How parenting is curing perfectionism

I don’t turn around. Ever. Even when I’ve forgotten something vital. Especially when I’ve forgotten something vital. I just can’t bring myself to turn back. It’s admitting failure. It hurts the perfectionist in me. 

I do like to get things exactly right. I probably need to get things exactly right, if I’m honest. I hate screwing up. Hate it.

Becoming a parent changed all that. Uncomfortably so. Because I know how to operate as a perfectionist. As a grade A student. As someone gets it right first time. I don’t know how to work myself as someone who gets it wrong and has to try again.

But oh my sainted aunts, did parenting a newborn throw that out the window. Cause you can’t get it right. Partly, cause sometimes, there is no right. You do everything the books tell you – rocking, swaddling, hushing, downloading white noise mp3s, car rides, vacuum cleaners, hairdryers (don’t ask), car seats, suckling, skin-to-skin. And it doesn’t matter. You still have a kid who looks and sounds like the world is going to end any minute now.

And partly, cause you screw up one day, then get a complete do over the next. Baby doesn’t know. She doesn’t remember that you accidentally kept her awake for seven hours straight because you didn’t know she needed to sleep, and then she screamed the house down for a long, long time until it finally dawned that she might be horribly overtired.

She doesn’t remember that  you only discovered the magic of the all-soothing swaddle at week four. Or that you didn’t realise that partly green diaper contents (sorry folks,) weren’t normal. Or that (continues ad infinitum)

We’ve made so many mistakes in the last eight weeks that I should stop referring to them as mistakes. There are no right answers. Just attempts to get things right. And sometimes, the strategies simply keep you busy while baby works out her issues for herself, thankyouverymuch.

Like with the gassiness. We tried tummy massage. We forced minty gas drops into her mouth on a pipette (she hated it and spat it out. We laughed at her ‘sucking-on-a-lemon’ face). We bicycled her legs. We altered her feeding positions. I eliminated entirely random foods from my diet (goodbye beans. See you later cheese. Adios carbs). One person actually advised us to stop taking baby for a walk on windy days. Yes, the idea being that she swallows wind and it makes her gassy. Ohdearlord, that’s not even science. And honestly, all it did was give us something to focus on while she grew out of being gassy. Cause if someone has told us it’d be four weeks of crankiness, we’d have got in the car and driven to Florida. Without the baby. Instead, we kept ourselves merrily occupied researching new solutions online (“this blog says it could be a fear of heights” “GENIUS! THAT’S GOTTA BE IT!”) and implementing them, while she solved her own problem by, well, growing up.

Who’s Afraid of the Dark?

The days are filled with laughter, buzz, family and chatter. With support, warmth and normal life. The house bustles as people stop by, bring food, cook for us and hold the baby. They let us nap for a precious hour. Or update us on what’s going on in the wider world. Or give us time to mess around on the internet.

It’s how I imagined having a baby. In a house that’s bright, cozy, and filled with family. She’s sweet, patient and gorgeous. She snoozes in our arms, and we coo over her when she sneezes (baby sneezes – so ridiculously cute). Minute by minute, we all fall in love with her.

And then, at the end of each day, everyone leaves. And it’s just us. Gone are the bustle and activity, and with them, the advice and support.

Cradling my beautiful baby in my arms, I stand at the window waving everyone off, and fearfully watch the sun go down. It’s late February, it’s only 4.30pm, and already, the night is drawing in. My heart sinks and a wave of despair washes over, as the brightness dips below the houses opposite. A bruised light gives way to inky periwinkle. Daytime gives way to darkness. And we’re all alone.

Each night, it’s just me. With a newborn. And not a clue what I’m doing. I don’t know when she’ll wake, what she’ll need, or how to settle her. Even when she sleeps, I’m awake listening to her breathe in the crib beside me. I daren’t lie on my right side, because then I can’t see her. I sleep halfway down the bed, my feet crunched against the foot board, so I can reach out to her if she needs me.

