It’s been a long time. It’s almost at the point where so much has happened that I’ll forget most of it unless I record it somehow. So here you go:
1. Reader, I married him. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to write that sentence. So unsentimental as to be the most romantic thing one could write about this kind of event. The wedding was in our apartment, with no one but A’s cousin (a minister – it was the first wedding he performed), his very pregnant wife, Z, our babysitter as witness, the dog and the cat there, with my sister and her husband present on skype and taking wedding pictures. I was 8 months pregnant, just like A’s cousin’s wife. It was my dream wedding.
2. E, my second daughter was born on the first of June, at 12:51am, in our apartment, as I was lying on my bed with our midwife and a doula assisting. It was a fast and hard labor that hurt like hell and was utterly wonderful and amazing. It was my dream birth. At 5 am Z woke up and A brought her to our bedroom to meet the baby. It’s one of those moments I’ll never forget: the pleased and serious smile she gave and how she reached out her arm to hold her new sister.
So far, Z’s still pretty happy about having a sister. Then again, the baby’s so small that she hasn’t really infringed on Z’s territory just yet.
3. Since that morning Z’s decided she’s a big girl and has matured, very suddenly, by several leaps. In her language (both Hungarian and English), her behavior, her motor skills, her awareness, everything. It’s really amazing to watch.
4. Z is potty-training herself. It’s the only way she learns anything: by observing then teaching it to herself, doggedly practicing until she’s got it. She’s had her frustrations with it, leading to hysterical bouts of crying at random tiny provocations, waking up at night, and so on, all the things she does when she’s working on a new skill. But yesterday, for the first time, with absolutely no prompting she sat down on the potty when she needed to, and peed. While she was watching the potty episode of Elmo’s World with a bare butt. Elmo’s world DVDs tend to be a good investment around here.
5. I’m finally doing some things for myself that I’ve been putting off for a long-long time. Like taking guitar lessons. And getting a good haircut. I’m also planning to start doing some Pilates. The challenge is to time everything in such a way that I have someone to watch the children when at least one of them is asleep, someone who is not me. It really is challenging because this really only leaves me with two perhaps hour-and-a-half windows: in the afternoon when Z naps and in the evening when Z is asleep and E doesn’t need to nurse nonstop. Oh, and I’m going to blogher this year! Because it’s in New York, and I live here, and I’ve no excuse not to go. Baby E will probably also attend.
6. And Baby E, who turned seven weeks old on Tuesday, knows how to smile.
- 35 weeks pregnant. It is time to order my birth kit, even though the thought fills me with all kinds of superstitious fears of committing an act of hubris. But yet? I am so relieved I can plan to labor in my own bedroom, in my own bathroom, my own little cave, and not have to plan going to the hospital except if truly necessary. (Sadly, I don’t think I could be a nice person to the doctors and nurses this time, like I was when Z was born. Because all that led to was both of us being, in a pretty real way, screwed by the system.)
- On that note, St. Vincent’s hopsital, the midwife and homebirth-friendly hopsital of New York City, is closed. That sucks a big one for our carefully laid plans, which are still carefully laid but now involve much less certainty. The hospital went bankrupt because routine care of emergency room patients or HIV patients or – for that matter – mothers who insist on giving birth with as few interventions as possible is, quite simply, not profitable. At least, that’s my (admittedly simplistic) explanation, though it’s roughly true. Now what WOULD have made St. Vincent’s some money is a lot of expensive specialized care (for which one did not go to St. Vincent’s because there are other hospitals around here that do it better), and in the maternity ward a more concentrated drive towards high end and high-tech interventions. Instead, St. Vincent’s overall intervention and c-section rates were relatively low and coming down. New York City moms-to-be, especially the not-so-well-to-do ones, now have a whole lot fewer options. Not good: though worldwide maternal mortality rates appear to be declining, those in the U.S. are on the rise, and it’s very possibly and at least partially due to the popularity (and profitability) of high-tech and high-cost interventions during hospital births.
