Snow, kitchen and nails

It's snowing.  Again.  It looks pretty, but it's a bastard to drive in.  And this is the first year we've had to shovel our own driveway clear of it, which is only slightly less extruciating than digging your car out of the two feet of drift the snow plough just pushed up against it in the apartment building car park.  While pregnant.  And it's -30F.  And there's been an ice storm, which has stuck said ice to your windscreen an inch thick.  And no-one sells de-icer, so you have to scrape it off in two minute bursts, broken up only by warming yourself up in your car for another ten.

Ah yes.  The famous Wisconsin winters.  At least this year I don't have to wake up two hours early to get the car prepared to leave for work on time, and thanks to my insistence on purchasing a house with an attached double garage, I never have to scrape my car again.  I do, however, have to think about Owen and whether valet parking at Children's Hospital is truly a lazy girl's game or a stroke of genius.

Speaking of CHOW (I love that acronym), I took the babba up there today for his CT exam.  He was a perfect angel and slept all the waaaaaay... until they switched on the machine and strapped his head and arms down.  Apparently that's not very comfortable compared to my left shoulder, and he let us all know about it.  He screamed so much they've had to postpone the test until Friday, when he can be sedated.  So, what should have been a half hour scan has now turned into a full day in the surgery clinic.  Naughty baby, but I can't blame him for being scared.

In other news: our kitchen is being installed tomorrow!  Yaaaaay!!  Cannot.  Bleedin'.  Wait.  I HATE our old kitchen and I said when we moved in that other than Owen's nursery, the kitchen was the first room I was going to work on.  It's just such an eyesore, which its orange (ORANGE!!) cabinets, ivy print wallpaper and fake wood laminate countertops.  Eugh.  At least from tomorrow we'll have beautiful cupboards, even if we have to wait a bit longer for the sink and countertops to arrive.  In the meantime I consider ourselves very lucky to have a downstairs bathroom to wash Owen's stuff in.

And finally:  I must be getting a bit stressed at the moment because I've had to resort to painting my nails with Stop 'n' Grow for the first time since I was sixteen.  I'm so ashamed. 

Tina.

So tired... so very, very tired...

Well, it seems as though life is out to bite me in my abundantly-sized buttocks, because we've had some more bad news about Owen's eyes and brain.

Ok, so here goes:

Owen's eyesight is actually okay. He's long-sighted but apparently that's common at this age and he'll outgrow it. No, the problem is a little more difficult than that. Firstly, his eyes only open a tiny amount because the muscles in his eyelids are underdeveloped. He's now learnt to compensate for this by tipping his chin up, which is very bad for his neck, back and shoulders, and if we don't sort out his eyelids he may develop a permanent disability because of it. He needs corrective surgery between now and May to insert silicone tubing into the upper eyelids to strengthen them and help open the eye up further.

In addition to this, the doctor carried out a refraction on his pupils and found something very, very scary. The optic nerves in both his eyes are so inflamed that if we ignore the problem it could become an emergency. Owen's skull is fusing prematurely, which means it has essentially stopped growing and expanding. His brain seems to still want to expand though, which is putting an extraordinary amount of pressure on the skull and the backs of his eyes (hence the inflamation of the optic nerves). Now, normally I would just sigh and think, "Oh, yet another hurdle to get over", but today the doctor frightened me by the stress and importance she was putting on his condition. She seemed frightened herself.

Owen will almost definitely need surgery to open up the spaces in the skull he's supposed to still have, but he may also need a shunt put in to the brain cavity itself to drain excess fluid and relieve pressure in between surgeries (he will need several over the course of his life, until his head is adult-szed). If we do nothing and the pressure continues to grow he could either lose his sight, experience brain damage, or in some severe cases, even lose his life.


So it was not a pleasant way to spend my morning and I got very upset about everything.  This poor little boy is experiencing headaches as a result of all this, which makes me want to just pull him into my arms and cuddle him very tightly forever.  I'm not even sure I'm allowed to give him any pain relievers as they don't routinely recommend giving them if there's no cause.  Sigh.  What on earth am I supposed to do?

Thankfully we have managed to get his CT scan moved up a week, so if they find anything on Tuesday that's serious enough to need action immediately, we'll be ahead a week.  Today I've been making phone calls left, right and centre to push appointments up, get reports faxed to new specialists and generally try to make life easier for Owen sooner.  I think it's going to be a bumpy road, folks...

Oh, and I think I'm anaemic again.  Booooooooo.


Tina.

A few new ideas

We went away to Minnesota for Thanksgiving last week and it was really nice for Owen to spend time with his extended American family (the fact they can occasionally drive me bananas is neither here nor there).

While we were out there I basically stopped wearing make-up.  For Friday, which was when Owen got baptised, I put on some warrior paint again and I actually enjoyed it.  It's made me stop wearing it since we got back (except for a touch of concealer, because I'm still vain and embarrased about my teenage-style spots) and I'm determined to keep it up.  I like to think that while I may be plain under my eyeliner, actually it doesn't matter to anyone but me.  And then, when I do put some slap on again for a special occasion, it feels like a treat and I'm happy to devote some time to it.

I think the thing that bugs me the most about make-up is taking it off again at the end of the day.  I absolutely HATE getting ready for bed because I have to use the loo, take off my make-up, take out my contact lenses and clean them, brush my teeth, put on lip salve because the teeth-cleaning dries them out, put on hand lotion because washing my hands after everything else dries them out, and finally get into my pyjamas.  This all usually takes place shortly before midnight because I forget to do everything before Owen's last feed of the day... SO... if I can skip taking off the make-up because I didn't put any on in the first place, all the better.

