Today

Today was sort of a long and crappy day. I had to get in early this morning for a meeting that ended up being waste of time and then spent most of the day trying and failing to deal with a couple of extremely challenging and time sensitive situations at work. On my way to another meeting, I tripped on the stairs down to the subway, twisted my knee and ripping the cuff of my pants in the process. I also managed to drop my blackberry, which sent the battery and the back casing flying irrevocably onto the subway tracks. When I got to the meeting, I realized I had neglected to bring a pen, and it wasn’t really a situation where I could ask to borrow one. I left my office with a good three hours of work to do tonight and realized about a block from the subway that I left my wallet on my desk.

Ellie’s daycare lets out at 5:30 pm and on the three days a week that I am responsible for picking her up, I have to leave the office at 4:50 at the absolute latest. If I’m still there at 4:50, I don’t even have time to shut down my laptop or, for that matter, save any documents or emails I’m working on. I just shut the lid, throw it in my bag and hurry – sometimes I even run – to catch the subway.

So today, after my long and crappy day, I was racing through Grand Central to the subway, my knee hurting from my fall, my feet hurting from my heels, a billion work problems hanging over my head and without a wallet, and I was in a pretty good mood because I was on my way to pick up Ellie.

I can’t even express how much I love picking her up. When I get to the daycare, she’s usually playing on the mat, or hanging out in the exersaucer, or with one of the “teachers”, and it takes me a few seconds to get her attention, but when she sees me, she always breaks into a big smile. It’s not just picking her up, either, although I especially enjoy that. Just coming home to her on the days that Jeremy has already picked her up is terrific. Sometimes he’ll take her into the stairwell when he sees that I’m home and she’ll be so excited to see me (or, more realistically, to see my boobs) that she’ll start laughing before I make it up the stairs. It’s not her excitement to see me though. Even if she’s grumpy, even if she’s sleeping, I’m just as eager to get to her.

To some extent, I have always felt that way about coming home to Jeremy. I’ve always looked forward to arriving home and to seeing him, and that hasn’t changed in the almost thirteen years that we’ve been together. I never feel blasé about it. I’ve always quickened my pace as I get closer to my apartment. But with Ellie it’s even stronger. I don’t know if it’s because she does something new every day, or because I’m still learning all the different aspects of her personality, but I just can’t wait to see her. It’s like Christmas morning every day.

Today, as I was coming home, it occurred to me that I get to have that feeling of coming home to Ellie, or Ellie coming home to me, for the next eighteen-ish years. I guess as she gets older, the feeling will moderate itself a little. But I can imagine myself being excited about coming home to the toddler Ellie, and the grade-school Ellie, and even the teenage Ellie. It’s such a happy thought.

I’m just so happy these days. I feel like I’m stretched ridiculously thin, and I’m finding that to be pretty stressful. And I think that sometimes the stress can mask my happiness. But whenever I get a quiet moment in my own head, I just realize that my heart feels so full. I feel so lucky, to have Jeremy and Ellie, to have my little life and my little family.

Year in Review

I went and looked at my entry from the beginning of last year, wondering if I had kept my resolutions, only to find out that I hadn't made any. Probably a good thing, since this year was more about surviving than it was about aspiring.

2007 was a year full of new highs and new lows. Ellie was born, so the year can't have been anything but great. We love our little girl so much, and more with every passing day. I know, now, that I didn't appreciate the freedom, ease, and wealth of my pre-baby life. But I also know that there isn't anything that I value more than my family; that I would give up a million different things for Ellie; that I am happier now than I have ever been.

It's been a difficult year, too, though. The medical stuff was hard. I'd always seen myself as impervious to health problems. Work was a mess, mostly. I got promoted in the beginning of the year, and then everything went downhill, with deals falling apart and my motivation, right before I went out on maternity leave, sinking to an all time low. Ellie was harder than I thought she would be. She went through a gassy, colicky phase and taking care of her wasn't as rewarding as I had expected it would be. Balancing motherhood and work has been challenging. Keeping our marriage strong hasn't been as effortless as I thought it would be.

