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her cord fell off today
the dry stump a husk, just a thing to shed
its final thread hung sticky, stretched and shining in the morning light
alien, untouchable Other

for a heartbeat i watched it, enthralled
unable to bring myself to pull away that last tangible proof
that we once had a lifeline, she and me
that i was her first home, that we were more than Other, not quite two
even so soon it seems impossible

when i unwrapped her the next time the thread had broken
quietly, unheralded.
garbage now. she does not need it anymore.

and the maudlin sniff reverberates around my head
oh christ, they grow so fast
Josephine, my love, your mother is a sap.

**i swear Oscar didn’t lose his cord until he was nearly three weeks old. i’m sure she’s very advanced.

what did YOU do with your kids’ cord stumps? i felt vaguely guilty tossing it…like it ought to be saved like loose teeth or something…but…let’s face it, it’s a leftover body bit. and i am acculturated to think that’s kinda icky.**

…actually, i don’t have ’em, those blues. what i have is something…unfamiliar.

(ducks, peers about waiting for rotten tomatoes to materialize from the wings. gazes earnestly at audience).

i feel like i’ve had the blues…baby blues…for four years now. or maybe fourteen, if we’re counting the general standard-issue blues…maybe twenty. the low-grade depressive feeling that all is about to go wrong, or at the very best is happening somewhere else and will never happen to me. the sense that the world is a zero-sum economy, and that i am lacking in capital and agency. i’ve spent my whole adolescent and adult life waiting for the next thing to happen; straining to be older, more credentialed, more experienced, more travelled, more…whatever. i’ve tried, worked hard, but seldom felt fully satisfied, content. i’ve always been looking ahead, nursing hopes close to my heart, hopes tied tight to old wounds and disappointments. i have been happy, plenty, but True Happiness has always seemed either a fiction or a destination still around the corner.

except suddenly, i’ve arrived. in the last place i expected. in the sanctuary of this house these past few days, stumbling about bleary and leaking milk like a firehose, i feel complete. saturated with grace as with bodily fluids…full up with all i could really ask out of life. i am, inexplicably, Truly Happy for the first time i can remember…content in the exact right now. i wipe faces and bums and sing the alphabet song and lullabies and try to catch sleep in the corners of the day and they look at me, these two little faces, and i catch my breath. mine, runs the small refrain lilting in the back of my brain, mine. they are mine. and they are precious to me, and for now, for just right now, they are here with me and i am at peace.

i’ve had wilder times, and more restful ones, sure. but this bounty…these two healthy children, after all the grieving and the longing and the coming to terms with the reality that fortune is a capricious bitch sometimes…this tastes like winning the lottery. this partner and this stable life i long thought would stifle and then thought would escape me is suddenly mine…four of us and a cat. i feel like frigging June Cleaver, and it feels weird. and simple. and good.

there are still plenty of things i want to do, sure. there are still sorrows knit to me, part of who i am…we had three children, four pregnancies, lost multiple dreams and cherished illusions along the way to where we are. but the old, familiar ache of something missing – something desperately wanted but likely just out of reach forever – is gone, wiped away. i have all i could ask for. and to my surprise – me who has always been hungry for more – it feels like enough.

this is a sea change, a self i do not know. in change there is usually loss, and i usually mourn, turn blue, keen and moan with the recognition of things past and gone forever. but this time, i just stand here watching, swaying with weariness…content and bemused and spilling gratitude like milk, wondering what the hell i do now, and watching the skies for shoes to drop.

my Posey girl.

you came home yesterday, four days old.

we were greedy, all a-clamour for early release, but by late Friday we had to admit that you had the orangey glow of an aging Beach Boy. you wore it with grace, kiddo, but had to spend 36 hours on the little tanning bed in the NICU. jaundice is an exhausting ordeal for a small body, and you stopped eating so well…started dropping off before you’d even begun to feed, became impossible to waken no matter how we tortured your wee toes. your pixie face stayed still, lips crenellated in a pucker like an old smoker. i missed your bright bird eyes, Posey.

