Lily's Pond of Fictional Reflections

So, William's a month old today, and I've not really said anything about how it's all going.

Well. Extremely, incredibly, unbelievably well. I honestly can't believe how easy a baby William is to look after - and how much I'm loving... I was going to say perhaps not *every* minute, but to be honest even when it's the middle of the night or my shirt's smeared with poo or my bra's soaked with vomit or his sad little face is all screwed up in distress, I'm just trying to soak up the experience of him being this tiny and (and this cooperative!).

He's put on over a kilo in his first month of life, which is absolutely brilliant. He attached and ate very well from the beginning, and although at the beginning I kept having to wake him to feed, he's begun making it quite clear when he'd like to be fed, which is... well, a mixed blessing (particularly on days like today where he's presumably having a growth spurt and has essentially decided he wants to be fed constantly - by which I mean I can only obtain any breaks at all where he's not crying by giving him my finger to suck on instead, which pacifies him for maybe 15 minutes before I have to put him back on the breast for another hour - but this is fortunately unusual). As long as I get seven or so feeds in during the day, he only demands one or two night feeds. Nights with two are better, because the only real difference is that he agrees to go back to sleep after the second, so that I can catch an hour or two more sleep and end up with eight hours total. At first we had to spend a few minutes rocking him and singing to him a bit to convince him to go back to sleep again - but now he's figured out the difference between night and day and he's usually asleep the moment we put him back in his bed again. Woot. Seriously.

Oddly enough, even when he demands feeding in the middle of the night, he doesn't actually wake up. He'll squeak a bit, and I'll look at him and he'll be fast asleep. So, I'll go back to sleep. He'll squawk a bit more seriously, but when I look at him again he'll be fast asleep. And so it goes on. Eventually, the squawks get so frequent that I'm getting less sleep waking up every time he makes one than I would just by picking him up and properly waking him for a feed. When I finally decide to draw the line and feed him I'm almost always convinced I'd done that last time he made a noise so I'd already been feeding him but had fallen asleep doing so and so it's time to change sides or put him back to bed (despite the fact that I never feed lying down now that I can sit up, because of the risk of falling back to sleep). It can be a bit distressing, actually, because by the time I'm awake he's fallen silent again, and I start searching for him beside me and he's not there and I worry he's worked his way down under the doona or fallen off the edge of the bed or got wedged between the mattress and the wall... And then I look over into his cot, and he's just there, fast asleep, making no noise, and I feel like an idiot for having fallen for it again. Still, if that mid-nightly ritual is the greatest of my sleep difficulties, I'm definitely a lucky mother.

The last couple of weeks he's been having more difficulty feeding. It's like he's completely forgotten what a nipple is for - he's very happy to hold it in his mouth and lick it or even cuddle it close to his cheek like his very favourite friend, but he seems to have a lot of trouble remembering he's supposed to start sucking. Or even realising that he's obtained his objective. Whether he's calm as anything or absolutely frantic with hunger and shaking his gaping mouth from side to side like a laughing clown on speed and windmilling his crazy arms in the hopes that will help... somehow, it doesn't seem to make much difference to him noticing that it's right there in his mouth, all he has to do is start sucking. This has been heaps better since I realised that I could bait-and-switch by getting him sucking on my finger (which for some reason he's *always* ready to suck - I've got a hickey on my fingertip), then swapping in the nipple when he's got the idea. But because of all the mucking around - and the usual increase in wear and tear on a sensitive part of my anatomy - I've been getting pretty sore, which has been making things even more difficult, because it's not like I can take a couple of days off feeding him to heal. Fortunately, I found some good (if counterintuitive) advice to attempt to feed him more often rather than less so that he'll be calmer and suck more gently, which has made great strides in keeping things from reaching the cracked-and-bleeding stage.

I've been expressing breastmilk the last couple of weeks as well (ever since I started getting really sore, so that if things get really bad I actually *can* take some time off) and it seems I can consistently pump one extra feed per day when I first get up, so I've been building up a bit of a stock of frozen milk to cover me if I want to have a couple of extra drinks every now and then, and to keep at potential babysitters (ie. grandparents) houses as well as, once I've got enough of a buffer to make me comfortable, donate to the Australian breastmilk bank for babies in need who, for whatever reason, can't have their own mother's milk.

