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for the past nine days, Oscar & Dave & i have been home together, just the three of us.  the sitter’s on vacation, as is Dave, and i’m home anyway, so it’s a last gasp at summer for us as a family, and a last chance – knock wood – to do stuff as a threesome.

it’s been a bit on the rainy side, and mindless wandering around the local timewarp that is The Mall is morbidly depressing, so we haven’t necessarily filled our time with as many outings as we’d imagined.  but amidst the walks and the swims at the park, we checked out a couple of local attractions and brunched and had tea and took O for his inaugural bumper car ride with Daddy.  big fun.

everywhere we went there were kids’ menus.  and christ in a handbag, no wonder our culture has an epidemic of childhood obesity.

truth is, the amusement park probably hasn’t changed its menu in forty years: hotdog, hamburger, or deep-fried chicken bits, all with a side of fries or onion rings and pop.  not health food, but as an occasional treat, no biggie.  especially if a kid only gets out for a treat a few times in a summer.

but everywhere has menus like this, these days, at least where we are.  and when on holidays, one can be everywhere – eating out – more than a few times in a summer.  i have apparently been living in a bucket, happily oblivious to the contents of these craptastic wonders, because i haven’t had a child old enough to be interested in eating from them until now.  but suddenly Oscar has reached an age where he’s noticing that other kids aren’t eating the yogurt or dish of cottage cheese dragged from mommy’s bag; where pilfering dad’s toast & eggs at the diner is not entirely a sufficient meal unto itself.

and it seems that the rite of passage of having his own plate means he can now choose from a wide array of white-flour-based, deep-fried, nitrate- and preservative-saturated foods.  in quantities that would suffice for most adults. oh, independence.

i’m really not a sprout Nazi, or anything.  my kid likes Elmo crackers, and eats cupcakes now and then.  but for the most part we do try to make sure his diet has more nutrients in it than unpronounceable additives. we just don’t buy white bread or white pasta.  the store-brand organic breakfast cereals around here now cost less than the brand-name non-organic Raisin Bran or Shreddies, and we made fudgesicles this summer out of chocolate soy milk.  if Oscar liked hamburgers – he’s gone off meat, our little Smith’s fan – i’d happily serve them to him.  but seriously?  with fries and pop?  when he’s two?  even when he’s ten, i’d really like him to have a few more alternate options.  healthy choices shouldn’t be something that magically appear with puberty.

to me, when McDonald’s appears to have the healthiest kids’ menu in town – because you can at least get apple slices and juice with your white-bread-wrapped grilled cheese – there’s something kinda weird about that.

i know, first-time parent naiveté.  i do get that a few meals out is not going to destroy my child’s health or digestive tract, and that with some kids, getting them to eat anything at all is a huge success.  we’re lucky that way – O turns up his nose at a lot of things, especially vegetables, but would live on tomatoes and avocadoes if we let him.  that’s just how it turned out.  but he also had his very first non-soy hot dog only last week, so the options he’s been given do have something to do with the tastes he’s developed.  is it just where we happen to live – in one of Canada’s fattest provinces – that circumscribes the kids’ menu options to such blatantly and exclusively unhealthy fare?  is it just me who thinks this kinda sucks?  or do most kids between four and twelve in North America live on a steady diet of processed snacks and sugar and hotdogs?  seriously?

shine the light for me, people.  am i fighting a losing battle on this one?  when you eat out – if you eat out – what do your kids eat?  what’s your philosophy regarding kids and diet?

we went out to the market this morning.

upon return, in amongst the weekend flyers dragged in from the porch advertising marvellous Walmart specials and bizarre lawn ornaments i can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy, i found a book.  an apparently new book, with price tag still attached.  not the sort of book that usually comes with the sales ads…there’s not a single Huggies coupon in the thing.

it is titled What NOT To Name Your Baby.

how this mysterious tome came to grace my kitchen table, i do not know.  i do know that the book is quite entertaining, despite the fact that Oscar is among the more than one thousand names it sardonically prohibits…i’ve come to expect the world to take a bit of a piss on that front.  we’re fair game.  in North America, having a kid named Oscar perpetuates a rather thick skin in a parent.  yep, like the Grouch.  he’s our favourite muppet. or, yes, we LOVE Academy Award season.  (insert sarcasm as necessary).  my favourite…oh yes, we call his penis the Oscar Meyer weiner…we picked the name for that very reason! (that last is a fictional response to a real question posed to me by an elderly woman on the street one day.  charming.)

i have vague suspicions that the anonymous book donor may actually be a worried grandparent, afraid that we’ll either call the baby Elmo or Miss Piggie this time round (my father’s family are vastly tickled by their oft-repeated and immensely clever jokes on this front) or that we do, in fact, actually plan to continue calling her Hughloise after her arrival.  we don’t…we just like telling my mom that.  her middle name’s Louise, so we say it’s for her.  then she turns this gorgeous, flustered red.  very fun.

(if in the colossally unlikely case that five separate ultrasounds were wrong and she is actually a he, i’m betting that Dave will cave and actually let me call him Hugh, but that’s as close as we’ll really get to Hughloise.  his half of the creation – Heloise, for the twelfth-century errant abbess – never quite made it onto my lists.  i like old names and all, but not ones that call to mind those Hints from Heloise newspaper columns of my childhood.  i never liked her mayonnaise recipes one bit.)

if we’re casting our thanks/aspersions in the wrong direction, though, and anyone out there would like to take credit for the kind and mysterious gift of What Not to Name Your Baby, please speak now.  i think you’ve already said your piece. :)

and if anyone has any naming suggestions – preferably in the realm of “austere yet dowdy”, no cute Kaylees or eltra-femme Larissas or neologic McBritneylyns need apply, fine names though those may be (or not, ahem) for other people’s children – bring ’em on.  right now, we’re kinda taken by Hortense, inexplicably NOT an entry in the book…think of the nicknaming possibilities!!***

i wonder if we should start locking our door when we go out?