Three or four times a night, I wake to her grunts and whimpers. I feed her in a hard chair, in an empty room. I try to soothe her after each feed. Sometimes she sleeps immediately. And sometimes, I pace that small room for hours with a grizzling baby constantly on the verge of heart-rending cries. Once she’s down, I barely sleep because I know that she’ll wake again in less than an hour. So we can start the whole routine again. Sometimes, she fights a feed. Her tiny fists beat my breast. Her face flushes red as she strains, bucks and arches her back. She holds herself rigid in pain. And I have no idea why. And no way to calm her.

You’d think it would be a romantic ‘me and you against the world, kiddo’, kind of thing. Instead, it’s mostly like, ‘I feel so alone, it’s horribly dark, I’m out of my mind with tiredness and my poor baby won’t go to sleep’.

For a week, my fear of the night grows. It reaches the point where my tears fall as the light dies.

And oddly enough, you know what helps? The nightly news. I have no idea why, but settling down to watch CBC Ottawa’s 5pm news broadcast, followed by Global at 7pm, calms me. Maybe it’s the routine. Maybe it’s the brief connection to the outside world. Maybe other people’s sorrows put my battles into perspective.

And slowly, I learn to deal with the dark. I add half a glass of wine to my nightly routine. It helps. It reminds me of normal life.

Five weeks in, I’m still not a fan of the night. But I’m learning. Learning to take it one night, one hour, one minute at a time. To deal with the cries and the sleeplessness. To enjoy those moments in the wee small hours, when it’s just me and her. She’s snuggled into my chest. She’s utterly content. I hear her sweet little baby snores and smell her heady, soft, milky baby scent. There’s nowhere she’d rather be than nuzzled up to her mama. That I can make another tiny being feel so safe, so protected, so blissfully calm. Well, it’s amazing.

Thankful for healthcare

It started with a leg too painful to stand on. And ended with needles, stockings and cold ultrasound gel.

In between, there were tests (oh were there ever tests), tears and a whole lots of worry.

A Saturday night visit to the ER. Shifting awkwardly in our hard plastic seats, underneath the florescent lights that can’t help but cast everyone in an unhealthy pall. Next to a hunched-over, scruffy man, drowning in blankets with an IV line snaking between them. We wondered if he was detoxing. There were nice, middle-class people who had taken the time to dress properly – starched shirts, shiny brogues and freshly-ironed slacks – before their late-night visit to the ER. They looked surprised to find themselves thrust next to the needy, the on-the-margins, the frequent ER fliers and the evidently sick. To be confronted by those they had taken great pains in ordinary life to avoid.

And  then there were those who looked at home in a hospital. The hypochondriacs who just couldn’t resist checking out that twinge. The chronically-ill for whom ER visits are just another part of a life dominated by their condition. And the down-and-outs who need the ER because it’s a warm, safe space.

From the echo-y, bustling waiting room, we were ushered into the inner sanctum, behind a thick door protected by a keypad. From there, the rest of the night was a blur. We were shuttled between various rooms, each masquerading as a staging post to somewhere unknown. It quickly became apparent that each room was a step closer to a doctor, yet somehow a step further from one. Each room brought a new request – for information, blood, heart rate, health card – but no diagnosis or treatment.

After being prodded and poked, we understood that they were trying to rule out deep vein thrombosis or a clot in the lung. Which was tough, because all the symptoms of both are conveniently also the symptoms of being 30 weeks pregnant, which I was. Breathlessness (why yes doctor, I am indeed breathless. I have a nearly-cooked baby pushing up against my lungs). Aching legs (why yes doctor, my legs do ache. I’m carrying around an extra 30 pounds and my blood volume has doubled). Varicose veins (ditto. Plus they run in the family).

