C.S. Starr's Blog, page 2

On International Women’s Day.

I found out I was having a boy at around 14 weeks. It was our last ultrasound at the fertility clinic, before we “graduated” to what was decidedly a normal, successful pregnancy.

The ultrasound techs at the clinic were nice, warm women, and since we went for an ultrasound most weeks, we started to develop a bit of a relationship with them, as you do when you’re experiencing something as emotional as a pregnancy.

Anyway, I asked, even though I knew it was unlikely they’d be able to tell before our 20 week appointment, and the tech, who had been the one to finally cajole our lime sized baby into a position where they could do the measurements to ensure he didn’t have any genetic disorders the week before, screwed up her face and nodded.

“I think it’s a boy,” she said. “There’s some salami there.”

I didn’t panic about it until later that afternoon, when I wrote some of my girl friends (a few of us have this very long, ongoing Facebook chat box that’s lasted a few years now) and freaked out a little. Despite being fathered by one and married to one, I felt overwhelmed at the idea of being responsible for one of the most potentially dangerous creatures on the planet.

A white male.

“What if he’s a misogynist?” I said. “What if he doesn’t treat women well?”

One of my friends, the experienced mother of three boys immediately replied, “He won’t be, because you’ll be his mother.”

I could make a very long list of all the hopes I have for women in the future. I hope my nieces never have to deal with pay inequality, and discrimination. I hope they live in a world where they don’t feel afraid walking down the street at night at an unsafe hour, or alone in the house when someone knocks, like I sometimes do. I hope they’ll never feel the need to act dumber than they are to impress anyone. I hope they’ll never be the victims of sexual assault, or domestic violence, or sexism.

Change like this doesn’t happen overnight, and we all have a role to play.

I think about my place in this quite often. I can do my best to let them know that they deserve more. I can live my life in a way that subscribes to my feminist values and strive for equality in my life, by working hard every day and proving myself over, and over again.

I can also do my damnedest to raise the type of man that I’d like to see more of in the world.

There are a lot of outside influences, sure, but when it comes down to it, the fundamental influence parents have on their kids cannot, and should not be discounted, least of all by those doing the parenting. My three month old mimics my tone in the sounds he makes; he looks to me for assurance in social situations. He eagerly watches my interactions with his father. And every day, he takes something away from that. He processes it, and it becomes part of what he knows.

He will know that his father does the dishes, and cooks a lot of the time, and that his parents equally own the house he lives in and have equal levels of education. He will know that respect is an essential part of any relationship he’ll have in the future with anyone, no matter what their gender.

And hopefully, one day, he’ll know that March 8th used to be International Women’s Day, but it won’t be necessary to celebrate the achievements of women in some sort of bubble in his future.

Top Ten Rad Baby Things.

I just hit three months on maternity leave this week, and it somehow feels like it has gone by really quickly and at a snail’s pace all at the same time. The winter, as those of you in Canada know, has been terrible, and if anyone ever has any choice in the matter, I would not advise having a baby on the front end of the season because it makes everything just a little bit harder. There’s a lot of bundling, and cold winds, and lugging, and trying to keep your baby from contracting every awful cold/virus imaginable.

Anyway, needless to say, I’m looking forward to spring. I’m struggling with my post-baby body, as all new moms likely do, and being restricted to indoor exercise in a small house with a baby is kind of challenging. I’ll write more on this at a later date, but so as to keep things upbeat, I thought I’d write about some things that have been a help in the past three months.

As I mentioned before, I’m not turning this into a mommy blog, but as I have a few friends that are expecting, and I know a lot of people are always curious about what to get people for their showers and such, I thought, since we have three months under our belts as parents, it might be cool to give a shout out to the top ten things that have made our lives easier, and some things we’ve found unnecessary.

A few things to remember about us. We live in a smallish house and don’t have a lot of room for extra stuff. This is our first (and probably only) baby, so we bought things with re-usability/resale value in mind in some cases, and the ability to turf them after one use in others.

1.  Boon Grass countertop drying rack

I wasn’t sure about how much we’d use this, except I really liked the way this one looked. Turned out, this was an awesome, awesome thing to have. We breast/bottle feed, which means we’re washing a pump and bottles on a regular basis, and this gives us a great, accessible place to put all this stuff so it can air dry after we wash/sterilize it. It also looks super fun on our counter and doesn’t take up as much room as a traditional drying rack. There’s also a slim version for smaller counter tops. We’ll probably continue to use this for quite some time after we’re done with bottles for other kid related drying.

2. Ubbi Diaper Pail

Even though it’s more than a traditional diaper pail, this was one thing I was sure I wanted. It’s a very cool looking diaper pail, and it takes kitchen bags instead of the really expensive diaper genie refills (we did the refill thing with the kitty litter locker and it was annoying, because you had to remember to get them). This holds the smells in (and there are some pretty wicked smells), and we figure we’ll relocate it to the basement for kitty litter once Charlie eventually stops using diapers. It holds quite a lot too (we use G-diapers instead of traditional diapers so there’s not quite so much waste). We probably change it a couple of times a weeks.

3. Graco Pack and Play (the uncomplicated one)

We knew from the beginning that were weren’t going to cosleep. Sushi sleeps with us, and we hadn’t intended her to, but caved when she was a tiny, adorable puppy and started whining on her first night with us, away from her mom.

That was eight years ago.

We wanted Charlie in our room, but also wanted him to get used to sleeping independently of us. Our doctor encouraged this, as he said it would make him a better sleeper long term, and he’s a champion sleeper so far. He crawls in with me for an hour or so after Matt gets up in the morning, but spends at least 8 hours most nights on his own. As I mentioned above, we also made an effort to buy things that would be multi-use, so the Pack and Play fit the bill. It’s great, and he likes hanging out in there, and it doesn’t take up too much room in our room. I’m also hopeful that when we eventually move him to our crib, I can relocate the Pack and Play downstairs to contain him when he becomes more mobile, and when we travel with him he’ll feel comfortable in it at night.