***uh, kidding on Hortense.

dear readers…

do you notice dates?  ascribe signficance to them?  see numbers dancing in front of your eyes like mad Rockettes?  subscribe, on some superstitious, instinctual level, to old adages about children born on particular days of the week?

i appear to.  particularly when childbirth is looming.  given my history this makes me shrink in shame, as i realize that the day and date of my child’s birth is, generally speaking, hardly of massive significance.  i’m sure i’ll come to like whatever date she comes on, because it will be hers, and all that marvellous rational truthiness.  sure.  but i have nonetheless come to the uncomfortable conclusion that i am a closet flake, and possibly some kind of subconscious but full-blown proverbial nut.  i have dates flit through my mind so many times a day that i am considering getting a turban and stitching paper stars to it, hiring myself out as a swami.  feel free to contact me if you would like my completely ungrounded but very heartfelt opinions about auspicious dates looming over the next, oh, three or four or five weeks or so…i will be happy to consult the litter box for signs in the turds, and whatnot.

see…much as i wanted to make it to September with this pregnancy, to try to get as close as possible to a healthy term infant…i’ve never been totally keen on a September baby.  late September, dandy, if i could get there…but the first part of the month?  mixed feelings.  this is not my good sense talking.  i know many fine people who were September babies…half the people in our families, quite literally, have early to mid-September birthdays.  that’s part of the problem.  we’re stuffed full of Virgos ’round these parts, and Virgos have many honourable qualities…among them tidiness, a virtue above all others.  also, i’m aware that just in the unlikely case astrology isn’t simply an interesting personality assessment tool but my child’s total future sewn up and written in her stars, moon sign and rising sign still mean more than the actual sun sign under which one is born.  see?  i’m almost an informed flake.  but for some reason i can’t quite put my finger on, i’m still not super thrilled about the idea of my child sharing a birthday with most of the noble Virgos to whom we are related or befriended.  i’m also not wild about her coming on any of the defunct wedding anniversaries and significant death anniversaries that occur in our small, immediate circle during early-mid September…nor do i especially like dates with a 5 in them…thus leaving about four separate days between the first of September and the twentieth on which i’d be happy to see her arrive.  or at least of which the inner crazy swami Bonnie – whom i cannot seem to shut up – would approve.

i just found out that for two of these dates, my OB will be off work, having surgery herself.  as i want her there for the delivery more than i actually want to assuage my bizarre obsessions, those dates are now added to the long list of Dates On Which I Will Keep Legs Crossed.

as of this afternoon, my OB’s scheduled my cerclage removal for one of the others…which just happened to bethe date she’s on hospital duty that week.  We’re doing the removal there, at L&D, in case the loss of the stitch sends me straight into labour.  removal has been set, folks, for September 10th.

which would be gorgeous, close to 37 weeks, even the 10/09/08 birthdate utterly cool if you follow the Canadian and European day/month/year system…but, um, it’s a Wednesday, folks.

and the old rhyme says, Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

seriously, full of woe?  how can i set my hopes on a birthdate that will doom my offspring to being full of woe?  i mean, Tuesday is “full of grace, Friday’s “loving and giving”…how the heck did poor Wednesday get stuck being full of woe?  i have been holding my breath all Wednesday long for months, now.  it would feel like bad parenthood, almost, to wish my child into the world on a Wednesday with that kind of prognosis.

damn, it’s not easy being crazy.

(and the 11th and 12th are already crossed off the calendar as taken…so, if Saturday the 13th doesn’t work, i may just have to try keeping that poor old cervix closed until well into Libra.)

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what day of the week were you born?  your kids?  do any of these signification systems – be they planets, rhymes, or other superstitions – surrounding birth weigh on your mind?  are Wednesday’s children really full of more than their fair share of woe?  should i forget about the birth entirely and go check myself into a pink padded cell?

ah perspective.  when i was in junior high, the only English teacher i ever really disliked taught me an invaluable lesson…ostensibly about fiction and short stories, but really about living, about the art of narrativizing and understanding one’s own life.  Perspective, he intoned, in a faux Oxford accent, is all in where you’re looking from.  To be able to tell a thing means you’re looking at it from somewhere.

we took a whirlwind trip over to Halifax and back between Saturday evening and noon today – whirlwind because now that my doctor here has agreed to try to be there for the impending-ish birth, being away from her and back to square one in terms of attending physicians feels like i’m Linus in Peanuts and my security blanket got left behind and i need to get back to it.  now.  but it was a fine whirlwind nonetheless…Oscar got to attend his cousin’s second birthday party, replete with trip to local farm, plus cake, Dave got eat Limburger with his brother-in-law, who is the only person in his circle of cheese philistines who can stand the wondrous stink, and i got to visit the IWK.  whee.  the IWK, for those of you who have not been memorizing my life’s story as we’ve gone along here at ye olde crib, is the maternity/children’s/neonatal hospital where Finn was born, where i spent weeks on bedrest, where i was seen once or twice a month through this pregnancy.

but i wasn’t there for me.

a friend from here, a friend due a month behind me, got airlifted over on Friday.  and so Sunday night, once O was nestled all snug in his, uh, travel cot, while visions of farm animals danced in his head and his poor pancreas tried to process more sugar than it had ever been overloaded with in his short life, i found myself riding up the elevator to the seventh oh-so-familiar floor, bearing chocolate and licorice.  a visitor.  a total role reversal.  the smells of the place chewed at my memory like termites, and i found myself looking over my shoulder as if someone was going to order me to hop into a wheelchair at any moment.  but they didn’t.  i was free to come and go as i pleased.  i blinked, all wistful and joyful and strange.  because it is now and not then.  because from the perspective of someone who didn’t have to be there, my eyes could see all that i escaped this summer by getting to stay home, by not having to take up residence on this bedrest floor again.  and i was grateful.

her room looked bleaker than i remembered them being, the four or five i’ve been in over my three stays over the three-plus years it’s taken us to get to this point in our attempts to have a family.  the walls are the coldest blue.  i talked too much.  i oohed and aahed over the new tvs, little tiny flatscreens, replacing the Atari-era versions that hung on the wall even in March when i stayed there last. i kept looking at her in the bed and thinking, that’s not me.