At one point, they wanted to do an ultrasound. I thought they meant for me. For my leg. But it quickly became clear that they meant an ultrasound for the baby. Who was fine. She was the finest of us all. She was never at risk. But cautiousness demands intervention. So we spent three hours hooked up to a machine so we could listen to baby’s heart rate. Which was great. Although a little less great at 3am.

And then the tests really started. An ultrasound on my leg. Pretty non-invasive, although a tad painful. A chest x-ray. A bit disconcerting, especially wearing a suit of armor to protect baby from the radiation. And then the worst – a V/Q scan. Which for those without a medical degree, involves being injected with a nuclear liquid. Then scanned for an hour from every which angle inside a giant, hulking machine. Beforehand, the doctor talks about the risks of nuclear liquids. Which are tiny. But you don’t really hear that. You just hear ‘nuclear’, and freak the hell out.

Watching medical dramas, everything is very fixed. You deal in certainties. Blacks and whites. Except real medicine isn’t like that. It’s the weighing of two or three risks, the benefits and drawbacks of treating versus not treating, and the complexities of treating pregnant women. The last condition  meant all the standard treatment went out the window, and I was caught in a mini-battle between obstetrics’ expertise in managing complex pregnancies, and haematology’s expertise in handling blood clots. And without a medical degree (although with an aptitude for research and access to google), it’s impossible to judge who’s right.

“Obstetrics says that Prednosone is contraindicated for pregnancy but the studies are limited and evidence is mixed as to the placenta’s ability to block transmission to the foetus. I’m happy prescribing it to you, but it’s your choice.”

Great. If you don’t know what contra-indicated means, what Prednosone is, and don’t understand relative versus absolute risk, then good luck making an informed decision. In fact, just good luck anyway.

So, after scaring the crap out of me (and ruling out a serious blood clot, but ruling in two non-serious blood clots. Yes, non-serious blood clots exist. Who knew?), we were sent home with a quick overview of how to inject myself with blood thinners (ack!), serious sleep deprivation, a very attractive old-lady leg stocking, and a deep, deep appreciation for universal healthcare.

Labour of Love

The memories are fleeting. They sink like photographs thrown into a deep lake. Lulling back and forth, the water blurs their edges until they fade entirely from view.

It’s only been a week since I gave birth, and yet, perhaps as some evolutionary protective instinct, my recollection is already hazy. The experience feels more like a montage of images viewed through frosted glass, than a movie to re-play at will.

On Sunday, I wasn’t even sure that the liquid spilling into the toilet was my waters breaking. In the books, it’s described as a gushing; like a powerful river flooding. Instead, it was an uneven waterfall dropping from me. And before we’d had time to digest that this might be ‘it’, the contractions began. Rather than the gentle increase in intensity the books speak of, these roared in only three minutes apart. Within an hour, they were too intense for me to continue my sarcastic comments about the dresses on the Grammy’s red carpet.

By the time the midwife arrived, I was drawing on most of my comfort measures – breathing, back massages, the birthing ball and chanting. Yet I was still cracking jokes about how thick and fast the waves had arrived. Only two and a half hours after Stephanie came to the house, we were ready to leave again for the hospital. The speed of my labour had taken everyone by surprise, not least me. For some reason, I’d prepared myself for a long, drawn-out affair (mental note to self: must stop treating pregnancy books as lore). Despite the intensity, I was joking in the car about being pulled over because I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt (I was actually hanging over the backseat, staring out the rear window as I laboured). I rode in an elevator up to the delivery ward with a poor woman heading to haematology. She was quite taken aback to find herself briefly sharing my contractions.

I got in the tub. I got out of the tub. I sipped water, closed my eyes, and chatted with my mum and J. But mostly, I walked, leaning against the wall when the pressure mounted. As the hours progressed, I retreated inside my own head. To J, it must have seemed that I was lost in a pea soup of moans, chants and pain. Yet to me, my thoughts were diamond cut as I laboured through the contractions:

“How do women in developing countries do this? I am so lucky to have this support. I couldn’t imagine this experience without J, my mum and the midwives. It must be terrifying to endure this without proper help”.