4. Muslin Swaddles

We have upwards of 12 of these, and we use around 4-6 at any given time. I’m partial to the Aden and Anais ones because they’re lovely and pretty, and we were lucky to be gifted a number of them, and handed down some others. Charlie liked being swaddled when we first brought him home, but he also really, really liked having his arms out, and one night, when he was about three weeks old, he screamed bloody murder when Matt wrapped him up and we finally figured out he wanted to be able to wiggle. A sleep sack later, and he was sleeping like a baby. Now that he doesn’t use them as swaddles, we use them for a ton of things, like cleaning up spit up, covering his stroller when we don’t want him out in the open, as a plaything in the crib (he’s having a lot of fun grabbing and nom’ing on it right now), a quick blanket if I want to lay him down when we’re out, and much more.

5. Simple Pacifiers

Some schools say you should wait to introduce a pacifier, and some say you should do it right away, as it can ward off SIDS. Our doctor suggested introducing one right away because he felt it was better he suck on that than his thumb, because you can take a pacifier away, but not cut off your kid’s thumb. We did, and he likes it sometimes. He’s not totally hooked on it, and we were pretty careful not to use it to soothe him to sleep because we heard that sometimes they can wake up if it falls out when they fall asleep and that sounded terrible. We bought a variety of pacifiers and, lucky for us perhaps, he likes the cheapie green ones best. Sushi also likes these, so we go through them pretty quickly. We also have a WubbaNub one, which Sushi has been desperately trying to get her mouth on for months now, but it stays in his crib and she’s been unsuccessful so far at devouring it.

6. Footie sleepers with zips

If you’re buying clothes for people, these are great. So, so great. It doesn’t matter what brand they are, but zips are fantastic for late night diaper changes, and the feet are much, much easier than trying to keep socks on an infant. Snaps, and their evil cousin, buttons, take extra minutes that can get you peed on, or cause any number of other horrible things to happen. At home, Charlie lives in these because they’re easy and warm.

7. Sleepsacks

As mentioned above, Charlie prefers a sleep sack over a swaddle, and most parenting experts are anti blanket for kids under a year at the moment, even though most of us survived them in the eighties, so it’s swaddle or sack. Since it’s the winter from hell here and it gets chilly at night, he usually sleeps in the above mentioned zip up sleeper and a fleece sleepsack with arms and stays nice and toasty. When it’s warmer, we have a couple of muslin ones we’ll utilize.

8. Multiple thermometers

We had a bit of a scare with a UTI a few weeks ago, which has resulted in us taking Charlie’s temperature a lot to make sure he doesn’t have a fever. The most accurate reading is a rectal one, so, yeah, unless you’re always going to take it like that, you’ll want one that can be used in the mouth/armpit, and a separate one for that. Make sure they are clearly distinguishable for obvious reasons. Yeah. You don’t want to mix that up.

9. A Sweet Stroller/ Car Seat Blanket

Before I had a baby, I had NO IDEA that you couldn’t put them in their car seat in a snowsuit. No idea. You can’t. You’ve got to dress them in thin layers and then pile blankets on top of them. We have two that we use regularly. Some good friends gave me this wonderful one for my shower. It washes well, is super super Canadian, and gets mad comments from random people on the street, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the day. The car seat thing makes almost all snowsuits and baby jackets redundant if you drive anywhere, which is unfortunate because they’re adorable.

The sweetest stroller blanket.

10. A Chair of Some Sort.

You need to put your kid down to do stuff, and, bonus, they’ll sleep there. A chair is a good place to put them. I didn’t want a swing because they take up a bunch of room (and I thought I’d wait to see if I needed one before shelling out for one), and this chair, which I was kindly gifted, has a great vibrate function, which wasn’t so popular at first, but is now. As Charlie’s getting more into grabbing things, the caterpillar and the tags are also becoming a big hit.

Zip up jammies and the sweetest vibrating chair (where’s the adult version, Taggies?).

11. (Bonus Item) Plushy Stuff to Love/Shit to Hold Onto

Month three seems to be the grabbing stuff month, and the first thing he really started snuggling with was this raccoon lovie blanket that a mommy friend in the know gave us. He’s since added a bear that Matt bought him to the rotation, and it’s super cute. He also like this alligator with a chime in it, and this round owl ball thing . We’ve tried not to go overboard on buying him too much stuff, since there are a slew of special occasions every year, and, well, he’s a baby, but it’s nice to have a few things.

Swaddles and teddies and black and white prints, oh my!

Stuff We Haven’t Really Used.

1. Baby Monitor

I think we’ll use this more in the future, but my house is pretty small, and I can hear my kiddo cry from pretty much anywhere but the basement, and I really, really don’t want to spend my precious nap moments watching him on a baby monitor. As I mentioned, he sleeps in our room in the Pack and Play at night, so we’re close enough to hear every breath.

2. Out of Season Clothing

I never gave this too much thought until I had a baby, but when you’re buying/gifting baby clothes, it’s important to consider how big the kid will be when it’s appropriate to wear it, particularly when they live in Canada. We had quite a lot of stuff that we were unable to use because they weren’t seasonally appropriate, and this really sucks.

3. Excessive Newborn Hats.

Baby hats are adorable, but somehow, we ended up with about twenty of them, and only use two: one for sleeping, and one for outside. We don’t use the sleeping one anymore, as every time we put it on him, it woke him up, and that was horrible.

