Mendolonium

I do not understand how the time change works.

Of course, I understand that at the appointed hour we all set our clocks one hour forward and for the next seven months of our lives donate an hour to the gods of daylight savings time only to get that hour back this fall.  I think such shenaniganas are rather antiquated, but whatever; there are lots of things that still exist that should be banished to the history books (checks, phone books).  I will deal.

It is my children that are incapable of dealing and I do not understand how a one hour change can work to wreak such havoc with their sleep.  Logic dictates that if my children are usually asleep by 8:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time), then given the recent “spring forward” in time they should be asleep by 9:00 pm (Pacific Daylight Time).  Well, my children are nothing if not illogical.  Annie was utterly incapable of falling asleep last night without heroic measures.  Then after waking up three or four times she decided she was AWAKE from 12:00 am to 2:00 am nattering on in her baby speak and randomly signing “cookie” and “dog”.  She was happy; looking quite pleased with herself actually, as I lay next to her doing the tired math of “When do I have to get up in the morning minus what time is it now?”  She finally acquiesced to sleep only by sleeping on my neck.  As you might suspect I did not exactly find such sleep restful.  Then Theodore was up with the sun and decided not to take a nap today.   Thomas didn’t fall asleep until after 10:00 pm last night, was up and cranky this morning for school.  I expected him to fall into bed like a log tonight but no such luck.  It is currently 11:02 pm and I can hear him singing in his room.  He is going to be most unpleasant in the morning.   The worst part of it this whole affair is that Thomas’ wakefullness is making me postpone my nightly ice cream sundae.  Thomas keeps getting out of bed to inform me that he “is having a hard time falling asleep” and I can only imagine how indignant (and awake) it would make Thomas to see me chowing down on a giant bowl of ice cream.  It would totally ruin my lie to him that all we do after he goes to bed is clean up the house.  Little does he know that we eat dessert, order takeout, watch movies, read books, and once I even built a space shuttle out of his Legos after he was in bed.  (Of course, I also do dishes, study, fold laundry, prep meals, clean up, and pack lunches).

Of course, Jeff has no such issues with daylight savings time – he is currently curled up on half of the couch with me – sound asleep.

OK, so it wasn’t a bar, it was my living room.

After a long night I awoke yesterday morning to a chatty, happy baby (seemingly oblivious to her half dozen wake-ups during the night).  I rolled out of bed, got a bowl of cereal and popped Mary Poppins into the DVD player for Theodore, and whisked Anna off to the bathroom.   Despite the fact that Anna has the sleep skills of a 2 week old, she is rather competent at using the toilet.  She often wakes up dry and it is our routine to sit her on her wee little toilet in the morning to do her business.  After she finished I stepped a few feet away to grab some clothes for her out of the hall closet (poor third child in a two bedroom house doesn’t even have a closet).  In the few moments I was gone Anna decided that #1 wasn’t all she had in store and began to work on excrement #2.  Apparently this was not to be done on the toilet, but required a stroll out to the living room during the act.  I walked back into the bathroom to see a a trail of turds leading onto my living room rug where I found a gleeful baby pointing at her handiwork shouting “Dat dat dat!”  Theodore looked up from watching Mary Poppins and calmly observed,  “Annie pooped.  You should clean it up.”  Thanks kid.  That boy will yell for help at the top of his lungs if his blanket has even one wrinkle in it or if he can’t find the specific Lego he is looking for but when his baby sister decides to take a dump on the floor he says nothing until after the fact.  I took a deep (well, not too deep) breath and coaxed Annie over to the changing table to clean her up; her soiled sleeper billowing behind her like the cape of a tiny, very filthy, super heroine.  It quickly became clear that this was a DEFCON 1 sort of situation requiring a full bath.  I ran a shallow bubble bath for her (bubbles – I am quite nice in the face of adversity) and plopped a still delighted Anna into the cleansing waters.  I then grabbed a stack of old prefold cloth diapers, some cleaner, and went to work cleaning up the poopocalypse.  As I scrubbed the living room rug I noticed an ant, then another, then a whole trail of them marching into the living room to torment me.  It is been over a year since I last saw an ant try to invade our living room but they choose yesterday to make a stand.  I rewarded their bravery by squishing them in poopy diapers.  I was feeling like I had regained some modicum of control over the situation when I grabbed another clean diaper only to have a black spider crawl out at me; a black spider with red hourglass on its body.  My god!  Can’t a mother catch a break?  Apparently not.  I responded in the only way I reasonably could to a black widow in my living room; by screaming bloody murder and smashing the spider into oblivion.  I realized that Anna was ominously quiet in the bath and went in to to investigate.  I found that she was quiet because she had occupied herself by dumping the bathwater out onto the bathroom floor; bathwater that was full of a fresh load of crap.

