms. i know that. i know that even when those same arms ache to put his kicking, thirteen-pound self down.

and i know that forty years from now, i’ll probably be accosting new mothers in the Shoppers Drug Mart and telling them to enjoy their babies, because it goes so fast. not because i actually expect them to enjoy every moment – i hope i remember to explain that. nobody enjoys everything. nobody remembers everything. and they shouldn’t try…i shouldn’t. i know. but the outside reminder that this wild, exhausting, heart-rending period is also precious and finite is helpful sometimes.

thanks, blue-haired lady. next time, why don’t you offer to babysit so i can nap and you can enjoy him too?

so…tell me honestly. do you think Oscar’s too young to send away to summer camp for a couple of weeks? :)

it’s been a bit of a nightmare weekend. for three days, the boy has been crying whenever he’s awake, which is approximately every hour or two around the clock. he appears to be on a bit of a nursing strike and a growth spurt at the same time, so he latches on, pulls off, screams, latches on again…and around we go. hurts like hell, and apparently doesn’t make him very happy, either. we’ve resorted to using more supplementary bottles as a result, which is likely exacerbating the problem: i suspect he’s gotten spoilt by the easy flow of the bottle nipple and not want to work for his dinner anymore. fair enough, son. but i fear our days of nursing may not be long for this world…and that makes me sad.

not quite sad enough to spend the next seventy hours withholding bottles and trying to train him back on the breast properly, admittedly, as poor little O seems to think he’s starving each time the flow slows down, but sad. i am grieving my own hopes for Oscar’s babyhood – those best-laid plans that had no place in them for colic and allergies. ah, sweet baby O, this whole ride has not quite been what i had in mind. i’m trying to forgive myself that…and resign myself to the road we’re on. i’m getting there, but i don’t like it much. bah. humbug.

mama is tired – actually, beyond tired. mama is bone weary. and cranky. and hot, dammit…here we are having this fabulous stretch of summertime weather in a part of the world not always known for balmy temperatures, and all i want to do is crawl into bed and stay there for about a week, sunshine or no sunshine.

i should have stayed in bed – or at least in the house – this evening: drove my mum home, and managed to back into a car. a parked car…that Lincoln just popped out of nowhere, i swear, officer! or rather, it was just minding its own stationary business…and there was the hind end of my Kia, butting into its bumper. completely my fault. and there went eighteen years (god, i’m that old?) of a perfect driving record. sigh. kinda sums up how i feel about the whole weekend.

i did leave them my number. and felt vaguely virtuous for doing so. i wonder if any of that smug pleasantness will be left over by the time the bill comes in?

when i feel cheerful enough, i remember to tell myself “this too shall pass.” if anyone knows when, they’re invited to please let me know, and to hurry it up, if they can. before i seriously consider sussing out that infant summer camp, or sending myself off to one.

i do love campfire songs…