It seems like, in 2007, I had to lose myself and then find myself again. I'm mostly the same person that I was before, but somehow more so. More self assured, anyway. I feel so calm and strong, right now. It's difficult for me to articulate, but I feel like everything has been brought into sharper focus. I know what I want for myself and from myself. I feel like I've finally (at 31!) crossed into adulthood.

My resolutions for 2008: I want to be fiscally responsible; I want to work hard and do well at my job; I want to lose weight. I want to be a good mother. I'm already doing all of these - fiscal responsibility for a few weeks, hard work and job success post-maternity leave, losing weight consistently (if slowly), a good mother since Ellie's birth - so I just have to keep them up. I think I can do that.

Taxi cab confessions

I’m going to write about being back at work, but not yet. It’s not so bad. I miss Ellie like crazy, but I also like getting out of the damn house. I wish I could stay part-time forever, though, because I think that’s WHY I don’t think it’s so bad.

Also, I’m posting a random picture of Ellie, just because I think she’s so damn cute and awesome. Really, it’s just the pictures driving the increase in the frequency of posting.

So, on an unrelated note, I’m not a great taxi cab rider, except late at night. Late at night, I’m happy to be in a cab, getting home quickly and there’s no traffic to aggravate me. So I make pleasant conversation with the driver, tip him well and am generally happy with the experience. During the day, though, when there is traffic, I always feel like 1) I’m wasting my money and 1) the taxi cab driver is out to destroy my soul by taking the longest and most inconvenient route possible. Sometimes I passively-aggressively sit and fume and let it irk the shit out of me, and sometimes I actually tell them what route to take, which pisses off the driver. Sometimes my suggested route is actually a crappy route and then I still have to sit in traffic and stew while the driver either silently or loudly mocks me. I don’t take a cab unless work is paying, I’m drunk, I’m late getting somewhere, or with Jeremy who likes cabs more than I do and insists on tipping a ridiculous amount, like 50%, regardless of the cab riding experience. He once gave an enormous tip to some guy who went purposefully three blocks out of the way AND told me to settle down when I was sitting in the back seat fidgeting with anger. I think that actually prompted a genuine argument between us.

I took a cab last week because I had one of my five billion doctor’s appointments clear on the other side of town. Since I’m working three days a week, it’s hard to just take off from work for a few hours to go to the doctor but the other option is taking Ellie with me which is worse. So I went during the work day and ended up taking a cab back to the office after the bus didn’t come for like ten minutes.

This particular cab, I got in and the cab driver told me that the last women in the cab had been racist. Right away, I figured I was going to like this guy. I’m always happy to have a conversation about what assholes racists are, and the guy was Caucasian (reasonably rare in a NYC cab driver) so it was nice to hear a white guy complain about racism. Assuming, of course, they aren’t talking about racism against white people, which is at best boring and often complete bullshit.

“Oh, really,” I said, “that’s no good. Racist against whom?”

“Pretty much everyone,” he replied. “The Irish, the Italians, blacks, you name it. The funny thing is, she tried to cheat me out of the fare.”

At this point I was just sort of idly listening, seeing where he was going with this. As it turned out, it was going downhill. I can’t remember what he said, but he vaguely implied that the woman was Jewish and that’s why she was racist and had tried to cheat him.

“Sound like you’re racist,” I said, happy that for once I was not just ignoring someone’s egregious behavior.

So that got him started, and he ranted on and on about the Jews for awhile, and how they came to the US after the Holocaust and didn’t have a trade to sell like everyone else, so they had to steal money or some crap instead. And that turned into a much more massive rant about illegal immigrants, who were responsible for 1) ruining the great country that was America 2) shoddy products 3) the massive increases in healthcare costs and 4) bad taxicab driving. I argued with him, but at some point it became apparent that the guy was batshit nuts, so it’s not like he was listening to anything I said. He kept saying that I’d understand when I had a little experience. I kept wondering if he did this to every customer. I’m pissed at myself, because at the end of the ride I gave him a normal tip (not a good tip, but a respectable one, because even though I wanted to give him no tip for being a shithead, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I blame Jeremy with his overly enthusiastic tipping.

