ThreeSeven

Babies and sleep and poking the internet with a sharp stick

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:02:00 +0000

We're gonna have to cry it out.

My kid's sleep habits are crap. When she goes down for a nap in her crib, she will reliably wake up 15-20 minutes later, roll over and start screaming. It's a guarantee that didn't get enough sleep, but when she wakes up she is pissed off and won't go back to sleep no matter what I do. Then we all end up paying for it in the form of CrankyBaby(tm) for the rest of the day. In contrast, if I have her in her sling, or in the carseat, she'll sleep for an hour or more and wake up happy. Having her nap in the sling was not a problem when she weighed 8 pounds. Now, at 20+ pounds, I cannot have her in the sling for every nap, nor can I take 90 minute drives twice a day every day. As a result, she's getting horrible naps - and I'm not even going to talk about bedtime, lest I start to go in to convulsions. I am a firm believer in the fact that sleep is very, very important - for my child and her brain development and overall happiness level, and secondly, for me and my ability to function as a new mom. Suffice it to say, my child is getting far, far less sleep than a child her age needs; far less than this family needs.

Basically, what I'm doing is not working.

People have a lot of Opinions on sleep training, or "crying it out", with babies. These opinions range from "it's child abuse" to "it's the only way". I don't really hold a strong opinion on it, especially when it comes to other people's choices, being a subscriber to the theory of "whatever works best for your family, is the best thing to do".

But if I'm being honest, I will admit that the thought of it has left me nervous and pokey for a while. It goes against my natural instinct as a mother, to not pick up and comfort my child at all times. Adding to the voices in my head that are debating this is the fact that those who are against sleep training are very, very against it. They march out studies about how it's just very very bad to do it to your kid, to let them lay in their bed and scream in an attempt to make them sleep. It does seem rather counterintuitive, I suppose; crying and sleeping are mutually exclusive. But when I read what people write on the internet about attitudes towards CIO, it seems that they always pull out the extremes: that CIO is done in an attempt to show your child who's boss, and that sleep training involves ditching baby in the crib to scream until they puke every night while the parents sit on the couch and eat bonbons and watch Melrose place. And for every person I've spoken to who actually "cried it out", this wasn't the reality. There have always been degrees of what each individual parent's line was; whether they picked the child up when crying changed from "tired and pissed off" to "something is very wrong here and I need you right now"; whether they sat outside the room or beside the crib or downstairs; whether they checked every 30 seconds or 5 minutes.

But the common refrain in people who sleep train?

Their kid starts to sleep.

And more often than not, with the people I've spoken to, the babies learn to sleep within a few nights. Not months or weeks. Within a few days, the baby sleeps through the night. And they wake up rested. And they take naps without fussing.

Ultimately, there is only one reason to do this: My kid needs more, better, sleep. What we're doing needs to be changed. I need to change her habits. I need her to realize that she can fall asleep in her own bed and not be rocked to sleep or have me right beside her. I've tried gentle methods. They don't work. So, some night soon, I will be going in to her room, and reading her stories, and then putting her in her crib and sitting beside her for - an hour? Two hours? Four hours? Until she puts her head down and goes to sleep. I'll rub her back and I'll soothe her, but what I can't do is pick her up and rock her to sleep, like I love doing, like I've done every night of her little life. Because if I do that, it will perpetuate the cycle and she will wake up 15, 20, 30 minutes later and scream for me to come back and rock her again, when what she should do is wake up, roll over, and go back to sleep, sleep she so desperately needs.

But I do know one thing:

This is going to suck.

Gordon Lightfoot Is Not Dead. Here's what happened.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:34:00 +0000

Yesterday, a false rumour quickly spread across Canada that Gordon Lightfoot was dead. The rumour was quickly quashed, as Lightfoot rose from his dentist's chair apparently none for worse. The media is blaming the rumour simultaneously on Ronnie Hawkins and on Twitter. Twitter in this case is a friend of mine, someone who feels awful about starting a firestorm. Except, she didn't start a firestorm: she like everyone else was the victim of a prank. Her name has been reprinted across the internet - unfairly - as the perpetrator of this hoax. That's not how it happened.

Here's what we know. At some point on Thursday, a man claiming to be Gordon Lightfoot's grandson called Ronnie Hawkins' management office and claimed that Gordon Lightfoot was dead. Hawkins, being a longtime family friend of Lightfoot, was understandably devastated. His wife started spreading the word via phone call and fax to their circle of friends. As the news spread through the circle, inevitably it reached someone who is a regular Twitter user - Fleminski, who has many friends in the entertainment industry. She, trusting the source and believing that the rumour was true, and believing that it was common knowledge, tweeted a very simple line:

RIP Gordon Lightfoot.

Simple. Not link-mongering. Not starting a false rumour. Just paying respect to an artist who deserves it.

This tweet wasn't re-tweeted. The first three responses to it (including one from myself) consisted of people going, huh? I haven't heard anything.

However, it appears that the mainstream media jumped on it. Within half an hour of tweeting, Fleminski received a phone call from a reporter from CanWest (1. holy sleuth work, and 2. boundaries much, media?) asking for the source. She replied honestly: Ronnie Hawkins. The media then called Hawkins who confirmed the story. Believing they had a confirmed story, the media then ran with it.

Only problem, of course, was that Lightfoot wasn't dead. He soon thereafter saw the reports and set the record straight.

But here's where the *real* hoax set in.

It was clear to Fleminski that the media outlet who contacted her had already heard the rumour, and was desperately looking for a source. The speed with which they contacted her made it clear that they were searching Twitter for the story, as no media outlets had been following Fleminski otherwise. When she directed them to Hawkins, they contacted him immediately. He confirmed the story. He was the victim of the initial hoax. So, despite media reports stating otherwise, the first report wasn't from an Ottawa twitter user; the first report was on the telephone, from Ronnie Hawkins. And when that word started to spread, Fleminski was punk'd just as much as everyone else.

Soon thereafter, Lightfoot himself cleared up the rumour and the media all across Canada printed corrections, in one breath blaming Twitter and in the next explaining the hoax on Hawkins. But the thing is, Twitter isn't to blame. Neither are any of the people on Twitter who took the information in good faith and passed it on. The only person to blame here is the person pretending to be Lightfoot's grandson, who played a cruel joke on Ronnie Hawkins. And perhaps on the mainstream media for publishing a story without doing all of their homework.

If you use Twitter, you know that there are several different kinds of users. There are those who use it for play, and there are those who use it to influence. Fleminski is the former. She is great and funny, but she is not a Twitter influencer. Her tweet was not picked up and vastly re-tweeted. She got a few replies, but her tweet really didn't set off the firestorm. And once she realized that nobody else was talking about this, she made her twitter feed private to stop the spread of what was looking like a false rumour. It wasn't until CanWest outlets started running the story that it truly started to gain traction on Twitter or anywhere else. In the end the bulk of the comments on Twitter weren't about Lightfoot being dead; they were about Lightfoot NOT being dead. So, frankly, Twitter corrected the story. It didn't spread it.

And yet, the media blames Twitter, and in particular that one "Ottawa user". Is it because that's the good "story", that Twitter started another rumour, oh, that wild online west where nobody checks their sources? Or is it, as is more likely, the media trying to deflect the blame for spreading the false story in the first place? After all, one call to Lightfoot's publicist would have nipped this story in the bud, and no media outlets seemed to do this. In fact, his publicist had to call them to kill it.

By saying it started with "one Twitter user in Ottawa", the media is truly being disingenuous. That twitter user named her source. CanWest contacted her source who verified their story. Then Global ran with it. By hanging it on Fleminski, they're trying to deflect the eyes off themselves for running an incorrect story. Hey Media: you are the media. Twitter isn't. It's just a tool. So put the blame where blame is due: On the telephone the hoaxter used to call Ronnie Hawkins. Or, if you think blaming the mode of communication is ridiculous (and you're right) then don't blame Twitter.

Blame the prankster.

Not the pranked.

In the meantime, let's all rejoice. This hoax did one wonderful thing: Reminded us that we still have a great man among us. Let's continue to enjoy the gifts he's given us.

Wanted: Someone who knows what they're doing

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:27:00 +0000

I do realize the irony of requesting Wordpress help on a Blogger blog. With that out there, let's forge ahead.

My other blog, ecochick, features environmentally friendly products and programs available in Canada. However, since the whole Project Raise A Child started around here, ecochick has not gotten a whole lot of love. Which sucks. It's a great little blog doing a great thing. So, I'm going to kick my own butt to do something that I've been wanting to do for a while, which is to cast a net far and wide and find some awesome women who want to become part of a team of ecochick contributors. Awesome!

However, in order to do this I am going to have to move ecochick off Blogger. While Blogger is an excellent platform, it does have technical limitations - one of which being the fact that I cannot add contributors in the way I'd like to. I'd like to have contributors write and submit blog posts complete with images and links, with me then being the ultimate control freak able to edit posts if necessary and in charge of determining when things will get posted. Blogger will only allow me to add authors who can publish directly, which isn't what I want. Wordpress does allow this, and since I'm already paying hosting with Netfirms which includes a Wordpress installation, I might as well just use what's available.

However, Wordpress doesn't quite do what I want either. From what I can see, I can add "contributors" or "authors". Contributors are almost exactly what I want - people can write posts and submit them, and I then have ultimate posting and editing control. However, Contributors do not appear to have the ability to upload images. I've checked out the roles, and basically, what I want to do is add the capability to upload_files to the role of Contributor. And that's where my geekiness ends, because I don't know how or if I can do that.

So I ask the intertubes, people who know more about this stuff than me. Am I able to change the Contributor role to add the ability to upload files? How do I do that?

Buses, strollers, and my blood pressure.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:07:00 +0000

Here's why I'm so aerated about this.

People are pissed off that there are too many strollers on buses. They take up space. You have to maneuver around them. You have to make room for them. You have to slow down and take your time to get past them safely. You look at the stroller and resent it, resent the room it takes up. Lady, your stroller is a pain in the ass. And you, by extension, are a pain in the ass too. You're slow, and you're bulky, and you inconvenience me. Having to walk around you makes me annoyed. Having to hear your child squawk makes me irritated. If you are in my way, you shouldn't be allowed.

And now, our city is about to let the irritated, the inconvenienced, the annoyed, get their way by recommending that people (and who are we kidding here, it's 90% women) who take their children in strollers on the bus be forced to take the child out and stow the stroller.

Great for those who are irritated. Unbelievably difficult for the mother, and dangerous for both the mother and the child. But more than that: unreasonably punitive to one group of people, when the reality is everyone who rides the bus is the problem. Everyone who refuses to give up their spot. Everyone who refuses to move down the aisle. Everyone who sees everyone else on the bus as their enemy.

But let's back up a bit, shall we?

Mobility is a basic service of our city. The taxpayers of Ottawa - including moms - provide a great deal of funding to OC Transpo.

Strollers are a reality. Yes, children are inconvenient, and you have to use a lot of crap when you have them like strollers and high chairs and car seats and who knows what. They're messy and loud and they screw up people's orderly worlds, just like you screwed up someone's orderly world back in the day. Children and parents are never going away. Families are as much part of this society as anyone else, and to say that they we not able to take the bus unless we adhere to specific rules isn't living in reality.