i wanted to negate the place, take her up in my arms and brush away the fear and the monotony and the frustration and isolation like cobwebs and whisk her to another time when it will all be past.  but she will have to find her own way there, and i know no two paths are alike.  i hope hers – and her baby’s – is smooth.  i am glad mine has come full circle, so that this place is no longer within my circle of possibility.  i like where i get to look at it from, these days…the privilege of distance, far from cold blue institutional walls, for now.  i like that i can walk out, walk away, as i wish.

i was glad i’d gone.  and i nearly jogged to the car.
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perspective, of course, is also key to telling a story you make up.  and telling a story from the perspective of a character you don’t much like is a fascinating exercise, i discovered last week.  to those of you who took the time to muddle through draft one of my first foray into fiction, may the lord bless you and keep you, especially Awake and her clever husband, and Anta and her mad googling skillz.

and just in case y’all really meant it when you said you’d like to read the more polished – um, read finished – version…and because i’m kinda proud of myself for actually completing the piece and reading it out loud to real live people and all, i give you version 2 of the Yep it was Poison but Don’t Believe Everything the Newspapers Tell You Because It’s All Perspective, Folks story.  you may of course please tell me if you think it makes no sense.  i will only cry a little.  and the perspective?  hell, in the long view, it’ll be most helpful.

He couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned.

Gordon normally ate oat bran for breakfast. Seven days a week, whether the girls were there or not. Oat bran – no sugar – soy milk, coffee. After his run, before his shower. At nearly fifty, it is work to stay trim, regular, ship-shape.

Gordon generally paid little attention to whether the girls ate breakfast – he refused to keep crap cereals in the house, though they were welcome to oat bran or toast or fruit as they desired, and he suspected the elder of throwing up most of what she ate anyway – so when the school counsellor had caught him in the midst of a meeting Friday afternoon – an important meeting, a single-malt meeting – and mentioned pancakes, it had thrown him off, led him to assume that the conversation was a prank, a charade.

“I don’t eat pancakes,” he’d said, flatly, into the phone, grimacing towards his Scotch partner with a look he’d hoped was both authoritative and blameless.

“Sir…Mr. Herbert…” The voice on the other end of the line had sounded awfully young. Gordon had grown irritated. Some stupid joke. Maybe his youngest had pissed off some of the in-crowd at school? Fourteen year-old girls can be such a mess. Gordon has little tolerance for mess.

“Thank you for your time.” His voice had been curt, final, all Father-Knows-Best as he’d hung up, making it clear that he did not appreciate the interruption, the incursion of drama. School counsellor, his ass. But when he’d flipped the phone over just to check the number, the display had read “Wilmington Charter School.”

Gordon’s run at 06:00 hours Saturday had taken him down towards the stream in the park. He’d noticed the faint tinge of yellow in the foliage, there, amongst the stately old trees that dappled the path with leafy light. “Odd,” he’d thought. “That’s early.” The leaves seldom fall until well into November.

When he’d gotten back to the house and found both girls up and in the kitchen, his thoughts were identical. This was odd. This was early, for a Saturday. He was irked, alarmed by the change in his routine. Julia, sprawled on the couch by the breakfast bar using his laptop, waved sleepily. He opened his mouth to bark about That Damn Myspace but then noticed movement by the stove and, on instinct, smiled instead, vague and solicitous. Gordon smiles when he is nervous.

Tess, curls askew, had her back to him. She was…making pancakes.

“Hey, dad.”

“Hey…hon.” Gordon was aware, for a moment, that he sounded unusually hearty. He approached her, suddenly tense, like an animal wary of a trap. A part of his brain reeled, scrambled to recall yesterday’s phone conversation with the alleged counsellor. Another part nonchalantly scanned the countertop for his coffee.

Pancakes.

“I don’t eat pancakes,” Gordon said, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. He picked up his coffee cup and stared at his youngest child. She stood casually at her griddle, the picture of sleepy adolescent innocence…if such a thing existed. He willed her to look him in the eye.

Tess raised her gaze to his. Flecks of gold that mirrored his own caught the morning light. She looked younger without all the usual makeup. She laughed.

“Who said they were for you, piggie?” she teased. She poked him where his belly had been, before all the running. For a second, her father remembered her, small and round and still in diapers, the two of them playing piggies with her tiny, stubby toes, oinking in abandonment.

Gordon looked back at her, this specimen of near-womanhood, coy and unpredictable, and wondered how the hell he’d lost so much control. Piggy indeed. Was she trying to goad him? Was he just being paranoid? Why the hell had someone called him about pancakes yesterday when here she stood in front of him cooking the damn things? Was this a fucking joke?

He leaned on the counter across from Tess as she flipped the little circles in the pan, sipping his coffee and wondering who’d taught her that trick of the wrist. Another marquee announcing his little girl’s all-grown status, he mused, maudlin. Her mother had never been able to make a civilized pancake, let alone flip one. His jaw twitched. Her mother. If someone had called to tell him his ex-wife was planning to poison him, he might have believed it…except he felt confident she’d have skipped the pancakes and gone straight to rat poison. Pity. It would have given him the chance to have the bitch locked up…which would, everyone would have to admit if they were honest, make life easier for the whole family. Gordon has lawyer friends. Lost to reverie, Gordon fantasized revenge, again.

“Want some, dad?”

She caught him with the spittle of his fantasy fury dangling between his lip and his coffee cup. He straightened. No daughter of his would be so stupid or so uncontrolled as to advertise a poisoning.

Tess was his kid. It wasn’t that he trusted her, precisely; rather that he did not fear her. He wouldn’t hurt her. That meant there was no reason she’d hurt him. She was closer to her mother, sure…girls were soft that way. But she was fine. They were fine.