- On a different note (and this is worth another bulleted list, which I will get to one of these days because it’s worth recording), my daughter is just beyond awesome. And so is A.
- In the weeks leading up to Csinszka’s birth (that’s the in-the-womb name of our next one), there is so much slated to happen that I don’t quite know where my head is. Our support system for the next few months is pretty much in place now, which I find very reassuring, but there is still so much to do and I’m becoming ever bigger and slower and more tired and I really just want to sleep a lot but – no time for that.
This, this right here, is why I will never, in my entire life, ever again try to work in an office-based setting.
But also, things have happened that I’m still figuring out how to write down with enough love and respect, things that are hard though not outside the order of the universe. Easter Sunday was celebrated with Z’s cousins who live an hour away but others weren’t here who were, and will be, much missed. But, at least, it is truly springtime now. The cycles of life move forward, inexorably. And make you very aware of what it is that really matters in life.
While recovering my equilibrium after traumatic events,* I tend to find it helpful to covet things. I mean objects, beautiful consumery gadgety objects. I fantasize about the ways in which they’ll make my life easier, funner, let me do new things… Not that I need said new objects. But that’s really not the point of covetousness, is it? So:
- Naturally, I covet an iPad. Very, very much. Even though I think it’s missig two, from my point of view fairly important items: a little webcam and Flash functionality;
- I want an Epiphanie camera bag. This one perhaps (what a gorgeous red) – or this one (so very practical – actually: my favorite, it reminds me of the bags my mom always used to have when I was little, with magic stuff in them that her children loved to pull out and play with, and doesn’t that just sound like the perfect description of a mother’s camera bag?).
*I’ve mentioned my sister’s son. Who, by the way, is responding REALLY WELL to treatment, which fills all of us with hope. (Also: the healthcare reform bill passed (twice). In spite of all the people who make no sense (via, and via). It’s nowhere near what it needs to be. But at least it is, now, finally. Cause for hope, I think.)
My sister’s 6-year-old son has leukemia. He was diagnosed on Tuesday, when he just went for a blood test at a hematology center because he’d been pale for a few weeks and seemed to have a slightly strange kind of anemia on a blood test he my sister got for him at her regular pediatrician just by-the-way when she took one of her other sons for a checkup. The doctor couldn’t make heads or tails of the test results so she sent them on to a hematologist at one of the good Budapest children’s hospitals.
So two weeks later (on Tuesday) some more blood is taken, an hour or so later they’re told of the results, my nephew is told he’ll have to stay in the hospital overnight (he flips out over this) and then probably for a month or two (which doesn’t even register with him) once they confirm their suspicions with a bone marrow biopsy and spinal tap the next day.
Sadly, suspicions were confirmed. That was on Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon he began chemo. Thursday morning the oncologist told my sister about the long-term treatment plan and full diagnosis. My nephew will recover, my sister’s 6th sense was right on and he hadn’t even begun to get sick: the cancer hadn’t spread anywhere outside the bone marrow yet. But it will be a long road, with endless rounds of chemotherapy and baldness and no going to school and living in the hospital much of the time – for maybe two years.
My head spins. I can’t even begin to imagine how much my sister’s head is spinning. And my heart is breaking that I’m so far away from her.
Rain makes me tired.
One thing I love about living in the city is that the concentration of people make you think about interesting things is really high. I recently came up with a plan for a small business I want to start. It seems like a workable idea though it also means I’m going to have to study and relearn or refresh skills I have not used in over five years. If it ever pans out, I’ll write about it, in excruciating detail, I am sure, as that seems to be my wont.
But it’ll be fun.
I was right: my ex-OB was lying to me.
I’ve been thinking about this post for some time now – but it’s the kind of thing that some who I know read this blog might get very upset about what I’m going to write.
You see, I am now with a practice of homebirth midwives.