It's one thing if conditions are unsafe: If the bus is so crowded that the stroller cannot safely fit, then the mother - or anyone carrying anything with them that does not safely fit on board the bus, such as large bags, musical instruments, whatever - should of course be given the option to either board the bus and fold up her stroller and stow it safely (which - will the bus wait while the passenger removes her child and stows her stroller or will she be forced to bus surf with a baby in her hands?) or wait for the next bus. But if there is adequate room, then why enforce a punitive policy that forces a passenger and child into an uncomfortable and dangerous position?

I fully agree that stroller-users have a responsibility to be considerate and cognizant of the fact that they're taking public transit. It only makes sense to take a small, easily maneuverable, easily collapsible stroller. It only makes sense to not burden yourself with so many carry-ons that you are unable to maneuver the child if necessary. Of course.

But let's look at another angle: If there are so many strollers on OC Transpo buses that they're causing a problem, it shows that the bus is in demand for this group of users. Why are they choosing to pit other passengers, particularly those who use wheelchairs and walkers, against those who have strollers? Why are they making this a Mom issue instead of making it what it is: A limitation of our transport system to not be able to accommodate all of its users?

Instead of alienating or banning those who have strollers, why not work *with* them? Why not a public information campaign advising people with strollers of the best hours to ride the bus for maximum comfort, or what to look for in a bus-friendly stroller? Why not work with the public instead of beating them down with a stick? Why not a stroller parking spot on the bus? Why not encouraging others on the bus to help accommodate their fellow riders instead of just bitching about them?

Instead, OC Transpo and the City of Ottawa wants to just ban strollers entirely. Those mothers, they're just so bothersome. Why do they want to leave the house anyway?

In the end, if this recommendation makes it to law, then I will insist that it also become law that everyone else on the bus should be held to the same levels of consideration as the mother with the stroller. You! You're in my way! Don't stand in the aisle. Move to the back. Make room for the next person. Pick your bag up off the floor. Give your seat up to the elderly, the infirm, the pregnant. And if you don't, then you aren't allowed to board the bus, full stop. Just like that mom and her stroller.

Ottawa Stroller Policy: Sit Down and Shut Up (RESPONSE ADDED)

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:29:00 +0000

To Christine Leadman, Kitchissippi ward councillor.

Dear Ms Leadman,

I am writing to express my surprise and disgust at hearing that the transit committee is recommending a 'fold and stow" policy for strollers.

It seems the transit committee believes that taking the bus is a privilege and that unless you adhere to specific conditions, you aren't welcome - even if those conditions are completely unreasonable. As a new mother, I realize how very lucky I am to have a vehicle to allow me to get around. I cannot imagine the challenges faced by a mother relying on public transit in the first place-the awkwardness of using the bus, the struggles of managing a child and stroller in bad weather, and not at all least the attitudes towards mothers and children prevalent in society (ie-sit down and shut up) as evidenced by this policy. It is simply not reasonable to expect a person to manage removing a child and collapsing and stowing a stroller on a moving bus. It seems to me that those who are complaining are doing so out of a sense of entitlement for their own convenience, without regard to the difficulties of others.

Parenting is a reality in this world. This policy seems to expect that children be made invisible, so as to not inconvenience other riders, at huge inconvenience to the parent. Where is the basic fairness in this? Not to mention safety. I must wonder if anyone recommending this policy has actually attempted to carry out the actions they're expecting parents - and let's face it, primarily mothers - to carry out. Awkward at least, downright dangerous at worst.

Transit in this city is meant to serve all, not just those who are 'easy' to deal with. This policy is wrong-headed and at its base, clearly sexist. I certainly hope I hear your voice dissenting against this policy.

Regards,
Shannon McKarney

RESPONSE from Ms Leadman's Office:

Hello Ms. McKarney,

Thank you for sending your email. You do make some valid points. As a
member of Transit Committee, Councillor Leadman has been following this
issue very closely.

While she does not want to see parents unable to travel with their young
children, she also acknowledges the argument being made by the Seniors'
Advisory Committee and Accessibilty Advisory Committee. She is hopeful
that some kind of compromise can be reached.

I will pass your comments along to her so she has them for her
information and consideration as this issue is discussed tomorrow and at
City Council.

Kindest regards,

Jennifer Young

Office of Christine Leadman

City Councillor for Kitchissippi Ward

MY RESPONSE:

Thanks for responding to my email. Truly, a policy of "let's all use our brains and be kind to each other" would go a much longer way to enable all users of the transit system to ride comfortably and safely, rather than a punitive set of rules that inconvenience and endanger mothers with children.

Why not simply encourage stroller use in off-peak hours so that fuller buses aren't an issue? Why not educate other riders who are also not accommodating to seniors or those with limited disability (as I've seen with my own eyes)? Why not a public information campaign that will educate not only regular riders on bus etiquette, but also educate stroller-wielding mothers on the best ways to ride the transit system in comfort and safety (what to look for in a transit-friendly stroller; tips on what the best times are to ride a bus with a stroller, etc.)? Or if it's that big of a deal, if Mom wants to take an extra large stroller, why not charge an extra fare to take an extra spot? Then she can certainly say that her stroller has as much right to be there as anyone else does.

Plenty of other cities across Canada accommodate strollers without leaving mothers out in the cold. Ottawa shouldn't be one of those who chooses to punish people for the egregious sin of having a child in their company.

Regards,

Shannon McKarney

TerminaTorch

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:19:00 +0000

So.

After 106 days, 1,000 communities, 45,000 kilometres and 12,000 proud Canadians having had the honour of carrying the Olympic torch; after its presence sparked quintessentially Canadian celebrations in 200+ communities across the country; after starting a huge run on the now omnipresent red Olympic mittens with the maple leaf; after Canadians from all corners sat in their cars in -30 weather waiting for the minute the flame will run by them, then jumping out to cheer; after hyping us up about the Winter Olympic games that start on Friday in Vancouver; after all this, at the last hurdle, on the final day before the Olympics begin, we're giving the torch to an Austrian who lives in California.

Huh?

I don't get it. Did not enough Canadians apply to carry the torch? Were there not enough interested parties who actually live within our borders who wanted to schlep it for a leg? Could they not find someone with at least a Canadian passport able to carry it, and lacking such a person, they had to outsource it?

Carrying the torch is an honour and a privilege. It gave us ordinary Canadians, the vast majority of us who will be nowhere near Vancouver come next week, who don't hold tickets to a special hockey game or skeleton run or figure skating dance, who didn't have the opportunity or talent to become an Olympic athlete, it gave us all a chance to touch greatness, to be part of something big. And at the last moment, we're giving that chance, one of those final opportunities, to a famous American.

Yeah, it's just one leg. One kilometer - maybe less? What's the big deal? Why does it even matter?

It matters because that's a moment that could have - should have - been given to a Canadian. To a child who has dreams of becoming an athlete one day. To a mom who works hard every day to give her kids the best she can. To a nurse who helps others. To a firefighter. To a hockey dad. To an entrepreneur. To a dog owner, to a yoga enthusiast, to anyone who is inspired and excited by this once in a generation event. It should have been given to someone like that.

Or at the very least, it should have been given to someone who's paying for it.

So, bad call, Gordon Campbell. This isn't your personal party for your famous friends. We know you politicians are all about buddy-buddy-crony-chumminess, but please, we'd prefer if you'd at least save it for when we aren't looking.

Making it obvious that I don't know what I'm doing

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:53:00 +0000

You know, so I get this email from iStockPhoto saying that I have these credits that will expire, so I go looking for something to use them on and then I see this cool Valentine's day art, and I figure what the hell, except I only have 8 credits left and it costs 14, and of course that is their whole point. Don't let these credits go to waste! All you have to do is spend more money! But because I'm a sucker I do it because, what the hell, that old banner was looking a bit done anyway. But I don't let them entirely gouge me, because as with anything if you google "relevant website name here + discount code" odds are you can at least find 10% off pretty much any purchase on the interwebs. Anyway, so I get the credits and I buy the art and then I open up Illustrator to put my text on it, which is kind of like me opening up someone to do heart surgery. I pretty much know where the big pieces are but ask me to do anything that involves expertise and, well, patient's dead. So I insert the text I make up off the top of my head, and I pick a pretty font, and I make it about the right size. Then I open up Photoshop, wherein I at least know which end is up (although not really) (trust me, Adobe's embarrassed about me having ever been an employee there) and make it wide enough to fit the space on my blog, although it kind of doesn't really fit properly but shit, whatever. So then I realize all the greens and blues kind of look like ass with the pink and black, so then I have to go into the code of the template and that's when it's really time to laugh because seriously. I pick through and go, huh. That looks like it might be the right one. So I change the hex code and all of a sudden the whole blog turns fuchsia and I can't figure out how to change it back but luckily I haven't saved anything so I can revert back, except then I lose everything else I changed the way I wanted to change so then I get to start from scratch. This is the definition of "knows enough to be dangerous", people.

Anyway. Happy Valentine's Month, lookit me, getting all festive. Watch this be up til Easter or something.

I think I might throw up.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:48:00 +0000

I just saw this article linked on twitter.

Summary of the article: If you're under a general anaesthetic having some kind of pelvic procedure done, after the procedure, medical students will be permitted to do "practice" pelvic exams on your unconscious body. Without your consent.

My mind is reeling. I am nauseous. Do medical schools - doctors and nurses in the room - anybody involved in this - truly not see the horrible, disgusting privacy violation here? To be used as a practice dummy, without your consent? To have clumsy medical students insert speculums in your vagina and peer around like you're a bunny hill on a ski slope and they're the beginners? To be treated like an object, without even knowing about it?

Someone needs to tell me whether this is true or not. Because if it is? I am going to open a can of WHOOPASS on someone.

I had pelvic surgery 2 years ago under a general. The thought of having been used as an inert body and being paraded around in front of a pile of students without my consent is making me want to cry, to vomit, to hit things. This is a horrible violation, and it's being done by people we are supposed to trust implicitly - our doctors.

Someone, tell me this isn't true. Please.

Is this Calcutta?

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:40:00 +0000

Is Bohemia dead?

Last week, the rock opera Rent came to Toronto for the last time. The show opened on Broadway in 1996, closed in 2008 and is wrapping up a North American tour through 2009/10. The original Mark and Roger, Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal, were performing in this tour, and I had every intention of going to see it.

But then, you know, life with a six month old who still gets up a couple of times in the night to eat got in the way. Life with a husband travelling on business, for whom a weekend trip to Toronto would have kind of been a pain in the ass. Life with a dog when we can't find a dogsitter.

And it made me wonder. Would it have made sense for me to be there at all, anymore?

When Rent closed on Broadway after its phenomenal 12 year run, it left a different city behind than it entered. A different world. In this world, in 2010 Angel would still be alive, battling out her medication bills with her HMO. But she and Collins would never have met anyway, since he wouldn't have been mugged in the first place. The individual does not take his life into his own hands by venturing in to Alphabet City. There's no vacant lot with a tent city anymore; real estate in Manhattan is far too valuable for that.

