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this is a picture of Oscar’s mother in NYC.

it is a picture, more specifically, of Oscar’s mother at the Rockefeller Center, in front of the building her grandparents worked in during WWII.

there is no Oscar in this picture.

for just a couple of days, that was really nice. Oscar’s mother wore clothes with no spitup on them, and went to Hairspray and MoMA and funky little bookstores. she went shopping, and didn’t worry about nap schedules. she had real, uninterrupted conversations with Oscar’s father. Oscar’s mother ate a lot of Korean food, and Italian food, and Turkish food, and some pastries that the gods clearly invented. she had the best cheesecake of her life. she did not stint on caffeine intake.

Oscar’s mother drank in the afternoon.

it was a wonderful trip to a fantabulous city, and Oscar’s mother was enthralled and would go back next weekend if she could convince someone to get her a ticket.

but that isn’t the whole picture.

the picture doesn’t show the panic attack Oscar’s mother had at 1 am the first night, trying to fall asleep in a fabulously skanky “hotel” on Times Square while her very overtired and overstimulated brain reviewed all the terrible things that could possibly happen to poor Oscar over the course of his lifetime and played them in a vivid and unrelenting reel.

the picture doesn’t show the way Oscar’s mother’s head snapped round every time she heard a baby cry on the subway, or saw a little bald head peeping out of a snuggli.

it doesn’t show the hokey “i heart NY” baby onesie that Oscar got as a souvenir, or the NYC nameplate for his door, or his Oscar the Grouch his mother carted back to Canada in her carry-on, or the copy of “The Giving Tree” bought at St. Mark’s Place just so he would eventually know he was being thought of even when we were away from him.

the picture doesn’t show the Air Canada employee that Oscar’s mother nearly ate whole and spit out when the flight home to Oscar was cancelled.

the picture doesn’t show the nice first class seats Oscar’s mother and father got to sit in on the eventually rescheduled flight, once the previously mentioned Air Canada employee was made aware of the existence of Oscar waiting patiently at home. or the fear in said employee’s eyes as she tried to assuage Oscar’s mother into feeling a little less fierce and feral.

the picture doesn’t show Oscar’s mother’s face when she got home at midnight last night after fifteen hours in transit – we could have driven home faster – and pulled Oscar from his crib and rocked him in the dark and kissed his head.

i think that was probably the best picture of the whole trip, but only Oscar’s father got to see it.

wow, what a city…like a toyland for grownups. someday we’ll take Oscar and see if it’s a toyland for kids, too. :)

at Oscar’s six month checkup on Friday, they asked me whether he knows his name.

i think i blushed. and foolishly, wishfully called out “Osssscaaaar!” in my sweetest singsong-y tone…which he flatly ignored. shite. all the “good mother” brownie points i’d been hoarding for myself like stars on a kindergarten chart went flying out the window…kerthump. um…he’s supposed to know his name by now?

i smiled apologetically at the doctor and called out again. this time O turned his head and smiled, beatifically – and a few little gold stars crawled back in the window, redeeming my motherly vanity. but in truth, i suspect O’s compliance was more a response to my voice than to his name specifically. it’s not his fault. i don’t call him by his name very often. if he could talk, Oscar would most likely tell you that his name is Bunny.

i didn’t plan this pet name for him. he was “BabyO” and “Little One” at first. then, as he filled out, he was “Muffin” for awhile, and “Pumpkin” and “My Sweet Baboo”…which devolved into “Boo,” and then the apt, if unfortunate, “Poo.” it’s not that i don’t like his proper name…i love it. but in discovering my inner mother, i’ve learned that this new, heretofore secret self thrills in singing tuneless, repetitive babble to her offspring all day long. and she likes the tuneless, repetitive babble to rhyme. nothing, sadly, in the English language – nothing whatsoever – rhymes with Oscar. so Little One-Son Muffin-Puffin Boo-Poo-You-Baboo he became.