The one thing I did learn on the incredibly irritating ride was why the taxi cab drivers in NY are objecting to having to take credit cards in their cabs. In the media, the stated reasons have been really vague, and up until that point I had been going with Jeremy’s theory that they object to being forced to install the credit card machines. In the midst of his ranting, and I can’t remember how this fit in, he said that the reason they don’t want the machines is because they have to pay taxes on their tips, and this will force them to report the tips accurately to the IRS. This made perfect sense to me, so it goes to show you can learn something from every asshole who crosses your path.

Adjustment

The Yankees are lame and should have won last night. But we're still fans around here.

The first day of work was rough. I was late, because I haven't really mastered the get out of the house routine. And then Ellie spent most of the day crying and sleeping, even though she was with Jeremy, who takes care of her all the time. I don't know if she missed me, or if she isn't used to having to eat from a bottle or day, or if it was just a coincidence. She was still grumpy when I got home, and I couldn't really get her to smile, and then she went to sleep an hour later, two hours before her normal bedtime. On the whole, it was a depressing day and I cried over dinner because I couldn't stay home with her anymore.

Today was better. She was happier, I was getting into the routine and into my job, she stayed up for a few hours after I got home, and also, I have tomorrow off, which is a happy thought. It doesn't seem quite so unbearable today.

I was sure I would want to go back to work when I was pregnant. When people asked me about it, generally I would claim it was for the money and the health insurance, both of which are valid reasons. I didn't want to say to people that I wanted to work, because I thought they'd think less of me and I'm entirely too concerned with other people's opinion of me.

Post-Ellie, it's not like my choices, or options, have changed. I still want to work, I still HAVE to work. But I didn't understand how difficult it would be to leave her and how reluctant I would be to cede control of any portion of her day to someone else. She's just growing so insanely fast, and changing every day. I get up in the morning eager to see what new thing she's going to do today. With my working, I feel like I'll miss out on that.

I can't even count how many people have said to me, with respect to staying at home, that they stay at home because they want to "raise their own child". It's such a shitty and offensive thing to say to someone, and so unfair. Working or not, I'm going to raise my own child. After all, when Ellie goes to school in a few years, no one will say that the school is raising her. My mother worked my entire childhood, but not once did I think that she was an absentee parent.

I don't know what my point is here. I'm just rambling on. It'll all fall into place, working and Ellie, I'm sure. I'm also sure that this won't be the first time I'm judged as a parent.

On another note, "they" figured out what was wrong with me with respect to the blood clot/seizure thing. I have some minor blood clotting disorder from a gene mutation, so I'll have to take blood thinners for a year and then aspirin (which has blood thinning properties) for the rest of my life. Not such a big deal, thank god. If I want to get pregnant again, and despite the misery, I'm pretty sure I do, I'll have to take an injectible drug every day. The hemotologist shrugged this off as no big deal, and I don't generally have a problem with needles, so I guess that's fine. Although it doesn't sound fun.

Out of time

When Ellie first came home, I was very attached to her, and certainly loved her, but she didn't quite feel like she was mine. It felt more like an extended babysitting gig. She (obviously) wasn't that responsive, so it almost felt like I was pretending to be a mother. She was cute. Mostly she slept.

Then I was in the hospital for a week, from when she was two weeks old to when she was just about three weeks old.

When I came home from the hospital, I was really tired. Too many drugs, I think. Ellie cried all the time, from gas. She would cry and I was exhausted, and I still really loved her, but a lot of times I thought to myself, "this sucks". Her schedule was eat, cry, sleep, all day, repeat. Nursing was tough. She didn't sleep much at night, so I didn't sleep much either. She was still pretty unresponsive.

She's a different baby now.

