Chasing A Child

The constant taste of bittersweet

A woman speaks to me in the post office. I'm holding Squeaker on my hip, waiting in line to mail packages. It's been a rough day. "How old? What's his name? Is he your first?" She's pretty, fit, tan, put together. I hate her for looking so great. I'm exhausted, unshowered, barely holding my shit together. She tells me she has a 4-month-old daughter at home. I ask her if she's getting any sleep, and she says yes, she is. I hate her even more. "We just got back from Hawaii." I hate her for being able to afford vacations. "I just snuck in the door with this pregnancy," she says. She tells me that the doctors told her she was too old to have children, but her acupuncturist told her otherwise. The pride in her voice is obvious as she tells me that she was pregnant at 43, gave birth at 44. I get it now -- she's one of us, she wants to let me know that she knows I've been there. I appreciate it, really I do. I tell her I'm 44 too, and that I wasn't able to make it through the door in time. In some ways, it's nice -- we're sharing a moment. But I still want to kill her with my bare fists, because her baby lived and mine didn't. I cry as we drive away.

****

Squeaker is walking. For the past few weeks, he's been hovering, lunging forward a few half-steps between the couch and the chair, but last night I watched him take nine steps in a row, unassisted, across the kitchen. Suddenly, he's much older. I'm so excited to see him moving into this new phase. But I dread that the walking will mess with his sleep the way that crawling did at first. I wish that just once I could enjoy this baby without having to worry about work or relationships or sleep.

****

A friend emailed me an entire book about sleep last week. It's the first book we've seen that actually makes some sense based on our parenting style. My friend tells me that this book saved their lives, but even so, the first year of her child's life was so rough that she's living with medication for depression and anxiety. I would hug her tight if she didn't live so far away. I skim the book at work, because that's the only place I have any time to myself, and then I tell the Mister the basics. The method involves, among other things, getting a chair and sitting by the child's bed. The chair we have in Squeaker's room is an heirloom, but it's uncomfortable and falling apart. I drive to hell and gone out in the suburbs the next night -- in blinding rain and barely-moving traffic -- to buy a rocking overstuffed chair with matching ottoman we found on craigslist. The trip takes hours. The woman selling me the chair tells me that her 3-year-old was her "change of life" baby. She wishes she could have another. Her child still doesn't sleep. She tells me the chair is a big help, but that I'm probably in for a long haul. She hugs me as I leave and emails me after I get home, asking me to let her know how things go. 

****

An open adoption friend and her family brought us a plate of holiday cookies last night. It was such a joy to see them, even for a short bit. She said she's thinking about having another baby. I'm in that place too, even in the middle of sleep deprivation hell. Yet there's no money, no energy, no time. It's probably the wrong time in my marriage. But I'm not getting any younger, and I want to make sure Squeaker has a sibling while I have energy enough to manage two babies.

Of course, it's complicated even more by the fact that I don't want Squeaker to be the only brown person in the family. In some states, there are plenty of minority babies needing good families, but our state is overwhelmingly white. We figured out that Squeaker was the only African-American child placed by our adoption agency last year. So we'd have to go out of state or look at an international adoption. Which involves more money. Which we don't have. I feel trapped every way I turn.

****

A young friend is pregnant, unexpectedly. There is every reason to expect that she will have a happy healthy pregnancy and she'll be a wonderful mother. I'm delighted for her of course. But oh my lord, it's hard to hear that kind of news.

Yes, another post about sleep

Thanks for all the suggestions for teething potions. We did invest in some Baby Mo*trin -- I think he slept longer when he finally fell asleep than when we'd given him Baby Ty*lenol. We'll keep experimenting. I should amend my last post -- he's not in pain so much as he is uncomfortable enough to be incredibly angst-ridden and unable in sleep. Nothing pleases him. Or, if he does get distracted from being Mr. Cranky Pants Runny Nose Whiny Boy, it's only for a few minutes and pretty soon he'll be yelling at us again, clearly frustrated that we're not actively distracting him 24 hours a day from whatever this thing is that's annoying him (teeth).

It's definitely not an ear infection, although I have been keeping my eyes open for those signs. And hey, did y'all know that diarrhea is thought in some circles to be a symptom of teething? Oh gee, we've had some lovely times lately. Yes, I'm aware that loose poop could be a sign of some other illness, food allergy, etc. But again, no signs of illness. Just one enormously fussy drooly poopy kid.

I think there's other stuff besides teething going on. He seems to be in some kind of maturing stage where he's very much more aware of things around him in an adult kind of way and frustrated as hell that he's not able to clearly communicate his needs/wishes/desires to us. He wants to interact with his surroundings -- all of them, all the time -- and being trapped in a car seat / shopping cart / adult's arms / etc. just pisses him off. So he let's us know about it. Loudly. He has this particularly effective noise that's kind of like the shriek of a velociraptor. That's a fun one. And there's the whole "suddenly arching his back when you're carrying him on your hip" thing that makes it impossible to do anything except hold onto him for dear life because he seems so bound and determined to launch himself backwards onto his head on the floor. I see major tantrums in our future.

Don't get me wrong -- I love this little guy with every piece of my being and it's a constant joy being with him, even when he's being a complete pill. And lots of the things he does are perfectly normal kid stuff that any toddler will put their parents through. But he is also a challenge in ways that people have a hard time understanding unless they've lived with him. For instance, today the Mister told his mom that it took the two of us, taking turns, an hour and a half to get Squeaker down for a nap. She apparently asked why we don't just let him fall asleep where he's playing -- a perfectly logical question if you were talking about most babies. But Squeaker doesn't just sit somewhere and play. And, if he were sitting somewhere and playing, it would never occur to him to fall asleep, nor would his body let him. He would continue playing until he was bored and then he would move to the next thing (a span of oh, 30 seconds or so), or, if he were confined to the playpen, he'd yell for us to move him somewhere else so he could chase around the house or otherwise be active. Without intervention, Squeaker is a perpetual motion machine.