At that point I called Jeff home from work to share the joy.  We cleaned up the children, the rug, and the floors.  Then Jeff took the kids to school so I could mercifully take a shower in peace; free from excrement, insects, and arachnids.  Now that, my friends, is true love.  It’s not flowers, or wine, or roses – love is the partner that will literally clean up shit with you; and laugh while you are doing it.

I don’t work on Fridays; I spend the day at with Theodore and Anna; baking, doing housework, and reading stories – generally enjoying the life of a part-time stay at home mom.  This past Friday afternoon I had made plans to go to Thomas’ school to give a long-planned talk on the solar system to his kindergarten class.  I had a power point presentation, solar system objects for each child to hold in a interactive activity, and planet coloring sheets all ready to go.  I was excited when Jeff came home early to take over the care of the little ones.  Before I left Jeff asked whether or not I had heard any news that day.  We don’t ever watch the news in our house and I rarely get a chance to read the happenings of the world on the internet until the children are asleep so I hadn’t heard anything.   Jeff briefly told me what had happened in Connecticut and I walked out of the house to Thomas’ school in a daze.  I didn’t really know how to even process the news of what Jeff had told me but I felt tears springing to my eyes at the thought of such horror and pain.  I could logically think about the issues of gun control and mental illness; but I could not emotionally understand how such a thing was possible.  I took a deep breath before I walked into the school and tried to focus on the excitement of outer space.

As I was walking to Thomas’ classroom I found my pace quicken.  I was taken by the sudden urge to hurry and I practically ran into the room to gather him up in a big hug and plant a kiss on his cheek – right in front of all his classmates.  Thomas’ face broke into a big grin.  I smiled back with the appreciation that he is still at an age where it is cool for your mom to give you a hug and a kiss for all to see.  We talked about the solar system for 40 minutes; the kids were excited and asked all sorts of (mostly) intelligent questions.  The presentation was at the end of the school day so after we were done I simply took Thomas by the hand and headed home.  These days, I don’t often hold his hand when we walk together but I took it and didn’t let go until we got to the car.

We had a good weekend together as a family; the carousel at the mall was ridden, Christmas presents were made, and cookies were baked.  But late at night as I nursed Annie to sleep I read the news of the massacre on my iphone.  I read the names and birthdays of the children, all of them with birthdays within days or months of Thomas’.  I just felt so sad and so vulnerable.  Deeply sad for the families who lost their loved ones and for the survivors who must deal with the aftermath.  Vulnerable for my children and all children really.  I am not worried about my kids at school per se; not really concerned that we any of us will be the victim of random violence.  But as a parent, you want to believe that you can protect your children; that if you are vigilant enough somehow they will be immune to anything bad happening.  I think we can, and should, enact greater controls over weapons of mass murder such as assault weapons.  I think we can and should do more to treat mental illness.  But I also know that all the gun control and psychiatric care and car seats and vaccines and fire drills and talks about stranger danger and hand holding will not necessarily keep my kids safe.  And I when I think about that I feel physically ill.  Thomas, Theodore, Anna, and all those perfect, beautiful children in Connecticut; children who sound just like Thomas and the kids in his kindergarten class – right down to many of the same first names – are all innocent and we must do better to protect them.

Thomas asks a lot of questions – we’ve discussed religion, war, alcoholism, politics, and where babies come from.  I usually enjoy his questions; pleased at how inquisitive and forthright he his.  This time, though it is my deep hope that Thomas does not hear about the school shooting; if he does he will ask and there will be no sugarcoating the issue with him, he will want details.  If he asks I have no answers to give him, only sadness and my promise that I will keep him as a safe as possible.  That doesn’t feel like enough.  I need to go give him and his brother and sister another hug and kiss now.