Gordon decided pancakes were fine, too…if Tess was toying with him, making oblique threats through her friends, he’d show her he would not be intimidated. He’d sprinkle some oat bran on his, though – in the end, what counts is that one’s bowels are fine.

His smiling nod was precise as steel.

Behind the curtain of her tangled bedhead, he did not see his daughter smile in return; a private, crocodile grin.

They sat to the table with the stack of pancakes, far too early on a Saturday morning, all three of them present. Each seemed out of place, discomfited. The family gathering ’round the breakfast table serves nothing so well as to point out what is missing, like a cheery family picture with the faces scribbled over in Sharpie. Tess ate steadily, her pancakes plain as usual. Julia poured syrup liberally on hers, helped herself to seconds. Gordon took a pancake, made an elaborate show of loading it with oatbran and sliced berries, gave into his old weakness, the maple syrup. They ate in silence. That was normal. Then Julia disappeared into the bathroom. That, too, was normal.

While Julia’s car careened into the hospital parking lot an hour later, Tess sat curled beside the vomit in the kitchen, replaying the scene. Her father’s disbelief, fury, panic as the nausea overtook him. He hadn’t believed she’d do it. She hadn’t really expected him to. She couldn’t decide which of them had failed.

She gnawed on a pancake. Beside her, in a garbage bag, were the remains of her father’s half-eaten breakfast, the one pancake littered with chunks of oat bran, traces of syrup. The jug of sugary maple was there too, nestled against the ipecac bottle, clean as a whistle. Her sister had used that stuff to throw up, back at the beginning, but had moved on to more sophisticated methods. The ipecac, nearly two full ounces of it, had sat, unnoticed, at the other house for a year or more now. No one would miss it. No harm done.

Gordon woke in the hospital, throat raw from the stomach pump, IV dripping into his left arm. He sat up too quickly, eyes darting left to right and back. There was nobody there. It was 0:900 hours and change.

A nurse entered, looked at his chart, raised her eyebrows. “You thought you were poisoned, huh?” Her voice was pleasant, slightly forced. His eyes lit on the restraints, the locked door. This was not the emergency room.

“I don’t eat pancakes,” said Gordon, flatly.

all quiet on the cervical front, friends.  this evening’s literary reading at ye local library was uninterrupted by the waters of Babylon.  i even laughed without peeing myself…banner day.

have i ever mentioned that i live two doors from the Dairy Queen?  and that i have something of an, erm, sugar fetish?  i came home from the reading with a fervent hankering for a chocolate-covered-cherry blizzard.  they’re my all-time favourite, my True Patriot Love…and the fact that DQ took them off the menu a couple of decades ago does not daunt me, people.  i know what i like: ice cream, cherry mix, cone dip.  lots of cone dip.  i have – with the help of slightly embarrassed minion Dave, who loathes ordering anything special or altered or ‘on the side’ but was nonetheless man enough to procure my fix when bedrest prevented me from doing so – been personally training the local DQ ice cream jockeys over the past few years to prepare this wondrous concoction of deliciousness.  tonight i got the boy who’s really good: he puts a little extra cone dip in there, oh fine pimply charmer, and never scoops the extra off the top.  some days, i think Dave & i should adopt him.

all that to say…this will be a short post.  i need to go make love to my ice cream.  and then write some more, because we have to read tomorrow night, at the closing dinner.  and in the company i’m keeping, my meandering little rambles i feel so proud of here suddenly sound like the braying of donkeys.

oh well.  one cannot learn if one does not shame oneself, i always say. ;)
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i leave you with a challenge, or a favour, really, should you choose to accept it.   the story opener below is an exercise we did today, a one-off written from a brief news clipping.  i’d love feedback.  first person to guess the backstory or what the news story was actually about will be allowed to share my next Blizzard.  a little.  first person to tell me how to end the damn thing will win my undying affection and…um…uh…something nice.  i know!  DQ boy! he doesn’t look engaged, or anything…so, uh, as long as you promise to move here so i don’t have to let him go, a talented young mail-order ice cream boy can be yours for just a little bit of closure.

He couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned.

Gordon normally ate oat bran for breakfast. Seven days a week, whether the girls were there or not. Oat bran – no sugar – soy milk, coffee. After his run, before his shower. At nearly fifty, it is work to stay trim, regular, ship-shape.

He generally pays little attention to whether the girls eat breakfast – he refuses to keep crap cereals in the house, though they are welcome to oat bran or toast or fruit as they desire, and he suspects the elder of throwing up most of what she eats anyway – so when the school counsellor had caught him in the midst of a meeting Friday afternoon – an important meeting, a single-malt meeting – and mentioned pancakes, it had thrown him off, led him to assume that the conversation was a prank, a charade.

“I don’t eat pancakes,” he’d said, flatly, into the phone, grimacing towards his Scotch partner with a look he’d hoped was both authoritative and blameless.

“Sir…Mr. Herbert…” The voice on the other end of the line had sounded awfully young. Gordon  had grown irritated. Stupid joke. Maybe his youngest had pissed off some of the in-crowd at school? Fourteen year-old girls can be such bitches.

“Thank you for your time.” His voice had been curt, final, all Father-Knows-Best as he’d hung up, making it clear that he did not appreciate the interruption, the incursion of drama into the realm of his dignity. But when he’d flipped the phone over just to check the number, the display had read “Wilmington Charter School.”

Gordon’s run Saturday morning had taken him down towards the stream in the park. He’d noticed the faint tinge of yellow in the leaves, there, amongst the stately old trees that dappled the path with leaf-filtered light. “Odd,” he’d thought. “That’s early.” The leaves seldom fall until well into November.

When he’d gotten back to the house and found both girls up and in the kitchen, his thoughts were identical. This was odd. This was early, for a Saturday. He smiled at them, vague and solicitous. Julia, sprawled on the couch by the breakfast bar using his laptop, waved back sleepily. Tess had her back to him. She was…making pancakes.

“Hey, dad.”