and about two months ago, in the midst of one of the singing extravaganzas which will likely render Oscar musically scarred for life, the name Bunny came out. my funny, sunny, Sonny Bunny. it’s stuck. the rhyme is fun, and sweet, sure. but my affinity for the syllables probably goes deeper than mere phonetics. Bunny is a name that, for much of my life, i prized above all others. not for myself…no, “Bonnie” has been plenty cutesy enough, thank you kindly. but Bunny evokes a rush of comfort and tenderness in me…and was for many years the name of my most beloved.

for Oscar is not the first Bunny to grace my life. rather, this fine gentleman on the right, the blue, threadbare beanbag rabbit who is actually older than Dave and wiser – in the estimation, at least, of the child who brought him to life in her imagination and made him a confidante, security blanket and precious friend – than anyone…he was my first. he is almost thirty-three years old, and could use a right eye and some fresh whiskers. but he is, to me, still beautiful.

however, i hadn’t connected Oscar-my-Sonny-Bunny with Bunny my plush companion, or even noticed the fact that i – naming snob that i am – have utilized such an obvious moniker twice, until today. today, CBC radio’s marvellous Stuart MacLean unwound another story in the ever-ongoing Dave & Morley saga, about a stuffed rabbit named Bunny who comes to live with the family when daughter Stephanie is small and afraid of the dark.

i caught the word “bunny” first, and began mindlessly singing to Oscar. then Dave pointed out that the story was about a stuffed bunny, like my Bunny, and i pricked up my ears. but things didn’t develop quite as i’d expected. as Stephanie grows, her faithful Bunny goes everywhere with her…camp, sleepovers, even treeplanting…until, one day, when Stephanie’s off at college, Dave finds Bunny in her closet, left behind. unnerved, Dave takes to carting Bunny around with him for a few weeks until he too learns to let go. the Bunny is eventually passed on to another little girl who needs comfort from the dark. end of story.

i listened with tears in my eyes. tears of recognition, at first, because i am a sap. and as the story unfolded, tears of bewilderment. i felt bristly, defensive. how could Stephanie just leave Bunny behind? how could her father just give him away at the end? because i, of course, did not leave my Bunny behind when i went away to college, but dragged him with me, gave him place of honour in my tiny dorm room along with the empty Southern Comfort bottles and my dubbed tape collection (and my books, i should mention, in case my mother happens to be reading). i didn’t leave him behind when i moved further, either…out West, up North, to Korea, Eastern Europe. Bunny – who is better travelled than most people i’ve met – always came. to my marriage bed, and a couple of other beds before and after (avert your eyes, mother). by the time Dave & i got together, when i was nearly thirty, i considered meeting Bunny to be a rite of passage in admitting people to my inner circle. anyone who did not accord the proper respect to the deflated sack of bilious blue polyester, with his one sage eye, was not worthy of any great trust.

there is a great debate now in child-rearing circles about “transition objects,” as teddies and bunnies and security blankets are formally known. it is thought that perhaps the need for a transition object suggests a lack of secure attachment in a child…that having a “lovey” implies trauma and a poorly adjusted personality. perhaps. i suppose i can’t very well hop up and vouch for my own well-adjustedness after having just admitted that i slept with a blue stuffed rabbit into my thirties. but i can say that Bunny has been incredibly good for me. and to me.

when i was small and needed tubes in my ears, and a hospital stay? Bunny wore a bandage tied around one ear for three winters. when people moved, or died, and the constancy of change was too heavy and lonely to deal with? Bunny burrowed against my chest, comforting in his constancy. when i was angry, wounded by the injustices of grade school? Bunny was a safe repository for secrets and lamentations. i once threw him across the bedroom in a broken-hearted fury…but – due to his dignity, in which i believed wholeheartedly – he also deserved and demanded chagrin, and apology. in Bunny, i invested my best: his silent, one-eyed gaze was a lens through which i judged myself, and he was both infinitely loving and eminently, scruprulously exacting.