“We can’t have any more children. We just can’t. Because I can’t do this again. I can barely do this now. Being an only child isn’t awful. In fact, it’d be great, I could handle it”.

“I now understand, finally, why women choose C-Sections”.

At one point, while in the bath, I asked the person leaning over me with coffee breath to stop puffing with me.

For an hour, with my mind focused on a singularity, I thought about the birth process. To me, pregnancy and birth seemed to have been created by a poet. By someone who filled every last drop of the experience with such poignant symbolism. Nothing wasted – every part had a deeper meaning. The merging of two people to create something from nothing. The hosting of a creature who draws their all from you. The emergence of new life born of sacrifice. The visceral ripping of flesh from flesh as the body vests itself. And the blood. Oh, the blood.

The end got misty. Nine hours after my waters broke, I was finally ready to push. And push I did. I’d imagined a distant, controllable process, where a sensation would arrive, I’d recognise it, and make a conscious decision to bear down. Instead, it was the most powerful urge I’ve ever been subjected to. More than an urge. A primal happening. Like so many times during pregnancy, my body took over. With a life of its own, the contractions swept over me with such intensity, I couldn’t resist. My body pushed for me, like its only mission, its sole purpose was to birth this little girl.

After two hours of pushing, as per protocol, the obstetrician was called. Baby wasn’t quite making it under the pubic bone, and in retrospect, I hadn’t quite got the hang of pushing effectively. I was forcing most of the power into my legs, which were braced against a bar. The resident wanted to use a vacuum, and unbeknownst to me at the time, also suggested an epidural. Afterwards, everyone told me how clever I was to continually delay this intervention by saying, “can we talk about it after the next contraction instead?”. It didn’t feel clever at the time. I genuinely couldn’t fathom making an informed decision while my body was wracked with spasms and my mind hijacked by this all-encompassing quest. I couldn’t imagine the next second beyond where I was, let alone the next minute.

But, after three hours of pushing, and only moments away from a vacuum delivery, Isla Lille made her own sweet way into the world. Placed on my chest, J, I and my mum cried tears of happiness over her.

The baby days

Day One: Stupified staring at this gorgeous, perfect being we created. High on adrenaline and sharp memories of birth.

Day Two: Falling in love with her peaceful face, her snuffly expressions and her little toes. Not falling in love with sore, tattered nipples.

Day Three: Pregnancy hormones recede. Come down the stairs after a nap sobbing, “I miss her smell”. Recurrent dreams of tripping down the stairs and dropping her. 

Day Four: Hooked on smelling our baby. Like a methodone substitute, we take to sniffing her clothes instead, to avoid disturbing her while she sleeps.

Day Five: Tiredness creeps in as the post-birth high tails off. I reach the peak of breastfeeding pain. A burning that curls my toes and draws sharp breaths.

Day Six: We take her on a car ride. I am a highly-strung, nervous racehorse for the entire trip, eyes darting, watching for errant drivers. I dream of accidentally leaving her outside in the cold.

Day Seven: I fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans. Just about. I feel a wave of feminist guilt for being so pleased

Day Eight: The memories of birth, only days ago so raw and overwhelming, have faded alarmingly. I can barely recall it now. I conclude it must be some sort of evolutionary, protective effect.

Day Nine: First breastfeeding in a public place. Baby is remarkably calm. Feel like a proper parent as I multi-task – eating Thai food, having an adult conversation and breastfeeding all at once.

Day Ten: Something approximating normal life resumes. Grocery store trip, drive to doctors and the gym. Fuelled by plenty of coffee. I vow to take her out more if only for the admiring glances of strangers. “Yeah, that’s right. That’s my daughter. I made her. And she’s adorable”.

Pregnant and pro-choice

I never wondered whether becoming pregnant would change how I feel about abortion. But others did. They mused about whether carrying my own child would make me more ‘sentimental’, and hinted that feeling my baby move would bring about a sea change in my position on abortion.

