Well, my thesis is done. So I’m back! To blogging, that is. To cleaning, not so much. It’s a work in progress.

It’s kind of fitting, really. My last post was a birthday post for Das Baby. And now I’ve birthed another baby of sorts. A 92-page chunk of my “book,” and a 35-page critical paper about issues of memory and authority in third generation Holocaust literature. It’s all more exciting than it sounds, I promise.

Some other stuff happened since I last blogged:

Das Baby started walking.

Das Baby started eating real food (again).

Das Baby: food face.

Das Baby started talking. Yes, all of his words sound something like “Bah,” “Gah,” “Dah,” or “Boob,” but they can mean up to fifty different things!

We both started eating dairy again. Hooray, cheese! Less hooray: the ten pounds I subsequently gained.

Das Baby is a natural at the beach. Yes, he’s missing a frozen drink, but give him twenty years. He’ll figure it out.

We went on a fabulous family vacation to Bermuda, courtesy of Herr Husband’s work. We traveled with a delightful pack of pediatricians (no, not because we’d retained them to monitor Das Baby, but because of Herr Husband’s work). Their clinical opinion was that he was the cutest freakin’ thing even (excepting their own grand/children, of course).

Oh yeah, and Das Baby came off of both daytime oxygen (November) and nighttime oxygen (February). The 02 feels like a distant memory, which is, frankly, awesome.

Now that I’ve returned, I owe you lots. What do you want to hear about: Trying to make friends in the ‘burbs? My fear of being the slutty mom at baby swim class? A review of Spot’s Balloon, quite possibly the most tragic, amoral children’s book ever? What really happens to your breasts if you pump for 18 months? My attempts to teach Das Baby to answer the question, “Who farted?” with “Dada,” regardless of the truth? Said efforts failed (he kept saying “Mama,” no matter the actual answer), which is why you shouldn’t manipulate your child’s language development for your own amusement.

Or you can hear more from Das Baby, who apparently wants to discuss golf. Ordinarily it’s a topic I’d find excruciatingly boring, but his little voice manages to make anything sound adorable.

October 21, 2010

October 21, 2011

And also…

And finally…

Yay! Happy birthday, sweet boy. And thank you.

We’ve had a lot going on. I’ll summarize the not-so-good briefly:

Das Baby has stopped orally feeding. Yes, it’s a major, demoralizing and somewhat scary blow. It started on September 18, when he first threw up. From there, he starting barfing more and eating less, landing us where we’ve been for the past couple of weeks: with a kid who has a hair-trigger gag reflex, and, unsurprisingly, no desire to eat solid food, or drink anything (a surprise considering the pair who spawned him).

So we’re doing all feedings by tube, wearing scrubby clothes (because of projectile vomit, duh), and engaging in “food-play” once a day, during which Das Baby mushes food around and nibbles on a Mum-Mum. I too am unconvinced that a miniature Styrofoam surfboard is going to motivate him to eat, but so far he’s tolerating it more or less.

I could boo hoo hoo about this conundrum a whole lot–that the point of the tube was to support his growth so that he could work on oral feeding, but now the tube makes him refuse to orally feed. This means we’re locked in a Catch-22. He can’t get rid of the tube until proves he can eat on his own. But the tube makes him refuse to eat on his own. And so on.

The good news is that he now weighs a whopping seventeen pounds, nine ounces.

Which means he looks like this:

Das Baby is also off oxygen for a few hours a day! No more hiding those fat cheeks behind those sticky dots!

The even better news is that tomorrow is his FIRST BIRTHDAY. And thinking about how far he’s come absolutely dwarfs the problems we’re facing now. He weighed two pounds, five ounces at birth. And that night, he almost died.

Now he laughs, and crawls, and stands up, and cruises (the walking holding onto furniture kind, not the naughty kind!) and loves throwing toys on the floor from his high chair, holding his mom’s hands and dancing, and swinging at the park (the swingset kind, not the naughty kind, jeez!). He’s literally the happiest baby I’ve ever seen. I’m not always as good as I should be at being grateful for how far we’ve come; I’m too busy jonesing to clear the next hurdle (despite my best efforts not to live that way). But something I’m loving about his birthday (in addition to buying presents and selecting cute outfits onto which he can smoosh cake or vomit) is that I’m being reflective, and doing so is making me happy and grateful and filled with wonder and joy and love (amazing what having a baby will do to a sassy gal).