i dragged him with me into my adulthood because i couldn’t leave him behind. through loving him, a la The Velveteen Rabbit, i’d made him real to me – he was my childhood incarnate, but externalized. and through all the mess of my struggles to grow up and truly grow into my adulthood, he was with me, held to my chest when i needed him. he helped me keep loving myself at times when i don’t know if i’d have been able to do so otherwise, because – through him – i could still access and comfort the child within.

it was only when Finn died that i outgrew Bunny. it wasn’t just the staggering magnitude of the loss, but the nature of it that suddenly rendered the rabbit impotent, external. for the first time, i hurt in a way that had no connection to me as a child. Finn had made me a parent, briefly…and it was as a parent that i grieved. not for the remnants of any child i’d been, but the one i’d carried, held. no small creature in my arms could give comfort if it was only plush and stuffing. so i was doubly bereft…both of my firstborn, and of the lifelong sense of sanctuary i’d always found in the little blue rabbit.

but time is healing.

these days, Bunny lives on top of the bureau in our bedroom…no longer a tactile part of my daily life, but still present, still faithful. i pet his blue head now and then, and find benediction in that mild, familiar, plastic gaze. i am learning again to pay attention to the child within, and the stuff she needs…and i am grateful for Bunny’s ongoing readiness, and reminder. Oscar – who has his own stuffed bunnies but no transitional object of choice just yet – is the child i focus on most of the time, though. and i am deeply grateful that i get to.

i have been blessed twice with Bunnies. loving the blue one taught me, i think, a great deal about loving and listening to the boy one. i hope, even now that i seem to have grown beyond my symbiosis with the little blue rabbit, that i can remember what i learned. Oscar could do worse for a nick-namesake.

but we still need to work on the child knowing his real name.

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.

we had a big day today.

this afternoon was the 2006 Run for the Cure, the breast cancer fundraiser. i bundled up O in too many clothes – i have this nervous horror of him being underdressed – and we walked the route…along with my mom, her friend/longtime companion Henry, and my sister Erin.

we raised just about five hundred dollars for the event, which i thought was rather amazing. i haven’t fundraised since those nasty magazine subcription drives we were conscripted into in high school, when i couldn’t find a donor to save myself and ended up having to buy a year’s worth of Women’s World Weekly or some such schlock just to stay on the student council. but this was pleasantly different. when i registered for the run, i set my fundraising goal at $150, which i thought was modest but reasonable. after all, when one only gets organized enough to register five days before the run, one must not be too grandiose. but the generosity of family and friends blew me away.

Erin and my mom and i walked in memory of my grandmother Hilda, my father’s mother. Hilda died in 1988. i was sixteen then. Erin – who is my half-sister, the youngest of my father’s children – was three. my parents had been divorced fifteen years. but there was a bond stronger than mere marriage between my mother and her ex-mother-in-law…a shared staunchness, a respect and odd likeness. Hilda’s funeral was the first time i remember seeing my mother cry. so, we three walked today for Hilda.

Henry walked for his wife Laurene, who died almost exactly seventeen years ago, in early October of 1989. Laurene and Hilda would have known each other in the 60s, when Henry was minister at a then-growing suburban United Church where Hilda was a Sunday school teacher for thirty years. they would have known each other fairly well, i imagine…wives in their thirties and forties, raising children in the same small community, organizing lobster suppers together, dishing out potatoes in the big kitchen at the back of the church hall, holding fundraisers of a different sort from the run today.

i don’t think they could have imagined us…the very model of the modern muddled family, walking today in their memory. nobody aspires to be a statistic, however inspiring. Laurene would be in her seventies now, had she survived breast cancer. my grandmother would be in her early eighties. they brought us together this afternoon, our strange little group…just as the memory of thousands of other family members or friends or coworkers brought together the other runners and walkers and strollers and riders in the throng of white and pink shirts.