I went to see Harry Potter on Sunday, which I enjoyed a great deal, but was perhaps most notable for the fact that it was the first time I'd been out of William's immediate vicinity since he was born. I was away for three and a half hours total which, since he eats approximately every two hours, meant Hubby got to give him a bottle. He accepted that quite happily and seamlessly switched back to the breast afterwards, so essentially that means I'm free to have him babysat or leave him with his dad whenever. Now I just have to work on wanting to be away from him. :)

So that's how he's going for sleeping and eating - I won't go into detail about his other primary function, except to mention that we've just started using our cloth nappies, which are 'modern cloth' - ie, just like a disposable with velcro closures, elastic legs, stay-dry liners, and waterproof covers, only when they're dirty you chuck them in the washing machine. So far, I'm pretty pleased - we'll see if I still feel that way after a few washing days. :)

As for his personality... he's so much more calm and content and easier to settle than I'd expected. He doesn't seem to cry for no readily apparent reason at all. If he's a bit unsettled, it's a short checklist of: hungry? (feed) dirty? (change) wind pain? (sling him over the shoulder in a fireman's carry) tired? (swaddle and rock) just plain sad? (present finger for sucking) And that's essentially it. Of course it's a full time job - I was expecting it to be a full time job. I wasn't expecting to feel calm and in control and almost always able to solve his problems when he's upset.

At this point he has essentially three 'quiet alert' periods every day - one first thing in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one last thing before bed. Each period is one to three hours (depending on whether he has a feed in the middle and keeps going), and during the time (unless he's having a bad wind day) he's just this amazing happy little sponge. He windmills his arms and kicks his legs, lifts and attempts to support his disproportionately sized head on his little pipe-cleaner neck, and grunts and coos like mad. He watches everything - his particular favourites are lights and the security grill above my breastfeeding chair - but he's happily been holding eye contact since he was a couple of weeks old. We think he smiled his first real 'social' smile today, which is a big milestone. We've yet to see when it's repeated. Quiet alert periods are the highlight of my day - I just sit with him cradled on my lap making faces at him, poking my tongue out and cooing back at him, and marvelling that this very small person will one day be full sized.

I can't believe it's already been that long - but I guess as they say, the days are long but the years are short. All in all, I think it's fair to say that so far, I'm loving motherhood. :)

All sorts of uncensored stuff under cut, mainly for my personal records, so not necessarily for the faint of heart.

( Read on if you dare... )

( Summary version for those who just want the are-you-okay version, or get bored or squicked in the unbelievably tl;dr above. :) )

Selected picspam to follow.

To whoever has stolen my ankles:

I appreciate that it was a funny practical joke to look down an hour ago and realise that my legs were essentially cylindrical from the knee down, but it's rather disconcerting not to have any visible protruberance or change in shape due to ankle bones. Particularly since, as far as I can recall, they were totally fine yesterday. I'm beginning to be concerned that if swelling continues at this rate, by the time I reach my due date I'll have a pair of feet more suitable in shape for an elephant than a human being.

If the thief could please just return the bones in question overnight, we'll say nothing more about this.

Thanks in advance,
Lily.

I am so unbelievably tired.

When the car pulled into the garage at work this morning, I laid my head down on the seatbelt for a few moments to rest my eyes before I could face getting out of the car. After some prodding by Hubby, I managed to get one foot out onto the ground, then needed another break. I may call time of death at work in the midmorning and go home, because this is ridiculous. I literally can't keep my eyes open for more than a few minutes.

I feel like I'm about to head into Uni to hand in an assignment after two all-nighters in a row, without the accompanying semi-alertness of intellectual overstimulation or the adrenaline of the short term limit on the task ahead (ie. once I've dropped the assignment in, I can go to bed and sleep for a week). I did, I must admit, stay up until 10:30pm last night - AND the night before - so maybe that's the pregnancy equivalent of all-nighters. Still, given I generally wake up around 8:30am, that's ten hours sleep each night. Surely that should be plenty for woman and fetus, even if I am sleeping for two.

Someone's siphoning away all my resources, and likely to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. At least in seven weeks or so, he'll be capable of obtaining his own oxygen, even if he still needs me to process and manufacture his food.