“Hey, hon.” Gordon was aware, for a moment, that he sounded unusually hearty. He approached her, suddenly tense, like an animal wary of a trap. A part of his brain reeled, scrambled to recall yesterday’s phone conversation. Another part of it scanned the countertop for his coffee.

“I don’t eat pancakes,” Gordon said flatly, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. He picked up his coffee cup and stared at his youngest child, willing her to look him in the eye.

Tess raised her eyes to his. The flecks of gold mirroring his own caught the morning light. She looked younger without all the usual makeup. She laughed.

“Who said they were for you, piggie?” she teased. She poked at him, digging where his belly used to be before all the running. For a second, her father remembered her, small and round and still in diapers, the two of them playing piggies with her tiny, stubby toes, oinking in abandonment.

“Make me a few,” he grinned at her, surprised by himself. But his smile was like steel, a challenge.

yesterday morning, about 4:15, i woke up with a start.

heartburn.  pee break.  adrenaline.  chomped down a few Tums, had some water, tried to quiet my mind, to plump the pillow and slide back into sleep.  no chance.  got up and watered all my plants instead.

nesting?  nah.  first day of a week-long writers’ conference.  Ann-Marie MacDonald, live and in the lovely,  sardonic, talented, like-to-go-drinking-with-her flesh.  Carol Bruneau and Anne Simpson leading faculty workshops, in intimate groups; real live agents and publishers sharing advice.  peers – or rather, People Who Are Not Really My Peers as They’ve Already Written Novels – to share work and consort with.  all at a gorgeous resort, twenty minutes from my house, with fantastic food.   basically, candyland for anyone who aspires to be a wordsmith.  or who likes chocolate cake and good vocabularies.  since i found out in late July that i’d been granted a bursary to attend this shindig, i’ve been drooling…and intimidated, but mostly drooling.  looking forward to this has given me a focus other than the coming baby to set my sights on, to fantasize about.  and so yesterday morning, i was just all atwitter with anticipation.  i figured.

the first day of the conference saw me away from my house from 8 am to 10 pm, a first since long before the whole bedrest epoch began.  i came home exhausted but delighted, full of ideas and stories and a dessert so rich and high in my gorge i considered writing it its own poem.  i did jot out a few scenes on my actual topic, and fell into bed weary and richly pleased, grateful for this opportunity.  proud of myself for pushing myself to actually try such a bold thing as running in these heady circles.

about 4:30 am, i woke up with a start.

heartburn.  pee break.  adrenalin.  and a weird, non-rhythmic dull ache in my lower belly.  swallowed the usual suspects, tried the whole sleep thing again, gave up.  got up, did a couple of loads of laundry, folded all the baby sleepers, organized our finances.  no longer all atwitter with the first-day jitters, i forced myself to actually take stock of my state of being.

nesting?  um, i think so.  i am not a morning person.

i was hanging curtains – quietly – in our bedroom at 5:55 when Dave turned a bleary eye on me and muttered, “that’s a sign of labour, you know.”

yep.

33 weeks, 4 days.  still too early, but not so early that there’s significant long-term risk to her if she comes…just a rough start, wee thing, and possible complicated weeks in the NICU.  they will no longer stop labour if it starts in earnest.

the dull ache subsided about 9:30 am, in the midst of the writing workshop’s group feedback session.  i had to skip a session of the conference later in the day for this week’s appointment with my OB; cervix short, soft, thinning.  it appears ye olde cerclage stitch is letting go…or at least a loop of it has already.  and if i have any contractions or further aches at all, from here, i’m to go in and we’ll take just take it out.  i may be fishing-line-free sooner than i’d imagined.

or not.  the way my body’s been cleaning itself out, the way it feels like it’s gearing up without me, i’d guess yes.  except i’m usually wrong.

oh world, you clever little trickster.  sure, this is the only week out of the past six months when i’ve actually got other plans that don’t revolve around gestating.  is it really necessary to remind me of my small, snivelling place in the universe by threatening my still rather itsy-baby baby with imminent arrival when we’ve come this far?  is it truly that entertaining to deprive me of sleep right when ye olde brain is actually on call for regular all-day usage for the first time since, um, March?  must we play this little maybe-we’ll-go-to-the-NICU game when Oscar’s sitter is actually on holiday all next week and Dave’s dad’s in the hospital, rendering Grandmaman unable to come to babysit?  seriously?  you’re funny, world.  i get it.  i don’t run the circus ’round here.  you’re the boss, and i salaam to your charming sense of humour.

but could we just wait ten more days, or so?  September is such a lovely month for birthdays, i hear.  and Ann-Marie MacDonald has a reading Thursday night at the library.  it’s gauche to break your water at the library, world.  got it?

please. let her stay safely put.  or at least let me sleep, while i practice trusting my body to do what it needs to.

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this whole nesting thing – which goes waaaay beyond my usual OCD issues regarding tidiness – still appears to be having its wanton way with me.  i just sorted a bunch of outdated files.  my recycling?  you could eat off it.

i’ve never had this before, not really.  for those of you who have been similarly possessed by forces of frantic evil…is there any truth to the rumour that this is a harbinger of things to come soon?  what was the time lapse for you between the onset of Stepford Wife symptoms and the arrival of bebe?

somebody tell me a month, ‘kay?

