Timing Is Everything

I love the word ambivalent.  I loved it long before I even really knew what it meant, which did nothing to curb my use of it.  Thank goodness for the movie, Girl, Interrupted or I probably never would have learned that I, like Susanna Kaysen, had been using it to mean the equivalent of "I don't care," when in fact, "ambivalence suggests strong feelings...in opposition."  Armed with my new knowledge, I used ambivalent when several other words would have sufficed: to describe the fact that I was indecisive, perhaps, or simply a tad bit lazy and prone to procrastination when it came to important decisions.  But no, I was torn, you see, I was ambivalent.  Eventually I learned some new words and thank goodness, or else my psyche might have bowed under the weight of so much hand-wringing.

In May, just a few months ago, I found myself in a situation that brought whole new depths of meaning to the word.  I thought I was pregnant.

Back in September or October, after several weeks of dating and a few weeks of knocking boots with this new boyfriend of mine, I got my act together and went on the pill.  I had taken the pill for years as a teenager to help curb my viciously painful periods and had never had the issues with it that I know so many women do (thank goodness).  I went off of it in college because I was dating women, and it took a few months of being on it again this time around for it to sink in with me that now I was taking it because every single time we had sex, I could potentially get pregnant.  This might seem incredibly obvious, but for me, this was kind of mind-blowing.  All of my previous sexual encounters with men had been so short-lived that whatever potential for worry there might have been was gone within a month.  So, despite being not only well-educated but pursuing a degree in women's health care, it took some effort on my part to get my shit together.  I set alarms on my phone, I carried my pills in my school bag, I did whatever I could think to retrain my brain into acknowledging that yes, this could happen to me.  And things were fine.  I was lucky - I don't have any bad reaction to the pill and thanks to Yale's health care coverage, my pills were free.  Does it sound too good to be true?

And then, one day in late May, as I started my run on the treadmill, a fleeting thought blipped through my mind, Why are my breasts a little sore?  Did I mistakenly grab the less supportive sports bra out of my drawer this morning?  My mind drifted to other things until later that night, when we were lying in bed together, he asked me, "Um, hon?  Why are your boobs bigger?"

My heart dropped to the floor and words failed me.  The darkness of the room pressed against my eyes and I managed a faint, "I- I don't know.  Are they really?  No, they're not."
"...I think if anyone would know, it's me."

One beat, two beats, three beats of silence while I thought I might burst into tears.

"I love you," he told me firmly, gathering me in a hug.  "But I am not ready for kids right now."
"I- I know," I stammered, realizing with a cold and heavy certainty that this was truer than true.  "Neither am I."  And as I said those words, my heart wrenched and I knew it was true, but I didn't want it to be true.

And thus began the longest week of my life, while I waited to get my period, knowing that the reassurance of a negative pregnancy test could be entirely false since I wasn't even late yet.  I cursed everything I knew about pregnancy, because it meant nothing I felt that week, nothing, went undetected and uninterpreted as a symptom.  My breasts were sore, I was moody, I was vaguely nauseas, I was freaking textbook pregnant, until a week went by and there on the toilet paper was the reassuring sweep of red.

That week gave me a new perspective on the word ambivalent, as I considered what would happen if I was pregnant.  You see, there was a part of me that simply thrilled to the idea that I might have a baby now.  A part of me that lay awake at night with my hand on my lower abdomen and thought about how he and I could make it work.  But it was fleeting, because the much bigger and more mature part of me thought about the kind of things like, what a terrible way to tie someone to me forever - by knotting us together with an unintended pregnancy.  And I thought about how, sure, maybe it's old-fashioned and prosaic of me but yes, I really do want the wedding and the marriage first and then the conscious decision to be made together, of yes, let's procreate.

In the dark of one of those sleepless nights, I landed on it: I want kids, and I want them with him, but not like this.  

Which is why when I get back to school at the end of the summer, I'm going to get an IUD.  The pill is just not a long-term solution for me.  It's too much stress every month, between the remembering and the worry.  I am wary of an IUD, I'm not going to lie.  But I have several friends who have them who I've spoken to at length, and I'm willing to give it a shot.  If I hate it, then I'll reassess.  But even though it makes me a little sad to be so decisive about saying, No, not now to having kids, I know it's the right thing to do.  I take deep breaths and tell myself, No, not now, but someday.  Someday, soon enough.