and so we detoured into the bsheeeez-bhump rhythm of the breast pump and the measuring of tiny gains and losses – in milk production, in your less-than-six-pounds body weight, in rare moments of hospital sleep unbroken by call bells and feeding schedules and new roommates wheeled in at 4 am. it is an old story for us, your dad & i, true…but you are not your brothers, little girl. i dared hope, with you. you seemed so solidly, snugglily healthy at the root of it all that i found myself daydreaming of just running you out the door of the place. the great escape, with my pint-sized Sundance Kid.

i was too cocky, Posey.

we brought you home still lethargic, but free. you dozed through yesterday afternoon, though you woke to feed and suddenly, magically, were nursing like a champ. your brother welcomed you with pride and delight, kept bouncing back into the room to check on you, to kiss you, to tell you to wake up. the cat ignored you, except for one good smelling. i read you and Oscar a bedtime story beside his crib, my arms full, heart full. and then i took the time to bathe my stitches and put away gifts and oh, i was a fool, thinking this ain’t so hard, two kids.

you woke at midnight. screaming. you screamed whenever your mouth didn’t have some kind of nipple in it, and sometimes when it did. we fed for three hours straight, my milk just in…when i gave out, your father tried a bottle. and still you screamed, tiny girl. i was wrong in my early assessments of you as a quiet soul: when pressed, you put Yoko Ono to shame. but i hated seeing you pressed, Posey. you are so small, so new, for pain. holding you last night, unable to comfort or cure, i realized us as truly separate beings for the first time. and i dreamed fitfully in the rocking chair, spinning dragons to slay, heart broken with the truth that you are only nominally mine to guard, that at the core of things, i am helpless. like your brothers, daughter, your skin is your own, not mine.

i worry, though. about both of us, about the months to come. it has seemed so easy with you, ’til now. and i am wary, suddenly, of the prospect of colic, again, of the memory of my own despair in that long four months of crying and exhaustion. i know one night does not make things fore-ordained. i know too, very well, that there are far worse things than a colicky baby. i am shamed by my own dread, Posey. i am sorry, too. because holding you, warm and soft and feather-light, through the nights for a few months? all those long days i wanted you and hoped for you, i would have taken that. i will do my best to remember.

today we went back to the hospital for more blood tests, for a weight check…and the jaundice is creeping back as you lose weight from all that pain and crying. we got a prescription against the reflux i suspect is causing your misery; we’ve tried desperately to wake you all day, to feed you, to tire you. we’ve failed. but we are ready for another night, Posey.

welcome home, love.

a little late, but our first snuggle, with somebody checking out the view.

Daddy’s got a few more pics on flickr if you click through…mama and baby are stuck in the hospital (where there is one sad little ancient non-SD-card processing public computer in the basement) for at least another day while Posey learns to feed without slurping somebody’s nipples off. she’s coming along beautifully…we would have made 37 weeks today.

i am so delighted in her, so glad she’s here. you will be subjected to further photo adventures galore upon our arrival home. :)

ps. the wishes have overwhelmed us. the part of me that imagines i’m Martha Stewart’s illegitimate progeny thinks i’ll work them artfully into her baby scrapbook somehow. i promise i’ll at least print them, make sure there’s a record of her wonderful, warm welcome to the world. thank you, all.

she will be Posey, at least here and for as long as Oscar struggles with the letter J.

her name is Josephine Eleanor Maud…the Josephine for Dave’s brother who died 19 years ago this September, the Eleanor and Maud for my grandmothers…with Maud also, smilingly, a nod to Maud Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables, the child’s birthright as an Islander whether she likes it or not.  ;)

she is tiny for such a big, serious name…6 lbs, 4 oz, 18 inches long.  she is fierce, bright-eyed, not yet 37 weeks but looking around, seeking, sticking her tongue out.  she has her father’s pointy chin, Finn’s fuzzy dark hair, Oscar’s platinum eyebrows.  my mother swears she has my hands, and that mine once fluttered as hers do, little sparrows, when i fed.  she latches hungrily, doing her best.  i gaze at her with wonder, with disbelief.