The video below of Das Baby cruising is perhaps as interesting for how annoying my voice sounds as it is for demonstrating his new skills. And, dear reader/viewer, it is probably only tolerable if you are related to me, and perhaps not even then. Of note are both how insane I sound and the drivel I spew. This from a woman who fancies herself “a writer” (or once did, anyway). Spending ninety percent of your time with someone who can’t respond to you in anything other than giggles, growls, coos, and the occasional babble will do this to a person. On the plus side, having a baby totally legitimizes my habit of talking to myself in public, because I just talk to Das Baby.

I’ll post some birthday photos tomorrow. And I hope you’ll join me in wishing our little miracle man a very happy birthday (and that his second year is joyous and healthy and infinitely easier than his first!).

Someone is celebrating in true Husband Hausfrau fashion (no, not booze, costumes, and careless treatment of dignity): a big fat nap.

Which isn't to say that a good nap isn't the best thing to do post-booze-costumes-and-careless-treatment-of-dignity. But in this case, it followed a big bowl of oatmeal and a few good giggles.

Apparently the GI doctor was miffed that the pulmonologists let him go without anyone from GI checking in on him. I’m beginning to sense a rivalry similar to that of the cardiologists and neonatologists at CHONY. The pulmonologists clearly felt that they had everything in hand, however. And we like them better than the GI docs (with apologies to our friend, Dr. Huxtable, who thinks he wants to be a GI. Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate, Cliff?).

In more good news, the echocardiogram was the same as or better than the previous one, and Dr. Rhein, Das Baby’s fabulous pulmonologist found it reassuring. In fact, Dr. Rhein was pretty pleased with Das Baby in general, and is eager to see him fatten up. “By spring, I want him to be the size of a contestant on The Biggest Loser,” he quipped. Yes, I said quip. Dr. Rhein is a quipper. But a four hundred pound toddler sounds frightening. Imagine the tantrums.

The nutritionist hopes he’ll be fatter, but not Michelin Man fat, which suggests she has somewhat different goals than Dr. Rhein. We’ll see who wins.

"I give fatness a big thumbs, up, Das Baby!"

So far, it seems the whole fam gives the G-Tube a thumbs up. Theo’s appetite for solids is as strong as ever. The tube doesn’t seem to interfere with his comfort/movement one bit. We’ve seen crawling, pulling to standing, and tummy sleeping. It’s easy to manage, and it’s a relief to know he’s not going to pass out from dehydration-slash-weigh thirteen and a half pounds for the rest of his life.

Of course there are still worries: how long will he need it? Will he learn to eat as much as he needs to grow? What if it gets infected? But overall, I think if we revisit the Pity Party, we’ll see that things have gone far better than I worried they would, that many of my anxieties were exaggerated.

But don’t try telling me that next time I freak out. I can guarantee it won’t go well.

Surgery yesterday? Under general anesthesia? Oh, yeah. Piece of cake.

Das Baby’s surgery went well, and we’re now in his room. His pulmonary status is being closely monitored and looks good so far. We’re waiting to start feeding him. He was definitely in some pain post-op, but he got morphine (whoa!) and Tylenol, and they’ve calmed him down.

The tube seems less scary than it did on the tiny model doll, and it would appear that Das Baby doesn’t feel too hampered by it yet. He’s already rolled onto his tummy and briefly got up on all fours.

He wants to be snuggled (and who wouldn’t want to snuggle him?), but he wants his snuggler to stand and bounce. No sitting allowed. So our arms are falling off and our backs are stiff, but it’s so worth it.

So, so worth it.

Many thanks again to all! We’ll keep you posted!

While he’s under, they’ll also be doing an echo-cardiogram to look at Das Baby’s pulmonary hypertension, which means extra time intubated and under anesthesia. Yikes.

I’ll do my best to let y’all know how things go.

Thank you so much for the love and support.

