Category — Tear Jerkers

I hesitate to write this post because it implicates me as a terrible mom, but it’s important enough that I have to share.

We bathe the girls in one tub of water. When Chris isn’t home to help, I’ll take one child out of the tub and plop her on the counter to put on her lotion and brush her teeth while the other child plays in the tub. Then I put the dry baby on the ground and extract baby #2 from the tub, letting the water drain while I do lotion and teeth for her.

Tonight, I had Elise on the counter while Althea was in the tub. The bathroom is fairly small, so the tub is no more than two feet from the sink. Elise was being stubborn about brushing teeth, so I was really absorbed in the task.

I don’t know what happened, but Althea was suddenly coughing up water, struggling to gasp for breath while sputtering and choking  in the water.

She was submerged under the water. I don’t know how much time had elapsed. Maybe it was only for a second. Maybe it was three seconds. There were only three inches of water in the tub. Maybe she couldn’t really have drowned. Maybe she could have. But she was clearly choking on water that she’d inhaled while I was two feet away from her.

I WAS TWO FEET AWAY FROM HER. In the same room. Alive and conscious and sober and able to pay close attention to her, but I wasn’t.

I snatched her up and held her body close while her lungs struggled to expel water and inhale oxygen. I let my mind go there — her life, my life, flashing before me in an instant, overwhelmed with fear and gratitude that the unthinkable hadn’t happened. God and Christ and every other deity existed in that moment because my child was alive.

I don’t know if I’m overreacting, but what happened was fucking terrifying enough for me to have learned a horrible lesson:

The instant bath time is over, DRAIN THE TUB.

Do NOT assume that being in the same room means you’re paying attention.

I thought I was ultra cautious with the girls around water. I’ve never even left them unattended for four seconds to run into their room for a washcloth. I’m just too paranoid.

So what the fuck happened tonight???

People, you CANNOT be too careful around water when children are involved. In my mind, my 20-month-old girls are big and strong and smart enough to extract themselves from a couple of inches of water. Apparently not. Don’t fall into that same trap!

I could have sworn. SWORN. That I was carrying boy bits in me.

So when Chris and I opened the envelope containing The Ultrasound Photo that would reveal our third child’s gender, I fully, 100% expected to see only three letters.

Instead . . . Well, you can probably see where I’m going with this.

I won’t deny it. I cried. I cried and cried. I was disappointed. Shocked. I wanted a boy. I felt nothing but boy. I really had my hopes up.

As “insurance,” we had the tech take a photo of the baby’s bits and put it in an envelope for us to open later. We joked that we didn’t want to cry in front of everyone if it was a girl.

And when the tech told us that, in case we would later wonder, he was 100% sure of what he saw, I thought YES!!! It’s definitely a boy because he saw the undeniable.

As the tears streamed uncontrollably down my face when I saw the word “GIRL!!!!” I was simultaneously filled with shame and pain. Yes, I was disappointed. But the idea that overwhelmed me was that I could be at all disappointed in this tiny little baby, this innocent little girl who is completely welcome and wanted and loved.

I thought of my perfect daughters and how much they’ve improved our lives, of how endlessly I love them, of how the last thing I feel in them is disappointment or shame. So I was embarrassed and mad at myself for feeling what I felt.

I know, I know. As a mother, I’m not supposed to feel these things. And even if I do, I’m certainly not supposed to admit them. But the deal is, it’s over. I was disappointed. I’m still kind of in mourning.

But I love my daughter. Like Chris said, the sadness is in the idea that it’s not a boy, not that she is a girl.

So. On the bright side:

• We are experienced parents of girls.
• We don’t have to buy anything new for a while.
• Surely with three girls, we’ll get some grandkids out of them somewhere.
• She’ll have two awesome older sisters who will dress her in silly costumes and carry her around like a baby doll. Or a rag doll. Or a football.
• Who says we’re done, anyhow?

(Okay, that last one was a bit premature. I AM NOT THINKING OF #4.)

I think at this point, I’m mostly dreading the reactions from the general public. I’ve gotten enough negative BS about having twins — I can only imagine the shit we’ll hear about having three girls. “Blah blah blah three prom dresses,” “Yadda yadda three weddings,” “Yap yap yap you’re really in for it.”

Ugh. Like we haven’t already thought of that? Like we can do anything to change it?

“Girl” is not a four-letter word, even when multiplied by three. (Because that would be 12. Right? I took math. YES I PASSED.) There are plenty of four-letter words that aren’t bad — words such as good, luck and love.

Also, ulna.

Here are the rest of the photos of our darling doll of a daughter. We’re pretty happy now that it’s sinking in. Her profile looks a lot like the girls’.

Besides, if she’s half as wonderful as her sisters, we’re set.

(Man, my blog post titles are getting stupid.)