4. Baby Shoes.

I was handed down a couple of pairs of Padraig booties, and these are the only baby shoes we’ve used so far because they tie up around the ankle and don’t come off. Everything else comes off, and putting socks that come off and baby shoes that come off on your baby is a serious time suck. Baby shoes are adorable, but not super practical since no walking is involved and my baby, at least, dislikes them with the passion of a thousand suns.

Was there anything else you found super useful in the early months? Anything that was a waste of cash?

 

 

 

On Two Months As a Mom.

So, as I’m sure all of you know at this point, I’ve been MIA from my blog because I have a new fellow in my life.

Blog followers, meet Charlie.

Charlie will be two months old on Sunday (I’m not sure how that happened), and to say the last two months have been a whirlwind for me would be a huge understatement. I’ve tried to write about the experience of bringing him into the world a couple of times, but haven’t been able to find the right things that I wanted to say.

Charlie was born on November 18th. Much like me most of the time, he was a little early, probably because he was eager not to miss anything, but also perhaps because he didn’t want to be perceived as late in his first meeting with the people who would be responsible for him for the next eighteen years and beyond.

It’s taken quite some time for he and I to get on the same page with a lot of things. The first example of this happened when my labour began with him ready to go, and my body not even close to ready to let him out yet. I don’t know when my water broke because he was already in a position to block it when it happened. As we proceeded, this trend continued and eventually culminated in an unplanned c-section about 14 hours after I’d gone into labour.

When the suggestion of a c-section was presented, it was minutes after I’d watched Charlie’s heartrate plummet to 40 when it was supposed to be around 160. This was also just after I’d been given some labour inducing drugs that had sent him into a state of distress, which could have been caused by his umbilical cord being any number of places it shouldn’t have been, like between his hands or around his neck.

After a lifetime of making decisions mostly for myself alone, particularly when it came to things regarding my health, being forced to make a quick decision for someone else hit me like like a punch in the gut. The realization that it was far from the last time it was likely to happen followed. With too many unknown factors, and my unwillingness to play around with his life and health, I opted for the c-section.

It wasn’t so awful, and after being in unmedicated labour for about 10 hours, it was actually nice to understand what was coming next.

I don’t remember much of the next 8 hours, beyond a surgeon noting that my baby was much larger than expected, and hearing his cries, after what felt like a small eternity behind a white cloth.

We stayed in the hospital for about 48 hours, me in the hospital bed, and Matt on a poor excuse for a bed chair, and Charlie in one of those plastic bassinet things, wrapped in the typical white, blue, and pink swaddles.

A few moms that I have a lot of respect for told me fairly early on in my pregnancy that I shouldn’t worry if I didn’t connect with my baby right away. I can say with the utmost certainty, two months later, that I didn’t. I loved him, in that confusing instinctual way, sure, but it wasn’t what I expected. It was a lot, with medication, and surgery, and all of a sudden being expected to exclusively care for a small person that cried, and took, and gave very little in return. The first two nights of clusterfeeding a child that I quickly learned was a bottomless pit when I could barely sit up was a pretty awful experience.

Upon our hospital discharge, I also found out that, despite what felt like an inhuman effort to feed him, he’d dropped a considerable amount of weight; so much in fact that the nurse had to check in with a doctor before letting us take him home. The hospital I gave birth at is breastfeeding only, so no option to give him anything else, even a pacifier until my milk came in was presented.

I immediately felt like a failure.

That continued for the next three weeks, as I met with lactation consultants and two doctors at my family practice as I attempted to get help in the hopes of increasing my supply to something that could sustain my kid and help him thrive and grow. Every time he kept crying after feeding for upwards of an hour, I found my eyes growing wet as we prepared yet another bottle, and second guessing my decision to even have a child when, between the fertility issues we struggled with, the c-section, and now the breastfeeding problems I was clearly not cut out for the fundamental physical demands of motherhood.

It took a long time (and the fading of the excess of hormones in my system after childbirth) for me to come to terms with the fact that not breastfeeding my kid exclusively for six months to a year didn’t make me any less adequate as a parent as someone that did. Despite the fact that I know lots of mothers that didn’t breastfeed for that long or at all, that I look up to and respect, I felt like shit about my supply issues, even though I never bought into any of the more militant breastfeeding arguments.

If you’d asked me before I gave birth why I wanted to breastfeed, it wasn’t because I thought it was vastly superior to the other options available; it was in the hopes of dropping some of the over 50lbs I put on while I was pregnant, and possibly to save some money. I know breastfeeding provides babies with great nutrients and is good for their immune system, but I’d also seen a lot of perfectly fine children, includes all of my beautiful nieces, thrive without it.

Once I accepted the situation, I quickly learned that not exclusively breastfeeding had its advantages. Because I was able to share feeding with Matt, and my mom when she visited, and really anyone else that I trusted to hold a bottle, it meant that I could have a break now and then to get my head straight. It meant that I could get up and walk around and work my c-section incision, which meant a faster healing time. It meant I didn’t have to spend every minute I had to engage with my baby, who wasn’t awake much in the beginning feeding him to make up for my low supply. Instead, I could spend time looking at him, and slowly but surely beginning to fall in love with his tiny hands, and the interesting wrinkle in his earlobe that we share. It meant that when he smiled for the first time, I was engaged enough to appreciate his tiny milestone, instead of obsessing over all the things I wasn’t doing right.

Things are better now. I’m still breastfeeding/pumping, but I’m not doing it militantly, and probably won’t keep doing it much past March, or April when he starts eating bits of real food. Charlie is huge, and hitting all his little milestones right on time.

I’m also settling into my very full-time job for the next 9 months or so, which is to do my very best to turn him into a great kid, on our terms. He’s well on his way.

Here are my first few takeaways from two months as a mom:

1. I’m glad I took my time, falling in love with my kid because it reflects the way I’ve formed a relationship with every other significant person in my life. I’m excited that it’s an ongoing process that will continue as he becomes more and more fully formed.