cancer scares the shit out of me. three of my four grandparents have died of it, two before i was born…it skulks in the gene pool, waiting. my mother celebrates her fifty-eighth birthday on Tuesday: she is just about the age Hilda was when she found the first lump in her breast. both of my mother’s own parents were dead by fifty-eight. and i looked at her today and realized how much i don’t want Oscar participating in the Run for the Cure in her memory. i don’t want him, like Erin, to have only faint memories of his grandmother. i don’t want him, like Henry and Laurene’s grandchildren, to grow up never knowing her at all.

and i really don’t want him and Dave left alone, to run in my memory. not anytime soon. not ever.

the pinny on my back this afternoon said “i am running for Hilda.”

but it wasn’t entirely true…and not just the part about the “running”. i walked to honour Hilda’s memory, and it made me proud to do so. but i walked for Oscar…Oscar whom i’ve nursed with these breasts, who i want to watch grow in the long term. so i think we’ll do this again next year. i’d like O to grow up thinking of the run as an annual event we do around Nannie’s birthday, with other families, for a great cause. and maybe if we can raise enough money to beat cancer, he’ll never have to walk or run in anyone’s memory…because we’ll be there with him.

so, i really did go running yesterday.

or, at least, i went out in the rain and trundled along at a fast waddle. my panting, bosom-bouncing scoot earning me more than a few glances from passing cars (i think i need a better sports bra), but i did it. for at least a whole kilometre, i did it. and magically, i did not collapse nor die in the doing.

of course, neither did i magically discover that elusive “runner’s high” that i hear so much about. i did get a wee thrill from the oxygen deprivation, reminiscent of the thin, strained feeling one gets right before one passes out from hyperventilation, but no identifiable “high.” pity. i could use a high, and the promise of it brings me sporadically back to jogging every year or two, for a few weeks. i’ve always suspected that runner’s high runs faster than i do. i galumph along chasing it for a bit…but it gets away on me, and then i forget about it.

this morning, however, it’s hard to forget yesterday’s little jog. i woke up feeling vaguely pleased with myself, like i’d done something virtuous and deserved a nice pat for it. when i glanced at the clock and realized it was ten after seven and we’d all slept right through the night, i thought that sleeping must be the good thing i’d accomplished. then i rolled over, and my bleary brain wondered why – and how – the cat was gnawing on both my legs under the blankets. when i realized that the cat was sitting across the room staring at me, i remembered. went jogging. yay. crippled now. ow.

turns out that walking around the house holding a baby whilst working out the lactic acid from one’s limbs is not fun. Oscar has learned a few new swear words this morning…but he is polite. he neither criticizes nor repeats…nice boy. i’m going to miss this baby stage when it passes.

as hobbled as i feel, i’m proud of myself. mostly just for following through on the commitment to go: i want to keep trying to be a person who actually does what she sets out to do. i’d like to set that example for O. but i’m also amazed, in a much deeper and less personal way, at the capacity of my body to adapt and rejuvenate itself. yesterday, as my legs plodded along the trail and my lungs opened up, i remembered that only five months ago this body was completely confined to a bed. for ten weeks, i lay around and watched my calf muscles atrophy. and yet here they were, despite a lack of any focused recovery effort, carrying me faithfully along at a pace twice as fast as they’re accustomed to. i’m grateful they didn’t dump me in a heap.

i will go again tomorrow.

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.

ah, the sacrifices of parenthood.