Birth

You know what's awesome about birth, babe?

What's that?

It's like...today was one of the biggest days of these two women's entire lives, because their babies were born, and - and - you get to be there for it.  And for me - all it is is Thursday.  But for them - it's a day that they'll never forget.  I can't believe I get to be there for all of those days for the rest of my life.

Well, I can't think of anyone better to be there for them than you.

I'm so lucky.  I just can't believe how lucky I am.

So are they, he tells me.  And I laugh because this can't possibly be my life.

And yet it is.

Welcome to the world, baby girls.  Today was an awesome day to be born.

It's Something in the Water Here...

My friend dropped her five-month-old off into my bleary arms at 8 AM this morning.  It's her first day of work at her new (grown up RN!) job and I never pass up a chance to snuggle her little man.  A couple hours later, the boy called me to say he was leaving for work if I wanted to come outside for a hug (the benefits of living on the same street abound).  As we were standing on my front stoop, and the dog was wondering what exactly this small squishy creature was that I was holding instead of petting him, my mouth said this:

"Sprocket, be nice to the baby.  You're going to have to get used to them, you know."

And my brain did this:

"MOUTH.  WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, SPEAKING WITHOUT MY INPUT?!"

He (the boy, not the dog) was unfazed.  He knows I want kids.  We have had this conversation before, he and I.  I honestly don't even think he noticed.  We chatted about how Sprocket had most likely never seen a baby before, and I asked him about when he'd be back tonight, he smiled at the baby and kissed me goodbye and it was totally fine except for in my brain.

Here's the thing: I am acutely aware of the intensity with which I often want children, and I do an excellent job 99% of the time of ignoring it.  But sometimes I forget to ignore it, like now, when I am finishing up my pediatrics rotation and heading into maternal-newborn, and babysitting for the cutest baby ever is not helping things.  It also doesn't help things to see classmates and friends of mine with little ones, because my brain is all like, "See?  If they can do it, so can you!"  And then I tell my brain something that I have to repeat a lot, which is, "Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD."

It's not like I'm feeling the pressure of my biological clock, or worried that there will never be another right time in my life to have kids.  It's honestly as simple as, I want a baby.  And I'm so much healthier now, and it makes me feel so good about how much better equipped I am to be a mom because of that, and hey, bonus!  I met someone I want to have kids with and shack up with and shout at from across the dinner table when we're old and grey.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to keep the baby fever comments to myself, lest I scare away the other half of this future equation.

So Many Good Things

Three months old, she has never left the hospital.  There is a hole in her heart and that is the least of her problems.  Her kidneys look like Swiss cheese and her esophagus has scarred from the surgery to close the hole that connected it to her trachea.  So they cut a tiny incision in her belly and snake a gastrostomy tube into her stomach and feed her from the outside.  She is three months old, she has just learned to smile but will only really do it for her mom, and when she cries, she makes no noise.  Her tracheostomy  is hooked up to oxygen twenty-four hours a day, it bypasses her larynx and so when she wails, all that comes out is a breathy wheeze and the insistent beep-beep-beep of her monitors that tick out her escalating heart rate - 148, 162, 210.  All she does is fight.  She doesn't know how to do anything else, and so I change her diapers and learn how to suction, and research her condition.

He is 85 years old, and his health is failing quickly.  He still speaks clearly and articulately, though he takes a breath every few words.  He has lived long and well and he tells me that his trusty body is giving out and that that's okay.  I sit by him and I'm supposed to be asking questions but all I can do is listen, rapt, while he tells me that this is the greatest country there is and that I should never forget that and that I should use my skills and be an achiever and a lone tear slides down his cheek as he tells me that his wife of sixty years, who died one year ago, was a magnificent woman, and a woman of great wisdom.  He tells me his children are the best thing that ever happened to him and he tells me that I should have a plan, but that I should always remember, there are so many good things.  I shake his son's hand when he comes to visit and I bring him more ice water and a new stack of paper cups.

I bounce my neighbor's baby on my hip tonight, in the seventy degree evening air.  We're chatting and laughing, there are four of us on the porch and there are families walking down the sidewalk and I have soup on the stove in my little yellow house across the street and the baby is drooling and so unremarkably healthy that I feel as if the world is splintering in my hands when he blows a bubble.  The horizon slides away and then springs back against my eyes as they fill with tears and I want to lay down in the street and sob because there are so many good things and even though things are so good they can still be so hard and what is hard for a baby who can't make noise or eat or breathe on her own?  And what is hard for a man who is dying with his mind fully intact?