2. Feeding your kid is important. How you do it is not. Anyone who tries to tell your otherwise is a Mommy Wars flamer, and probably not a great person to talk to in your first couple of months of motherhood.

3. Baby smiles, when they’re not signalling a poo or gas, are probably the best thing in the world. They are shortly followed by baby laughter.

4. The first few weeks of motherhood aren’t particularly rewarding, but after that, things get better in a hurry. It’s pretty awe inspiring, being someone’s everything, particularly when they start to acknowledge it.

5. Dogs and babies are awesome. Always. See my Instagram.

6. As are husbands and babies. And husbands, generally. Particularly the supportive, awesome ones.

So, that’s it for now. I promise this won’t turn into a mommy blog; somewhere this year I plan to finish my third book, which has been sitting dormant for almost nine months, despite being mostly done, and I have a couple of other projects I plan to start on. Mom things will, undoubtedly creep in, as its a new lens to see a lot of different things through, but it won’t be the focus.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are enjoying the first couple of weeks of 2015.

Goodreads Giveaways and Print Copies!

I finally got around to ordering a new supply of print copies of Campbell and West, and to celebrate me finally remembering, I’m going to give some signed copies away!

Enter to win a signed copy of Campbell!

Enter to win a signed copy of West!

As you’ll see, the giveaway runs until December 15th, mostly to ensure I’ll be up and running again after baby Reid makes his appearance. If you’d like to purchase a print copy of either book, you can do so via Amazon, and Createspace. E-books are available via Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords.

If you want a print copy, I’ll have them in in a week or so, and I’d be pleased to send you a signed copy of either/both books! If you’ve requested one, I’ve scratched your name down in my head or on the chalkboard wall in my kitchen, and I’ll be in touch once they’re in to arrange shipment/pickup/delivery/a pre/post baby visit.

Because shipping is expensive, and me shipping books makes them quite a bit more expensive than I’d like them to be (especially within Canada), I’m also offering a 20% discount code for both Campbell and West if you’d like to purchase them in print via Createspace and have me sign them later (you’d also be doing me a solid, since I can’t see my feet to walk to the post office right now, and driving 5 minutes feels ridiculous):

West: KHZRTHP2

Campbell: 3JQCKNW9

I’m not finished book three yet, but I have been finessing the plot wrapped around a snoogle while I fight insomnia, and I have to say, while it’s different than I anticipated, I’m actually very excited about the direction that many sleepless nights have taken it! I’m going to aim for a spring 2015 release, once my other project makes his escape, er, entry into the world.

So there you have it! If there’s anything else I can do for you, please ask. I’ve been a huge author slacker since this spring, and I’m hoping I can make up for it in the year to come, once the initial baby fog clears!

Thanks again for all the support! If you’re a blogger/Goodreads reviewer looking for an electronic book for a written review, please, please contact me via my blog or twitter.

The Giving of Thanks

I started my day this morning with the cat warming my feet and the dog lodged tightly against my back, the last position we’re really able to cuddle in since the third trimester began. Somewhere, not so far under the surface, Baby Reid kicked away, oblivious to the fact that some part of him was hitting my bladder.

It was a good way to start the day.

With five weeks to go, pregnancy is both going by in a flash, and crawling all at the same time. In the first six months, I was able to at times put aside how much our lives were truly about to change, but more and more I’ve started feeling an almost desperate need to prepare for his arrival. We’re almost there, too, save for a few important things, like a car seat and a baby monitor, which I haven’t been energetic enough to go pick up.

We’ve still got a few weeks, after all.

When I think about the single thing I’m most thankful for this year, it’s hard to narrow it down, which I take to mean that I’m in a good place. I’m thankful that everything has been going very well so far, and that my doctor runs have been limited to (mostly) scheduled appointments. I’m thankful for the fact that so far, I’ve had a fairly textbook pregnancy, down to a 50th percentile baby at 27 weeks. I dodged gestational diabetes, after having to do a couple of sugar tests, and at last check, Baby Reid had relocated from a breech position to a more suitable head-down one.

I don’t really enjoy being pregnant for numerous reasons, however, and I’m also grateful for the mothers out there that have confirmed that this doesn’t, in fact, make me a horrible person, and mean I’m going to be a sub-par mother because I haven’t embraced this stage. I’m grateful that it’s countdown time. We’re both getting very eager to meet the little guy bouncing around inside of me, the one that’s been very wanted for a very long time.

There are still a lot of variables that I’m left wondering about. I know my end date at work, but I’m not sure if he’ll come early, or late, or how, or what it’ll feel like when I know he’s coming. I’m not sure if he’ll look like one of the few names we’ve narrowed down for him, or if he’ll take after Matt or me in any number of ways. Will he want his dessert leftovers for lunch, like me, or be able to restrain himself until dinner like Matt? What will he like on his pizza?

I’m thankful that it won’t be too long until we start to know these things, and much, much more. I’m thankful that I elected to have this kid with a man that I’ve known will be a great dad since we were teenagers, one that we’ll both be very lucky if our boy takes after. I’m thankful that he’ll grow up with our fantastic pets and that we’ll get to integrate him into things like our evening walk, and teach him things, like how to grow a garden.

I’m thankful that we’ll be able to surround him with family and friends that have different backgrounds than us, that will show him that there’s a million ways to be yourself and all of them are perfectly acceptable. I’m also thankful to all the family and friends near and far that have been so enthusiastic, supportive, encouraging, lovely and kind. It hasn’t been an easy road, getting here, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Thanks to everyone that’s taken a couple of minutes to send me a tweet or a note checking in! I am doing well, though not writing much, but I’m hoping once I get a bit more settled after Baby Reid comes along that I’ll be able to get back to it!

What are you thankful for?