Oscar has had diarrhea for almost three weeks now, poor wee beastie. no, this is not another post on poop. but when one’s newborn is miserable for weeks on end, the desire to seek out the root of that misery and rout it out grows with each passing sleepless night. so after a few calls to the public health nurse, a few sheepish am-i-just-being-a-paranoid-mom visits to the family doctor, and a Friday referral to the children’s clinic at the hospital here, we finally have a potential answer to the mystery of how our sweet baby turned into a leaky, tortured screech owl. lactose intolerance, says the specialist of the moment. blame it on the cows.

since i’m not quite ready to give up this breastfeeding thing Oscar and i’ve worked so hard to master, i’m giving up cows instead. or at least their milk and its byproducts…for the next two weeks or so, to see if it makes any difference in the little guy’s comfort and bowels.

one does not realize how much one owes to the poor cows until one goes to give them up. i’ve gone off the hoof before…i was a fairly strict vegetarian for a number of years. but even then, it was the beef i missed. i could go years and not look at chicken or pork or seafood…but…however much i’d like to be more politically and environmentally noble and avoid mad cow disease and all those fine things, i like the taste of cattle. a lot. in all their myriad forms.

now, as a decidly fallen vegetarian, i can eat as much steak as my postpartum anemia might clamour for. which i thought would be more of a consolation in the rest of this cow withdrawal, until i realized that giving up milk doesn’t just mean switching to soy milk on my cereal. that part’s fine. but ditching yogurt – and thus tzatziki? and cheese – and thus those little frozen pasta lunches i’ve been subsisting on! and butter – oh poor naked popcorn and wax beans. i grew up on margarine. i only discovered butter in my twenties. and while i don’t eat it on much, those few things i eat it on i really eat solely for the butter…what good is corn on the cob without it? all baked goods made with milk are also verboten, as are any whey byproducts flavouring my snack foods. and Dairy Queen. no Dairy Queen hot fudge sundaes. no blizzards. not a single slice of the Dairy Queen cake i was going to buy Dave for Father’s Day next Sunday. as we happen to live right next door to the local Dairy Queen, this whole ice cream prohibition is a particular hardship, as i can’t step outside my door without the temptress staring me in the face. ach, what one endures for one’s offspring!

if poor Oscar really does turn out to be lactose intolerant, i think we’ll have to move to a different neighbourhood…imagine growing up next door to the town’s major purveyor of ice cream and not being able to eat any? cruel, methinks.

ah sweet Dairy Queen, parting is such sweet sorrow.

and i suspect Dave is getting a nice tie for Father’s Day instead of that blizzard cake. wouldn’t want him to feel guilty having to eat it in front of me. :)

i have spent most of the past 24 hours slumped on the futon in my den, nursing an intestinal bug and an incessantly hungry baby. and watching, with that secret, lurid fascination i usually reserve for entertainment gossip and the shopping channel, the annual fundraising telethon for the IWK children’s hospital in Halifax NS.

i’ve never watched a telethon before. i remember, vaguely, the cable tv marathons of my childhood, full of juvenile tap-dancers and the musical talents of local Women’s Institute members, but as i was never invited to perform in these spectacles, i failed to find them anything but embarrassing. i was a late bloomer in the community spirit department.

but this IWK telethon, full of poignant testimonials from now-healthy children and pleas to pick up the phone and call, compels me now. over the past fourteen months, i’ve spent a cumulative nine weeks living there, on their perinatal bedrest ward. one of my children was born at the IWK, and died there: the whole eleven hours of his life were spent inside the hospital walls. my second child, lying fat in my lap as i type, was threatened with the same too-early arrival as his older brother but came at a safe thity-six weeks, thanks to the IWK’s diagnostic and bedrest care.

it takes a lot of money to run a hospital, and a lot of equipment that Medicare can’t always supply to meet demand. when Finn was born and the emergency code was sounded, a neo-natal team of fifteen people came pouring into the delivery room so quickly my addled mind imagined them all hiding in a secret closet off the room, waiting for their cue. and they all had monitors and machines he needed – thousands and thousands of dollars worth of monitors and machines, utilized without hesitation even for a child born with almost no lung development, a child without much hope of survival. Finn was treated with skill and dignity and care for the duration of his short life. we could have asked for more from providence, or whatever powers determine who lives and who dies, but we couldn’t have asked for more from the hospital and its staff. they do good work, and even when they cannot save a child, their efforts matter.