Someone else probably opened up the restaurant in Santa Fe.

And have I changed?

Rent was my anthem, my soundtrack. Through anything, through everything. Blasting as loud as I can stand it through any point in my life.

How do you leave the past behind when it keeps finding ways to get to your heart? It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out til you're torn apart. How can you connect in an age when strangers, landlords, lovers, your own blood cells betray? What binds the fabric together when the raging shifting winds of change keep ripping away?

I will always know exactly how many minutes are in a year.

So I own not a notion, I escape and ape content. I don't own emotion. I rent.

Ask me what's the time. It's gotta be close to midnight.

What was it about that night? Connection, in an isolating age. For once the shadows gave way to light. For once I didn't disengage.

Every Akita is named Evita.

Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.

It always will be my anthem. And yet, look at me now. Basically, I've sold out.

At midday, I'm the three piece suit.

My husband and I are dear old Mom and Dad.

The Village Voice is owned by a corporation and is going.. mainstream.

When you start to think, you know, Benny wasn't so bad...

The show opened at the right time. The world was just coming to grips with the reality of AIDS, and New York City's gay community was hit harder than anywhere. Manhattan wasn't the glittering town of million dollar bonuses and Sex and the City; instead it was gritty, tough. Dangerous. To live there, you had to be brave. Creative. Ingenious. Artistic. Bohemian.

Today, you just have to be loaded.

Still, had it been easy for me to get there, it's simple. I would have been there. But what I really would have loved would be to somehow teleport myself back to the Nederlander theatre in the fall of 2006, with Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal - and Taye Diggs, and Jesse L. Martin, and Idina Menzel, and all the rest of the original cast, with their original, new, beautiful, fresh energy. None of them were who they were going to become yet, none of them had anything to lose, and neither did any of us. It was a long time ago, and the world has changed.

Maybe in a dozen years or so my daughter will play Mimi in a high school musical. No, I think that I dropped my stash. Possibly. By that time it will be a retro piece, like Oklahoma. But I'll still be there.

The opposite of war isn't peace. It's creation. Viva la vie boheme.

#noprorogue

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:21:00 +0000

I couldn't make it to the Canadians Against Parliamentary Proroguation protest on Parliament Hill today. Bummed. However, with a six month old, life gets a little testy.

However, it's turned out to be a good thing - because I'm following the protest on Ustream and Twitter. And on twitter, something really great is happening. People are taking pictures of the protests in cities across Canada, and posting pictures of protestors, their signs, their faces. Twitter is uniting this protest - and illustrating the great creativity of Canadians. I'll link as many as I can here during the protest and clean it up later.

democracy - ur doin it rong #noprorogue http://twitpic.com/zeg3r

prorogue war not parliament http://tweetphoto.com/9389423

Panorama of Toronto http://twitpic.com/zeerb

Harper can't silence democracy http://tweetphoto.com/9389196

Noprorogue crowd http://twitpic.com/zear3

The grinch who stole parliament http://tweetphoto.com/9388639

Silence is compliance http://img390.yfrog.com/i/mspx.jpg/

We miss you (sort of) http://img159.yfrog.com/i/vijl.jpg/

Better government better snacks http://img162.yfrog.com/i/p5ko.jpg/

harper the crook http://twitpic.com/zedo0

don't crush democracy http://img113.yfrog.com/i/io1k.jpg/

harper is a dick tator http://tweetphoto.com/9387938

Stand up to Harper http://img159.yfrog.com/i/9f7s.jpg/

Yes Oui Canada http://tweetphoto.com/9387468

parliamentary prorogation - canadian defamation http://tweetphoto.com/9387332

dundas square http://tweetphoto.com/9384148

Is that Stephen Harper walking right in front? http://twitpic.com/zeioy

King Harper on a hockey stick http://img154.yfrog.com/i/7y8ui.jpg/

Slacktivism Schlactivism. http://tweetphoto.com/9391228

Perogies yes! Prorogation no! http://twitpic.com/zejww

What, me worry? & Closed minds, Closed doors http://tweetphoto.com/9391013

What, me worry (second shot) http://img129.yfrog.com/i/osimz.jpg/

Heading down Yonge street http://twitpic.com/zek3l

What's that odour http://twitpic.com/zeacb

Non prorogue! http://twitpic.com/zdvkj

Protesting from Oman http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=370175&id=516195423&ref=mf

Unplug parliament - purge and flush Harper http://img49.yfrog.com/i/ur1vg.jpg/

Don't prorogue democracy http://tweetphoto.com/9383668

Harper miscalculated. http://twitpic.com/ze5f1

Go back to parliament. Do not collect $200. http://tweetphoto.com/9386122

Harper can't silence democracy. http://twitpic.com/ze878

Get back 2 work. http://tweetphoto.com/9387053

Cyclists against prorogation! http://tweetphoto.com/9387646

Raging Grannies video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iggFNbd67Pk

Heavyhanded Arrogant Rich Power drunk Egotistical Run amok http://www.flickr.com/photos/12943478@N04/4298539514/

Queen street filled with passion http://mypict.me/show.php?id=38P57

Raging Grannies on stage http://twitpic.com/zeazb

From the steps of Parliament http://twitpic.com/ze63t

GET BACK TO WORK http://tweetphoto.com/9392905

I want my country back http://twitpic.com/zepnk

the view from Jack Layton http://twitpic.com/zeqq8

Outside Harper's office http://twitpic.com/zetaz

I can haz democracy? http://twitpic.com/zfiox

I'm with CoCo.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:14:00 +0000

I cannot remember the last time I watched The Tonight Show.

The only time in recent memory I watched something even remotely related to late night TV was to watch Letterman's clip on YouTube about the extortion attempt. And I didn't even know Jimmy Kimmel existed until Sarah Silverman started fucking Matt Damon.

So as far as which host is better or which show is better or any of that stuff, I couldn't tell you. Truly, I have no dog in that fight.

But I do notice when people aren't being treated fairly. And from the sounds of it, so do most people, when it comes to the latest NBC late-night debacle.

From what I can see, Conan made no bones about wanting the Tonight show for years. And NBC gave it to him. Bye Leno, Hello Conan. Simple.

But when push came to shove, either someone at NBC wasn't ready to let Leno go, or Leno has pictures of someone at NBC having intimate relations with farm animals, because now they want to put Leno back on at 11:35. Or in other words, they want to give him back the Tonight show.

Sure, they're not going to *call* it the Tonight show. It's just a variety show! On at 11:35! The Tonight show is on at 12:05, it's still the Tonight show! (Except it isn't. It's really the Tomorrow show, but whatever.)

But I know back when I was young and did things like watch late night TV, I only ever watched the first half hour. Saturday Night Live just wasn't funny after the first musical interlude. They put the A stuff on first; by the time you got the last half hour, it was so lame the studio audience wasn't even laughing. The networks know when the viewers show up. And they won't show up for a delayed Tonight show. Conan's right: this move will kill the Tonight show franchise. It will never, ever, get the numbers that it used to get at 11:35. And then NBC will use those low ratings as a reason to sack Conan and can that silly half hour Jay Leno show and just reinstate him into Tonight which is what they wanted to do in the first place.

It's a nasty move. NBC is being completely dishonest. They're using a whole lot of weasel language and sly maneuvers to basically give Tonight back to Leno instead of simply just ...doing it.

I mean, truly. If you had been working your ass off to get a promotion and you finally get it once the old guy retired or left or whatever - who cares because you're now the new VP of Development and you're doing exactly the job they promoted you to do - and then a couple of months later they hire the guy you replaced back and move him in to your office and give him more money and ask him to do everything that you're doing but they tell you, don't worry! Your job isn't going to change! You're the VP of Development and he's the VP of Strategic Development! Totally different! And suddenly your calendar is empty and your inbox doesn't bing anymore and you're left stunned and confused and wondering why there's still a rubber glove hanging out of your underwear.

It's truly a loathsome way to treat someone. It lacks honesty. It lacks integrity. It lacks humanity.

I get that TV is all about ratings and advertising revenues. I get that if you don't get the eyeballs, you don't get the airtime, especially in this ADD age. So if Conan isn't working out, he isn't working out.

And if that's the case? Then be honest, NBC. If you want to put Leno back on the Tonight show, put him back on. Save everyone some pain. And if doing that means you'll have to pay Conan and his team a lot of money, then so be it. That's the high price of integrity.

These are a few of my favourite tweets

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:59:00 +0000

It's not just about my raging ADD, although the instant gratification and character-limited commentary does suit that aspect of my personality quite well.

It's not just about the fact that I can read and even talk to with people across the city, country, planet, people I wouldn't know without it, people you and I would only be able to dream of reaching without it.

I love Twitter. And it's because people are funny.

I started plowing through some of the tweets I've marked as "favourites" over the last couple of years, and even after months have passed they still have me snorting vodka out my nose. (Yes, vodka. My kid is teething. You'd be drinking it too.)

I have a lot of favourites. I know a lot of funny people.

So with this being January and all, and since everyone did their top ten or top whatever of the year lists last month, and since it's totally beyond typical of me to be completely late to the game, henceforth I present: My Top Twitter Gems for 2009. Ish. (You'll notice I don't say "top 10". It's because my ADD means I can't cut a list down to favourites for shit.) I've linked to the twitter-er, so that you can also add them to your follow list and make your life just that little bit more fulfilling. You can send me cheques to thank me later.

First up, from the lovely @mochamomma, who wisely uses retail therapy in much the same way I do: Instant gratification, with a guarantee for more depression later.

My California buddy @farkerpeaceboy delivers with a twist.

@herbadmother is a daily treat, discussing anything from mommyhood to pop culture to deep personal issues. And maybe this is a little insight to exactly how deep she's gone:

@joeboughner and I get this joke, which means we've been around the interwebs way too long.

Down Kansas way, @the_dza is honest about his motivations for caffeination:

During the Larry O'Brien trial, Glen McGregor from the Ottawa Citizen was live tweeting the proceedings as @obrientrial, as well as a few other observations. Apparently Armageddon will come with lattes.

@ryananderson needs to learn to express his feelings more clearly.

@gwenbell is a constant source of smiles and inspiration. Her observation on success and failure spoke directly to my heart:

I don't actually know who @secretsquirrel is. But good god, he makes me laugh.

Jenny @thebloggess is the entire reason that you need to be on twitter, if you aren't already.

@stephenfry was telling his followers about a great sale on.. something. But then discovered it was only available in the UK, and responded with my favourite kind of British humour - the murderous kind.

@jesseengle is one of my favourite social media people - aw, one of my favourite people period. And he notes a particularly effective method of corporate market research:

OK, yeah, I favourited myself. This was the night that GWB gave his farewell speech and it preempted a particularly riveting episode of CSI (and by "riveting" I mean "not Bush so obviously better no matter what it is"). Enough already. Go away.

Finally, it's funny how things have come full circle:

What are your favourites? Share below!

Stop the trainwreck, I wanna get off.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Look, you all know what went down with Tiger Woods over the last few weeks, there's no point in me rehashing it.