Still, I can't help feeling sorry for the poor little sod: he's had the hiccups pretty much non-stop for the last several days. Maybe that's what's taking all our energy.

We've entered a study of Baby Triple P which is a new offshoot of the Positive Parenting Program (one of the only evidence-based parenting courses around). This one is aimed at couples expecting their first child. We're yet to find out whether we're in the control group or the group that actually gets to do the course (darn you, scientific method!), but from what I've heard about it from others at my Aquamums class, I'm really hoping that we make the coin toss.

We've already done antenatal classes, a separate class on keeping well during pregnancy, and this last weekend a breastfeeding class administered by the Australian Nazi Breastfeeding Association (which was good, if unofficially but hair-tearingly bigoted against things like pain relief during childbirth and mothers who also work outside the home), so if we don't get in we won't exactly be entirely lost for information about what to do when my lodger decides it's time to move out.

And even if we don't get to do the Baby Triple P course, I've already found the initial survey we each had to fill in (presumably to compare our current happiness and relationship status with that after we've had the baby - and then compare the changes between the group that did the course and the control group) incredibly interesting - and quite an emotional boost, to be honest. Among other things, I had to list how many times in the past day/week/month Hubby's been physically affectionate, verbally affectionate, done household chores either unprompted or on request, provided sympathy, socialised with my family, discussed and resolved relationship issues, confided in me, talked through financial issues - and also, because the questionnaire asks of course, how many times he's been verbally or physically abusive, critical, controlling, invaded my privacy, lied, or went back on his word - and then how happy I was about that number.

I won't list numbers here (although I will say the second group of answers had a thankfully large number of zeros in it), but I will say that I'm one incredibly lucky girl. May my life and relationship continue to be as awesome as they are right at this moment.

Edit: We got in. Well, they say we got in, and that the control group don't receive the course at all. But it is, after all, run by the psychology department. Maybe they're just saying that and we'll be going along to course lectures filled with lies! Hmmm, I suspect that wouldn't get past the university ethics committee. Is paranoia a pregnancy symptom?

So, an excellent 20 week Morphology Scan, where they go through all the parts of the baby's body counting and measuring, making sure they're all there and all in proportion. And everything is well! Gil's perfectly formed and well-sized for dates at about the size of a large mango.

It was nice to see the doctor who did my CVS again - he obviously loves his job and had fun writing silly notes on some of the more interesting bits of the scan. Speaking of which, we have rather unmistakable visual confirmation: it's most definitely a boy. But I'll leave our young man some privacy and at least won't post the proof online - although I'm not promising the pictures won't come out for his twenty-first party. :)

( Video within... )

He's moving!!!

At the moment, I can only feel it if I lie down and just breathe very quietly with my fingers over my stomach, but it's *definitely* Gilgamesh getting down with his funky self in there. I have to resist the urge to keep poking him to try to keep waking him up and make him do it some more, so I can lie there all day feeling it. :)

Women seem to have a lot of trouble describing the sensation. I've had people say it's like a bubble, or butterflies in your stomach, and my sister said it was like having a goldfish in a bag and feeling the fish flick past through the plastic. My mother in law couldn't come up with any description at all.

I think it feels like a muscle tic in your eye or something, although obviously this is in my abdomen. It's just like that involuntary muscle movement that you don't realise you've made until you feel a tiny twitch.

Hmmm. I thought it would suddenly feel a whole lot more real when I felt him moving, but it still feels a bit like a weird dream that's just got a few specifics out of place, or a story I'm telling, or something like that. Maybe it'll feel more real when his movements interrupt me in the middle of doing other things rather than needing to practically meditate to feel him.

In other news, you'll likely have piccies of The Bulge looking very impressive in a week or so. My sister-in-law's wedding is next Saturday and I've finally got around to altering my MOH dress to fit both Gil and I at the same time. If I hadn't known the dresses were bought before we'd even thought of getting pregnant, I would have thought they'd been specifically designed to show off The Bulge to its best advantage. Yay, looking pregnant, rather than just waistless!

Well, it looks like the shifting placenta and getting hold of the CVS last Friday was too good to be true, and I'm darn lucky the doctor went in a second time to collect a bigger piece of genetic material.