the money raised by the telethon – which factors into the millions every year – goes towards funding the equipment and supplies and programs that keep the hospital functioning as humanely as it does. we’ve made a small donation in Finn’s memory, last year and this one…but watching the show this weekend, i’ve realized i’d like to do more. as Oscar gets older, maybe we’ll do some fundraising as a family. and while my experiences at the IWK aren’t the poster-child kind that usually inspire testimonials, i still wanted to share one…hence this post.

if you’re connected to the Maritimes, the IWK telethon website is www.iwkfoundation.org. consider giving. if you’re elsewhere, take a look at your local children’s hospital, and consider offering what you can, be it time, toys, or money. they’re a good cause.

end soapbox. :)

it is 11 pm on Thursday night and i, dear friends, am in labour. i sat through book club as the contractions got more and more…um…noticeable, thinking “nah, i’m making this up.” i have since changed my mind. or, at least, the delusions are now forcing me to stop speaking every few minutes or so and try to find my happy place. my breathing place.
we are off to the hospital…and hopefully, we’ll meet our wee boy soon.

wish us luck. back later. :)

my mom and i cleaned the baby’s room this weekend.

or, well…she cleaned, and scrubbed, and re-arranged, bless her heart. i mostly held a rag in one hand and waved it in the direction i thought things ought to go. one of the secret advantages of having spent all those weeks on bedrest is that nobody expects me to do much in the way of work these days. admittedly, i do get winded folding laundry, so their lowered expectations aren’t entirely unrealistic. but i still feel terribly pampered, like i’m getting away with something.

the problem with me supervising Cinderella Mom’s kind Easter gift of organization, though, was that i had no clue what half the things in the baby’s room were actually for. finding a place for baffling pastel cloths is not the simple task it might appear to be, particularly when they appear to have magically materialized in the nursery-to-be without instructions.

while i was away in the hospital for two months, kind friends and family (particularly my generous and enthusiastic ma-in-law…this baby has some keen grandmothers) came bearing gifts. many gifts. lovely gifts, but mysterious gifts. little blankies, and littler blankie-looking things, and plastic-covered blankie-shaped things that might be mattress pads…and a lot of other soft items, but not one of them with a training manual.

i like to think of myself as an intelligent person…i play a mean game of trivia, and am in an ongoing quest to actually figure out the internal evil workings of the CRA (Revenue Canada by any other name). but i find myself addled by infant products. i’ve managed to get my cloth diapers (which i am able, miraculously, to distinguish from the other square cotton blanket-ish things populating the nursery) all prewashed and softened, but the kitten hasn’t stayed still long enough to actually let me practice putting one on someone. and i seem to have six different baby butt creams sitting on the changing table Dave’s parents lovingly handcrafted – but no clue as to how to distinguish between them. i live in secret fear that i will get this baby home, bring him downstairs to display to visitors, and discover that i’ve got him swaddled in a changing pad and wearing diaper rash lotion in lieu of lipbalm.

i suspect, though, that i can’t be entirely alone in this discovery of ineptitudes i didn’t know i possessed. and i suspect the changing pad will be the least of my worries, given a couple of weeks. so…this Wednesday night, April 19th, 7 pm EST (8 pm Atlantic, my time), the crib will host its first live webcast, using Skype.

topic – things you wish you’d known before your baby came home with you. identifying products, choosing good ones, but also what newborns actually need and do, what supports new parents actually find helpful, how you felt in the early days after the birth…stuff like that.

how to listen – under the “webcast” heading on the top right of the page, you’ll find two links. the top one, “text chat room,” will take you directly to the chat, which will be open all during the webcast. questions, comments, and any problems with the live audio feed can be addressed in the chat. the audio itself can be accessed by clicking the lower link, “listen live,” which will take you to the audio stream – instructions for listening to the webcast will be there.

all welcome.