14 Years and Counting.

Dear Matt,

Neither of us are much for public displays of affection, but on this, on the eve of fourteen years together, I thought I’d make an exception. The card I meant to fill out for you on Valentine’s Day is still stuck on my desk. For someone that spends a hell of a lot of time looking at words and thinking about words, I seem to have devoted very few to you.

To us.

At seventeen, I think very few people have any idea what the future looks like, or at least that ability to predict it with any degree of accuracy. I’ll admit to being mostly concerned about immediate things, like not being the last person in the universe to lose my virginity, and maybe getting into a good university. I probably cared about not getting too fat because I’ve spent most of my life concerning myself with that, and I likely also cared about having a bit of money, so I could do the things I wanted to do.

It would be a lie to say that all that changed the moment we met. When it comes down to it, I’m not entirely sure when that was, and I don’t think you are either. There were a series of moments that summer, and I don’t exactly recall the timeline.

A lot of things change in the fall. It’s the type of change you can smell in the air, when you start wrapping a sweater around you to ward off the cold, even before it sharpens the air. The party wasn’t entirely an excuse to see you; I threw it as one last hurrah before grade 12, before the lake cooled down, and the nights were too cold for sleeping in the back of my car.

The turnout was good. You showed up early, and after that, I didn’t care who else swirled around us. We ended up surrounded by your friends on the daybed in the boathouse, the only light from the faded sun and an old lantern whose batteries had seen better days. We wounds our fingers together behind your back, away from prying eyes as you, the designated driver, and me, the host of a ever growing party watched those around us move, as we stood still for a lovely moment in time.

It’s impossible to pinpoint the moments that are going to change your life before they happen. I didn’t know then how things would unfold, but I knew I wanted to find out.

We’ve had fourteen years of comfortable silences, knowing glances, encouraging smiles. Fourteen years of coveting the mundane moments that make a life together. Years of building and growing and changing, taking parallel paths that overlap almost every day in the moments I like the most.

After we got married, that became your favourite anniversary. It’s the more logical one to celebrate, the one that people remember. September 8th is mine, because it was the start of something great. One of the few moments in time that I’m able to pinpoint as a turning point exactly because I see the results of it every day.

And every day I’m able to see, to feel, to know with certainty, with tangible proof, how very lucky I am.

 

The Thing About Time.

I like Pinterest. It’s not much of a secret. There’s something so relaxing about looking at beautiful stuff and curating bits and pieces into collections. It’s a major time suck, sure, but so are lots of things.

Every now and then, this quote comes up that’s attributed to Buddha, set either in vintage typewriter font or with a serene picture in the back. It’s not actually a Buddha quote, but it’s distilled from his teachings from some big time Buddhist guy. It doesn’t really matter who said it. It’s a good quote.

“The Trouble is, You Think You Have Time.”

This isn’t a post about how I have ten weeks before my life changes immensely with the birth of my son (for inquiring minds, my pregnancy is going very well), though it probably could have been just as easily.

Instead, it’s a story about an abundance of time.

My last living grandparent, my grandmother, died on August 18th, sometime around 7am in a nursing home in Brampton. I’d received a call from my aunt notifying me that it was probably coming the night before when she was trying to get ahold of my dad to let him him know the end was near, and that she’d decided to stop eating.

The option was there to feed her via IV, but at ninety-ish, it was fairly universally decided that if she wanted to go, it was up to her. And go she did.

My relationship with Gania was/is complicated. I prefer not to take much accountability for this, though it does take two people to have a relationship, and I backed away from ours, hands up in surrender, besides a casual ask about her well-being, when I was eighteen or nineteen.

Before that, I struggled with our relationship. I’m not sure if she did.

Unlike some of my cousins, I do have some positive memories of her. I remember the blond woman with the piercing eyes at my birthday parties when I was very young. I don’t recall any affection between us, but I presume there must have been some; her name is my second middle one on my birth certificate. She also gave me a Cabbage Patch doll when they were impossible to find in the eighties and my first dog when I was three. The dog, a bichon not unlike Sushi, was an important part of my life until she died at the ripe age of fifteen. 

It’s not entirely clear when or why she decided to remove herself from my family’s life. It was around the time I was six though, when my family set off on our boat for a year and she moved back to Ontario. I’ve heard mumblings about how she didn’t approve of the trip, and how she thought my father was being reckless by taking us. There’s some story about a missed mother’s day visit that circulated for a while. I’m old enough now to know that these reasons are fairly superficial, but at the time, when contrasted with my beloved Granny Sue, who was incredibly involved in our lives, her lack of presence or involvement stuck out like a sore thumb, and as a kid, no matter what you’re told, it’s hard to understand.

I’m also old enough now to know that her life wasn’t easy, not by any means. When I was young, I used to ask my dad about her a lot, in the hopes of perhaps understanding why she wasn’t interested in being in our lives. She grew up in a soddy in Manitoba, the child of Ukrainian immigrants and ran away from home at a young age when her father married a woman she didn’t like. From there, she ended up here, in Toronto. At some point when she was young, she married a Greek man and had two sons. After that, she married my grandfather and had four more in very quick succession. The kids from the first marriage ended up in social services, and one died in a gas station explosion at a young age. My dad remembers her face being plastered across the front page of a Toronto paper at the time, grief splashed across her pretty features.

After the death of her son, she divorced my grandfather, who kept the kids, though they seemed to see her often enough. She went from a big house in Rosedale, an affluent part of the city, to a slummy area south of there (which is now not so slummy at all), where she did everything she could to earn a buck, from breeding dogs and birds to running rooming houses to vagrants and alcoholics. She was quite successful. At some point, the kids moved back in with her for a while, which left my dad with a lot of baggage that has affected him his entire life. She wasn’t what anyone would describe as an atypical mother, and in a time when mental illness wasn’t commonly diagnosed, she survived what could have been any number of psychotic conditions, but what was likely bipolarism.