What I am going to hash, though, was how we as a society reacted to Tiger Woods falling down. And really, it isn't flattering. We ate it up, chewed it up and spit it out, cackling like wild people and pointing fingers with a Nelson-like "ha-ha!" We took pleasure in his family's pain.

Really, there's something very disturbing about the utter glee we take from tearing down our heroes.

Of course, you say, Tiger tore himself down. He was the one who did the bad things, the tear-down-able things. And I'm not disagreeing with that.

But it's the sheer joy, the rubbing-hands-together-with-glee excitement with which people greeted the news that Tiger wasn't such a good boy after all that really made me feel kind of nauseous. People were loving it. Everyone was cracking a joke, making a buck off this man's mistakes and his family's pain. And I didn't understand. I was of the opinion that the guy and his family should be left alone.

But others disagreed. He's a public figure. He's a "brand", his good boy image carefully crafted in order to win him lucrative contracts and sponsorships. If that brand was a lie we, the public who bought in to it, should be aware!

Who knows. Perhaps this careful image sculpting did exist. Perhaps every appearance was managed, manicured, scripted to present a very different picture of him than the reality. Or maybe he was simply a person who wanted to keep his private life private, and succeeded in doing so for many years. Is that branding? Well, maybe. I guess so. And if that's the case, I guess we're all brands now, carefully crafting our persona that we present to the outer world so as not to appear to be... fallible? Vulnerable? Human? Because we can't show any of that. It isn't acceptable in this world. As soon as we present an imperfection, the tigers pounce. So don't show it.

Are we as a society just too cynical now? Do we simply lie in wait for everyone to fall on their faces? And what does that say about us?

It's not just Tigergate. We also cackled in glee when Britney Spears sank into mental illness and substance abuse and lost her children and came as close to complete self destruction as you can probably get without submerging. We all tittered up our sleeves when Kate Moss was photographed snorting coke and laughed as her modelling contracts dried up one by one.

We read blogs like Lainey and Perez and TMZ and drink up the gossip. We talk about other people's lives and pass judgment as if we have any clue what it's like to walk a mile in their shoes. We watch shows like Cops and (god forbid) Steven Seagal Lawman and watch people at their absolute worst, during some of the most awful moments of their lives, and we call it entertainment.

Why? Why is this entertaining? Is it really that old cliche, that we enjoy it because others' misfortunes make us feel better about ourselves?

I truly don't know. But what I'm finding particularly interesting is how other cultures such as the French and the Italians are laughing at North America for being so utterly horrified at a man having mistresses.

While I in no way condone infidelity, these Europeans have a point. Perhaps it's the weight of history on these countries, but they seem to know far better than we do that everyone, including celebrities, are fallible. They know that the hero has a dark side. And they watch us build these pedestals for our heroes, and we build them out of fragile, delicate, spun glass that will collapse with one misstep, one shift of balance. And they laugh, because they know that this outrage we all feel when someone inevitably falls is of our own doing. We set our celebrities up to fail. We refuse to believe in the fallibility of human nature.

The other option is, of course, that we know that the fall is inevitable, and we just sit with a bowl of popcorn and wait for it to happen. Who knows.

Either way, it kind of makes me feel queasy to watch people get happy and make money over the misfortunes and missteps of others. But I guess I'm the only one.

Time and flying

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:08:00 +0000

When did it get to be November 12?

When did I get to have a four month old child?

They (the ubiquitous "they") always say that time flies when you get older, when you have a child. It's true. Unbelievably true.

Sometimes the days - and nights - seem to take forever. When I'm sitting beside my daughter, trying to entertain her with one hand while I try to hold the breast pump with the other, thinking of all the things I have to do - her laundry and my laundry and wash bottles and clean the kitchen and wash diapers and get groceries and and and - the moments seem long, endless, waiting for the next moment where I can catch five minutes and feel like a normal human being, a human being who has time to make a coffee or read a newspaper article or get a decent sleep or anything, anything at all that doesn't involve being called away, demanded upon from my (gorgeous) benevolent dictator.

And yet, I look around and suddenly, it's Thursday. Sunday was about 5 minutes ago, my baby was born last week. Wasn't she? I look at the bags of clothes she's already outgrown and think, did she ever fit in to these? I look at pictures from the summer and wonder, when was she ever that small?

I'm going to have to get careful, very careful, about not letting time slip by without noticing it. Every week, it seems, I have a panic attack about not documenting every moment of my daughter's life, every change. When did I last take pictures? What did I miss? I need to be writing this down! Because it does slip by, so quickly that you can't see it, and the business of every day makes me forget that there's so much I'm going to forget that I need to remember.

Little things, charming, beautiful things. Things like how she laughs like mad when a shirt is pulled over her head, or that when you put a book in front of her face her eyes widen like she's just spotted a buried treasure. Things like how it's impossible right now to clip her tiny fingernails and yet if I don't do it, she claws the heck out of her face, or how the dark brown hair she was born with is finally all gone, replaced by a fuzz of indeterminate colour. Or that she refuses to nap during the day for more than 20 minutes because she just doesn't want to miss anything and will not shut her eyes at night until the lights are switched off and there's nothing left to see.

These are the things I need to write down, capture on videotape or digital film or whatever, because these are the moments that make my heart melt. And heart meltage is hard to come by in this world.

The Swine, The Vax, and the Angry.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:47:00 +0000

H1N1 is here. And I'm angry.

I'm angry, probably, at you.

Don't take it personally. But if any of the below apply to you, then I'm probably angry at you. Because I don't understand what you're thinking. And what you're thinking is putting you in danger.

I'm angry that there is even a debate about whether or not a vaccine for the flu is "safe".

I'm angry that people think that they are "better off" not getting themselves or their kids immunized against a flu that is killing healthy children.

I'm angry that people are watching YouTube videos and letting that influence their decisions to vaccinate themselves or their families.

I'm angry that a Playboy model seems to have more clout in the vaccine argument than people who go to school for decades to research the way our immune systems work and how to fight disease.

I'm angry that ordinary everyday people think that they are better equipped to interpret study data than people who are thoroughly educated in and live and breathe this stuff.

I'm angry that the misinformation out there is so strong that I'm even hearing stories of doctors spreading bullshit about this vaccine to their patients.

Just angry. Because if you buy in to any of the above, you're putting yourselves at risk. And you're also putting other people at risk; people who cannot get the vaccine. People like my child.

And that makes me angry.

*************************************************************

Look, people. I know none of you were alive in 1918 (well, if any of you reading this blog were, in fact, alive in 1918, nice one. Let me know your secret.) But in 1918, an H1N1 virus started merrily jaunting its way around the world, much like this one is today. And way back then, in 1920, when that version of the flu had run its course, 50 million or so people were dead.

Bring Out Your Dead!
50 million. (Conservatively. The number could be double that.)

Just for the sake of writing it out, that's 50,000,000. (And change.)

And that's the same strain of the bug that's bouncing around our buses and subways and offices and schools right now.

And we have a vaccine that could keep it from killing people.

But there's this big anti-vaccine movement, see. And these anti-vaccine people don't believe that vaccines would have helped. They don't even see the flu as a big issue. Sure, it killed fifty million people. Oh, but the anti-vaxxers have an argument for that. Maybe it's that life was different back then, different diet and hygiene. Or maybe it's that the flu was invented by big pharma and released to scare the public. Or maybe the global H1N1 die-off just never happened. It's just a big myth.

These anti-vaxxers, boy. They're a fun bunch. They take all kinds of fun "science" that they can't back up with any actual research or facts, but then they push it around on the Internets like They Know Things. They take quotes from mysterious "heads" of agencies and swear by them, even though they can't be proven. They take two or three or five or ten stories and present them as trend, as actual fact. They take one YouTube video of one person who is claiming that a vaccine turned them into a goddamn mutant and hold it up as a banner to say BIG PHARMA IS TEH EBIL! VAXES ARE THE POISONZ!

(You know what? Here's a request from me to you. If you don't get your kid vaxxed, and he or she ends up in the ICU on a ventilator in a coma, could you do me a favour and put it on video so that we can put it on YouTube? It might be the only way to reach some of these people who think that YouTube is the Oracle and The Only God That Matters. Thanks.)

These are the people, the whackjob conspiracy theorists, that far too many people are allowing to have greater influence over them than they do physicians and public health officials. People are allowing others who believe that Cancer does not exist to influence their health decisions when it comes to their families. These people, these people who call those of us who live in the "mainstream" "sheeple" for simply following blindly what we are told, these people will seize on to any argument, however spurious the facts, however dubious the evidence, and call it the suppressed truth.

Jenny Freaking McCarthy, people. An MTV host and Playboy model who swears, SWEARS she KNOWS that a vaccine gave her kid autism. Jim Carrey. A funny guy who makes goofy faces for a living.

Are these the people you truly want to entrust with the lives of your kids?

*************************************************************

Hmm. Yeah. So let me ask you another question.

Are you concerned about the amount of testing done on this vaccine?

Yeah, I hear that a lot.

Let me ask you another question.

Do you have a PhD in Immunology? Virology? Respirology?

Do you have an MD?

Did you spend any time at all studying viruses? The human immune system?

No?

Hmm.

Are you a naturopath?

Have you actually taken any biology courses past first year university?

Do you spend any time at all reading and interpreting studies and data in your real life, at all?

No?

Then why do you think you are suited to appropriately interpret data and scientific studies in this case?

Not trying to bust your balls here.

But ask yourself: would you listen to an "expert" who had your credentials on this?

*************************************************************

Let me tell you a story.

Two months ago, I took my (then) two month old daughter for her first vaccines. I was nervous. I'm a modern woman and a modern parent and I have access to the internet where people say things like vaccines cause autism and vaccines aren't safe and even though I believe in western medicine, I believe it saves lives, those words planted seeds in the back of my head and I wondered. This is my child, the center of my life. I want to ensure no harm comes to her, especially not from something I did or allowed to have done to her. I wondered, Are all these vaccines safe? Can her little immune system handle it? What about the thimerosal and the viruses and the scary creepies?

But in we went for the jabs, despite my misgivings. I asked the doc what the jabs were for. One of them was for something called HiB. Haemophilus Influenzae type B. I'd never heard of HiB. Do we really need to give that vaccine? It obviously isn't a disease that's around anymore, is it?

..................wait for it...................

That's right, you moron. You don't hear about it anymore. That's the point.

Years ago, little babies died of HiB. They'd catch it and develop meningitis and they would die. Now, there is a vaccine that we can give them to keep them from getting HiB, and we can give it to them starting at two months. And we do, and now, little babies no longer die of HiB. So we don't hear about it. It isn't news anymore. It's gone.

Miraculous, this thing we call modern science.

If you choose to listen to the nay-sayers. If you choose to believe that more harm will come to you or your child by taking the vaccine than by taking your chances with the flu. If you choose to believe that this bug, this same strain of bug, showing the same characteristics as the bug that killed fifty million people in 1918, is no big deal. You are clearly not thinking clearly.

*************************************************************

Listen. I was the first one to say the media was hyping swine flu back in the spring. And it was. It was headlining every story and seriously, it was overkill. And especially now, because, guess what. We have a vaccine. We're saved. H1N1 can as easily go the way of HiB, because modern science made it so. Maybe you find that hard to swallow. You'll find swallowing anything a lot harder if you get the flu.