Here's the thing -- no matter how tired he is, unless an adult physically restrains him, rocks him, holds him, puts him in his crib with his blanket and a binkie and continues laying him back down when he pops back up to a standing position, he can't go to sleep. Not "won't" -- "can't." It's like he has to be physically reminded that sleep is even a possibility. Otherwise, the more tired he gets, the more amped up he becomes, until he's literally a whirling dervish, tearing around the house or tearing his room apart, or, if we're holding him, thrashing around in our arms in a move that we all refer to as "spinning" (including NannyC, who is looking at this whole situation from the standpoint of someone who has been getting 8 hours of sleep/night for the last year). Once he's spinning, we know he's really tired. And once he's that tired, we have to help keep his body still enough to let his mind go to sleep. Some days are easier than others, but it's always been this way. Sleep has never happened on its own, unless you count sleep that happens while he's in the stroller or in the car. There always has to be someone/something restraining him, and there has to be motion/rocking/bouncing. 

When I was looking at daycares as a backup plan in case we couldn't find a new nanny, I found a lovely place -- affordable, clean, organized, organic, cheerful. But they required that kids Squeaker's age be able to <gasp!> go to sleep, on their own, in a crib, without assistance. Ha ha ha hahahahaha!

Um, no, alas.

Today's been particularly challenging. Usually, I know that when he's been spinning for awhile and finally starts to cry, he's nearly ready to pass out. But at naptime today (and he only had one, for 30 minutes, that, as I mentioned, took 1-1/2 hours to reach) the crying continued into hysteria. He was so tired he was hysterical, but his body wouldn't let him go to sleep. We finally dosed him with baby mo*trin and the Mister let him tear up his room for 20 minutes. Then he passed out in the Mister's arms. It was exhausting for us all. My mom keeps suggesting Ben*adryl, but I hate to dose a baby with a drug when there's really nothing wrong with him except an over-active awake system. Pain reliever, okay, but anything more would really be for my benefit, not his.

I know that I write about sleep a lot, but that's because it's so incredibly elusive for poor Squeaker. We've read the books, I swear we have. But frankly, they seem to be written with other babies in mind.  I'm sure there are babies somewhere who just need their parents to change their routine or impose a routine or let them cry or bring them to the family bed or recognize their sleep patterns, or whatever the magic combination of factors is for any particular family. I'm sure there are babies who fall over asleep happily in their toys, too. I've seen pictures of babies asleep in their exer*saucers, babies asleep in their high chairs, babies asleep hanging on the edge of their cribs. That's just not our baby, and reading books won't make his physical nature change. We just have to live with it and live through it. And when I step back and look at it objectively, he is getting better -- sometimes.

In the meantime, he's getting so much bigger and is almost ready to walk. Nanny C says she's seen him take 2 or 3 steps between the couch and the dining room chairs. And we had to buy a new car seat, because he outgrew the old one. We found one that will let him be rear-facing for another 10 pounds or so, which is great. And then it morphs into a forward-facing seat and, eventually, a booster seat. With luck, we won't need another one until he's, oh, 17 or so. At which point, I expect he'll be sleeping all the time and I'll have to drag his lazy teenage butt out of bed in the morning for school ...

Teething Hell

The first 4 teeth were relatively painless. The Boy didn't sleep as well (as if he ever sleeps well in the first place, ha!), but the obvious pain was not excessive. The current set of emerging teeth, however, (another 4 at once) have created a monster child. Intense drool. Whining. Congestion and runny nose. Ear-pulling. More whining. Moaning. Writhing. Complete and utter failure to sleep during the night for more than, oh, 3 minutes in a row. I kid you not.

Last night, I went to bed at 10:30. The Mister was called to the Boy's room 3 times between 10:30 and 11:45. At 11:50, he walked the dog. So when the Boy next woke at 11:52, I awoke, miserably, from a deep deep sleep. And then I spent the next hour and a half rocking, pacing, feeding, changing not just one but two diapers, pacing, rocking ... and finally, putting the screaming child in his crib and leaving the room before I became one of those parents you read about in the newspapers. After spending a few minutes deep breathing in the hallway, I was safe to re-enter the room, but soon reached breaking point and left again. Repeat several times. Finally, at 1:30, the Boy slept. I went back to bed.

Ten minutes later, there was a loud wail from the squawkbox, followed by lots of sobbing and pounding of small fists on the crib. I told the Mister that he had to take over before I broke our baby's leg. Yes, I actually said that. So, the Mister wisely took over -- then and the next 4 times until finally, after a bottle at 6:30, the Boy slept for a full hour (as did we) and I ended up late to work, yet again, even though I skipped my shower. I was so delirious that I left my perfectly full, wonderfully hot cup of coffee in the travel mug on the window ledge next to the front door. Halfway to work, I reached for my coffee and <gasp!> it wasn't there. I nearly drove off the road just to end it all right there.