But let me explain.
I’ve been away a long time. Not physically, just internet-ly. But perhaps it’s time to return. I won’t make firm promises about writing every day or even every week. But I’ll try to keep things current about the most important stuff.
So… here’s the gist.
Early last October we moved to Manhattan, through a stroke of good fortune so huge that I still spend at least a few minutes of every day marveling at it and just… enjoying it. As best I can tell, one should enjoy the things one loves when one is right there with them, not least because everything can be gone in an instant. I don’t sit here anticipating that instant, of course.
I love city life. Adore city life. And I can’t even participate in it as much as I would like right now, for reasons I will get to in a moment. I love that we have neighbors we can be friends with because we live in SUCH a wonderful building. I love that A’s daily commute to his studio has gone from 3 hours by train and car to 3 minutes on foot. This, possibly, is the very, very best part. I love that if ever I feel a tiny bit gloomy, all I have to do is take a quick walk outside and it’s all better right away.
Walking has also become one of Z’s favorite things to do: like me, she LOVES the city’s hustle and bustle. Luckily we live on a block that gets real quiet at night and on weekends. Although… I have to confess that most city noises don’t bother me. On that note: bizarrely, Z sleeps better than ever. Though Z’s also had a cold lasting a month-ish, or perhaps several colds one on top of the other, because she goes to an indoor playground every day, one it’s really hard to drag her away from.
There’s a new kitty in our household: we adopted a lovely, very dog-like cat from a shelter this Christmas. His name is Cinco, because he’s the fifth member of our household. Cinco and our dog get along shockingly well, aside from a few spats about who gets to sleep where and a decided preference for the other animal’s food on both their parts.
We also have a Hungarian-speaking nanny a few mornings a week, partly because this way Z can practice her Hungarian and partly because, at the moment, I can’t do some of the things with Z that she needs someone to do with her.
Which brings me to the biggest news of all: I am pregnant with our second daughter. Sadly, I have a touch of placenta previa that may yet resolve but that’s caused my doctor to bar me from a fair amount of physical activity. I vacillate between thinking she’s overly cautious and believing I really need to be super-careful. And then I end up being super-careful anyway. So I need help with Z on playgrounds because I’m not supposed to do any exercise, and taking a toddler to the playground is, I think, a fair amount of exercise – hence the nanny. But I’ve slowed down a great deal also just on account of being pregnant. I get tired very quickly, just like I did when I was pregnant with Z. It’s starting to be painful to walk because, like with Z, I’m carrying on the low side. There’s a bit less than four months left that this baby needs to stay in me and, besides envisioning that goal quite frequently and refusing to contemplate the alternative, I really just hope I don’t have bedrest in my future.
I won’t write about A’s car being nearly totaled by a particularly able-bodied deer, or my car being difficult to sell, or almost having to sue our old landlord to get any part of our deposit back, or my having eight colds since getting pregnant because all of those things are kind of yucky and I don’t feel yucky so why write about yucky things?
Louis Menand, writing about the “overproduction” of Ph.D.’s in the humanities (via 11D):
The moral of the story that the numbers tell once seemed straightforward: if there are fewer jobs for people with Ph.D.s, then universities should stop giving so many Ph.D.s—by making it harder to get into a Ph.D. program (reducing the number of entrants) or harder to get through (reducing the number of graduates). But this has not worked. Possibly the story has a different moral, which is that there should be a lot more Ph.D.s, and they should be much easier to get. The non-academic world would be enriched if more people in it had exposure to academic modes of thought, and had thereby acquired a little understanding of the issues that scare terms like “deconstruction” and “postmodernism” are attempts to deal with. And the academic world would be livelier if it conceived of its purpose as something larger and more various than professional reproduction—and also if it had to deal with students who were not so neurotically invested in the academic intellectual status quo.
I couldn’t agree more. And wasn’t something like this the original purpose of a liberal arts education?
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