she came at 4:12 this afternoon, crowned her way into the world after a long night and a stitch that took a trip to the OR with me tits up, two doctors crammed between my open legs, tugging, to remove.  we almost went for a c-section then, at only 7am.  i am glad we didn’t.  this was the birth i’d hoped for…humane, unrushed.  second-degree tear, no biggie: overall, the experience was healing.  i am grateful and relieved…and proud, quietly proud.  i faced down a lot of fear today, felt the edges of the panic when the epidural wore off in transition, fought through.  i remembered the things many of you had offered, held them tight.  i crushed Dave’s hands and remembered why i was there.  my doctor was there with me, and good, good nurses.  i was safe.  i didn’t even care that it was a Wednesday.

my last baby, this girl.  tonight, i lay down my spent, sore body and know that i am lucky.

welcome, Josephine, wee Josephine.

We are 95% on the name but I’m going to leave that particular conversation to bonnie when she gets near a computer.

Mother is well… very well actually. The labour was 16 1/2 hours… but manageable, and, in places, alot of fun. Our little girl is perfect, with a clean bill of health and the appropriate dark hair. :)

cheers all… and thanks for all the wellwishes.

um, i am heading to the hospital.  nine hours before scheduled cerclage removal.

my water broke.

thanks for all the love that has brought us safe thus far…will keep you posted.

no matter how grateful one is, the end of pregnancy gets long.  especially when one kinda thought it would all be well over by now, had mentally groomed oneself to be ready for the shitshow of the NICU.

being spared one endurance test usually means you’re trading for another.  cynics’ handbook 101, friends.

maybe the end stage gets especially harsh when one runs in online circles where a disproportionate number of friends have lost term babies without warning…to stillbirth, to unforeseen genetic anomalies, to all kinds of tragedies that caught them by surprise even in these late, last, seemingly certain days of expectation.  i fret a little, chafe at the bit, try to jiggle and coerce the baby into moving, into reassuring me as best she can that all is well in there in her little fluid cocoon.  i tell myself to be patient, remind myself that i will likely be willing to kill small fluffy animals for this much time on my hands in just a few weeks.  i rub my belly and marvel at it, knowing that it will never be this big  – or this taut and firm, oh glory – ever again. i try to tell myself that all will likely unfold just fine, and that i do not need to be in control of this event or when or how it occurs. i tell myself chances are everything will be just fine.  i bought an AIDSwalk keychain the other day with the word “trust” on it.  it’s in my bag.

but my brain isn’t listening to me or to much of what i tell it.  it’s not that it’s consumed with worry about worst-case scenarios, either…more just that it’s fixated so soundly on the physical realities of this pregnancy that it flits through the worries like it flits through everything else, like a bad hostess drunk on sherry.  my mind runs on spin-cycle these days, a lather-rinse-repeat refrain of hourly pre-labour twinges that leave me caught in the undertow of ow, hmmm, that one hurt, could this be it?

promptly followed by nothing.  dead air of the uterus, not a cervical cramp in the land.  this child is going to go to prom still inside me.

just as my brain recovers some of its dignity and capacity for self-determination, another vicious little surge sneaks up and stabs me in the stitch, still mightily holding strong despite the complete lack of cervix around it.

i have been in low-grade labour for three weeks now.  it is gradually eroding my ability to form coherent thoughts, especially coherent thoughts not related to this beloved baby and whether or not i will actually deliver her sometime soon.  my brain is all bump, all the time.  and i am weary of it, and weary of myself and the monotony of this refrain.  i wanted to write about something else, desperately…if not upcoming elections – American, Canadian, take your pick – or abstinence-only education or Oscar’s wretched little cold, at least something thoughtful about the whole balancing act of planning to welcome a child once you know that all can go wrong, and how weird it is to wash little onesies and pack them in a drawer with cotton-mouthed fear that the other shoe is about to drop and slam home that the universe really is into bad jokes…

but then i cramped up and tightened, and that was all she wrote.

and hell, at least it keeps me from fixating on the bogeymen.

when i wake up tomorrow morning – barring any drastic excitement before then – i will be further along than i have ever been before, more pregnant than my body has ever managed.