(and then shoot me when six weeks from now i’m still pregnant and eating my words AND my screen, and the world is cackling bwah ha ha ha ha.)

we left Korea for good that winter.

the fall beforehand was golden and rushed, one of those queerly vivid transition epochs where the body and mind are open and receptive, future utterly unknown and thus all changes possible answers in masquerade.  it is heady, that hurtle towards the break, and for me it was a productive time -i started writing professionally for the first time in years, took up jogging for the first time ever.  looking ahead, i tried to lay ground. looking around me, with eyes that knew i was leaving, i tried to store all that i could of the city and culture, the small apartment with its sliding glass doors, the autumn light pouring in, the sweet-sour tang of mokkoli and cheom-chi kimbap, the hectic market across the street, laden with strange fruit that had become familiar.

in casting ourselves upon the fates that fall, we went whole hog.  i threw out the birth control pills, had my cystic ovaries checked at Our Lady of Mercy Virgin Mary Obstetrics and Gynecology – the head OB had learned his English at a Catholic college in the United States, he informed me proudly – and one Monday morning in November, watched two clear blue lines materialize on a pregnancy test i’d had to play charades to acquire from the apothecary’s on the corner.  there is a lot of vocabulary that a life spent in classrooms and bars does not necessarily teach.

every season of life has its soundtracks.  this one was a single CD, a nothing-else-quite-like it literate and intimate collection of folky imagery-laden songs that a friend who lived in another city had brought one weekend in October, that we played all through that fall and early winter as we planned and packed and i threw up.  those songs, with their quirky rhythm and their haunting, non-linear stories, were burned on me in those months just as Korea was.  i was wax, taking everything in.  and all my hopes and anticipation sang in me to those tunes and words, lullabies to the little life inside around whom all the changes centred.

we brought the CD back to Canada, though the light was harsher here.  the last time i played it was in the hospital after my water broke too too early, headphones stretched across my belly.  i was still hopeful, the laws of inertia internalized to such an extent that continuing to hope was not so hard as it has been ever since.  i chose, the first night after my airlift, in the 3 am quiet of the hospital room, to tune in to the baby inside, to spend what time we had left together present to him or her.  i sang to him, spoke to her – we had been told girl, then boy, then girl again, that time ’round – played him music.  for that three weeks, i was tender and more in-the-moment than i have ever been in my life, connected and maternal in ways i hadn’t imagined i had in me.  until he died in my arms.  all those months of hoping and planning, all we’d tried to build toward, all the light and song packed into that period, dissipated into ash.

last night, Dave and i were watching back episodes of a tv show on the computer.  in the climactic moments, a song started up, a song neither of us had heard.  but he recognized the voice…the same singer whom, as if by unspoken, accidental agreement, we have not listened to in over three years.  my ears perked up, and just the familiarity of a single word, characteristically pronounced at the end of a line, assured me he was right.  the scene unfolded on the screen in front of us.  but i didn’t see it anymore.

i saw a small apartment with muted light falling over a sleeping mat, a huge desk rescued from the side of the street one evening.  i saw the campus-issue furniture and the pillows brought back as bounty from Thailand, the coffee grinder propped up against the yogurt maker and the funny little packets of bacteria bought at the same apothecary’s as the pregnancy test.  i saw ashtrays and ESL books, plastic tables set outside the neighbourhood corner store for drinking at, neon signs advertising singing rooms, internet cafes, chicken.  i saw rows and rows of persimmons, ripe to bursting, and crisp pears that look like apples, and packets of salty seaweed for snacking on.  i saw, though i had not known i remembered.  and i felt it all again, the hope and the shattering that followed, as if the episode we were watching were one from our own lives.

and i wept, because i knew the ending to all that risk and hope and openness.  because it was like watching a replay of my own personal train wreck, and i could not shout out a warning, could not do anything but sit and let the brokenheartedness of it all wash over me.  and because it was beautiful, too, to have it all come flooding back, to remember what it felt like to be in that skin and that mind, faithful for the last time to the belief that all will ultimately be right.

i like to think i’ve healed.  but not once in this pregnancy, or with Oscar, have i stretched headphones over my belly, unselfconscious, and sung to my child.  not like that.

i don’t even know if i should try.  i don’t know if i can.  i wish i could, though.  i realized last night that i wish i could.

your comments shine through my screen like benedictions.  the overflow of truth and thoughtfulness and humour, raw and warm, calms me, strengthens.  i bask.  i eat up ideas, cross-referencing, googling hungrily.  call answered.

i sit humbled, grateful.  you took me by surprise.  i did not know, not like this, that the well ran so deep and generous, that the collective wisdom of a mythological sisterhood could be tapped like this.  i feel as if i’ve wandered into a Little House on the Prairie stageset, into a quilting bee community of yore where i am mothered, friended, surrounded and held up.   my birth coaches, sixty strong.  your stories widen my horizons, my sense of the possible.  your stories make me less afraid.
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i have never known how to ask for help, before.

Mad wrote a powerful post the other night about fear and walking at night and the Take Back the Night phenomenon that swept college campuses in the late 80s and early 90s.  that was my coming of age, that era, and i sang that song for years.

my mother’s spent her life more than usually mistrustful of the unknown, and she tried desperately to inculcate in me caution, wariness of all that the newspapers said i should fear as a young and vulnerable woman in a predatory age.  but, like so many, it was not the unknown that hurt me, that damaged my sense of my own worth and my right to inviolate status.  i did not even have words, at eighteen, for what happened.  but i had anger, at the misdirected fear that smothered without protecting, and shame, in buckets.  the shame kept me tongue-tied, unable to ask for help or support.  the anger made me defiant.  and in the mess of my fumbling attempts to find healing, i began to walk, at night, alone, alert…head high, keys spiked.  i walked and walked, for nearly two years, compulsively.  it was a way of refusing to wrap myself in the shroud of victimization and dependence that society held out as a false promise of safety.  it was a way of taking back my own body, as well as the night.  but mostly it was a way to quiet the deep, crippling sense of vulnerability and fear that ate away at me in those years, the panic that threatened each time someone came close.

it took, in the end, years and years and ultimately a conscious letting go.  but i walked my way out of that trauma, that damage…literally walked away from it, each step a blind, grasping effort to surmount fear.

i think i have been trying to do the same with the trauma of my children’s births.  except a waddle is not a confidence-inducing stride, and i have been unable to outpace myself, my fear, my history.  so i have had to face my shame this time, own it and voice it and say aloud, “i have been hurt.  i am frightened.  i do not know how to go forward by myself.”