I lay in my bed, the window is cracked and the spring air comes in and I soak my pillow with tears for them all, and still in my head I can hear him saying, There are so many good things.

Leaving Kids Behind

So I've started reading this blog written by a (former) nanny because it gives me something to do while my little guy naps and because her writing makes me laugh.  I'm still wading through the archives though, and reading old posts about how much she misses the girls she used to nanny for has made me so nostalgic about all the kids I've left behind since I started babysitting/nannying.  I've probably taken care of more than twenty kids in my time, but there are two families I will never forget.  The first was a family for whom I worked for two consecutive summers, the first after I graduated high school and the next after my first year of college.

It was idyllic in some ways - Cape Cod, beaches, four sweet darling boys all within three years of age - and maddeningly frustrating in other ways - parents who didn't "approve" of discipline, being on 24-hour-call, feeling out of place in an area so much ritzier than any I'd ever been or belonged in.  But I loved those boys so fiercely that I would have taken a bullet for any one of them.  They were tough kids to take care of, there's no denying it.  The oldest, L. was three years old one summer and four the next, and he could push limits better than any child I've ever seen.  My interactions with him consisted mainly of defusing meltdowns and calmly leaving places with him screaming in tow because he refused, after three warnings, to follow the rules I set down.  W., the sweet, good-natured one of the four, was two years old and then three the following year and he was possibly the easiest little one I've ever cared for.  Not picky about food, no trouble going to sleep, loved to laugh, doled out hugs with no reservations, and told me repeatedly, even after two days of knowing him, "I wove you so much, Caywin!"  But the clincher?  The twins.  My babies.  Eight months old, and then almost two years old the next year.  With them I got a crash course in baby-raising - changing diapers with one hand, reading to two kids at once, singing bedtime songs in Spanish (their non-summer nannies were Spanish speakers so I tried to encourage their bilingual language learning as much as I could).  I would wake up with them in the night and feed them each a bottle at the same time, laid out on the floor side by side.  I would take them to the park the second summer, chasing them over and over again, just to hear them giggle with delight.  Each summer that I left (especially the second, knowing it was the last time I'd see them) I felt like my heart was breaking.  I cried so hard on the airplane ride home that the flight attendants came to sit next to me with tissues and bottles of water.  Almost four years later, the pain of leaving them has effectively left me.  I think of them often, smiling at the memories, but knowing that they are loved and cared for (though perhaps not in the way I would choose).

The sadness that still nags me is that of leaving the family I cared for during my senior year of college.  Three times a week, for four or five hours at a time, I would take care of two darling girls, S. and J.  S. was six and J. was 15 months when I started.  We bonded from the first day I showed up and I looked forward to seeing them every time.  S. was incredibly precocious and would beg me to play mancala with her over and over again, just so she could beat me and howl with delight.  She told me I should open my own quesadilla shop (with the delightfully original name of Caitlin's Quesadillas) because I made her favorite dinner so well.  What can I say, I'm quite the whiz with tortillas and cheese.  J. and I would spend one day a week together, just us.  We'd read Doctor Suess over and over and she'd fall asleep on my chest, the only place she would reliably nap for more than fifteen minutes.  They called me Cakey because J. couldn't say Caitlin, and when I showed up at their house, they would run to me for hugs and cuddles.  The day I last saw them, I came home to my half-packed room, already anxious about leaving my beloved school and immediately retreated to my best friend's room and started sobbing.  "What happened??" she asked, imagining the worst.  "My girls," was all I could say.  "I miss them already."

What will I do when I leave my little man?  I've already seen his first rollover, his first crawl, heard his first attempts at words, caught him as he toppled after first standing up, and taught him how to feed himself.  We practice words like "diaper" and "ducky" and he'll crawl to me, giggling, one arm waving wildly in a request to be picked up.  I sign to him, tell him "No," when he bangs on his high chair or pulls open drawers that are off-limits.  I rock him till he's sleepy and rub his back until he falls asleep in his crib.  He nuzzles into my chest when he first wakes up in the morning and he goes limp in my arms as I put him to bed at night.  I don't want to think about leaving such a precious kid in a little over a year, but I know that I will.  Someday, I tell myself, I will have a baby that I won't ever have to leave.  My own.