It’s been eight days since I last nursed my girls.

::sob!::

Since I first started writing about weaning last month, I gradually reduced the number and frequency of nursings. We’d skip a day, then two days, then three. The couple of times we went for three days, my boobs ended up insanely uncomfortable — not really engorged, but heavy as bowling balls and very sensitive.

Then the tantrums started.

When it became obvious that we weren’t headed to my bedroom to nurse, the girls would start throwing a tantrum. That wasn’t worth it to me, so we’d nurse.

And then one morning, they didn’t freak out.

And they didn’t freak out the next morning either.

And here we are, eight days later, and my boobs have not freaked out and the girls haven’t freaked out and we’re all doing just fine, it seems.

My boobs have changed already. The last vestiges of hormonal brown discoloration are finally fading away. My nipples have regained their non-stretched-to-hell appearance. The aereola seem to be shrinking and looking less Nat Geo.

I think I’m doing okay with it. For a silly, superstitious reason, I kind of wanted to make their last time nursing be on the 17th, when they’d be 17 months old. You know, golden birthday nonsense.

But we did good. Sixteen-and-a-half months of nursing twins ain’t bad, in my book. We’re happy. We’re healthy.

I have lost many people in my life. My wonderful grandparents on both sides of the family. My step-father. Beloved pets.

But I’ve never lost a friend. I’ve never had a friend die.

Die. Dead. How can a friend. Be dead?

The words don’t make sense in the same sentence. Because people who die are gravely sick, or old, or addicted to dangerous drugs, or reckless and irresponsible. There’s an explanation for the death. There’s a moment or a choice or a lifestyle or an illness that you can point to and say, “Oh, he died of a heart attack,” or “She died from cancer.”

A dear friend died in a motorcycle accident yesterday. His sister contacted me through Facebook to break the news and we spoke on the phone shortly afterwards.

The news was so shocking, so abrupt, that I thought it was a joke.

The finality of death, the eternity of it, the forever-ness of it, has always been the most painful thing to understand. But at least there’s always been a cause.

This time, though, I’m at a complete loss. He’s still here. I can still hear his voice. I can still hear his motorcycle pull up to the house. I can still hear his uproarious laughter bouncing off the walls.

There’s his spot on our couch. He swam in our pool and ate Chinese food with us. We all got fired from our jobs together. We all started our own company together. We exchanged secrets.

Our cats peed on his motorcycle helmet and we bought him a new one. He clogged our toilet and, while piss-water flooded the bathroom, he calmly asked, “Errr….you got some towels or something?” He formed a band with my husband. He didn’t flinch when Chris burned a rack of ribs on Memorial Day.

He took me on my first (only) motorcycle ride. He gave me binoculars for my birthday. He took me to Chili’s when I was pregnant. He came to my baby shower.

His hair turned gray. He laughed louder. He got smarter and sharper. He was finally going to buy a couch for his apartment.

And then he died.

Dammit, Troy. God dammit. We miss you.

Today is my birthday. I am 32 years old. My 30′s suddenly seem so . . . inevitable.

Normally, I’m the one to celebrate my birthday the loudest. A birthday is your own special holiday, a day the world became a little bit different because of your existence. Every birth has a story, a history, the artifacts of which you carry with you every day of your life.

***

It’s been an unseasonably wet and cold winter in Florida. Where we normally take sunny days for granted, we now remark on the days when the gray skies part to give us a glimpse of what is being obscured.

A cold front, and the rain it bears, kept us stuck in the house again today. The girls were losing it. I was losing it. Not bothering to change the girls out of their pajamas, I took them out to the front yard.

We sat, the three of us, on an old porch swing by the front door, a swing I’ve used maybe three times in the past five years. The simple motion — back, forth, back, forth — invoked instant calm, the memory of rocking in the womb.

The wind picked up. The girls got down. Without hesitation, Althea buried her feet into a pile of wet leaves, sitting down to squish the earth and twigs between her fingers.

Elise picked up handfuls of leaves and trotted around the front yard, shrieking with delight.

Both girls stuffed piles of dirt into their mouths, an unapologetic exploration of their ever-expanding world.

Builds immunity, as our 93-year-old, World War II-vet neighbor would say.

***

In some tiny corner of my mind, I mourn. I long. My daughters’ lives evoke these feelings. I don’t embrace these feelings. I don’t hide them either. It’s just a dormant seed that I do not plant. But in fleeting, gray moments, I mourn. I long.

I mourn because my daughters will know so much about their lives — of their father, their future siblings, of each other, of the day they were born.

Things I don’t know about myself.

Much about my birth day is a mystery to me. I know that I was born in a small town nestled in a valley in the Pyrenees mountains of northern Spain. I know that my mother did a natural child birth. According to my Spanish birth certificate, I was born at the vague hour of “noon.” I don’t know how much I weighed, how long I was, how active and alert I was.