So yeah -- it's hard being a lawyer under these circumstances. And I'm fresh out of legal interns -- now and for the foreseeable future. And I'm drowning in work. For some weird reason, my busiest time at work is November-February. Convenient, eh? Just in time for shorter days, long dark energy-sucking afternoons, bitter-cold mornings that make staying in bed sound like an infinitely preferable idea, and oh my lord yes, The Holidays. And we're really broke right now, due to the economy taking a big chunk out of the Mister's freelance work. And we're paying for marriage counseling out-of-pocket because our health insurance would only cover it if one of us were declared mentally defective in some way. I bet I could make a pretty good argument that we're both mentally defective right now, but then if somehow we had to change health insurance, we'd have a pre-existing condition and god knows one should avoid that at all cost.

The good news? The new nanny starts in 2 weeks. The worst thing her references found to say about her was that she spent a lot of time reading to the kids. Oh, the horror.

Thankful

I'm too tired to post anything thoughtful. Let's just say that we're struggling through sleep-deprivation, major relationship issues, lots and lots of work at our jobs (where is it all coming from?!), and to top things off, our Wonder Nanny gave us 3 weeks' notice last week. Wah!!

So today was spent interviewing nannies, all of whom had some form of tattoo (not that that matters, but we found it interesting from a statistical/societal basis). Fortunately, one of the young women seems promising ... and, most importantly, sane. I'll be checking her references tomorrow, and if no one mentions the phrase "axe murderer", she's hired.

Until I have more brain power, I'll leave you with a few photos from October and November:

Polenta is nom nom nom!

Sitting in the pumpkin patch, refusing to smile.

Thanksgiving with teeth! We do have a lot to be thankful for this year.

 

Babies, grandparents, and moms of a certain age

Squeaker is sleeping better. Not significantly, but enough that we aren't completely crazed. We haven't really changed the bedtime routine. I suspect the fact that he's cut 3 teeth in the last 2 weeks (we're at 5 total, and more on the way) might have something to do with it -- teething screws with his sleep big-time. The Mister's folks were in town last week and thoroughly wore Squeaker out with grandparent excitement, which was good for all of them. But I think he's also just getting the hang of the sleep thing a bit (knock wood). The only change we made was to add music to the mix, playing a semi-new-age-meditation-music CD while we do the story-reading, bottle-feeding, rocking, pacing, etc. It seems to make Squeaker less manic, and has the added bonus of lowering the adult's blood pressure a few notches, which probably contributes to the decreased child mania.

He still does this thing where just when you think he's groggy enough to pass out and you've lowered him into his crib, he grabs onto your neck like a boa constrictor, making it impossible to actually put him down without unleashing the howling banshee. He does the boa thing in the middle of the night, too. But instead of waking 6-8 times during the night, he's back to 2-3. The Mister tells me Squeaker only woke once the other night, but I was away at a friend's wedding, so wasn't here to experience the bliss.

The more sleep thing is particularly important because we've started going to counseling and need all the clear-headedness we can get during that process. I think it's important to mention this -- to pretend that people can plow through the stress we've had during the past few years without experiencing some kind of serious rough patch would be to promulgate belief in a flowery fantasy world where everyone gets to live happily ever after, no matter what nastiness they go through. Those of you who know how I feel about the helping professions will recognize that things must indeed be rough if I'm willing to pull in the talk-therapy folks.

Unfortunately, I can't blog about the experience (although I would really really like to, because the process of peeling the onion is turning out to be a much weirder thing than I expected) ... but too many of our relatives have access to this blog, and being that honest with them would create more trouble than it's worth. I might do some password-protected musing at a later date.

That wedding I mentioned earlier? It was the daughter of one of my high school friends. The bride was 24, a lovely young woman, who clearly found a great guy. They're incredibly lucky, and we were all so proud to wish them well as they started their journey. Of course, I can't imagine getting married at 24. I could barely feed myself at that point! But she's 4 years older than her mother and I were when she was born, and thinking about that actually made me realize how lucky she was that we didn't just drop her on her head or let her wander out in the street. Twenty-year-olds caring for infants ... yikes. And yet, it happens all the time.

And who's to say that young moms do a worse job than, say, a 44-year-old first-time mom? My friend, for instance, raised a well-educated, grounded young woman, kind and beautiful, with a good head on her shoulders. She went through some extremely hard times, but she survived, and she loved that child with everything she had in her. She did great! It was just so funny knowing that the baby who taught me everything I know about babies was walking down the aisle, while my 10-month-old was home tormenting the Mister ... And of course, my mother-of-the-bride friend is so completely over having babies, and our other friend who came to the wedding has decided not to have kids at all, and here I am, late bloomer, just getting started. We all live in different universes, but our friendship is stronger now than ever. I got so much strength from spending less than 48 hours with these women. The timing couldn't have been better.

On the plane home, there was a 10-month-old baby sitting across the aisle with his mom and grandma. When I told them I had a 10-month-old at home, they were both clearly surprised. Age-wise, I'm probably closer to the grandma than to the mom, and the readjustment they both had to do was really interesting to watch. I felt ... weird. Judged, somehow. The baby's mother should be my peer, because our babies are only weeks apart, but she was clearly uncomfortable seeing me that way, because I was at least 15 years her elder, and the grandma was clearly uncomfortable that someone so close to her age could be in the same situation as her daughter. Internet, I ask you: where are my peers, and how do I find them???

Sleep mode unavailable

And still the baby does not sleep.

I've read about the 9-month sleep regression, and I'd like to believe that that is all we're dealing with. But the truth is, Squeaker has always had a very hard time getting to sleep. When he was a newborn, he couldn't sleep unless one of us was holding him on our chest. Eventually, he was able to sleep for a few hours (albeit fitfully) in between us, so we co-slept until he was about 4 months old. By then, he was too big to fit comfortably in the co-sleeping nest and was kicking and thrashing so much in his sleep that none of us were getting any rest. We'd moved to the new house and he started sleeping in a crib in his own room.