Get the jab, already.

I'm going to be closing comments on this post soon.. mainly because I have limited time and I can see that this will be an issue that will continue to generate discussion, and I won't always have time to respond appropriately. Thanks to everyone who has commented, I appreciate your input and the chance to discuss!

Reduce, reuse, recommit to decluttering for the 4,723rd time.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:41:00 +0000

I'm staring at a stack of fluffy, newly washed diapers and a dish rack tumbled full of freshly washed bottles. A clothesbasket of clean laundry sits on the floor next to the couch, a pile of newspapers to be recycled next to the front door. Lots of organizing has happened around here today. And yet, the house is still a grade-A disaster.

I've never been what one would call a neat freak, not ever in my life. My mother spent most of the first 18 years of my life despairing of ever having me clean out the crap from under my bed, the place where I shoved everything when I didn't feel like dealing with it. Today, the modern day equivalent of under the bed is the office, where the adult things I don't feel like dealing with get dumped, and the despair is no longer my mother's but my husband's. I am a clutter freak. A packrat. A disorganized mess, if you're being uncharitable, and a charming slob, if you're not.

There's no question where the clutter gene came from. If you walk in to either one of my parents' homes, you'll see they have the same problem. My parents, both born within spitting distance of the Great Depression, learned that you don't just throw things away; you keep them forever. If something breaks, you fix it - or you put it in the basement until you get around to fixing it, which is the more likely scenario. If you have an Item X, and Item X gets old, you don't think of replacing it. Why would I replace it? I have a perfectly good one! But if for some reason, you do choose to replace it, maybe there's a new one with new features or whatever, then Old Item X does not get chucked - it gets stored until you find a new home for it. That new home usually means "pawn it off on a kid going to University" but we've only got so many of those in this family, so the alternative becomes "keep it for a yard sale", one of which I've been promising my husband I would hold every spring for the last 5 years and never quite manage. So these hoarding tendencies then ran smack dab into my husband's Upper Canadian "get a new one if you want a new one!" attitude, and has created a total stuff monster.

Recently a new show has come on A&E called Hoarders. This show is about packrats gone wild, people who cannot bear to part with anything until their homes are overrun with stuff. I have a secret fear that I am one of these people. I watch as they justify keeping piles of old magazines ("there's an article in that issue of Style at Home from October 2002 I wanted to read!") or old broken hair dryers ("there's nothing wrong with it, just needs a new fuse!") and I have so much empathy for them.

The difference between them and me is that I don't mind parting with things. I just hate *wasting* them. I hate sending things to a landfill when I know there is a home for it out there somewhere, if only I would take the effort to find it. I can remember being a little child and tossing a broken toy in the garbage, only to look at the landfill site wistfully every time we drove by it, knowing that little broken toy was still sitting there, rotting away. And since then, I imagine that little toy every time I pitch something into the garbage. Meaning, nothing gets thrown out unless I'm feeling particularly ruthless, which isn't often. More often, I put it in a pile for the recycle bin, which miraculously assuages my waste not/want not guilt by ensuring it won't go rot in a landfill. At least, I hope not.

But something's got to be done, because adding the extra work of a newborn into the mix has tipped this joint over the edge. The magazine I bought to read while I was giving birth in the hospital, three months ago, is still sitting on the ottoman, under a stack of new magazines I won't have time to read. The clothes my daughter has already outgrown rest in a pile beside the couch, needing to be transported into the storage bin in her closet. And never mind the piles of clean clothing sitting beside them. Or the four diaper bags in various stages of packed/unpacked resting on the kitchen stools.

Gah. You'll have to excuse me. I see a few things I have to recycle.

And it all smells vaguely of sour milk.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:35:00 +0000

When you become a parent, you tolerate a lot more grossness than you ever thought you could.

This morning, as my child sat on my lap, a nuclear explosion went off in her diaper. The windows shook, the leaves blew off the trees outside, a small but distinct mushroom cloud hovered over the house for several minutes. After the dust settled, when I picked her up off my lap, I realized that said lap was soaked. Thankfully, not with anything solid. From what I can figure out, satisfied with her work, she peed on top of the nuclear waste inside the diaper which, with its hydrophobic qualities, resulted in the pee getting sheared off to the side and out the leg and on to my pyjamas.

This was mere minutes after she woke up, smiled, and shot a stream of clear spit-up all across the (clean, I might add) sheets on my bed. The kid actually caught air with the projectile vomit.

A year ago, if someone's kid puked or crapped on me, I would have smiled politely and handed the kid back to the parents to deal with, all the while choking back bile in the back of my throat. Ah, how far we've come. Bodily fluids are now our life. She's fed from my body and she digests it all and eliminates it with hers. It's beautiful, and it's ick. And not only are we used to the ick, we analyze it. 'What colour was the poop?" "Green." "Neon green or brownish green?" "More brownish. Kind of sludgey. And it's got clumps." "Oh, that's good."

I now understand how people can go out in public with white spit up stains on their shirts, or worse. It's just.. everywhere. All the time. You barely notice it anymore. When I put on clean clothes, I frolic in them for a few minutes, enjoying the smell of nothing, which isn't a smell I smell much anymore. And then I pick up my daughter and boom. Done. I've been baptized with baby.

It could be worse. The three days we had her on formula before my milk came in resulted in black, toxic diapers straight from the tar sands. The reintroduction of breast milk meant that the diapers subsequently only smelled like sour milk as opposed to the armpit of Beelzebub. So we count our blessings.

Still, I'll add "smelling like that" to the list of things that I won't miss in a few years. No longer will I sit on my bed and wonder where the spilled milk is. No longer will the couch frighten away visitors. I'll miss most things about having a newborn, but trust me: that's not one of them.

Fitting in to prepregnancy clothes, or the ways in which we delude ourselves

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:19:00 +0000

The weekend before I found out I was pregnant, I bought new jeans.

The purchase of denim has been a pretty standard thing for me for years. Gap Long and Lean, size 6. They covered what they needed to cover and made my ass look like I wasn't 38. Plus, they were easy. I like easy. The only thing I had to worry about when I went to the store was choosing the colour of the denim.

So this time, when I grabbed the denim that delighted me and I strolled in to the dressing room and pulled them on, I expected them to just fit. But this time? I couldn't close them. The 6 was.. tight. Uncomfortable.

This is when the denial kicked in.

Ha, hahaha! I thought. The gap has obviously changed their sizing. That had to be it, I convinced myself. I grabbed the size 8 and pulled them on, satisfyingly buttoning them shut. All they've done is correct the vanity sizing, I said to myself.

Three days later, I peed on a stick and it all became very clear. Suddenly, these were no longer re-vanity-sized jeans. These were baby bloat jeans.

I wore those jeans for another ten weeks, until the belly began to assert itself and maternity pants became the only option.

I didn't bother trying those jeans on until about four weeks ago. Why torture myself, I reasoned. To my delight, when I finally slipped them on, I was able to fasten the button without having to suck my gut up to my tonsils. Hallelujiah!

I didn't push my luck. I didn't try on the jeans that fit *before* the baby bloat jeans.

It's like there's a progression of clothing that one fits in to post pregnancy. Stage one, you get back in to the mat clothes you outgrew. (Yes, I outgrew mat clothes. Shut up.) Stage, two, you get back in to the non-maternity but larger-size clothes you bought in the first trimester. Stage three, you fit back in to the stuff you wore when you got pregnant. Then there is the largely mythical stage four, when you fit back in to the stuff you haven't worn since well before pregnancy, the stuff in the back of the closet that you told everyone the dry cleaner had shrunk. Even though the stuff hadn't actually been to the dry cleaner.

Yesterday, in an orgy of organization, I cleaned out the closet. And I found a pair of Stage Three trousers. Nervously, I pulled them on. OK, they were stretchy fabric and OK, the vertical stripes were forgiving. Never mind. I got them closed. Followed by a triumphant shout of "prepregnancy pants!" and a dance of joy around the living room.

Someone tell me Stage four is not far behind.

I have exactly 22 minutes to write this post

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:21:00 +0000

The kid is sleeping, the bottles are washed and filled, the boobs are drained. I'd love to go take a shower, but the kid is asleep on the couch and moving her = waking a sleeping baby = are you high?

So I sit, and I surf, and I think about how my IQ has dropped about 60 points since giving birth.

Seriously.

Yesterday, I forgot how to take a screenshot with my Mac. I mean, I thought I knew how to do it. I kept pressing Ctrl-Option-4. Over and over. And it didn't work, and I didn't know why. I thought it was because I had installed new software, but how stupid is that? How dumb are you, Apple, to change keystrokes just because you felt like it in a new release? Yeah, Apple's the dumb one. Which I found out when I asked Twitter about it, and someone kindly pointed out the correct sequence. The sequence I've been using for oh, three years? The sequence that just dribbled out the bottom of my head for no reason?

Yeah.

There's no real point to this post, except to say I have no brainpower to even write anything anymore. I'm beyond sleep deprived, even though I get more sleep than I have any right to be getting at this point in new-mom-dom. Maybe I've drained my brains out through my nipples or something. Who knows.

So in lieu of posting anything coherent, I'll just show you a picture of my kid.

The Price of having a family

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:33:00 +0000

Today, an Ontario Panel recommended that the Provincial health care system cover infertility treatments. Currently, almost all infertility treatments are paid for out of the patient's pocket. And it can be a hefty fee. However, judging from the feedback I've been hearing, lots of people are pretty vocal about this issue. It's too expensive! Why should I pay for someone else's choices? It's an elective procedure! Wah wah wah!

And I'm here to say: Shut it.

Yes. Infertility treatments are expensive. A round of IVF at the Ottawa Fertility Clinic starts at $6,000 and easily goes up from there. Paying for it out of the public health care system would be expensive.

And I bet the people who are whining about how expensive it is and how our health care system can't afford it are the same people who go to the emergency room to get antibiotics for the flu. I bet one visit to the ER costs the health care system hundreds if not thousands of dollars, depending on what you're visiting the ER for. But because we don't pay the bills, we don't notice. But trust me: everything we do in the health care system is expensive. Know that infertility treatment is no more or less expensive than anything else. You really want to save the health care system some money? Lose 10 pounds, quit smoking and eat more vegetables. Then come talk to me.

Yes. Having children is a personal, life choice, especially for couples who very specifically pursue fertility treatments instead of getting it done the easy way by humping in the back seat of their parents' chevy. Why should we fund things that are lifestyle choices?

And while we're at it, if we're only going to treat conditions that aren't "lifestyle choices", then the next douchebag who gets hammered and gets in to his car and joyrides his ass right into a telephone pole shouldn't get treated under the health care system either. The next woman who decides to skydive and has a faulty parachute and gets pulverized into the ground shouldn't get treated under the health care system either.

Yes. It's "elective". Nobody "has" to have a child.

And there are hundreds of "elective" procedures, procedures that aren't life threatening or medically "necessary" carried out every day that the province pays for. Exploratory surgeries. Knee repair. The list goes on. Should we force all elective procedures to pay out of pocket?