I have so much fun with her. I get her to smile with little games. I'll poke her nose and say "beep", and a grin will crawl over her face. Or, I'll pretend to give her pacifier to her, but miss her mouth and hit her chin or her cheek instead. That makes her smile, too. I try to teach her to say Da-da - I enunciate carefully, "say Da-da" - and she gets a huge smile on her face. Sometimes she puts her tounge to the top of her mouth like she's going to say it too. We stick out our tongues at each other. We practice standing and sitting. She tries to eat her fists and drools. She wakes up at 5 am to eat and after I feed her I bring her into my bed, just so I can watch her wake up a couple of hours later; watch her stretch and yawn. I say, "Good Morning, sweetheart", and she smiles just to see my face. She watches me leave the room and is delighted when I come back. She loves her baths. If you tickle her, it will piss her off. She snuggles into my chest, her feet tucked up under her while I watch television or read the internet. When I carry her, and she's almost asleep, she'll throw one arm casually across my shoulder and sort of half-ass hold on.

There are so many things I can't wait for. I can't wait for her to start cooing and babbling more - she's a pretty quiet baby, and doesn't make sounds very often. I can't wait for her to start laughing. And turning her head when I call her name. There's other stuff, like crawling and talking and walking, that will be great, but I'm not ready for that, because I still want her to stay a little baby. I don't want to hurry her along. I don't want to miss a single second of it.

I guess I'm going to, though, because I go back to work on Monday. Part-time at first, thank god, and then full time starting in December. I'm so greatful that my lazy days with her are not completely over yet, but even part time is going to be tough. I'm dreading December. December is going to suck. There's so much I'm worried about. I'm worried that no one will play with her in daycare, or that she'll start going to sleep earlier (people put their babies to bed at 7!) and I'll only be able to see her for a tiny little bit each day. I'm worried that she'll miss me. I'm worried that she won't be happy to see me, the way she is now, when I'm clearly the highlight of her life. I'm worried that I'll have problems with breastfeeding/pumping. I'm worried I'll miss out on all her great "firsts".

I keep telling myself, and other people, that I'm not cut out to be a stay-at-home mom. That'd I get bored and miss adult conversation. That I'd feel like I'm not a contributing member of society, that I'm good at my job and have worked hard to get where I am today. That it will be okay once I get into a routine. That my mother worked, and I respected her for it. All of that is probably true. What is more true is the financial reality that I need to work and there's no point wondering whether or not I want to. I have to go back. I just wish it wasn't so soon.

Grandma

I meant to bring Ellie to my parent's house the day she turned two weeks old. Since that was the day I ended up back in the hospital, I didn't manage it until the following week, when she was three weeks old.

I came home from the hospital sort of depressed, but mostly deeply, deeply tired. I think it was mostly the drugs - on top of the medications I'm still on, they had given me an enormous dose of sedatives and I was still having memory problems. I was nursing, or trying to, so I was getting up at least once in the middle of the night, I think still twice at that point. So I was sort of beat down. But that morning, heading to my parents, I was in a pretty good mood, because life was getting back to normal, because I was home, because we were going for this nice drive, because we were going to both sets of parents and I got to show off my baby. I was sort of nervous, too, because this was going to be the first time my mother met the baby.

Her attitude during my pregnancy had changed slightly. Even though she still sort of refused to admit that I was pregnant, as I got bigger and bigger, she would tell me that I should sit down, and she was a little nicer to me. I had sort of high hopes. My mother had always loved babies. She loved her own, especially, and was a terrific mother, but she loved other people's too. I knew I would be sort of crushed if she didn't show any interest in the baby, because I thought of that as a fundamental part of her personality, one of the things that gets through the crazy, and reminds me that this person is still my mother.

Her reaction was pretty much all that I could have hoped for. She was very sweet to Ellie, and very happy to see her. She kept calling her cutie and sweetie, and she wanted to hang out with her and interact with her. She admired her clothes and her baby accessories (like her car seat) and in keeping with her general insanity, told me I should get her baby diamond earings and necklaces. I wasn't hoping for sane, though. I was just hoping for affection, and I got it.

She didn't want to hold her. I would have let her (though supervised), because I'm absolutely positive that my mother wouldn't hurt a baby. And she's not a violent person. But she didn't want to. At first, she didn't ask to, and then, when I offered a couple of weeks later, she said that she was afraid to, because she had a little bit of a cold, which wasn't true. It's interesting. I can't really discern the reasons behind that, but I figure she'll hold her when she's ready. Or not. It's just nice when she kisses her.

