Absence makes the heart

Sam is showing new signs of stranger anxiety. It passes relatively quickly, but, for the first time, he's doing all the "I want Mama!" behaviors.

Is it screwy that I find this so gratifying, being needed so intensely? While simultaneously worrying that he'll be plagued by the separation anxiety that I'm told I had as a toddler...

Something fishy

I mentioned a few posts ago that in November, I had a run-in with something that felt all too much like post-partum depression. The sudden onset made it seem like a physical event, one compounded by stress and the waning daylight. When the waves hit, I felt like I was looking through a window at a happy life---baby, good marriage, good job---and wholly disconnected from it all. The P&L sheet of my life seemed heavy on losses; any gains felt insubstantial. And then the guilt! of feeling so ungrateful, when I'd finally gotten what I wanted!

So we went on a vacation, and that helped a lot, and it eased my fear that I was on some kind of downward spiral. And then, when we got back, I stumbled across Moxie talking about fish oil as the miracle supplement for new moms---the theory being that your brain gets depleted as the fetus/baby basically sucks the fatty acids from your brain---and remembering an old bottle in the medicine cabinet, I popped a few.

Oh.my.god. They worked. They really worked! I just felt like...myself. More even and relaxed and sane. So I looked around at research exploring the relationship between EPA (fatty acids) and mood. Adam's uncle, a psychiatrist, told me that he recommends fish oil to all his patients, and takes 4000mg himself (I take 3600).

Why hadn't I heard this before? Could I have lessened the post-miscarriage crash if I had known about this then? All the therapy sessions, making meaning of the grief, fear, and pain -- it wasn't worthless. Spiritual growth and all that. But could I have skirted the worst of it?

Eh. No point dwelling. The point is that I've gone down another step on the Celexa without any problems. I hope the trend continues.

Erasure

The holidays were good, but so busy. For some reason, we agreed to travel three times -- first to my parents' house, which is less than 2 hours away. Then down South to visit Adam's family -- a three-hour flight. Then home for two days, followed by another trip to my parents' to celebrate the New Year with my sister and her family. By the middle of the second trip, I was cranky. By the third, I was resentful -- of my family, even of Sam.

Sometimes, especially when I'm tired, it seems so much easier to meet the relentlessness of motherhood by just erasing myself. It's so much simpler and more efficient -- not juggling, just giving in. No real decisions to be made or priorities to be weighed, just a quick response to the most immediate in-my-face demands. Throw my job in the mix and it's easy to spend all my time merely reacting. And there is something oddly satisfying about being self-less. You don't realize what a burden it is to be a full human being until you get a break from it. But then the burnout sets in. Then I remember that martyrdom isn't much of a strategy. Damn.

Sam has picked up some really cool tricks lately. He can transfer Cheerios and Puffs to his toothless mouth. It's an inexact process, leaving him with three or four puffs stuck to his drooly chin before he gets one in the goal. But he is so proud of it, and I'm even cocky enough to think that we might be able to go out for Chinese and both eat food at the same time.

He also likes to clap, sort of. He slaps his hand down on my hand, making a nice thwack sound. Doesn't do it with his own two hands yet. I think the payoff isn't big enough, since baby hands don't make much noise. We're all about efficiency these days.

Piss poor

I credit my final, complete recovery from the Great Post-Miscarriage Depression of '06 with the spring '07 arrival of a little kitten, who we named Zev. He was exactly what we needed: a clingy little 3-pound baby in need of lots of lap time and snuggles, who would knead my stomach and purr like a little engine, then curl up and fall asleep. Zev helped me to embrace hope again, turn the corner, and remember what it was like to feel happy.

Zev had a problem, though. Having spent his first three months on the street (my mother-in-law's street, to be exact, where some kindly neighbors fed the local strays), Zev did not take kindly to the litter box. And that's being generous. To get him to use it with any consistency meant changing the litter and scrubbing the box after every use, and with another cat in the house, that was impossible. If he couldn't pee outside (and, mindful of the vet's warnings about life expectancy, we weren't letting him out), Zev preferred to pee inside, specifically on our bed. I've washed our sheets and blankets more times than I've washed my underwear.