I gave a great deal of thought as to whether or not I wanted a homebirth with Anna.  I had previously had two good hospital birth experiences.  I had felt the absolute relief of an epidural wash over me and knew full well that labor with my third baby was bound to be just as painful as the first two.  In the end I decided on a homebirth with Anna for all the same reasons that I had wanted one with Thomas and Theodore:  as a low-risk mother it was as safe as or safer than giving birth in a hospital and I didn’t want to have to constantly advocate for myself and my baby as I would have to in a hospital.

I got all of that with Anna’s birth, but I got something I never expected to as well.   The greatest gift of giving birth to Anna at home has been the patience it has given me as her parent.

I had planned a home birth with Thomas but for reasons unknown my labor was so long and exhausting that after 26 hours of unending pain I simply didn’t feel that I could go on at home.  My midwife concurred and I transferred to the hospital where after an epidural – and 18 more hours – I had an uncomplicated, relatively easy birth.  I was proud of myself after Thomas’ birth; proud of all those hours laboring at home, proud of myself for speaking up at the hospital for what I knew was safest for myself and my baby, proud of myself for pushing through a difficult labor.

With Theodore I had planned a homebirth, but when my water broke at 37 weeks along with concerns of intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) it was off to the hospital for an induction.  Even with the dreaded Pitocin Theodore’s birth was relatively quick, and with an epidural, easy.  I was proud of myself after Theodore’s birth too; proud of those hours I labored without Pitocin, proud of myself for asking for the epidural when I knew I really needed it, proud of myself for advocating for my baby and myself.

Proud of myself as I was; those births didn’t feel entirely of my own labors, so to speak.  Thomas and Theodore’s births felt more like a team effort, granted I was doing most of the work, but the epidural was on my team, the OB was on my team, the nurses tried to be on my team (I wasn’t that fond of the nurses help).  I didn’t like team sports as a kid and it turns out I don’t like them as an adult.  With Anna labor was much more of an individual event.  I had a fantastic cheering section to be sure; all the support a woman could want in the form of my husband, my doula, and a midwife.  And should I have needed the assistance of a team my midwife and a transfer to the hospital with my wonderful OB would have been there to help carry me through.  But I didn’t need it.  All I needed was myself.  I remember the feeling of those dark moments when I didn’t know how I would go on any longer.  A couple of hours from Anna’s birth I had no idea her arrival was so close and broke down calling out that I wanted to go to the hospital, that I wanted a damned epidural.  But as soon as I said it, the urge to leave home passed and I took a deep breath and just carried on.  I wasn’t the picture of the calm, serene mother you see in homebirth videos.  I yelled, I got mad, and I am pretty sure I even threw something at my very patient doula.  The contractions kept coming but I just hunkered down and kept going too.  What choice did I have?  I did what millions of women do every year; in that respect nothing special.  But when it was all over I was beyond proud of myself.  After Anna was born I just kept saying over and over “We did it.”  She and I, we did it together.

Today was Anna’s first birthday.  The past year hasn’t been easy.  Anna has been a challenging baby.  Nursing was a challenge for months.  She had colic.  She is a craptastic sleeper – for both naps and nighttime.  Last night she celebrated her birthday by waking up – no exaggeration – every 40 minutes from 7:45 pm to 8:15 am.  When Thomas was up all night long there would be tears on both my and Thomas’ part.  When Theodore would refuse to nap I would call Jeff and vent about how frustrated I was.  When Anna refuses to sleep I just sigh and hold her.  To be sure, much of the time I am holding her I enjoy it; downright love it, in fact.  I’ve got my limits though and there are many times I am so tired, have a million things to do, have two other children that need me that I really wish I could put her down.  But it’s ok.  When the going gets tough with Anna I think, I made it though labor with you and I can make it through this.

I’ve missed the past two nights of blogging because Anna simply would not sleep.  It’s taken me almost as long to write this piece as I was in labor with Anna.  She’s woken up five times since I started this post.  But it isn’t as hard as labor – not by a long shot.  And I got through that.  Anna and I -we – got through that together.

I expected a lot out of homebirth.  I didn’t expect how confident it would make me feel.  I think I will forever be on a high from Anna’s birth.  Perhaps a decade from now, thinking back how we made it through labor together, my confidence at navigating though the toughest of times will help us navigate though the teen years.  Homebirth:  the gift that keeps on giving.