the warmth of response has taken so much of the power from the shame and the fear that i wonder, sadly, what might have happened had i been brave enough to try this tack half a lifetime ago.
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i waited two hours to see my OB today, because half the practice is on summer vacation.  my fear and shame sat with me through the wait, despite all your words…i felt like a kid waiting to be called into the principal’s office, dreading humiliation and misunderstanding.  it’s not being my own medical advocate that intimidates me, but admitting my vulnerability, admitting how badly Oscar’s birth shook me despite his survival.  being supplicant and helpless is not my strong suit.  i was afraid i’d find myself tongue-tied, once again, unable to stand up for my need for agency and dignity with this impending birth…unable to admit how much i fear the panic that swallowed me last time, the panic i failed utterly to master.

i really like my OB.  she’s been with me through all four pregnancies, though never – by circumstance – for delivery or d&c.  i trust her.  she has looked me in the eye and said, “i’m sorry.  i made a mistake.”  she has always treated me like a human being.

and still i could barely meet her eyes as i unfurled the litany of facts and complications that have left me so afraid.  i hunched on the crinkly paper of the exam table, picked at the flannel blanket.  i didn’t want to overstate, be dramatic, have her write me off.  i trailed to a halt, handed over the list of questions i’d posted here the other night with all their what-ifs and maybes and stretches of what’s commonly done.  i looked at her and choked the obvious out.  i’m just…so scared.

she didn’t patronize me, or pat me on the arm and tell me not to worry my pretty little head.  she listened, and looked at me, and said, “i will come in with you, if i can.  i’ll put that on your file, right here.  i’d like to be with you through this birth, if that might help?”

they don’t do that here.  my mum has worked at the hospital for years, and i know they don’t.  there’s an agreement between the OBs that on-call status is respected, because the on-call docs have to be on site, away from their kids or their sick spouses or their beer or what have you, so having subs come in is frowned upon.  i looked at her warily, said “i’d feel guilty.”

she said, “don’t.”

and then tears welled up and streamed down my face and she handed me Kleenex and i felt six years old and like i’d just been rescued from the Kmart Lost and Found desk.

we talked.  plans for induction or c-section are tabled until i reach 37 weeks still pregnant.  we will try the delayed cord clamping, and a few other things both from her repetoire and your suggestions to try to minimize the likelihood of retained placenta and surgery.  we will aim for skin-to-skin and nursing right after birth.  she will work with Dave and the delivery nurses to try to do as much perineal support, lubrication, and stretching as possible.  we may try to break up any cervical adhesions upon cerclage removal at 36 weeks…or wait until labour depending on how imminent that appears at that point.  she’s checking on anti-anxiety options, and depending on how things present we may try an early epidural if that’s possible instead.  slowing things down a little, for me, might not be bad.  she approved of the advice i’d been given here to try to minimize prolapse.

and most important, she’s going to talk with the entire OB team about me, in case she can’t be there when i ultimately land at L&D.  and if at any point, with her or another doc, i panic and feel i just can’t confront another possible gong show, it’ll be on my file that i can ask for a c-section without any argument from the medical team.  not my first choice, but a choice i’m grateful to know is there.  i see her again next week, and we’ll talk some more.

tears are still close to the surface, tonight.  relief, gratitude, astonishment.  i haven’t given birth yet, obviously…the actual event is still ahead of us.  but the birth i feared, the panic i could not walk away from…i think its spectre has been largely deflated, weakened.  by you, with all your stories and your virtual hands in mine.  by one doctor stepping up to my side.

trust.  antidote to fear.

the longer this pregnancy continues with merciful uneventfulness, the more amazed i am.  and the more nervous.  a new and different low-grade panic wells up in my gut these days…not miscarriage, not genetic disorders, not uber-prematurity and brain bleeds and oscillating ventilators. just…birth.

there’s clearly got to be a birthin’ around here sometime soon.

(me and my pet Volkswagen and an – uneaten – magic mushroom, three weeks ago at 29 weeks…by the lovely and talented Kate)

everything’s dandy with the bambino, and the weeks of crisis delivery prognoses are creeping past, therefore…the more my razor-sharp neuroses get to hone in on me.

it’s not the fear of the unknown, but of a three-peat.  experience says i deliver fast, and early, and my babies have big heads for their gestational ages.  i have a scarred cervix that tends to resist dilation, then tear.  my placentas don’t detach properly, causing retention once, hemorrhage the second time ’round.  and my body – this time, as each time before – is weakened at its core from extended bedrest.

i feel silly about my fear…ashamed, even.  but it is real and grows bigger as i do.  birth has marked me in ways i do not like.  i do not want to dwell on those wounds, or give them power…i’d like to get beyond them.  but i am not sure i can until this baby is born and this third birth confronted and endured…and hopefully celebrated.  my fear is that the birth will add to the sum of baggage i need to unpack, rather than – perhaps? – being healing.  i’d like healing. i’m just afraid to ask for what seems like so much.

i had what was pretty much a post-traumatic stress reaction in labour with Oscar.  flashbacks, full-blown panic attack.  on top of that, i had complications that knocked out my pelvic floor: some clitoral tearing, a vaginal and bladder prolapse, an unwanted fourth-degree epiosiotomy that went straight through my perineum and then tore four inches up.  i was stitched three layers deep, stem to stern, and then had to be torn open again when they whisked me off to surgery to retrieve the hemorrhaging placenta.  barely a quick photo with my newborn before being rushed off for the d&c, then three hours alone and shaking, still panicked, in recovery…that, after having lost Finn only hours after his birth, was probably worst.

i had a birth plan for O’s delivery…written to try to remind myself that once we passed 35 weeks the birth needn’t be the powerless, frightening, emergency event that Finn’s had been.  it wasn’t a complicated plan…my only caveats were to avoid episiotomy and to be with baby after birth for at least an hour, for bonding and an attempt at breastfeeding.  neither worked out, though in the first case no one ever explained why, despite my shouts of “no!”.  the whole thing still turned out to be a powerless, frightening, emergency event.  had any of it been necessary to safely deliver Oscar, my sense of violation wouldn’t have mattered worth shit, to me…but he was fine through the whole blessed mess.  i felt like a piece of meat, ravaged and dismissed.