To remedy the problem, we tried getting him neutered, tried pheremone sprays, and tried positive reinforcent ("What a good kitty! good kitties get tweats when they use the witter box!"). We tried negative reinforcement (one brief and instantly-regretted attempt to get Zev to associate peeing on the bed with a quick trip to the shower. We both have scars from that bozo idea), and all kinds of special litter brands/types. We brought in a pricey cat psychologist whose advice, as far as I could understand, was that I'd have to quit my job and devote myself to providing a rich, stimulating environment for Zev, with a litterbox in every room in the house.

What we ended up doing is scooping all THREE boxes (one for each floor) every day, and putting the little Zev on Prozac, per one teary, desperate phone call to the vet (and yes, I have often savored the irony of our sweetly matching mommy-kitty SSRI ensembles). We also started letting him go outside during the day -- something we were loathe to do, as we live on a sort of busy street, but which we have come to accept as Zev's only true path to sanity. He's just happier being able to be outdoors. Keeping him inside makes him miserable, and he acts out by attacking our (IMMACULATELY behaved) older cat and, yes, peeing. So he goes out a few times during the day, and sleeps in bed with us at night, and we keep our fingers crossed and pray that he'll continue to show good sense when crossing the street.

And that has worked beautifully until this Great Blizzard of '08 rolled into town and Zev decided he doesn't like getting his paws wet. Or cold. Or something. Our Southern-born cat won't set foot outdoors, and last night, after one of Sam's usual 2am wakeups, I finally dozed off only to wake up sputtering as Zev dumped a couple of bladders-full of piss on my thigh.

Breathless

Lately, I've been having so many moments where Sam's existence just takes my breath away. I'll be playing with him, or cuddling him, or watching him sleep, and the incredible blessing of it all just stops me in my tracks. This is my baby, I'll think. We had a baby. He's here.

I think that half the journey for me has been about my slow realization that this time, we got lucky. I think my heart and brain have been so slow to believe it. I had gotten so accustomed to being one of the unlucky ones--and hell! We didn't even have it that bad. Two miscarriages. How many women have been through so much more?

I guess I'm not quite sure how to digest this good fortune.

And now he's doing little things like wrapping his arms around my neck when I carry him, and squealing and bouncing up and down and waving his arms when I come home from work. My God, the gift of mothering this child! I think, "What did I do to deserve this?" but it's not about deserving. The blessings are as much out of my hands as the losses were.

If only I could do something to help all the incredible, brave, hurting, and yes, deserving women who've lost babies. If I were a more reliable carrier, I'd offer be a surrogate, but I'm still high risk, even with Lovenox. I'm too old to offer reliable eggs. Gah. I just wish there was something I could do.

Good boy

Sam is a good baby. I find myself saying that all the time. "Oh, what a good baby you are," kiss, kiss, kiss. "Yes, he's a very good baby," I say to strangers when they ask.

But what does that mean? "Good" baby as opposed to what, rotten-to-the-core baby? I've only seen one depiction of a truly hateful infant, and that was fiction.

And yet there is this sense of a fundamental goodness in him. He's so content, generally, so quick to smile, so delighted by the Mexican tin hearts on the wall, or the skylight above our bed, or any random person talking to him. He's so quick with a giggle, and the noises, the noises! The delicious little squeaks and bleats and hiccups he makes in response to us.

But it's foolish to equate goodness with compliance. Hard to believe it, but he will defy me one of these days, and get angry and tantrum. I just hope I'll be as quick to defend and promote his fundamental nature. That's what unconditional love is all about, right?


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For the records: He has been pushing himself up into a sort of Cobra pose for a couple of weeks now, but he has just started to try to also push his butt up off the floor in a sort of pre-crawling lift-off. Everyone reminds us that we'll be well and truly screwed once he starts moving around. Thanks, everyone. We haven't childproofed a single cabinet yet.