The truth is, infertility is a medical condition where your body is not working the way it is supposed to work. Just like when your hip wears out and you need a new one. Just like when your heart has a defect and requires a transplant. Just like when your brain blows a blood vessel and you need it repaired. Just like a thousand other medical conditions where something isn't working the way it is supposed to work - but because it involves children, and women's reproduction, and all kinds of things traditionally deemed unimportant, people think it isn't worthy of being paid for by the public health care system.

The bald truth is, the couples who are pursuing infertility treatments are the ones we *want* to be parents in our society. These are the couples who know they want children - they're doing everything they can to have one. These are the couples who have the money to raise children - they're paying out the nose to have one. These are the couples whose marriages can take stress and strain - there's nothing more stressful than infertility. These are the couples who will make good parents. And we should be treating them fairly, not bankrupting them by forcing them to mortgage their lives just to achieve the most basic of human accomplishments: having a family.

Things I am tired of.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:39:00 +0000

1. Media circle jerks surrounding celebrity deaths. I don't know why CNN felt that the intricate details of the vans that drove in and out of the Kennedy compound at 2AM were worthy of broadcast, but the seeming lack of logic around it didn't stop them. Frankly, the media outlets have gotten so frenzied around these sad events that they can't even see when they're being mental anymore.

2. Breast pumping. Every 4 hours, every day. Each 24 hours I'm getting out enough to feed the kid plus put a bag in the freezer. Every bag in the freezer = 1.5 feedings I don't have to produce at the other end of this little adventure. The problem is, we're running out of room in the freezer. The husband goes to dig out the ice cream and he's assaulted by an avalanche of 150ML yellow blocks. And we're only 8 weeks in. Imagine 12. Boobmageddon.

3. Seamus O'Regan.

4. Spiders. Is it me, or have there been an excess of spiders this year? I can't even open my front door without walking straight in to a wispy, sticky spiderweb. Ugh.

5. The Dany Heatley trade saga. Score 50 goals and they'll be falling all over themselves to sign you, dude. Just shut up and play hockey.

6. Reruns.

7. Diapers. And yes, I know, this has only just begun. Sigh.

ETA I forgot one. 8. Canadian Political Wrangling. Bring them down, don't bring them down. I don't care. Just please, shut up about it.

See what it feels like now

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:25:00 +0000

I was just going to comment on this post of Dooce's, honest I was, and then I realized I was going to say this and this and this and oh wait this too and then I decided I needed to write a post of my own because shit, she doesn't need me blathering on her website with my verbal Coldplay diarrhea. That's what I have you people for.

So here's the story.

When I figured out I was pregnant, I didn't pee on a stick right away. This was because I had thought I was pregnant before and peed on a stick and all I did was waste $12. And yet, this time was different. I had been spotting as usual on the days leading up to Day 28, but when that day came my period didn't. And then my boobs felt funny. And I thought, Oh go on, just pee on the stick already and then I thought oh shut up you, you money waster. This went on for a few days.

And then, on Day 30, we went to see Coldplay.

This was the 4th? 5th? Who knows? time I've seen Coldplay perform. I saw them in Toronto at the ACC during the Rush Of Blood To The Head tour; in Ottawa, later during the same tour, which was such a small concert it was like seeing them in a nightclub; and twice more in Ottawa. I also think I saw them in their early days in London opening for someone else, but I can't be certain.

This time, we were in row wayfarback on the floor, which bummed me a little bit until the concert started, then I didn't care. When the first song started, the first time I jumped up and raised my arms, I felt it.

That little stretch in my belly.

Didn't feel quite normal. Something was definitely different.

I spent the rest of the concert on my feet. The entire night was magical, especially the moment during Lovers in Japan when suddenly we were surrounded by thousands of butterflies:

(not my video. I think i somehow deleted my video. WAH.)

I left the concert on cloud 9, like I always do after Coldplay, but I still thought... I wonder. Then the next day I peed on the stick and there I was. Pregnant. Just like that. And more, the kid was barely the size of a chick pea and she'd been to Coldplay already. (She'd also had most of a bottle of Chianti already, but that's another story altogether.)

Since that night, Coldplay and my kid have had a special bond. I used to sit at my desk at work, one earbud in my ear, the other one pressed against my belly, playing Coldplay, Pearl Jam or Leonard Cohen (no commentary on my musical tastes, you.) But mostly Coldplay. And mostly Viva la Vida. And finally, mostly Lovers in Japan, because of that moment.

And look at my delight when, now that my baby's out and 7 weeks old, if she's freaking out and I sing Coldplay to her she instantly calms. Or at least I think she does. We're kind of delusional, us new moms.

So, like Dooce, my kid will also be a kid raised on adult music. And I hope that when she's 30 and she hears Lovers in Japan come on the radio and all her friends go god, listen to this old crap, she'll be able to smile to herself, lost in a piece of nostalgia that's truly hers. And mine.

(Note: I took a video of the butterflies at the Coldplay concert. And I think I deleted it. I think I put it on my work laptop and not this laptop and then when I was cleaning the files off my work laptop I deleted it thinking I had it on this laptop when I didn't. I also had a great video of them doing The Scientist right in front of me. Gutted. That'll learn me. Sigh.)

Ode to a kitty.

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:53:00 +0000

I moved to Ottawa in 1996. Back then, the only person I knew in town was my best friend from the time we both learned how to use crayons - Maggie. Maggie and I have a lot of things in common, one of which being our love of cats. Over the years, we've both been owned by a series of kitties, some precious, some vicious.

Iggy fell in to both of those categories.

Iggy was a wee black ball of fluff the first time I saw her at Maggie's house. She had attitude even then, drinking out of Mama's water glass rather than out of her own water bowl, a princess from the start. Maggie and I struggled over the name, when suddenly it came to me: Igor. Iggy for short. And it stuck.

Iggy did not stay wee, nor did she stay fluffy. Within months, she was the sleekest cat I'd ever seen, with shiny black fur smoothly surrounding her body like a wetsuit. She was also, perhaps, the largest cat I'd ever seen. Which I normally wouldn't mention, except - surprisingly - it wasn't her most notable trait.

I don't know if you've ever owned a Bitch Cat. I have. Her name was Sam, and she'd just as easily take your eyes out as she would cuddle you. Iggy was rather like this, except I never encountered the cuddle part. In fact, I think I carry the honor of being the first person Iggy ever drew blood from.

Repeatedly.

Iggy was bitchcat extraordinaire. And she hated me the most.

I tried. For years, I tried with Iggy. I'd try to pet her, which was usually met with the Outstretched Swiping Evil Claw Of Death. I made her a designer food dish, which she ate out of - but that's not much of a stretch, there was no getting in between that cat and her food, now was there.

Maggie despaired of finding kitty sitters for Iggy. Most people who grudgingly agreed to kittysit while Maggie was away would ensure that their duties were 'feed and scoop', nothing more, as 'play' would most likely result in the severing of limbs.

But still, Iggy was a singular cat, with a squeaky meow and the most striking yellow eyes you'd ever seen on any feline. She simply wasn't a people person, reserving all her love for Maggie alone. Most people would gawp in amazement when, after Iggy had attempted to extract their appendixes from them by force, Maggie would pick her up, cuddle her and say, "bad kitty!" to her, the panther instantly tamed. For Iggy, Maggie was the Cat Whisperer.

I visited Maggie and Iggy in Edmonton several years ago.

"Has she mellowed?" I asked.

"Not so much", Maggie responded.

And yes, the Evil Eye was focussed on me from the moment I entered the house, as usual. I chose to forego the attempt to pet her, respecting her personal space requirements instead.

After a few hours of wine and gossip, I noticed a laser pointer on the end table. Idly, I picked it up and shone it on the wall. Instantly, Iggy jumped up (not an easy thing to do for a feline of her girth) and began stalking the tiny point of light.

"She loves that thing", Maggie said.

I shone it higher on the wall. Iggy jumped for it. I shone it on the far wall and she ran after it, her long skinny tail low behind her.

For hours, we played. Maggie and I talked, and I shone the light the whole time. Iggy gave chase, moving like I'd never seen her move before.

When I left after that visit, Iggy and I seemed to have reached a detente. Instead of her staring at me with daggers of hate in her eyes, she simply ignored me with indifference.

I had broken through the shield of the cat. She no longer wanted to kill me. I was irrationally proud.

Iggy died yesterday at the age of 12. It seems unreal; it seemed that Iggy, like Maggie, would be there forever. But we're all getting old and losing people, and animals, that are precious to us.

Lesson learned.

Bye, Iggy. May you long be chasing many laser pointers in the sky. I know your mama misses you very much.

Birth story part the deux: Nurses, nipples and running like a bat out of hell

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:07:00 +0000

What they don't tell you about childbirth: The aftermath can be just as much fun as the process itself.

And when I say "fun" I mean "hell."

It's been long enough now that I don't think I can recall a chronological listing of events. They're all still there in flashback form, but most of them aren't memories I care to revisit all that often. So here are the parts I do remember.

And I'll say now: The hospital stay was worse for me than labour and delivery. And I know that's saying something. I know these notes sound dark and angry. They are. Those three days were intermingled as both the best and worst days of my life. They're behind me now, memories fading into the mist of Lessons Learned. Very shortly after leaving the hospital and ever since, I've been blissfully happy. But if I'm going to document this, I'm going to do it honestly. So here goes.

Memories:

- Being in the recovery room and having my daughter nestled in to the crook of my arm for the first time. Truly, the most blissful, wonderful moment of my life. I might have just had my abdomen cut open, but I could have climbed a mountain.

- Ordering my husband to call everyone. Not that he needed to be ordered; he was on cloud nine himself. However, he was still in his hospital issue scrubs, which caused problems with the nurses who insisted he change post haste, otherwise he'd be mistaken for a doctor and hustled into a room to deliver a baby or something.

- Having nurse after nurse trying to show us how to breastfeed. Each nurse had completely different advice from the last nurse, and having actually consulted experts in the time since leaving the hospital, I now realize that most nurses were completely wrong. One nurse insisted on shoving A's head right on to my nipple and holding it there, and naive, exhausted me let her. If I had one moment in my life to do over, I would consider having it be that one, so that I could tell that nurse to shove it. This is the first nurse I wanted to tell off. It only gets worse from here.

- Getting wheeled into our nice single room with windows on two sides and a private bathroom with its own shower. Everyone raved about the fact that I had my own shower, but obviously none of these people had actually tried to take a shower in this room. The shower itself had no light, so I was trying to clean myself in the dark. The shower head had been adjustable at one point in its life, I think, but by the time I got in there it would only hang in one incredibly inconvenient position. The water pressure was virtually non-existent, so essentially it was like getting peed on, as my good friend suggested. And honestly, trying to shower with abdominal staples is an experience I don't wish on anyone. But still, my room was private, bright, and quiet.

- Getting served three square meals a day. Sure, it wasn't the greatest food in the world, but it wasn't horrible, and it beat the pants off trying to cook.

- Sleeping propped up in the bed, The Husband asleep on the pull-out chair contraption, both of us trying to figure out what exactly does one do with a baby, anyway?