I go there pretty regularly, usually once a week, even post baby, and a couple of weeks ago my brother was there with me. I can't remember the context, but he referred to my mother as Grandma. "Don't say that," I quickly corrected him, sure that my mother would loath being called Grandma, since she still thinks she's young and famous. But no. Instead, under her breath she asked, "Why not?". So she's Grandma.

I love my mother. I hope Ellie loves her too, despite everything.

A happy ending

And, several months later...

I had a baby!

The delivery/post-partum was miserable. MISERABLE. I'll reduce it to a list, because it's long enough as it is. It just kept getting worse and worse.

- I went to the hospital for a routine, post due-date stress test, and the baby has an arrhthymia. Probably not serious, I was told, listening as her heart missed a beat every once in awhile, but your physician might want to induce.

- My physician did want to induce. They sent me home to get my stuff, my husband, and eat dinner, and then to come back.

- While I was eating dinner, I noticed that half of my face was sort of...paralyzed. As it turns out, it was Bell's Palsy. "It'll probably go away," I was told, upon my return to the hospital. That was a little depressing.

- They didn't have a bed, so I was in the waiting room for four hours, from 8 until midnight. I was having contractions on and off.

- After that, they decided to put me in the very uncomfortable triage room, and hook me up to the baby monitor and an IV. It was basically a cot and I had to lie sort of half-cocked - not on my back, not on my side. That was temporary until they found me a regular bed. Which they did, after another four hours. Even then, they didn't start the induction, because they needed to, I don't know, find a doctor?

- At 7 am they started the induction. Because I was not at all dilated, even though I was past due, they had to give me cervadil. Supposedly that would cause me to become dilated, and then they could give me pitocin. After twelve hours of irregular contractions, every two to three minutes apart, still stuck lying in a half-on-my side position, they checked and said that the cervadil hadn't worked. I started to cry. Meanwhile, they kept losing the baby's heartbeat. They said I could do another twelve hours stint (which may or may not work), start the Pitocin anyway (which probably would not work), or do a c-section. With the heart issues, my ob recommended a c-section. I couldn't face another day or so of this without at least the likely possiblilty of a baby at the end of it, so I agreed.

- The c-section went beautifully. Except that, at the end, because of the heart issues, they took the baby to the step-down unit, and I couldn't see her, except for that minute right after she was born (when I was still tied down and feeling really, really horrible and ill from the anesthesia), for twelve hours. And I reacted poorly to the anesthesia, so I had the shakes for a few hours.

- They didn't have a bed again, so I was in the recovery room for about five hours while everyone else came in from having a c-section and got to bring their babies with them.

- I got to see and hold the baby the next morning, about twelve hours after she was born. And then I got to keep making visits to the ICU to feed and hold her every three hours until she was released to my room that evening. The arrhythmia was resolved. Everything was good, and we were happy.

- I had to go get an MRI for the Bell's Palsy. So I couldn't breastfeed for 24 hours. I fed her formula instead. When I got her back, she refused to breastfeed and would scream when I tried.

- We kept trying and trying and trying with the breastfeeding - using bottles, a supplemental nursing system, a nipple shield, you name it - and eventually persevered. I think it took about a week and a half, and more patience than I have ever had in my life.

- Two weeks after she was born, I had a seizure. We were getting ready to go to my parents, I made some horrible noise, and when Jeremy turned around I was on the ground. I went to the hospital with the paramedics, and by the time he got there, after having my brother's girlfriend come to watch the baby, I was having another one. It turns out that I had a blood clot in my brain, apparently because pregnancy causes thicker blood and it happens sometimes.

- I don't remember the first three days, but I was in the step down unit for six days. It sucked. We had to do the learn to breastfeed thing all over again, because at first they told me I wouldn't be able to and my supply dried up. I'm fine now, except for being on tons of medication and having excessive doctor visits. The Bell's Palsy went away, too.

The short version of all of this, though, is that I had a baby. Her name is Eleanor, Ellie for short, and she's awesome. I couldn't possibly be happier. She's eight weeks old on Saturday.

In the picture at the top she's less than a day old. Here she is from a week ago.