Because even with both combined, apparently it's still an incredibly small sample. They usually have enough for two flasks, one for the short term result and one for the long term. This time, they only had enough for one flask - and that means no interim results. In addition, the sample is so small that even in its single flask, the long term result is likely to take closer to three weeks than two to grow to a suitable size for testing.

Apparently there's a chance today - the sample needs its flask and growth medium changed, and they might be able to do a FISH test on the dirty flask - but I was told not to expect this, as it isn't likely. I was also told earlier that they usually didn't do FISH on CVS samples, there was another technique that was better - I don't know whether this is because it's easier or because it's more effective or more certain - so I don't know what the error margin would be even if I did get a result today.

I'm 14 weeks on Sunday, so today (Wednedsday) is probably the last day I could get a bad result and book in for a surgical termination. Tomorrow might be possible if (as wikipedia seemed to suggest) the FISH test takes another day to perform and the doctor's got room to squeeze me in. On the other hand, do I really want to be taking it right down to the wire and booking in for a procedure on the absolute last day the doctor considers it safe for my future reproductive health? On the basis of a test on a dirty test tube that might be less than accurate, with very little time to think or consider? These questions, I am successfully resisting the urge to obsessively research.

On the up side, I'm successfully keeping myself thoroughly distracted by reading baby and parenting books, which appears to be extremely effective at keeping me thinking positive. It's interesting - I've heard about the psychological effect of asking someone to make a choice while assuming the result you want (ie. 'do you want the option with the sun roof and leather seats, or the dashboard GPS?', rather than 'do you want the car?') and I think this is related. How do should I breastfeed most effectively? What dicipline techniques are most effective on a toddler? What should I do if my baby turns unexpectedly pale white on one side and bright red on the other?* All of these are questions that assume a positive outcome and a healthy child, and while I'm thinking about which way to deal with my healthy child, it's harder to worry about not having a healthy child at all. Yay me, I can hack my own brain!

*Yes, this was actually a sample question in one book. Apparently the answer is: baby's circulatory system is not yet mature and blood pooling sometimes happens - turn the baby upside-down for a few minutes and colouration should return to normal.

On the even further up side, I'm past the critical danger period and thus likely to be mostly safe from the worst case scenario - ie. miscarriage of a healthy baby - at this point. And that's a damn good thing.

I had a nice post typed up about my first scan, where we heard baby Agatha's heartbeat going thunka-thunka-thunka and saw her perfect little fuzzy image on the monitor, and I really should have posted it while I was still high on the shiny happy moment.

Because the second scan was... less comforting. The long and short of it is they've given Agatha a 1 in 166 chance of having Downs Syndrome, which falls into the 'high risk' category. If they take my bloodwork alone and ignore my age and the beautiful visual scans, the chances are 1 in 28. For anything else in the world, 1 in 166 would be pretty darn comfortable odds. For this, it's... just too big a risk to be comfortable taking.

( The answer is more testing. )

The morning of the attempted CVS, I dreamt I was Granny Weatherwax, which was a bit random but totally awesome. My dreams are always very... physically, emotionally and plottily immersive, much more than they are visual, and I could feel my massive, solid boots gripping the back of the sputtering broomstick, the flap of heavy skirts against woolen stockings, the drag of the wind against a hat held on by a zillion pins, and the inexorable determination of chasing down the train that carried the magical kitten that was the key to unravelling the entire impending disaster of the plot. I've never felt such supreme confidence and certainty of purpose in my life, and I think it must have been my subconscious's way of giving me a boost.

But this morning, Granny Weatherwax is gone. I'm afraid. Not so much of the chance of the results coming back bad--oddly enough, that's still managing to stick in my rational brain as 'ridiculously unlikely, but just can't take chances'. I'm afraid they're not going to be able to do the CVS tomorrow and I won't know, and I'll spend the next four weeks feeling like this, unable to stop myself from researching termination law and termination procedures and termination risks and so on to make sure I'm as informed as I can be when the news comes, because I'm a programmer; I spend my life sorting through and making decisions about edge cases no matter how unlikely. And in this situation I just don't need to be, there's some things I don't need to know and I don't want to know and just... please, tell me my baby's going to be okay?