I am pro-choice. Always have been.

And if anything, the past five months have further convinced me that if I made the choice to carry my pregnancy to term, I would never deny another woman the right to  make the opposite choice.

I could never force another woman to carry a pregnancy she didn’t want or couldn’t afford. I could never force another woman to endure months of miserable morning sickness, bone-melting fatigue, a body molded beyond recognition, and the heavy responsibility of caring for a new life.

I know I have what will be my baby inside me. Of course I know that. I can feel it, protruding from me in an amazing, but also pretty alien, way. It’s not as if becoming pregnant suddenly made me think “Oh, it’s a *baby*. Gosh, all those years, I thought women had potatoes in their tummies, and the babies were delivered by magic elephants”. Being pregnant has been an epiphany in many ways, but realising a baby grows in there isn’t one of them.

16 weeks: Hijacked

I never fully appreciated my own body until I had to share it.

I am now host to a small, avocado-sized being. I can feel it, sitting low and heavy inside me. When I lift my legs, the hard ball pushes up, and probing my fingers into my tummy shows me where it begins and ends.

It’s been a whirlwind revelation, this pregnancy lark. The first 12 weeks were a painful haze of sickness, sleeping and vomiting, but once the fog cleared, I began to notice how my body had changed.

I mean, I noticed the weight gain immediately. Week 6, my eating habits were so haphazard, and the bloating so bad (yeah, a lovely mental image, I know), I looked like I’d put on 15 pounds.

But it was more than the weight. It was the lack of control. Previously, I hit the gym 3 times a week. I say ‘hit’ like I was some kind fitness fiend, but I went regularly. And worked up a sweat. If I went too heavy on the pies one week, I’d ease up on the ice cream and add another workout to my routine to compensate. I could balance my body. I CONTROLLED IT.

Now, it controls me. The hormones coursing through my blood do odd things to me. I react in funny ways. I can’t push myself like I used to. In many ways, I feel like my body has let me down. I thought I’d be one of those women who powered through pregnancy. Working until the very end, like my mum did with me. Not letting convention, sexism and alarmist health warnings slow me down. Instead, it’s myself that has slowed me down. I just can’t do it like I used to. I’m out of breath going up the stairs.

Watching my body change as this little creature grows inside has proven more surreal than I thought possible. Only now do I fully comprehend how bizarre the procreation process is. I’m a host. A warm vessel for new life. Of course, I’m much, much more than that. I’m still me with my own needs. Often, I want to put my needs first – I need to go to the grocery store. I need to work a full day without napping. I need that glass of wine. But to find my own body, without my consent, jettisons my needs in favour of baby’s needs is jarring. Dammit, I’m the adult here!

It’s been an amazing 16 weeks, knowing we’ve created what will be our own child. The wonderfulness of it hasn’t surprised me. But the hijacked feeling has.

Morning Sickness

So, constant nausea. Fun.

At week four, when a faint but unmistakable line appeared on the test, we were over the moon. Pleased as punch. Happy, teary, amazed, a wee bit shell-shocked.

For the next week or so, I floated on a cloud, convinced I wore my secret on my face. I don’t remember doing this, but apparently, I rested my hands on my tummy in that classic,-verging-on-the-stereotype-I-never-thought-I’d-be, pregnant woman pose. I simultaneously wanted to tell everyone right away, yet keep our delicious secret all to ourselves.

By week six, morning sickness had arrived with a vengeance. At first, in an odd way, it was a novelty. It was also the first, tangible sign that I was indeed pregnant. LOOK! IT’S REAL! THE TEST DIDN’T LIE! Most times, it hovered around a three on a scale of one to ten. A constant, low-level nausea, sitting leadenly in my stomach, all day and night. I’d wake up in the night and feel sick. Sleep was the only time I felt normal.