- By day 2, A had lost 10% of her body weight. This is normal and expected by experts and pediatricians, especially if Mom had received IV fluids during labour. But nurses, apparently, use infant weight loss as a yardstick with which to beat exhausted, frightened new mothers over the head. When at day 3 she'd lost 14% at her midnight weigh-in, I was lectured sternly. I was not producing enough milk. I was starving my baby. I was harming her permanently and I had to give her formula.

And here's the thing. If the conversation had gone reasonably, if the nurse - now lovingly referred to as 'Nurse Bates' - had not been the harbinger of doom, if the veil of Bad Mother had not been suddenly dropped over me, I probably wouldn't have been upset at all about giving her formula. I mean, come on. My kid's hungry. My milk wasn't in yet, which was completely normal. Nothing wrong with a top up for a little while until everything came around, which it absolutely would. The formula is just another tool in the Mom arsenal, to be used when needed and not used when not. But the conversation didn't go that way. The conversation went more along the lines of "I know this isn't what you wanted", as if what I wanted - to breastfeed my baby - was something outrageous and outlandish; "I know this isn't what you've read", as if I could only have possibly read anti-formula propaganda and that I was horribly misinformed. If the nurse had simply said, this is just a tool for now, we'll make sure we get the lactation consultant in tomorrow, don't worry, you will breastfeed your baby, it would have been ok. But she didn't. As a result, I was a mess, freaking out internally about yet another thing my body couldn't do right. And when the nurse handed me the formula bottle while I tried just once more to get my baby to latch, I asked her to give us some privacy while I struggled for a sense of peace to encourage her to simply suckle, and the nurse left grudgingly, grumbling. Then another nurse came in ten minutes later to check on us to "make sure I gave that baby the formula". And at that point, I lost all faith that the nurses were on my side. I felt they were on their side, the side of "we see babies every day and we know best", the side of me being a "troublesome" new mother. And as it turns out I was right to be upset, because since that night, my daughter has utterly refused to take the breast. Which is a different rant altogether.

Anyway. On to other memories.

- Laying in a pool of sunshine on Day 2 afternoon, when a tall, blonde, tanned man in a lab coat walked in to my room. Flashing me his pearly white smile, he asked if I'd been dizzy at all. "No", I responded, wondering if he was checking my balance in order to offer me free surfing lessons. "Good", he responded, "because your iron is so low that if you were dizzy at all, we'd be giving you a blood transfusion." Ow.

- Talking to the resident on the last morning, the morning I was to be discharged and going home and getting the hell out of that god forsaken place, and feeling waves of horror gush over me as she said "the nurses tell me you want to stay another night because of your baby's weight loss."

I what?

Say what now?

Hellz no I didn't want to stay another night. I didn't want to stay another minute. If I could have, I would have walked out the door there and then, pyjamas, staples, horrible hospital hair and all. The resident looked very confused when I expressed these wishes, because the nurses had been very clear that I was planning on staying longer. Which, overall, just made me more pissed at the nurses. You want me to stay another night? Fine, that's what you want, but don't lie to the resident and say this was my idea, or that my daughter "needed" to stay another night, especially considering my OB and the pediatrician had both just finished saying, go home! You'll feel tons better there!

Anyway. Short version is, the resident talked to them and they 'consented' to let me go home that afternoon. Frankly, I would have snuck out on my own had they not discharged me.

- I rant, but there were some angelic gems of nurses in the maternity ward too. The lovely nurse who gave A her first bath was wonderful, friendly, informative and kind. My day nurse for the last two days was sweet, gentle, understanding and wise. And even the nurse who'd come to "check" that I'd given "that baby the formula" was sweet in the end, giving us tons of extra formula and bottles to take home - most of which, I am extraordinarily pleased to say, remains in the closet, because my milk arrived that day. Hallelujiah.

- But above all? There was Her. Her, snuggled up against my chest, with her wrinkly little hands and feet like a little old man's, rolled up in tiny balls. Her, with her head of perfect silky hair. Her, with her clear, singsong newborn cry, like the cry of a bird, the cry she doesn't make anymore. Her, sleeping snuggly against my chest. Her, her little hands grasping my fingers. Her, with her little eyes that weren't really open yet and didn't have any eyelashes. Her, with her chubby cheeks and her improbably long fingernails. Her, for whom I would have gladly handled any number of annoying nurses, abdominal staples, bad hair, and absolutely anything else.

How to not give birth, by ThreeSeven

noreply@blogger.com (zchamu) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:16:00 +0000

It's been three weeks since I had my unbelievable baby, and since then barely a moment has passed in which I have been able to have two hands on the keyboard at once. Life is gorgeously, irrevocably changed and while parts of the transition are painful, most of it has been surprisingly amazing. Still, it's important to me to document what got us to this point, because a lot of it wasn't so pretty and I'm sure the whole maternal amnesia thing will kick in soon and I will lose all memory of the fun parts of labour, like asking my husband to pull over to the side of the street so I could hurl all over the curb. (True story!)

So here it is: The story of how Avery Grace came out of my body and in to the world. Also known as "How To Have An Entire Birth Plan Go So Far Out The Window You Laugh At The Fact That You Even Tried To Have A Birth Plan In The First Place", by me.

Labour began on Sunday, June 28 - my due date - after yet another night of uncomfortable, broken pregnancy beached whale sleep. I got up in the morning to let the dog out, then went back to bed, but was woken repeatedly by mild cramping. Cramp...... cramp. Cramp. Another cramp. Eventually I realized, these cramps were rhythmic - they were showing up every 10 minutes. I took note of this fact before going back to sleep. (Note: That was the last time I was able to "go back to sleep" from that day... well... since.)

When I got up for good a couple of hours later, still rhythmically cramping, I was greeted with that alien-resembling goop known as a mucus plug. (Trust me: Don't GIS it.) Holy crap. I think this show might be getting on the road. I had been worried about going overdue and having to get a pile of interventions, so having my body start the process on its own was kind of thrilling. (Oh, the irony.) I settled on to the couch and spent the rest of the day relaxing, handling what were really quite mild contractions every 8-10 minutes or so, and thinking... hey, I will be having this baby really, really soon!

SNORT.

That night, the contractions got worse. Each one woke me up, about every 6-8 minutes apart. The pain was bad enough that I wasn't able to talk through them, and I needed to retreat into my Bradley method techniques of full body relaxation as each contraction wound its way through my body. I dozed intermittently, and by the time we got up Monday morning, the contractions felt to be about 5-6 minutes apart. We decided to head to the hospital to get assessed - more for the sake of the baby than out of any real belief that I was in full labour. I wasn't yet howling through contractions, but I had been regularly contracting for 24 hours and I was slightly concerned about how baby was dealing with the whole thing.

The hospital visit went something like this:

Me: "Hi, I'm in Labour."
Monitor monitor grope fingers in invasive places grope monitor
Them: "No, you're not."

Not only was I "not" in labour according to them, I wasn't even close. The contractions were regular, sure, but I was 1 cm dilated and 0% effaced. They have goalposts, these triage people, and I wasn't even in the right end of the field. I got a pat on the head, a suggestion to go to a movie (?) and sent on my merry way.

Needless to say, I was discouraged. I wondered how low my pain tolerance had to be to not be able to distinguish false" labour pains from "real" ones. I also wondered how much worse it had to get before I qualified as being in "real" labour, considering the contractions were regular. But apparently the definition of "labour" is "dilated to 4 cm", so home we went.

The contractions got worse that day. I was coping, using relaxation techniques or more often, leaping in and out of the bathtub like a goldfish who couldn't make up his mind about his suicidal tendencies. I showed The Husband how to do counterpressure on my back for each contraction. I started vocalizing, making noises like a sick cow every time a contraction hit. And when all that stopped working, I learned how to pace the floor through each contraction. I wore a hole in the carpet overnight that night.

The next morning, Tuesday, we headed back in to get assessed again, this time positive something had to have been happening.

The verdict?

1 cm. Maybe 25% effaced.

In other words, the last 48 hours of contractions had done jack shit.

Again.
Seriously.

I think I may have cried at that point. And I know the words "I can't do this anymore" crossed my lips. I hadn't slept in 3 days, I was contracting hard and regularly, but nothing was happening. Seriously?

A slight pause here: At this point, I was so exhausted that an offer of a c-section at that very moment would have been appealing. Luckily they were still saying I was in "false" labour, meaning that the real thing had to be coming! At some point! Soon! And so I held out for that hope. It's only in retrospect that I realized that there was nothing false about the labour I was in; it's just that stubbornbaby was refusing to engage. More on that later.

Luckily, this morning's resident took sympathy on me and asked a few pointed questions about fluid intake, bowel movements and exactly how much sleep I'd managed in the last 48 hours (the answers being "not so much" to all questions) and nausea (the answer being "fuck yes" to that one.) Mercifully, she quickly hooked me up to IV fluids, an enema, a shot of nubain (painkiller) and a shot of gravol. Within minutes I felt, if not pain free, at least stoned enough that I didn't care.

After the shots, the nurses sent The Husband for a wheelchair to get me out of there because like I mentioned... stoned. Between the nubain and the gravol I was as high as a kite. Unfortunately, only one of those drugs was actually doing their job. As Husband piled me in to the car, I still felt queasy. As we paid the parking attendant, I knew I wasn't going to make it back to the house before I lost all of the ginger ale I'd been drinking that morning. But I didn't want to hurl in front of the parking attendant because.... I still don't know why. Afraid of offending a hospital parking lot attendant's sensibilities? Or something? Which meant that 30 seconds later when we were in the far left lane and I blurted "PULL OVER NOW" the husband had to do some severe defensive driving in order to prevent me from hurling all over the car door. Let's just say it wasn't entirely successful.

The man is a saint.

However, after losing my lunch on the sidewalk on Carling Avenue, I started to feel remarkably better. So much so that once the Husband got me home and piled me in to bed and said he was going to McDonalds to find food, I demanded a McChicken. No! No McChicken! Bring me a salad. No! Not just a salad! A salad AND a McChicken!

Stoned pregnant people - not the most reasonable.

And for the next three hours, I got glorious sleep. I still woke up every several minutes as each contraction neared its peak, usually resulting in me climbing on to all fours, belly hanging on to the bed, and making dying cow noises into the pillow for 60 seconds until the contraction waned, then collapsing back on to the bed to sleep for however more minutes til the next one - but still, it was sleep, and I wasn't complaining. I woke up around 1, ready.. ish... to face another day. Pacing, groaning, hanging out on all fours, getting my husband to push my back, using a back massager if he wasn't around to try to clumsily apply my own counterpressure. By this point, I had taken to leaving the tub full, just topping up the hot water whenever I needed to, so that I could flop in and out as required. The tub was the only place the contractions were tolerable, for some reason - the heat or whatever it was took the edge off. It was also the only place I could sleep, frighteningly enough - I figured out how to doze off with my head resting on a pile of facecloths on the side, waking only to a contraction or when the water got too cold. Oddly? My fingers and toes never got all wrinkly. No idea why.

That was Tuesday.