We started out cuddling him until he fell asleep, humming repetitive tunes, pacing and bouncing, because constant movement seemed to help him settle down and eased his need to thrash. He would scream and cry and fight, and was not able to go to sleep without being held all the way into slumberland. As he got bigger and heavier, this became less attractive, particularly since his nighttime routine involves kicking and shoving. He's kicking at sleep, trying to punch it in the nose or at least shove it away, but if someone is holding him, then they're likely to get bruised on sleep's behalf. So we've started laying him in his crib and letting sleep take him over.

It's an epic battle.

Here's how it goes:

Change baby into nighttime diaper. Put baby in fuzzy pajamas. Sit in rocking chair and read 2-3 little cardboard books, ending with Goodnight Moon because that's his signal for bedtime. Baby squirms and thrashes, tries to throw book on the floor. Turn off light. Give baby bottle. He makes it through 6 ounces, then begins thrashing and hitting at the bottle, but screams if you take it away. Give baby a few more sucks on the bottle, replace it with his binky. Baby is now sleepy but ready for a fight. Baby twists and thrashes, kicking and struggling to get down on the floor. Put baby in the crib. Turn on the white noise machine. Baby calms best to the Ocean Waves sound.

Baby immediately pops up to a standing position. Lean over, let baby put his arms around your neck, lay him back down in the crib. Baby rolls over to a crawling position, then stands back up. Lean over, lay him back down. Baby rolls to crawling position, reaches one arm up to grab crib rail, stands up. Lean over, lay him back down. Repeat this 50-60 times. Eventually, baby stays down for a few minutes at a time, but he does not lay still. He rolls over to the side of his crib and uses his fingernails to scratch rhythmically at the wall and the crib slats. When he gets bored with this, he stands up. Lean over, lay him back down.

This time, he'll reach out of the crib to grab at the baby swing that we haven't gotten rid of even though he's way too big for it. Move the swing out of his reach. Baby pops up to a standing position and leans over the crib rail, yelling and trying to reach the swing. Lean over, lay baby back down. Baby takes the binky out of his mouth and rattles it back and forth across the crib rails, like a prisoner rattling his tin cup against the bars of his cell. Over and over. Then he pops the binky back in his mouth and chews on it, grinding his two teeth against the hard plastic. Baby rolls to a crawling position and wavers a moment, then reaches one arm up, grabs onto the crib rail and clambers up to a standing position. Lean over, lay baby back down, walk to the other side of the room. Baby flops around in the crib for a few minutes, then stands back up and starts to yell. Walk over, lay baby back down, walk away. Baby flops around, chewing on binky, then stands back up. Walk over, lay baby back down, walk away. Repeat this for awhile. Eventually, baby begins to cry. Pick him up and rub his back as he nestles his head on your shoulder. As soon as he begins to kick and push his body away from yours, lean over and lay him back down in the crib. Baby rolls over, crawls to the edge of the crib, reaches one arm up and drags himself up. Lean over, lay the baby back down. Repeat above process ad infinitum. Reset the white noise machine, because it only runs for 25 minutes at a time.

Eventually, when you lay the baby back down, he stays down, moaning and kicking, or scratching his fingernails repeatedly against the sheet. He's now almost ready for sleep. Pray that the cat doesn't start yowling outside his door and that the dog won't decide to bark at the cats next door. Wish that your spouse wasn't making so much noise in the kitchen. Any small noise will throw off the delicate balance at this point. Just when you think it's safe to tiptoe out of the room, the baby begins hitting himself in the head -- hard. Try to restrain him, but not so much that he feels trapped and wakes even more to fight it. His feet kick, even when your hand is holding them down. His arm is no longer able to thwack himself in the head, so he hits at his leg instead. Pick up the baby, sit in the rocking chair, feed him the remaining ounce or so of formula. Stand up, and sway back and forth, holding him firmly so that he can't thrash. After a few minutes, if you're very very lucky, he begins to snore. Lean over and lay him back down in the crib, taking a full minute to ease your hand out from under his head. Hold your breath. Ease the blanket up over his legs. Wait a full minute to make sure he's still snoring. Hold your breath again while you slowly tiptoe out of the room.

Sometimes, you'll get downstairs, turn on the baby monitor, and hear nothing. Blessed silence. Sometimes, there will be the indignant squeaks of someone who has realized that he has been left to sleep when sleep is the last thing he wants to do. At this point, your spouse takes over, while you break out the booze.

In any event, this whole thing will be repeated several times during the night, which makes the first triumph far less triumphant than one might otherwise expect. We know that it's not actually the end -- it's only the beginning. If a nighttime feeding is between 2 and 4am, Squeaker is usually good about going back to sleep quickly. Any other time -- and particularly feedings around 11pm or midnight -- may involve an hour or more of the above and variations on the theme. Add extra time for blown-out diapers, changing bedsheets and pajamas, or to find lost binkies. We keep 3 binkies in his room at night, but sometimes he manages to throw all of them under his crib, just out of reach. The Mister is famous for lying down on the floor of Squeaker's room so that his body forms a blockade and going back to sleep while Squeaker crawls around in the blockaded corner and does whatever he wants, eventually falling asleep on the floor too, from sheer boredom. I'm not so enamored of this solution, as I'm the world's lightest sleeper and find floors incredibly uncomfortable as sleeping locations.