It's incredibly emancipating and I reckon I'm going to save a few pennies too.  :)

In other news, I spent many an hour talking to my brother-in-law last week and we got into a very interesting discussion one night about Catholicism.  As we were talking about the concept of Original Sin (it having been Owen's baptism earlier that day), a theory occured to me.  Forgive me if someone else has already come up with this, but it really did enter my head entirely on its own.

Before women's reproductive systems were really understood, women were considered "dirty" and "the other" because they bled once a month.  (Misogynists still believe this today, but that's because they're idiotic trolls and not necessarily because they're uneducated.)  Now, the process of childbirth is also very messy.  It's often primal and the experience reaches into the very core of a woman in labour in a way that no other experience can.  It's animalistic and private, and when your child emerges they are covered in white goo, or blood, or even their own bowel movements.  They snort and they drool and they cry, and if you've never watched a birth before you'd probably be very surprised that babies don't emerge all clean and dry and swaddled in a receiving blanket.

So it occured to me that because children come from a place that is traditionally misunderstood and unclean - being the inside of a woman - the founders of Catholicism decided that not only did the outside of the baby have to be washed when it was born, but also the inside needed cleansing too.  Hence the idea of Original Sin.  Seeing as humans cannot reach the inside, or the soul, baptism serves that purpose.  Yes, Jesus may have been baptised by John, but the concept of Original Sin didn't emerge until hundreds of years later, when the women of the Bible had been all but erased (see the virgin/whore dichotomy throughout) and men could really get to twist its words.

Well, that's what I think, anyway.  Original Sin is essentially misogynistic and I'm not buying into it.  Owen's baptism was NOT Catholic and it had no mention of such nonsense.  My beautiful baby boy would have gone to Heaven whether he'd been sprinkled with holy water or not, but now he gets to embrace his faith fully and celebrate it with his family.

Original Sin can kiss my arse.

Tina.

Happy Half-Birthday, Owen!

Owen is SIX MONTHS OLD today!  So far to celebrate, he has cried a lot, vomited a lot, needed changing three times (it's 8am right now) and finally fallen asleep for his morning nap.  Later on I'm taking him for his six-month vaccinations at the doctor and possibly the H1N1 shot, too.

What a crappy way to celebrate your first half-birthday!  I think I'm going to buy him a little treat after our visit to the doctor to make up for it.  Or just half a treat.

Tina.

God in my life

I've been thinking really hard about my spiritual leanings recently, what with Owen's baptism next week and his blessing at Stan's Christening in January.  I haven't reached any conclusions yet, but I will say that my feelings towards God change on an hourly basis at the moment.


When Owen is clearly in pain and screaming so hard he makes me cry too, I shout at God.  I ask Him why he's chosen MY family to go through this; why Owen, why me?  It breaks my heart every single day to see my child live in such discomfort and to realise that he has known nothing else his entire, short, sweet life.  Why would God put such an awful disease on the planet, and why would He decide that Owen is one of the ones who should suffer?  I have taken to venting my frustrations out on Him because I find it a lot easier and safer than talking to Mike or anyone else.  After all, God doesn't really answer me back, and I know He'll forgive me if I say something I shouldn't.


But it's so hard to understand it sometimes.  It's just so damn hard to watch my little boy suffer so much and to not be able to control it.  I find myself looking at the children of friends and longing for their lives instead of our own.  That isn't right.  How can it be right to covert their lives; their children?  And it isn't even as though I want THEIR child - I just want MY child to have THEIR child's easy life.  I find it very, very hard to listen to people when they say, "Well yes, Little Susie spat up too", or, "Little Jimmy did XYZ today!"  So bleedin' what?!  My child is delayed developmentally because he has GERD and there's not a lick of a thing I can do about it.


Those jealous feelings lead me to believe that perhaps God isn't in control of my situation.  Perhaps He skipped this house.  Perhaps He meant to fix Owen's health issues but He got caught up in Darfur or Iraq, helping those mothers with their frail little ones instead.  I couldn't blame Him - they probably need Him more.


Which leads me to my other feelings about God.


I heard a lovely phrase the other day: "Special babies are given to special mothers".  I don't know whether this is true, but it's certainly nice to think it is.  Perhaps God does have a hand here.  Perhaps Owen was given to me because I am the one Mama in the whole wide world who is suited to exactly meet each and every one of his needs.  Maybe God thought that Owen is a strong enough baby to live like this and we are a strong enough family to cope with watching him struggle.  Maybe these problems had to be given to somebody and it was just a matter of choosing the strongest recipients.


I don't know.  In times of despair, I find all that very hard to believe.

Tina.

Been busy...

I'm sorry I've been absent since before my baby's birth - I've understandably been very busy since then! I promise to fill in the gaps and keep up a bit more now! Watch this space.

Anthea

Sad news

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects?CMP=AFCYAH


This breaks my heart.

In a moment of rather sexist bitterness, I find myself thinking 'women create, men destroy'. Who fights and kills? Not women, not children, men. Who suffers? Mothers and babies. Yeah, I know, there are female soldiers and men too suffer and die in war, spare me the lecture. But soldiers choose to fight and know the risk to their own lives that they are taking. These mothers and babies did nothing whatsoever to inflict this on themselves.

Stuff like this makes me lose all faith in people.
 
Anthea