Love. Love. Love. Send all good vibes, positive energy, white light, prayers, whatever you got/whatever you believe in to Das Baby, please!

It was Labor Day. We’d had brunch with friends and walked the High Line. When we got home, I noticed some wetness, then lay down on the couch to take a nap while John watched the US Open and packed up our bedbuggy apartment. When I woke up, I leaked more. I was scared, but scared in a way I’d been so many times during the pregnancy. I called the doctor on duty, and he told me to come in, just in case. Even though it was likely nothing.

I remember saying to John on the Brooklyn Bridge, “I’m sure I’m just being paranoid. Sorry. But it’s better to get things checked out.” He agreed.

I’ve never been back to Brooklyn.

I waited forever in the triage room, because apparently lots of women think their water is breaking. They hooked me up to a monitor, but it couldn’t tell us anything because I wasn’t having contractions and Baby Muda (as he was then known) was too small for his heartbeat to be heard.

The first time they tested me for amniotic fluid, it came back negative. Cautious relief. But when I got up to pee, I gushed fluid.

Then the residents came. The first one tested me, did a digital exam (which one should NEVER do on a suspected PPROM case), and left. She brought back another resident. I thought I was going to like her because she had tattoos. I was wrong. Her name was Lori Spoozak, and I use it here not to be vindictive, but because I honestly think it might help her as a physician to know how I felt in that moment. I want her to know that statistically, she may have been right, but in actuality, she was very, very wrong. I want her to see how much joy Das Baby has brought us. That our love for him dwarfs everything else.

“Okay, your water has broken,” she said.

“What does that mean? What are my options?”

And this was when she told me to terminate the pregnancy. I felt like I’d lost everything, like the whole world had been sucked away. I said I’d read of cases in which membranes resealed, in which babies survived. I said, “Look, I’m pro-life, I mean, pro-choice, but this is a very wanted baby.”

She said, “What kind of baby do you want to have?”

And I said, “I’m not prepared to have this conversation with you right now.”

So she left, and Herr Husband and I broke down. I’ve never heard him cry like that. When I mentioned it yesterday, he said he didn’t remember. He remembered my crying, worrying about me. “And then I went into shock,” I reminded him. “I felt unearthly and cold.”

So the attending returned and told us that sometimes residents overreacted. That I had some fluid left (essential for lung development). That we could do expectant management: antibiotics and wait-and-see. The baby wouldn’t be viable until twenty-four weeks (at which point exactly, it turned out, the last of my fluid would dissipate). Maybe my membranes would reseal. We could see how far I could go.

They put an IV in me and wheeled me to the antepartum floor. Our nurse was Grace. My teeth chattered as she asked me questions, set up my room. She told us about a woman who’d had her water break early and who’d walked out of the hospital with a term baby. We clung to that, even though it wasn’t to be our story.

I thought I would never sleep. I worried about the moment I would wake up and remember, and have to feel the shock all over again. But I didn’t have to wake up and remember, because it never left my consciousness, even when I was finally asleep.

But can I be honest? I didn’t spend much of yesterday reliving that awful day, which vies for worst in my life, but may lose out to the time Das Baby almost died (but that can’t be the worst day of my life because it is also the day he was born), and the day he was left unplugged from his oxygen source at the hospital and took 30 minutes to stabilize.

Instead, I marveled at how far we’ve come. I watched him sit on the kitchen floor, crawling around, picking up toys with his busy little hands, and I thought about how a year ago he was a fetus who stood the slimmest chance of survival. And now he’s a baby doing all of his typical baby things. Yes, he still needs medical support. But that medical support is enabling him to live a full and happy life.

Really, I spent most of yesterday enjoying my son and not thinking about it too much at all.

But I do hope that when terrified women are Googling, “membrane rupture baby survival” and “21 weeks PROM” and “21 weeks PPROM outcomes,” they find my story. It might not be everyone’s story. We know how incredibly lucky we are. But I’d love to offer just a glimmer of hope.

Because so much can change in a year.

A fetus who squirms away from the heart rate monitor becomes a baby boy who crawls towards his toy box to pull up on it, or who crawls back and forth on the kitchen floor, from his mom to his dad and back again, laughing the whole way.