"Why don't you just let him cry himself to sleep?" you ask. Because sleeping is not what happens. When this child really gets to crying, he screams until he pukes up enormous amounts of mucus, which he promptly inhales and chokes on. It might not happen every time, but when it does, it's scary. And it's happened often enough that I'm not about to take a chance on him asphyxiating himself because we let him scream. Plus, we just don't believe in CIO. It's not our style.

We do, however, believe in sleep. And eventually, I'm hoping he does too.

Yep, still here ...

You know it's been a long time since you've posted when you have no idea where you left off ... good lord, I've been busy. Can't even begin to describe. The biggest problem has been that I have not a minute of time to myself for exercise or creative efforts -- oh hell, who am I kidding -- I barely have time to shower. It's been 6 months since I had a haircut (or color -- oy, the gray! oy, the split ends! and the frizz!). Everything is work, childcare, housework, paying bills (or trying to figure out where the money is going to come from to pay the bills), trying to sleep, crying (usually in the shower, because it saves time), arguing with people who can't seem to understand how fricking exhausted and without time I am, and more work and then the baby wakes up, because god forbid he take a nap that's longer than 20 minutes. I need a vacation, a housekeeper, a wife and an additional husband, because the one I have is almost as tired as I am.

Things that have happened in the last month:

Squeaker is crawling everywhere as fast as he can, pulling himself up and sitting down and pulling himself up and sitting down, climbing up stairs while saying something that sounds remarkably like "up! up!" even though he can't actually say words yet. He's hugging soft things with big long squeezes (much to our cats' dismay), cracking himself up with something we call the laughing game (he fake laughs, I fake laugh, he fake laughs, I fake laugh), eating just about anything mushy we put in front of him (mashed potatoes or chunks of cheddar cheese are particular favorites), he's 20 pounds, in the 50th percentile for weight and growth, and generally doing great. Now if only this child would sleep!

He does sleep some ...eventually, after much kicking and thrashing -- 3 or 4 hours at a stretch, but no more than that. Which means we're feeding him bottles at 8pm, 11:30pm, 2:30am, and 6am. And he's seriously hungry for those bottles. If we could only get enough calories in him during the day to keep him sleeping longer at night, but he's just not ready for that volume of food, and he still only has the two teeth. His digestive system seems to run about a month behind his growth and energy level. It's incredibly frustrating for all of us.

Sometimes at 6am, he's ready to get  up for the day. Sometimes we're able to coax him back to sleep for half an hour. But 6:30am is his wakeup time and that's pretty much that. There was one day last month where we conned him into laying around in bed with us until 8am. The Mister woke all refreshed and delighted. I didn't actually sleep between 6:30 and 8 because there were little feet kicking my ribs and the Big Cat kept yowling (a very bad habit he's gotten into, which is now to the point where I'm ready to give him away), but I closed my eyes for awhile, which was better than nothing. I'm so tired at the end of my work days that I'm afraid I'm not going to make it home on the freeway. The fact that I'm responsible for making important legal decisions while in this zombie state terrifies the hell out of me. And my family wonders why, when they ask me to make a decision about what we're doing for Thanksgiving, my head starts spinning around and flames come out my nostrils. People, people, I've got enough going on, don't go trying to make me think about "holidays" (aka the most stressful time of the year). That's the last thing I need.

So, yeah, that's why you haven't heard from me in a month.

About the boy -- Squeaker's crawl is pretty funny. He keeps his right leg out to one side and pushes off with the sole of his right foot, while his left leg maintains the regular crawl position. He looks kind of like an outrigger canoe, but boy howdy that kid has some speed on him. One day at the park, he was crawling around in the grass while I followed after him, pulling sticks and leaves out of his hands before he could shove them in his mouth. A guy sitting on a picnic table was watching this process with obvious enjoyment. Finally, he yelled "He's got one mad scoot, don't he?" Mmm-hm, that he do. In fact, I may have to start calling him Scoot ...

The other funny encounter we had that day involved a little girl about 9 years old. Squeaker was swinging in one of those bucket baby swings and she was on a big kid's swing next to him.

"Is that your baby?" she asked.

"Yes,he's my baby."

"He looks different," she said.

"Yes, he does," I replied, assuming that she meant he looked different than me, and wondering how detailed I would get about adoption if she asked any follow-up questions.

"The rest of the kids are darker," she said, gesturing at the jungle gym.

I looked over, and sure enough -- the other kids in the playground, most of them Hispanic or African-American, were all darker than my little guy. I had to laugh at myself. Here I was, Miss Liberal Self-Conscious White Adoptive Mom, assuming this little white girl was going to focus on the difference between me and my brown baby, when what was most important to her was how to categorize him with the other kids on the playground. I'm sure there's a very important lesson there, and as soon as I get a little sleep, I'll figure out what it is.

On anonymity

I started this blog as an anonymous infertility blog. When you're discussing the details of your lady bits and visits with the, um, dildocam ... one's natural tendency is to keep things a bit hush-hush. Well, most folks feel that way, anyway. Some are braver than I am, putting their names and faces out for the world to see. Bravo for them! We need people -- real people, men and women, people with names and photos so you know that they're real -- speaking out about what IF is like. Otherwise, I think that it's too easy for the rest of the world to brush us off as a bunch of anonymous women whining about women things. It's increasingly clear that we won't get very far towards societal progress on any healthcare issue without the world hearing actual stories from actual people. To my sisters (and brothers) in IF who blog under your true identities, thank you! I hope that the people who read your writing treat you with the respect you deserve for taking such a huge personal risk. And may book deals flow in your direction!