i do not have the powers of self-delusion to simply compose another birth plan and assume it’ll go better this time.

i see my OB Wednesday, for the first time since Halifax released me.  i want to talk about birth…about what options are reasonably open to me, about what factors are controllable and what odds i have of a different type of birth than the last two.  we haven’t talked about it yet because until last Friday there was an assumption i’d deliver in Halifax…though the Halifax team were hoping to get me past 32 weeks and so didn’t want to talk about it, either.  but now i’m set to deliver here.  with whoever’s on call, because that’s how the system works.  and i wake up at night sweating.

i know my own fear is my worst enemy.  i also know that i can’t think myself out of a post-traumatic stress reaction, especially if this labour comes as fast and strong as the last two.  i’ve played with the idea of just asking for a c-section, except i doubt the likelihood of me making it to 38 weeks without going into labour.

i plan to take Evening Primrose Oil from about 35 weeks – orally at first, to help break down scar tissue, then vaginally after 37 weeks.  the cerclage, according to Halifax, will come out at 36.

i’d also – if i have a vaginal birth – like to try delayed cord cutting in hopes of preventing placental retention and getting to actually hold this child and be with her for the period following her birth.  it’s the one thing i ever really invested in, in terms of having my babies come into the world…the skin-on-skin of that first hour or two, reprieve from the work of birth.  if the baby has any issues, obviously that dream flies out the window, but if we can get to 35 or 36 weeks it’s far more likely to be me and my complications that lessens that possibility.  and thus i’d like to do what i can to help the placenta separate cleanly.  but there’s resistance here towards delaying cutting the cord, particularly with an early-ish baby.  my OB might respect my wishes, but the other docs?  i haven’t been overwhelmed with some of their listening skills.  thus i wonder if an induction – so as to be sure i’m with my own OB – might be wise, despite my aversion to the idea?

i did perineal massage when i was pregnant with Oscar and am willing to do it again, but don’t know what impact the significant epiosotomy/tear scar has on its effectiveness, especially when it so clearly did sweet f#ck all last time?

i want to know what you know.  i’m going to end up making what decisions are open to me based on odds…odds of a joyful, peaceful, non-brutalizing delivery, however it comes about.  the more people’s experiences i become familiar with, the better sense i’ll be able to gather of what those odds really are.  Dr. Google isn’t really helping.  so please.  no holds barred.

have any of you ever had a fourth-degree tear or episiotomy that didn’t open or need to be opened again in a subsequent birth?  if it did, how did the healing go the second time around?

did any of you who’ve had a cerclage try Evening Primrose Oil (or something else?) to help minimize scar tissue on the cervix?  do you think it helped?

any experience with delayed cord cutting, or with retained placentas and other methods of trying to minimize the likelihood of that happening?

has anyone who’s had a prolapse not have it happen again in a subsequent delivery?  were you able to do anything to impact how that turned out, one way or the other?

anybody able to compare a prolonged transition-type labour (contractions a minute apart for an hour or more) with an induction?  i know the latter are supposed to be really hard to tolerate, but i’m wondering if my own labours aren’t perhaps already on that track already?  would pitocin intensify that?

any general advice regarding planned c-sections vs. induction vs. taking one’s chances with the on-call docs?

is it common in many places to be allowed to hold your newborn for the stitching period after a c-section?  (it is in Halifax, not here.  policy.  bah.)

does anyone know if ativan or some other anti-anxiety medication can be safely given during labour if panic and PTSD symptoms set in?  i know it’s safe (or at least given) during pregnancy, but i’m curious about whether it’s usable so close to delivery.

i know birth is not a controlled event.  i also know that nothing matters more than taking home a healthy baby.  but i am still hoping, nervously, that maybe i can come out of this birth able to focus on that baby and not on my own mental and physical damage.  i’d like to ask for a positive, empowering, affirming experience…but i’ll happily settle for less than wretched.  so…keeping in mind that i live in a province where midwives are not certified and where the doula i met with told me that with my history she might not be able to do much to mitigate the physical repeat of past complications…tell me what you think makes sense for me.  and tell me what you can about what’s been positive for you, in birth…please…no matter what the circumstances.

(just…pretty please…don’t tell me just to relax and it’ll all be fine.  i will personally chew your arms from your body so that you can never, never type again.  :) )

pssst.  i have a secret.

i think i’m having a fabulous summer.

yeh, i’m more or less unemployed, with legs as weak as paper matchsticks and a belly the size of a Volkswagen.  yeh, laundry is frequently my most impressive daily accomplishment.  and stool softeners and Tums are my dearest, most beloved companions these days.  i am a glamour queen beyond measure.

but…with all this time off it’s been the first summer since we moved back here to this island vacation destination that i’ve actually had any time to spend with the myriad of people who descend on the place in late July and early August.  i had coffee with a girl i haven’t seen since high school, spent an entire afternoon taking up space in a restaurant with some fabulous women i don’t see often enough, discussed life, the universe, and everything with old friends from Korea, visited with aunties and a bunch of other people passing through in the seasonal glut of tourists and homecomers.  i’ve had time to pay attention, to linger, to collect myself between visits.  turns out working is hell on the social life.  i suspected as much.

tonight, Dave & Oscar & i are going out to a friend’s cottage for the night.  i’m not a lay-in-the-sun girl, but the beach at night?  some part of me was made for the beach at night.  dunes and cool night sand under my feet, stars, the crash of waves a few metres hence, a bonfire.  we’ll put O to sleep and then, with a few other parents, take turns minding the store while the rest abuse some old guitars down on the shore.  singing, maybe.  the mutter of side conversations and laughter.  but mostly just the licking, crackling flames and the ancient wonder of a fire…the first tv, the first happy hour bar, the first church of the human soul.

i’ll probably be the only one sober, and i’ll get tired first and lay my head down on Dave’s lap and worm myself into a little nest in the sand and become quiet, but my eyes will be open, rapt and locked on the glow of the little sparks dancing up into the blackness, until i waken cold and shivering when the party ends.