From Das Baby's long weekend of firsts. Friday: real crawling

Saturday: pulling to standing

Sunday: trip to the beach (Thanks, D-Fam!!)

Monday: sleeping in his crib (Thanks again, D-Fam!)

Here’s hoping that this weekend, you find plenty of whatever it is that makes you want to get up on your feet.

Hello, toy box. Where have you been all my life? Do you come here often?

Ha, ha, jar! I have dominated you!

So what was the secret to getting him to snarf down so much food?

I offered him chicken first, of which he ate three bites before starting to spit it out. An improvement over the last time he was offered chicken (with apples), to tell the truth. (Naturally, last time I offered chicken (with sweet potatoes) it was homemade. And who can blame a guy for not taking to ground-up boiled chicken thigh?). So once last night’s chicken was rejected, I wanted to confirm that it was the chicken he was rejecting, not food in general. And then Das Baby went to town on the oatmeal and fruit, as if to say, “Okay, okay, I’ll eat! Just don’t ever try to make me eat that chicken again!”

Of course, I’m sad that Das Baby won’t eat chicken because it’s healthy. But I also think it makes sense, given that babies like the taste of foods they’ve had before, either in amniotic fluid (of which Das Baby got sadly little), or breast milk. So Das Baby is predisposed to the vegetarian palate. And then I got nervous that because we’re both dairy-free, he’s been protein starved. So I force fed myself an egg this morning. Those of you who know me know what a challenge this was, even though I scrambled the egg with cumin and put it on a corn tortilla with salsa. I still wound up using water to swallow most of it, like an amorphous, spongy, fart-scented pill (an image which I think can do double duty as a marvelous insult).

“But, Hipster Hausfrau,” you say, “You bought a condo when you were twenty-six. You got married when you were twenty-eight. You taught high school English for six years.”

In response, I offer exhibits

A)

Hipster Hausfrau, drenched in shame. Age 30.

B)

Hipster Hausfrau, age 31. About to participate in a "boat race." With nonalcoholic beer, and as an official business school event, but still.

C)

Herr Husband and Hipster Hausfrau Karaoke sing karaoke in celebration of Herr Husband's 33rd birthday. Hipster Hausfrau is *only* 32.

But having a baby, especially a medically needy baby, kind of turns you into a grown up, like it or not. The secret is, most days I like it. In fact, whereas acting like a grown up used to alternately bore or terrify me, now I find it rather soothing.

I think we can all agree that I’ve had lots to be anxious about recently. (Das Baby’s early arrival, feeding problems, and impending surgery, for starters.) And what have I turned to (other than Das Baby and Herr Husband, and my other longtime love, literature) to settle my jingle-jangle brain?

Grown up behavior.

That’s right. Not booze, not hiding in bed, not even 90210 reruns.

Instead, I registered our car in Massachusetts and switched our auto insurance accordingly. I made appointments for Das Baby to see the audiologist and the ophthalmologist, and reminded his pulmonologist to schedule Das Baby’s echocardiogram for while he’s sedated for the G-Tube (so he doesn’t have to be sedated twice). I selected a doctor for myself, and went to see her to get referrals for: an OB/GYN (to see if I should ever try to get pregnant again, or if it’s a crazy idea), my old endocrinologist (whom I love and secretly wish would be my friend), and an ophthalmologist (because I have this weird but apparently not uncommon thing called lattice degeneration which I’m supposed to have monitored every year, but haven’t because, well, I’ve been a little busy with other medical problems).

Boring as hell? Abso-fucking-lutely. But getting things settled is a wonderful thing. Controlling the things I can control functions as a balm (not a potent one, but still) for some of the many things I can’t.

The very thing which I spent far too long trying to avoid actually makes me feel better. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t see my generation’s prolonged adolescence as the harbinger of social decay that some old fuddy-duddies might. But it turns out acting like an adult can help you feel more in charge of your life. You know, like a grown up should be.

I know, I know. A world of duh. What did I tell you? I’m a late bloomer.

And because you don’t pay to see pictures of my former questionable decision making:

He JUST woke up. Who is this cute and smiley when they wake up? My baby (Das Baby), that's who!