I'm not one of those folks, alas, although I sometimes wish I could be. I blame my job for my lack of openness. I really don't mind the anonymous internetz knowing all the details of my IF journey, but I don't want my co-workers to know those kind of details unless I've specifically chosen to tell them. Which I mostly haven't. My tendency is to keep my work and my personal life as separate as possible. No co-workers as FB friends, no co-workers as close pals or drinking buddies (not that I've had drinking buddies in the past, oh, 10 years, but you get the idea). Part of this is because I'm in upper management, and I'm a lawyer and the combination of those things requires that I maintain a certain, er, persona that people will respect. I find that maintaining personal distance/mystery helps maintain that respect. But besides trying to maintain my image as "The Law" (as opposed to "that lawyer who has had all kinds of weird medical procedures involving her lady bits, oh and did you know she lost a pregnancy?"), I just like to have a space where everyone doesn't know my personal business. Work is that space for me.

As my blog has morphed from infertility to adoption to parenting, some things about my approach to blogging have changed. But the anonymity part hasn't. I never use real names, I hint around about cities, I don't name my employer. Sure, if someone really wanted to stalk me, they could probably figure out what's what, but it would take some real work. As time goes by, and as I become closer with some of my long-time bloggy friends, I have sent a few of you emails from one of my (gasp!!) real email account which contains (oh the horror!!) my real name. I can count those on one hand. Otherwise, I like to think that I'm as anonymous as the wind. (I know I'm not, but humor me here.) Unless you're (1) a close friend, (2) a relative, or (3) someone with way too much time on your hands and a bit of an obsessive streak, chances are you don't know my last name and you're not sure whether the first name that I use out here is real or not. Hmm ... is it?

I tried to explain that to my relatives when we had the Big Religion Blowout, but they weren't listening to any of it. I had posted about (gasp!) family strife online and as far as they were concerned, I might as well have paraded naked photos of them on national television. They felt that exposed. Nevermind that I never mentioned names or cities or states or any other identifying info. I had violated a Cardinal Rule of Privacy (where do they print these rules? are they available for public perusal?), and I should be tarred and feathered for the offense. End of story.

So imagine what they would have thought at this: A few months ago, I was approached by a parenting magazine.

"We'd like to have you write for us for a month," they said.

"Yay!" I said. "When do I start?"

"As soon as you send us a photo and your name and the name of your child," they replied.

Pause.

I explained to them the whole thing about this being an anonymous blog and that most infertility blogs are anonymous and that the infertility info is still in my blog and well, I just prefer not to have my name and photo out there ... at least not now. It kinda ruins the honesty level, ya know?

"Oh," they said. "Hm ... we'll get back to you."

Of course, I never heard from them again.

I mention this because I was recently contacted by another parenting magazine with a request to reprint excerpts from my blog. They didn't want my photo or my name or the name of my child. They just liked my writing. So nice of them! I'm honored. And sure enough, if you happen to read a certain adoption magazine this month, you'll see my edited blog post. No photo, no name.

Attention: first parenting magazine ... Anonymity doesn't kill a blog, nor would it have killed the articles I might have written for your publication. Good writing is good writing. And not everyone wants to be a Big Celebrity.

I'm just sayin'.

So then the other day, I see that the NYT has jumped on the ongoing furor about (gasp!gasp!gasp!) mommy bloggers, in a blog post with the screaming title "Protecting Your Child's Privacy". The writer of the post stirs the pot, and then asks the following questions:

At what point do parents lose their right to their children’s tales? When do things stop being something that happened to “me” and start being something that happened to “them,” and therefore not “mine” to tell?

The post was primarily about mommy bloggers as a general group (no consideration of the fact that these blogs might be a way to provide information on specific topics like adoption, IF, premature infants, etc), and the comments are a mixed bag. Some folks condemn us for writing about our children at all, some folks think it's okay, so long as you anonymize everyone or only tell stories that won't come back to bite your child in the backside when they're looking for a job 20 years later.

I can see all sides of the picture, and can only take a stance from my own personal experience. I've chosen to be anonymous, but I've also chosen to post pictures of my child. If I continue to do so, the anonymity of the blog will be significantly reduced as time goes by and more people out there IRL know him and his face. At some point, if I want to maintain the anonymity, I'll have to stop posting photos of Squeaker. Or, if I want to keep posting photos, I'll have to scrub my blog of the material that I want to keep anonymous. We're not there yet, but it's something out on the horizon that I think about from time to time. I honestly don't know how I'm going to handle it.

The question the NYT blogger raised is actually a really important question in adoption circles -- whether or not adoptive parents blog, there are parts of our children's stories that have absolutely nothing to do with us but everything to do with them -- they are our children's very personal stories, relating to their original families and their experiences with them prior to (or after) joining our families. These stories may not be ours to tell -- at all. Recognizing where that line is and how to deal with it raises all kinds of ethical and personal issues. (Heather? Perhaps a topic for the next Open Adoption Roundtable?)

So what do you think, Internetz? Where do you draw the privacy line with your blog, and why?

In which I childproof (and phobia-proof) my home

There has been a lot of insanity in the political world lately. People bringing assault rifles to public gatherings, "news" anchors ranting of mysterious armies being assembled for who-knows-what purpose, widespread distribution of horrible misinformation about healthcare reform, and on and on it goes. Be afraid, be very afraid!!

So much of the fear-mongering is tied up in the absolute inability of a certain group of people to accept the fact that a black man is President of the United States, and much of the fear is being directed -- in ways that are both freakishly obvious and craftily subtle -- at immigrants African-Americans Muslims those scary brown people. Sigh. I've been thinking about doing a post on this, but on the other hand, why dignify the nonsense with a response?