More kids were had, both of which ended up in the system. One was adopted and wanted nothing more to do with any of us. One ended up in what had to have been Toronto’s worst foster houses. He’s been living with HIV/AIDS for about 20 years.

I often wonder how she would have told her story, but she had no interest in sharing it.

As a young kid, I tried to salvage the relationship. I remember an awkward phone call to my uncle’s house where she was living at the time when I called her for some information for a family tree project (I was probably in grade six), and got hung up on. In grade eight, she locked herself in her room when we came to visit her in Mississauga and refused to see us. I remember writing her letters.

Since then, I’ve thought about trying again. I watched my dad put forth a bit of effort by the way of sending Christmas gifts and getting nothing in return. I thought about it a lot, particularly after we moved here, but despite being within spitting distance of the nursing home she was in, again and again, I decided not to. Even though I knew I’d likely be better able to ration with her rejection as an adult, I held back, wary of putting myself out there again. I let time pass, knowing full well that someday I’d get a call and it would be too late to try again. I decided that would have to be okay.

It’s hard not to take rejection personally, particularly from someone that’s supposed to be a part of your life. It helps that I got to know my Ontario cousins, and found out that, despite what I imagined as a kid, they also had next to no relationship with her either. She wasn’t interested in seeing anyone, once she went into the nursing home, and anyone that dared challenge that got an earful and a fresh dose of rejection each time.

When someone like Gania dies, there’s still sadness there. Grief. It’s just a different kind, full of unanswered questions and uncertainty. There’s also hope. Hope that whatever happens next is easier for her than life was. There’s also some relief, knowing that our relationship is no longer one I have to fret about or consider.

I’m sure we had things in common, but it’s nicer not knowing what those are because it means I’m not left comparing myself to her. Maybe they’re good traits. I’ll wear her name on my hospital bracelet when I give birth in November, shoved between Granny Sue’s and my last name, now absent from most of my ID except my birth certificate, which seems like too much hassle to change.

I’ll remember the one lesson she left us with in death.

We all have choices to make, and some of them aren’t easy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Things I’ve Learned in the Second Trimester

Yesterday, we hit 25 weeks, which seems to be the point at which Baby Reid could probably survive outside of me on his own. I’m not anywhere near ready for that to happen, however, so he better stay put for quite a while longer.

It’s been a busy summer, and every time I stroll past the room that’ll be dubbed his, I realize that I am not at all prepared (in a material sense) to bring a baby home. Emotionally? I’m not sure it’s possible to ever be prepared in that sense, but I think we’re both as prepared as we can be.

I promise this isn’t going to turn into a mommy blog.

I think I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past 25 weeks. Here are the top four things on the list:

 

1. I’ve learned to cut myself some slack.

I’ve fallen way behind in my writing over the past 5 months, which I have been beating myself up a bit over. I’m tired though, and life’s been busy, and I’m only planning to do this once, so I’ve made an executive decision to cut myself some slack. Growing a person and holding down a full-time job should full my multitasking quota for the time being. I published two books in six months, which was a huge accomplishment (though I wanted to make it three in a year), and I’ll get back on track soon (in fact, by removing all deadlines, I’ve actually found myself more eager to get back to it).

I also realized the other day that I hadn’t posted Canadian links for West, my second book, so here they are:

Amazon Canada

Smashwords

Createspace (the most profitable print option, since some of you have asked)

Amazon USA

Kobo

B&N

If you’ve read West, please, please do me a HUGE favour and leave me a review where you purchased it/anywhere you can. Despite cutting myself some slack, I’ve fallen way behind in my efforts to publicize it, and could really use a hand.

I’m also going to be ordering some print copies, but I’ll let you know more about that in another post.

2. I’ve learned that my pre-pregnancy body wasn’t actually so terrible.

There’s a brilliant line from a Regina Spektor song that I’ve always tried to refer back to when I’d find myself down about the number on the scale:

I got a perfect body

But sometimes I forget

I got a perfect body

Cause my eyelashes catch my sweat

I spent most of my twenties being very hard on myself due to my size, which, hasn’t fluctuated much since I was twenty. I’ve gained a fair amount of weight so far with my pregnancy, and I’ve been fair more accepting of it in this context than I ever would have been in any other situation. And hey, my body is making another person right now, so, though I wouldn’t have quite planned it all the way it happened, it works pretty well. All this is not to say I won’t go back to feeling ugh after I give birth and lament the fact that Baby Reid was only a percentage of the total sum, but for now, I’m focusing on keeping active and treating myself a reasonable amount.

Also, my pre-pregnancy body didn’t swell in strange spots. That was nice. My ankles come and go more than my overwhelming desire for ice cream.

3. I’ve learned that I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life having to contend with other peoples’ opinions/advisement.

It’s not that I’m a stranger to other peoples’ opinions. It just seems that as soon as you start looking obviously pregnant, people seem to have a slew of things to say about it. Some of it is nice to hear, useful, and reassuring, and other bits, well, they make me want to curl up in the fetal position until I turn 60, at which time I hope my child will have developed some level of independence.

Here’s the thing. I’m aware that my life is going to change. I’m aware that I’m going to have to make adjustments. I’m aware that it’s going to be hard, and stressful, and I’m going to miss sleep. Being told this isn’t entirely helpful.

I’m also an adult, and most of the other adults I know survive this just fine.

Probably the best, and most assuring piece of wisdom that was passed down to me was that you don’t become a fundamentally different person when you have a child. You’re just the same person with some new responsibilities to react to. That was reassuring to hear.

I won’t share the worst advice I’ve received. Ask me in person if you want to hear it.