Wednesday was more of the same, minus the upchucking on Carling Avenue bit. Contracted all day and all night. Assessment in the morning. No dilation. No effacement. No nothing. Go home and sleep off a nubain shot. Spend the day leaping in and out of the tub. Rinse, repeat all the way in to Thursday. The only thing that changed was the level of hopelessness. I started to feel like I was going to be in labour forever.

Thursday brought the long scheduled 40 week OB appointment. My regular OB was out of town, so we saw one of his colleagues, who heard the story of the week I'd been having and immediately offered an induction. At this point, I had actually completely given up hope of my body going anywhere on its own. For some reason, I just couldn't go in to full labour - or if it was going to happen, it was going to happen after another untold amount of days of hell. And so, despite my years of absolute denial that I would EVER have an induction, I agreed.

The reason written for induction on the order papers?

"Maternal Misery."

Heh.

Still, by that evening, I had reached the end of my rope. I had been dealing with rhythmic, body racking pain for 5 days, with no sleep, with no progression, with no seeming hope. Finally, I said to the husband, I need another Nubain shot. I can't face another sleepless night. I just can't. So we piled in to the car, and in we go to triage for the second time that day. It was about 9 pm.

The resident on duty that night seemed to understand the state I was in. 5 days? 3 shots of Nubain? No progression? Misery? Induction orders on file? And the doctor who wrote the orders is the doctor on call tonight?

Forget the nubain. It won't help. Let's get this party started.

And all I could think at this point wasn't about how I didn't want an induction or how I didn't want drugs or how I really had wanted a vaginal birth or how I had done all this research and preparation to deal with labour. All I could think of at this point was fucking A, getting admitted means I'll get the good stuff. I thought for sure they had some drugs they could give me that would allow me to get some real sleep, and that they'd let me get that real sleep before they actually induced me. Wouldn't they?

Not so much.

Out of everything I had hoped for birth - avoiding interventions, labouring at home as long as possible - two things were paramount in my mind. I didn't want my water broken, and I wanted delayed cord clamping. Two things that weren't too much to ask.

But Nurse Overnight begged to differ.

Me (in a desperate attempt to maintain any modicum of control over this insane process): "Look, I am exhausted. I can't face full labour right now. Can't we just do the epidural and let me have a few hours sleep and then start the pitocin? Can you not break my water for now?"

Nurse Overnight: "No. You get the epidural, get the pitocin and have your water broken, or you go home."

Apparently when you're admitted for induction, you get the full meal deal or no deal.

At this point I was ready to say no, even though it would have broken my heart to be so close to being pain-free or at least pain-reduced, to go back home and face yet another sleepless night with no end in sight. But my husband, luckily, was grounded in reality. He'd been watching this whole process for 5 days and knew exactly what I was going to be able to handle and not handle - and he knew that I couldn't handle another night, day, 24-48-72, who knows how many hours of contractions like the last 5 days. So I surrendered to the process and agreed to it. I agreed to it all. They changed me in to gowns and put in IV locks and sent me to bed.

The epidural man showed up speedily around midnight. I braced myself against my husband, willing myself to remain still during contractions, staying perfectly still as the anesthesiologist was winding his tube down my spinal column - and can I just say, that's the creepiest feeling in the world, having a tube sent down your spine? CREEPY. Gah. I believe I even told the epidural man, dude, you're a nice guy and all, but that was the creepiest thing that has ever happened to me in my life.

I think he was a bit insulted.

But 10 minutes later, when the endless contractions were finally being deadened, when I wasn't living in constant fear of the next 5 minutes... I could have kissed him, creepy or not. I was tired. I was sick of the pain. I was done. And at that moment I was thankful, so thankful for having the choice of medical intervention.

They broke my water and started the pitocin next, and for the next 5 hours I slept. Finally slept, slept like I had never slept before even though they woke me up every couple of hours to check on whatever things they needed to check on.

Early Friday morning, the OB on duty - Doctor Santa, in honour of his merry white beard - strolled in with a pack of chipper residents, one of whom repeatedly called me "dear" and "hon" and was half my age and was lucky my legs were numbed or I would have kicked her. Doc Santa announced he was "not happy" with my progression - apparently you're supposed to follow the charts on pitocin, and the charts say 1 cm/hour, and if you aren't dilating 1 cm/hour you are automatically a troublemaker or something. Which isn't really a label I'm terribly upset about bearing. Frankly, my mentality at this point was that it had taken me 5 days to get where I was. For him to expect the drugs to just "work" to dilate me at 1 cm/hour was laughable.

The real heart of the problem was that baby still wasn't dropping. She was at a good solid -3 even after my water had broken, and she wasn't making any moves to change that. My awesome Day Nurse, Nurse Awesome, suggested having me rotate in to different positions, to which Doctor Santa sniffed and stalked out muttering something about young fry and their newfangled ideas. Still, I wanted to go for it, so I spent the next two hours rolling from side to side, back to all fours, trying to get baby to move. However, in the time since she was born I have realized: Kid's stubborn. She wasn't moving anywhere until she felt like it, and she really didn't feel like it.

But soon, a different vibe seemed to fill the air. Nurse Awesome, instead of being kind and relaxing, started to look a little.. distracted. She kept asking me to move, to roll, then watched the monitor with deepening furrows across her brow. Sensing the change in tune, I asked.. should I be worried? Nurse Floor Whore (hey, that's what she called herself, and we all got a big kick out of it) said: Do I look worried? Until I look worried, you don't look worried. Capisce? So I took her at her word and didn't worry. I probably should have been more worried, I suppose, but in retrospect after spending so many days trying to get this baby going on my own, I was happy to leave the worrying to someone else. But all that "not worrying" came to a crashing halt about 15 minutes later when Doctor Santa Claus came storming back into the room with his entourage and announced, you need a C-section. Now.

Say what?

Seriously?

And... I've seen you for a total of 5 minutes since I've been here and now you're pronouncing my case as hopeless? What was your name, again?

But as it turned out, the baby's heart rate had been fluctuating wildly. Too wildly. Apparently she'd been dropping to about 80 for prolonged periods. This is serious. But all I knew was, a doctor I had barely seen was telling me he wanted to end all this labour business now and get that baby out. And frankly, after the last week, I wasn't even interpreting reality all that well. I heard the words, but they weren't sinking in. And I literally had no idea what to do. I knew I didn't want a section. I knew that doctors are notoriously conservative - for example, Doc Santa's earlier declaration that I wasn't progressing "fast enough" seemed ridiculous to me, not everyone adheres to charts - as long as the baby was ok, I was fine to ride it out. But suddenly, she wasn't ok, and I had no idea what to do.

"Er. What are my options here?" I asked.

"None", he replied brusquely. "Your baby is in danger. We need to get her out now."

Speechless.

Long ago, my Husband and I had promised each other that before we agreed to any intervention, we'd ask for time to talk about it in private. I asked Doc Santa, "please leave us for 5 minutes to talk about this." He wasn't happy, no sirree. He muttered something about going to get the paperwork ready and stalked out the door.

At which point I promptly burst in to tears.

I knew anything was a possibility. I knew that my hopes for an intervention-free birth were only going to be realized in an ideal situation, and I also knew that the last 5 days had been anything but an ideal situation. But at this point, it felt like not only had one thing gone wrong, but that everything that could have possibly gone wrong, had gone wrong.

I said, I feel like I shouldn't have come in here last night. I feel like I should have just suffered through another night of hell contractions. This is not what I wanted. At all. It's all my fault. And I couldn't stop crying. This wasn't supposed to happen this way.

Thankfully the nurses were amazing, yet again. There's barely a person who is told they need a section who doesn't cry, they said. There'd be something wrong with you, frankly, if you weren't upset. But the doc's right: the baby's starting to show signs of problems. And this is the right thing to do.

From the point he said section, I knew I had no choice. I wasn't planning on taking any chances with my baby's life. And so when he came back in to the room, the next part was solely me trying to regain control of something, anything. As Doc Santa stood beside my bed with his paperwork (and his demeanour at this point completely changed, by the way: prior to now he had been brusque, abrupt. Now, he was kindly and gentle. I think he realized I wanted to kick him) I said, let's do it. But, I asked: Can we do delayed cord clamping like I had requested? Answer: No, and why would you want to do that anyway? Taken aback, I stammered something about lower incidence of anemia, to which he countered with higher incidence of jaundice. (I'm planning on sending him a package of every study I can find that says delayed cord clamping is a good thing, btw. URLs welcome.) I moved on. Can you make sure no first year residents are wielding knives on me? Answer: No. This is a teaching hospital. This conversation was not going well. Can you give the baby to my husband immediately once she's out? Answer: Yes. Finally something's going my way. Husband speaks up: Is this the safest alternative for my wife and my baby? Answer: No. The safest alternative for your wife is a vaginal birth. This is only safest for your baby. At least he was honest.

In the meantime, while these negotiations went on, people were buzzing around me. Nurses jabbed me in the arm, barely noticed by me while we talked. Blankets were getting pulled off the bed. Husband was getting whisked away to put on scrubs. Once things were moving, they were moving fast.

By the time we got to the OR, I was calming down. Person after person wearing a face mask introduced themselves to me. Anesthesiologist. Resident X. Resident Y. Nurse Q. On and on. I made a comment about how I would have really preferred to meet all of these people in a bar, which is when I realized they'd either upped my meds or I was actually OK with this whole thing.

Is there a point in detailing the section? About how I was so paranoid about feeling the procedure that I made them dope me up beyond belief, which made me so nauseous I needed more gravol to keep from hurling on the table? About how, when my daughter came in to the world and they took her to the table to check her out, I laid on my back straining my neck to see her and asked over and over, can someone bring that baby over here? Hello? Anyone? Baby, over here? Please? And that by the time my husband brought her over, I was so stoned I had to simply lay there while the room spun around me, while the doctor explained that the whole issue was that she was wedged against my hip and the cord was jammed between my hip and her head and there was no getting around the section? How he explained that he was able to do a beautiful incision and that my scarring should be minimal? Or that at some point, the anesthesiologist made the comment that hey, I'm 39, I shouldn't expect to be able to give birth as easily as a 23 year old (I still don't know whether to be butthurt or nod in agreement with that one). It was all a haze of images, of people, of me still in some kind of denial that this was actually happening - I think I even made a comment about how this wasn't a "real" emergency section at some point. Which... if that wasn't an emergency section I'm not sure what was.

But it all didn't matter. Soon, I came out of my drug induced haze and they wheeled me in to recovery and my husband put my baby girl into the crook of my arm. And that was that. Avery Grace, born July 3 at 11:45 a.m.

In the end, I think my labour and birth progressed... exactly how it was going to progress. I believe that my body was trying to go in to labour, but that the fact that Avery was wedged against my hip kept labour from progressing, and that once my water was broken and the cord compressed, it was only a matter of time til I was going to have a section. Even if they hadn't broken my water, I really don't think Avery was going to move - if she hadn't moved during 5 days of contractions and me labouring in every position imaginable, she simply wasn't going to shift. The only thing that could have possibly been done differently would be if the cord hadn't been where it was, I might have been able to labour with pitocin longer - but I think I still would have ended up with a C. No matter. She's here.

More to come, about fishbowl rooms, showers, boobs and Nurse Kathy Bates. The fun didn't end at the c-section incision, no sirree!