i am 36 weeks today, the threshold of what some – few, but some – definitions are willing to call term.  Oscar was born in the wee hours of the morning at 36 weeks, 1 day.  if i’m honest with myself, i feel overdue…a hundred months pregnant, long past the expected point of delivery…not because this baby couldn’t use another month inside, my rational mind cautions, but because this pregnancy has been so tentative and fraught with what-ifs from the beginning that the bar was set low; 24 weeks prayed for, 28 hoped for, 32 seeming bounty beyond all wildest expectations.  i have been on high-alert for months, as ready as i can be, prepared to drop everything and run to the hospital at the least sign of labour.

well, labour came, Wednesday, but not to me…my half-brother and his partner welcomed a daughter, their firstborn.  and i had to give my head a shake and remind myself, severely, that it was her turn, not mine…that i am in no rush.  i am weary, but i am in no rush.  i figure if i keep saying it, i’ll start believing it.

the baby’s name is Bronwyn Elise.  i love it, but i grieved a little hearing it…because if you check the comments on last week’s name post, you’ll see Bronwen was a top choice for us for a middle name.  what are the chances?  Bronwen was what i was almost called, before my father’s objections convinced my mother to go with the cutesy Bonnie instead – oh, my mother laughed yesterday when she heard he was finally stuck with it – and it has long been Dave’s favourite female name.  we couldn’t quite come up with a short form that worked well enough for us to use it as a first name: having a Bon and a Bron in the same house didn’t do much for us, and Wendy, as the name of Dave’s we-shall-never-speak-of-this-again first wife, was out.  but i wanted Bronwen in the mix.  my father remarried another Bonnie when i was less than two.  i’ve shared my name with my stepmother my entire life.  i nearly changed my name to Bronwen when i was in my teens…and in some secret part of me, have always considered it mine.  using it on a daughter would have been, in a way, my only chance to name her in some sense after me, me alone…because my real name has never been mine alone.  now Bronwen, even if we used it, could never be for me alone…it is hers, now, the little eight-pound beauty.  and that same small part of me is sad, wistful.

but it also narrows our choices, which probably will make the overall naming circus easier in the long run. :)

in any case she is here and wonderful and new and so i wander the maternity ward these days cooing at this lovely little niece creature, looking like i’ve swallowed a basketball, like i’m loitering just in case.  i think i make the nurses nervous.  perhaps it’s the licorice cigar and the manic Groucho Marx imitation.

if i thought my bambina had a womb with a view, i’d understand her staying safely put.  that look on my face scares me too.

September has come, it is hers
whose vitality leaps in the autumn
Whose nature prefers
trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.

– Louis MacNeice

oh September, you’re a tease.

you’re there, just behind the curtain, waiting.  there’s a crispness to the air, suddenly, and it promises sweaters and lined pages all new and clean and the smell of apples and the sour beer of homecoming weekends.  for a moment today i felt it, the call of fall, and it stirred me and something sang out and my step was light and purposeful in beliance of the body i lug around these days mashed into too-small clothes, belly jutting, hips giving way to gravity.  for a moment, i felt at home in myself and in the time-space continuum, because it was autumn and i could smell it on the wind and it was good.

then i loaded myself into the car without air-conditioning, the car that had been sitting basking in the sunshine, and even before i got to the doctor’s appointment all the autumn was gone from my world and i was sweaty and lumpen again and it was me i was smelling.

but you reminded me, September, you reminded me of the season on the wing and the short, bright days coming and for all i may have said about September birthdays suddenly i feel just right about it all.

i am sharp with hope, glassy and jagged, trying to be patient.  so much uncertainty, still.  so much hubris to believe it will all unfold as seasons do, expected and then brought to fruition, natural as the leaves falling.  but this season ahead, i know.  it is mine, has been since i can remember, the one in which i am most myself.  and that old intimacy gives me the oddest comfort in all this anticipation and lurching hope and excitement and trepidation.  fall, i lie to myself.  i am simply preparing for fall.

if i could knit, i would make her a little hat, to wear when we walk in the yellow leaves together.