4. I’m never going to be fully prepared for the future.

I’m a planner, and this lesson has been a particularly hard one to choke back. Miscarrying a year and a bit ago really drove that home in an unpleasant way, and to be honest, has left me very cynical about the process the second time around, despite the fact that everything is going very well, and so far, has been perfectly predictable, right down to the time my ankles started swelling, and Baby Reid started making himself know via lots of kicking (as long as his dad isn’t around). I’ve had a few shakeups lately in other areas of my life that have also caused me to realize this as well.

I will say that being pregnant has caused me to force myself to slow down (particularly when my ankles disappear) and participate in the now a little more. It’s been nice taking a moment to smile to myself when I get a series of kicks after my morning orange, or watch my stomach twitch uncontrollably between 8 and 10 most nights.

Here are a couple of questions for you, readers. What’s the one thing you couldn’t live without in your first few months of parenthood? And the counter, what’s something you bought that you wish you’d left at the store?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figuring It All Out.

When I lived in Japan, I spent the first few months feeling homesick. This feeling usually sank in in the evenings, after I’d have an overstimulating day full of unexpected barriers and I’d do what I could to remedy it by falling asleep to Sex and the City reruns or drinking and eating copious amounts of mystery meat on sticks. I wasn’t homesick for specific things, really, at least not that I can remember almost ten years later, but for that feeling of having it all figured out; knowing the challenges I was going to encounter on a day to day basis, more or less. I’d come from the safe cradle of university where all the most basic things were provided.

Once I came to realize that that feeling was a fairly artificial one, and it wasn’t Japan, but the life I was beginning to build that felt uncertain and scary because I had no idea what it looked like, I found myself more eager to face each day with a sense of adventure rather than dread.

I’m already halfway through my pregnancy. It crept up on me quickly, most of the last eight weeks since we climbed over the barbed wire fence that is the first trimester being eaten up with work challenges and trying to stay awake and be present when I found myself dreaming of my couch, Sushi curled up by my side while she still fit there.

Up until last week, the state of being and remaining pregnant ticked away in my head while I’d go about my day, mentally bemoaning my wardrobe and stopping to eat far more often than I would have normally. I’ve been fortunate to have a very easy pregnancy so far (knock on all the wood). Last week, the growing belly in front of me starting twitching and fluttering inside, and the reality that, in the few short months our lives were going to be forever altered started to set in, and I found myself feeling insecure about what the future looks like. I understand that this is a natural-type of feeling that I’m sure most women find themselves faced with, especially those that have jobs that consume a fair amount of their lives, and lifestyles that, while won’t have to be adjusted majorly because Matt and I are very old at heart, and very, very boring, will be impacted by being responsible for another human, along with all the other things they’re currently responsible for.

This week, the flutters have evolved to kicks. I find myself smiling when I can relate them to something I’ve eaten, as if his tiny personality is taking shape with every gulp of embryonic fluid post-ice cream cone.

You’ll maybe notice I said “he”. I’m having a boy. We got a very clear shot of boy at my 20 week ultrasound last Friday. He looks a lot more like a baby now than he did at 14 weeks, which is both thrilling and terrifying. He also likes yogurt and bananas a lot, at least via my digestive system. I spent about twenty minutes apologizing to the ultrasound tech as she chastised me for having a wiggly fetus while she was attempting to take measurements.

I had a lunch meeting today, and perhaps because we sat down quickly, or because it wasn’t someone I knew well, or maybe because it’s very rude to assume women are pregnant at any weight, it didn’t come up. It was strange to step back, to be myself without being pregnant, even for a few hours, and it was after that that I realized that, without even being aware, I’d adjusted to my new state better than I’d thought.

We’ll see how I do when I can’t see my feet anymore.

 

 

Why I’m Voting On The Health Platform in the Ontario Provincial Election. #onpoli #voteon

I’ve lived in Ontario since 2006, and last night was the first time I’ve been forced to use my local emergency room.

I’m fine, and I had lots of time to think about who I was voting for while I was waiting for several health professionals to determine whether I had a blood clot or a strain in my leg over the last 48 hours.

A quick note for those of you that aren’t Canadian, healthcare is provincially operated and publicly funded. I live in Toronto, Ontario, which is the largest city in Canada, in the most populated province. My experiences do not reflect the system as a whole, which varies greatly between provinces.

My adventures in Ontario health care recently have been remarkably good. Lately, I’ve been regularly seeing a number of medical professionals with my fertility stuff, and I’ve never waited longer than an hour to see anyone, including my current OBGYN, who is available not by appointment, but by queued drop in time most weekdays. I’ve gotten blood test results back the same day, as long as I show up in the morning. It’s gone a long way in providing me with fairly immediate assurance that I’m not miscarrying on a regular basis, which has allowed me to continue on with my normal life in a way I’m not sure I would have been able to if I lived in rural Nova Scotia and didn’t have regular access to these services. I’ve also been able to have biweekly appointments around my work schedule since they open early, which has been huge.

I had a bit of a rough go last year mainly involving a private ultrasound clinic and a few missteps while my family doctor was away, but I learned my lesson there, and so did my doctor, who stopped referring people to that particular clinic.

Half of succeeding in the Ontario health care system is having a good guide. Matt and I kind of stumbled into our current home clinic through the referral of a friend, and we couldn’t be happier with the overall level of service we’ve been provided by our family doctor and the people that support him. Our clinic operates on a short-term appointment basis, meaning that there are no long-term scheduled appointments. You call when you need something, and they get you in ASAP, which is within three days, depending on the issue. This includes general maintenance like physicals. They do phone calls for non urgent issues, which I’m sure saves lots of time as well. For small issues, a lot of the emphasis in their clinic is to involve the patient in their own care and course of treatment and minimize unnecessary medicalization. I agree with their philosophies 99% of the time, which is pretty good.