I, on the other hand, am obsessed with different safety issues. My child is crawling, people, pulling himself up on furniture, opening cupboards, scrambling after cats, yanking up rugs and peering underneath, throwing everything on the floor just to see if we'll pick it up ... I know it was inevitable, and yet, it's a shock.

I swore, hand to heart, that I would not be One of Those Parents. You know the ones -- every corner of their house is padded in 4-inch thick foam, and their child toddles around with the equivalent of a football helmet on, bubble wrap duct-taped to his body so that no injury will become of him. Surely, I thought, surely we can manage to have the child and the house co-exist without all that drama. And, for the most part, we're succeeding. The cats run when Squeaker gets too close, the worst of the dangerous furniture has been spirited away or tied down. We haven't figured out what to do to keep him out of the dog food yet ...

But today, I bought $200 worth of safety gear from an online store. This is in addition to:

• covers for the knobs on our gas stove (primarily for the cats -- we woke up a few weeks ago to find that they'd somehow turned the gas on while we were sleeping ...)
• outlet plugs throughout the house
• latches for the kitchen cabinets
• a plastic track to attach the DVD cord to the wall so that Squeaker can't yank on it, thereby pulling the TV down on his head from a great height (whatever possessed home builders to decide that fireplace mantels are the place where flat-screen TVs should go?!)

All of those basics were taken care of with a quick trip to the big baby box store and Home De.pot. Yet, my needs were not fully satisfied.

From the online specialty store, I ordered some foam padding for the three really sharp cupboard edges in the kitchen/dining area that Squeaker keeps lurching towards, the sharp-edged bookshelf in his room, and the edge of our poured concrete hearth. I may have my decorating pride, but the more I watched him maneuver near those surfaces this week, the more I realized he was eventually going to crack his head into one or all of them. I'm sure he'd survive, but we can't afford the medical bills right now, and who has time to go to the emergency room?

Also on order is a gate for the top of the stairs. This is really for the future, when he's old enough to climb out of his crib (perish the thought) and/or, god forbid, open the door to his room at night or during nap time when we may be elsewhere in the house. Oddly, "to gate or not to gate" has become a point of contention in our household. The Mister works from home, and his office is upstairs. The Dog spends his day happily wandering up and down the stairs, visiting Nanny C and Squeaker downstairs and the Mister upstairs as he chooses. I have been warned, in Very Serious Tones, that if the gate at the top of the stairs is closed during nap time, the Dog will be blocked from his roaming. Oh, the tragedy of a dog losing his freedom to roam for an hour or so during the day!

Conveniently, the Mister was out of the country this week, so was unable to frown over my shoulder as I merrily shopped. I ordered the damn gate. And a window lock for Squeaker's room, and a skeleton key thingy to open the bathroom door in case he or some other child locks themselves in. (We had a young visitor here a few weeks ago who did just that. Fortunately, she was old enough to be talked through the unlocking process. Again, who has the time/money for a locksmith?)

But what I'm really excited about is the fire escape ladder. I went to elementary school with a boy who, at age 6, was badly burned in a house fire that killed his baby brother. He went through surgery after surgery, and I know his social life was heavily impacted by the other kids' discomfort with the severity of his scarring. Other children I went to school with lost their father and brother in a house fire the same year. Suffice it to say that watching those kids' experiences, combined with several other scary fire incidents at an impressionable age left me with a huge fire phobia. As my childhood home was heated with a wood stove, my parents always made sure that we knew how to get out of the house if a fire occurred. I memorized those escape routes with obsessive care.

The fact that we now live in a very tall 2-story house with no porch roofs to jump onto (just straight walls and hard surfaces below) has made me extremely nervous. The Mister pokes fun at this -- not in a malicious way, but in the way of someone who has no phobias whatsoever and, therefore, can't really relate to the terror.

In every house or apartment I've ever lived in, I plan my escape. I know what I will grab, in which order, and which direction I will run, depending on where the flames are. When I was single, I always figured if I could catch the cats, I'd throw them each in a pillow case. If I couldn't catch them, they'd have to rely on their 9 lives. Obviously, now, my first priority is Squeaker. I assume that the Mister will get the Dog out. The master bedroom is at the front of the house, so if we opened a window there, the neighbors or fire truck would be able to get a ladder to us relatively quickly. Squeaker's room, however, is on the side of the house, looking out onto a narrow passageway between houses. It is also on the opposite side of the stairs from the master bedroom, and I figure that the likeliest place for a fire is in the kitchen, which might make getting back across the stairs impossible. Therefore, the ladder goes in Squeaker's room. I already have an easy-access storage place picked out. You can't imagine how happy this makes me.

Child safety and politics pretty much sums up my week. So what do y'all obsess about when you obsess?

Why doctors are bad for my health

I went to the lady-bits doctor last week. It was the first time I've been since my post-D&C appointment in which I was declared physically healthy and sent on my un-merry way. I was due for a mammogram and, since it's been almost a year since my last OB appointment, I scheduled an annual exam while I was at it. Figured I'd get all the ugly stuff done at once. (Have I mentioned how much I hate doctors?)

It was difficult being back at the OB's office -- I won't lie. This is a particularly wonderful office (for an HMO), in a clinic that is associated with a hospital where they love midwives. Love. Them. Therefore, the staff is as nice as they can be, and the focus of the office, understandably, is on You And Your Baby. Which means, as any IF vet will testify, that there are (oh, the horror!) posters all over the walls of Your Uterus, and Your Baby In Your Uterus and, if you've already been lucky enough to have your baby, helpful suggestions about How To Take Care of Your Body Now That You've Had Your Baby. And if you happen to have miscarried a baby at home, you look at the posters that show a fetus developing over the 9-month cycle and you find the appropriate month and you think to yourself "yes, that's about the right size. That's what it looked like."