Occasionally, it’d erupt into a seven or an eight. Roaring its way forward, fighting for attention. It was all-consuming, head-spinning, unbearable. Deep, coping breaths, closed eyes, rapid swallowing. I needed to eat all the time, but everything made me gag.

And that was the worst part. The food aversions. I couldn’t look at the fridge without wanting to vomit. I forced down toast because it was the only thing I could stomach. For a voracious eater, for whom cooking is a source of pleasure and relaxation, it was jarring to discover food was my number one sworn enemy.

Week ten: close up of me sobbing in bed. “Why won’t it go away? WWHHHHYYY????! When will it end? Please take it away, pleeeezze, pleeezzee, pleezzeee”. Ten weeks of twice-daily vomiting will do that to you, apparently.

This is not how I thought pregnancy would be. I’m not sure how I envisaged it, but it wasn’t this muddled fog of nausea and fatigue.

Yet when offered medication to take the edge off the misery, I couldn’t do it. I was so worried about miscarriage, that I clung to the sickness as the only real proof I was still pregnant. As long as there was vomit, there was a growing embryo. As I write this last part at 16 weeks, I wonder what I was thinking.

Men don’t do Dazzle

The four sat hunched around the breakfast table. They’d wandered into the dining room at around 8am, the parents bleary-eyed, the two children raring to start the day. Mom settled the baby into the high chair, and wee chubby hands amused themselves tipping over a bright bowl filled with cheerios. Dad waited while his other little girl, older than her sister, settled into her chair. She quickly amused herself playing a fantasy game that mainly appeared to take place in her own head, with her knife and fork playing the staring roles.

Mom and dad helped themselves to the breakfast buffet, piling their plates high with eggs, bacon, sausage and toast, as only you do at a buffet.

As they ate, the couple chatted intermittently. Mom shot out an arm to rescue a bowl of cereal from the toddler, before it hit the floor. Dad cut up little pieces of bacon to feed to the baby. The girl, I’d estimate she was about 4 years old, continued to play, lost in a dreamworld of her own imagination.

“Mommy, you be Sparkle”, she ordered in her little voice.

Mom looked up from her plate. “Sure, are we going to plant a garden today?”

“No, silly. Today me and Sparkle are going to make potions”. she declared.

“OK, and is daddy going to play too?”

“Yeah! Daddy can be Dazzle”

So far, so normal. Normal family, normal kids games. Then daddy breaks in.

“No, I’m not being Dazzle”, he says in a gruff voice.

“But daddy, Dazzle and Sparkle are making potions with me….” the little girl trailed off, confused.

“I’ll be Snake”, asserted Daddy.

“There isn’t a Snake in my game”. She offered hopefully, “you could be Rainbow”.

By now, I’d begun to guess why daddy didn’t want to play. In case there was any confusion, he laid it out to his little girl.

“Boys can’t be Dazzle. Boys are Snake or Tiger. I’m not being Dazzle”, he stated firmly. And with the gender roles clearly outlined and his little girl’s game ruined, the topic was closed and dad turned back to his breakfast. The girl fell silent, and with her head hanging down, she dejectedly went back to eating Cheerios.

Speaking in Tongues

“This is a high level approach that requires considerable interaction in order to tease out the various strands of the strategy”

“When we examine the vision carefully, with a view to fully engaging in it, we see that it has not yet been extended to meet its true potential.”

These are actual sentences I have heard spoken out loud in the last month. Really. People said these things. No  irony involved, they actually mouthed the words.

And other people, they nodded along. Some nodded sagely, others appreciatively.

Meanwhile, I had a blank look on my face, which cleverly hid my internal dialogue that shrieked, “what the hell is he talking about? What does that actually mean? Does everyone understand this? Oh God, they all understand. It’s just me. I should keep quiet. I’ll just nod knowingly, and say something bland like ‘interesting, good point’.”

Life would be a lot simpler if everyone just said what they meant.