Anyway, my blood clot vs. muscle strain drama started on Thursday, in a roundabout way. I woke up and noticed a few hives on my arm, but had a breakfast and lunch meeting, so I made the call to wait and see how they were by the end of the day. The last time I had hives, it coincided with my miscarriage, so I was a little unnerved, but the last time I had hives I was covered in them head to toe in a matter of a few hours, so I decided to see what was going to develop before I got panicky.

I made it through the day, and still only had five hives, but I decided that I’d call my doctor and see if I could get in before the weekend to see if someone could confirm that they were, indeed, nothing. I called when I finished work, and they said to come right down to their after hours clinic. When I sat down in a room to wait for the doctor, an hour after I’d initially called, I noticed my ankle was very swollen. After the doctor (not my family doctor, but one of his colleagues) checked my hives and confirmed that I shouldn’t worry about them unless they spread and gave a list of things I could treat them with while pregnant, I nodded at my ankle and asked her if I just needed to ice and elevate it, fairly confident that I’d over-walked it during the week. She checked it out thoughtfully, and agreed it could be that, but also noted that blood clots were more common in pregnancy, and if the pain got worse, or spread up my leg, I should go to emergency immediately because they had the ultrasound equipment to confirm it wasn’t a clot.

I heeded her warning and went about my day the next day, after elevating my foot overnight and skipping my Thursday walk. Feeling better, I went for a ten minute walk last night, and when I returned home, I noticed that the pain had spread up my leg a bit. It still could have been overuse, but at about nine, I decided that I’d rather have someone confirm I wasn’t having a clot than have one and end up in a bad spot because I ignored it. I have a history of heart disease and stroke on both sides of my family, and it wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

I live a ten minute walk from our local hospital emergency room. We drove over (because sore ankle), and began what we knew was going to be a very long wait, based on my last visit, with Matt the year before when he’d messed up his ankle playing softball too late to see our regular doctor. We moved through triage very quickly and got confirmation from two nurses that we were, in fact, better safe than sorry being there, and began the long wait to see a doctor.

I watched:

- A woman with a broken wrist, that was clearly in shock, wait five hours

- An approximately sixty year old woman with Downs Syndrome accompanied a homecare worker wait seven hours to see someone about what looked like a post-surgical infection on her calf (she showed me, and it was bad, and hadn’t developed in a few hours)

- A late teen girl who seemed to be having a bad miscarriage who came in right before us wait four hours with an IV in her arm. She’d been having problem for what sounded like a day or so

- A family of people who seemed to be regulars at the ER wait seven hours, see a doctor, not get the answer they wanted, and storm out, loudly claiming that the ER there had given someone they knew multiple sclerosis

- A man that was obviously high and possibly on the verge of OD’ing wait an hour or so while they scrambled to find him a detox bed to monitor him

After being quickly examined four hours after my arrival, I was given a requisition for an ultrasound to confirm that I didn’t have a clot that I needed to call to make an appointment for the next morning, since the young, obviously exhausted doctor didn’t want to give me medication without proof (fair enough), and the potential clot was low enough in my leg that it didn’t pose an immediate threat. I called this morning, and unfortunately, the ultrasound clinic was unable to perform the vascular ultrasound I needed on the weekend. I was informed that the doctor had made a mistake assuming he could refer me for a Saturday, even though the ER and the ultrasound clinic were in the same hospital.

After a minor meltdown and several other people telling me that I should in fact take what was happening seriously, but that they couldn’t help me, I called my family health clinic and was given several numbers to try, with the offer of a new referral for anywhere that would take me. I was unable to find one that wouldn’t require me to do the emergency room waiting game again (which averages 8-13 hours, I learned the night before), so I called my health clinic back to see if they had any suggestions.

Contrasted with my experience the night before, after a quick chat to confirm that I should come in, I got in to see my family doctor in an hour this morning (it’s a Saturday). He looked me over and said that he was 99% sure I was okay and that it was a newly formed varicose vein, combined with a strain, but that I should get back to emergency if anything changed. He also gave me his cell phone number (which he’s done before), and said that I should call him if I didn’t get the support he thought I should have received the night before (he was shocked that I hadn’t been scanned with a doppler or given a blood test and grumbled about the broken system), including a precautionary blood thinner if they couldn’t confirm that I didn’t have clots via ultrasound. He also said to avoid our local ER and go to Toronto’s best obstetrics hospital’s ER, who were better equipped to give me some answers.

The system in Ontario is badly damaged, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. In the past ten plus years, the Liberal party have worked to fix a system that was stripped down to nothing in the 90s. Through my experiences, I think they’re doing the best they can. One of the hardest things with four year elections is that nothing on a wider scale can be accomplished before the next election. I give them a lot of credit for ensuring most people have a family doctor (though I doubt many have one as responsive as mine), or someone they can see outside an emergency setting. I was grateful for that today. I think in time, they could continue repairs to the system, and hopefully half the people that I shared the room with will have community health care professionals they can visit before things become a problem. Maybe after that, I’ll be able to get effective emergency care the very odd time I need it in a reasonable amount of time, due to greater access to community health.

I realized today that, there is likely no end in sight to my future in the hospital system. As first time parents, we’ll probably end up at the emergency room a time or two (or much more than that), and my experiences today made me a little uneasy about that, but generally confident that I was better learning to negotiate the system, and that we had made the right choice on a family doctor, who we didn’t have to wait to sign up with and access four years ago when we decided we needed one.

In June, I’m voting to give the Liberals another four years to continue their work, in the hopes that my bad experiences continue to be fewer and further between. I’ve been following this election fairly closely, and there seems to be a lot of emphasis on cutting income taxes, which, would be nice, but not if it results in any cuts to the health care system. I’ll pay more taxes to make sure that doesn’t happen, because if you don’t have your health, what are you left with?