You can see where this is headed.

Wonder Doctor, who saw me through the aftermath of my miscarriage (after Doctor From Hell botched the handling of the actual miscarriage itself), was not available. Doc Wonder is, after all, the head of the department, and is apparently booked up solid until, oh, a year from now. Sigh.

I saw another doctor -- or perhaps she was a CPM. Regardless, she was in her 50s, cheerful as she could be, and a bit bemused as to why I was there. Had she met me before? No, this is the first time. Have I seen someone else in the office? Yes, I saw Wonder Doctor last time.

Pause.

"Oh." Looks through my file on the computer. "I see she did a post-op visit with you."

Yes, I had a miscarriage and a D&C and ... <sniff, sob, sniff> Goddamn it. I hate crying in doctors' offices. <sniff>

"I'm sorry." Pause. You can see her doing the math ... ("let's see, if she's 44 now, and she had the miscarriage last summer, she was 42 when she got pregnant, 43 when she miscarried -- damn, that's old ... there must have been IF involved.")

"You'd been trying for a long time?"

Yes. <sob sniff> But it's okay because we adopted and ... I tell her about Squeaker. Really, we're okay. (Hold on a second. Why do I use "we"? This is my medical appointment ... but IF is such a "we" event that now even a regular OB appointment somehow becomes about "us" ... and why do I feel the need to reassure her about our relationship anyway? oh lord, she's giving me the sideways eyeball ... she really thinks I'm nuts.)

And sure enough, at this point, you can see her readjusting her whole approach to the visit. Up until now, I had been a normal patient, here for an annual exam. Now I was Fragile Patient To Be Handled With Care. (By the way, I hate hate hate being Fragile in any context. It's annoying. I hate how people treat you when they see you that way. I want to be Tough Bitch Who Can Handle Anything and Doesn't Need to Be "Handled". So here I am in nothing but a hospital gown, explaining myself again to yet another New Doctor when really I'd rather be anywhere else doing anything else, and I'm mad about being sad, and sad about being sad, which makes me madder...)

She decides that it might be good to skip over the obvious IF portion of my health history, since it is clearly not something that will induce a Smiling Relaxed Patient. She jumps straight to the obvious alternative: "Any cancer in your family history?"

Yes, a cousin had breast cancer in her 30s.

Doctor gives me a Look. "Anyone else?" Grandmother liver cancer, grandfather adult leukemia ... Again, she gives me the Look.

"Any heart disease?" Not that I know of. "High blood pressure?" Yes. I list the names. "Osteoporosis?" Yes, my mother and her mother. Again, Doctor gives me a Look. "And how is your father's health?"

I burst out laughing. By now, Doctor is looking at me like I'm not only quite likely to die any minute, but I might be crazy as well. Which very well could be. Dad, you see, is off his meds, and is currently taking a bit of a forced vacation in a facility where folks who go off their meds go for a rest and re-medication (whether they like it or not). He's been in and out of places like this for the past 20 years. In between, he seems relatively healthy, all things considered. I explain this to the doctor.

"And what do you do for a living?" Lawyer. Again with the Look. "Are you working full-time?" Basically, yes.

"So what do you do for fun?" I can tell this is a loaded question. Um ... Truth be told, there hasn't been a lot of purposeful "fun" lately ... birthday parties and dinners I barely remember because I was so tired while I was there, jogging or walking that is more because I need to blow off steam than because I have time to exercise. I even gave away some of my favorite yoga videos to another new mom, because I knew she'd use them long before I ever got back to them. I begin to lie like a rug ... Yoga, hiking, jogging ...

"Good, you need to be doing weight-bearing exercises to stave off the osteoporosis. And you'll notice as you head towards menopause that your periods will get heavier ..."

At which point I practically begin wailing. <SOB SOB SOB SOB sniff ... sniff>

"Oh, I'm sorry ... but I usually try to tell moms about this before they get there ... should I stop?" Oh no, I tell her. By all means, keep on going. Do your worst.

And so she does. Then we chit-chatted about very silly stuff for several more minutes, she did the exam, and off I went. And yes, I bawled all the way home.

============

The first time I stepped foot in the offices of this particular HMO, the Doctor From Hell had used the words "donor eggs" almost immediately. The last time I was in this office, I was mourning the death of what I knew would be my only biological child. And this week, I spent more time than I ever cared to discussing menopause.

See, the problem is, I'm not ready for that yet. I still know exactly when I ovulate, and I still think about "if we did the deed tonight, it would be 5 days before, and well, it worked once so it could work again ..." Except that I'm forty-fucking-four now, and if I so much as mention the possibility of another miracle pregnancy, every scientist in the world is going to look at me with pity and suggest that I get some counseling or get back on my meds. The realistic part of me knows it ain't gonna happen. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to have my fantasies. I really didn't need the cold hard voice of Reality, masquerading as a Perfectly Nice But Clueless Doctor shoving what I already know to be the truth down my throat. It's enough to make a girl just skip the whole medical establishment experience for the next few years, ya know?

My point is, people, you never get over IF. You may decide to remain without children, you may adopt, you may be lucky enough to give birth to one, two, perhaps three babies in a scary wondrous litter. But no matter which road is yours, this shit stays with you forever, and comes back to bite you when you least expect it. And medical folks who don't know your history will look at you like you're nuts when your PTSD kicks in. And your relatives will never really understand. And if you're lucky, you've got an online posse to tell the tale to. Because you know they get it, and you know they've got your back.