I don’t know what I looked like. I will never know what I looked like.

And so (teensy tiny nebulous little thought that I do not nurture) I mourn the irrevocable loss of my infancy. I long for knowing.

***

This year, my parties and presents and over-indulgences are overshadowed. My desire to celebrate my day has dissipated. Today is now something more. I share the day of my birth with my my children, my whole family.

These are my gifts this year: my daughters, my husband, our family. Love. Cloudy days. Playing in the dirt.

As it should be.

I know, I haven’t been blogging. Shame, as my grandmother would have said.

I’m tired. I’ve been working a lot, mostly at night, and staying up much later than I’m used to. I’ve been working while sitting on an old, uneven couch, which is killing my back and shoulders.

I’m stressed. About the house. About money. About feeling overwhelmed — kids, house, money. What to make for dinner. Laundry piling up and spreading disease and pestilence.  You know, typical stuff.

But mostly, I’m freaking out. I’m freaking out because my daughters are going to turn one next week. I’m having flashbacks of where I was, what I was doing, this time last year.

This time last year, I was spending most of the day on the couch, having contractions that I didn’t know were contractions.

This time last year, I was shuffling down the street, trying to walk myself into labor.

This time last year, I had (gestational) diabetes.

This time last year, I had a 50-inch waist.

This time last year, I knew what day my daughters would be born.

This time last year, I didn’t know what my daughters looked like.

This time last year, I had no idea what I was in for. I had mentally checked out. All I needed to know, all I needed to do, was give birth to healthy twins. I didn’t know about the worry, the ignorance, the fear, the sleep deprivation, the protectiveness.

The hopes and dreams. The smiles. The laughter. The pride. The love. My god, the love.

***

I don’t know these folks. Haven’t interacted with them prior to their loss — a loss I truly, truly can’t imagine (happy birthday, little one). Even now, I feel that all I can do is leave sympathetic comments. But I think about their family often, especially in times like these when I get caught up in the charade that being a parent can bring on.

***

Now, typing all of that, I feel ridiculous for worrying about a fucking party. Fucking streamers and fucking balloons and the fucking idiotic Dixie plates I bought at Walmart, worrying that they weren’t fancy enough and theme-y enough and that people would judge me as an uncaring mother because I didn’t pay $5 for eight paper plates.

I love my daughters. I love my daughters.  And that is what’s important — to them, to me, to us.

I bought these today.

Freaking out. Freaking. Out.

When I think about what I thought I’d be like as a mother — let me tell you, it didn’t include being all sentimental at $8 “Birthday Girl” shirts. And it certainly didn’t involve walking into a Carter’s outlet store and almost having sex with the first guy that walked by in order to get pregnant after seeing an adorable (ADORABLE!) teensie tiny wittle baby newborn onesie.

Every day, I see my babies looking a little bit more like little girls. Little girls who will start walking soon. Walking by themselves. Talking. Talking to themselves. Pretending. Playing. Going to school. Having a crush. Getting in trouble. (I really hope they play pranks on teachers, because what good is it being an identical twin if you don’t?)

Best friends. Back stabbing. Crying.

First kiss.

Second kiss.

Beyond. Etc. (Freaking out!)

Broken hearts. Hugs. Hugs hugs hugs.

I have a lot on my mind as we approach the end of the girls’ first year with us — all conflicting and confusing and convoluted thoughts, of course. Thoughts about breastfeeding and weaning, thoughts about the future, thoughts about our house and our families and my age. Thoughts involving teensie tiny wittle baby newborn onesies.

Shopping sure can be complicated.

And he taketh away.

We just got a knock at the door at 10 p.m. A neighbor. How many cats did we have?

Kramer is alive and purring next to me on the couch. Vincent Van Gogh, the father of the rest of the kitties we have, is dead. Hit and killed by a car.

R.I.P.

Kramer did fine through the night. I talked to the vet this morning. As far as they can tell, he has a fractured palate and broken jaw. His eyes are swollen shut now, but when they were still somewhat open, he did have his vision. Most of all, though, he has his wits about him. He purrs when petted, and rolls onto his back to have his belly scratched. Just like Kramer.

The doctor was actually very hopeful that, with surgery, Kramer could lead a relatively normal kitty life. She thinks he’d be at higher risk of seizures in the future because of his head trauma, but the fact that he actually did well during the first 24 hours was a promising sign. She said they usually degrade or pass in the first day if they’re not doing well.

She recommended he be transferred to an emergency vet about an hour away where they have a dental surgeon on staff. The idea is to have Kramer put under general anaesthesia just one time, to do X-rays and the surgery all at once.

We’ve decided to give it a shot. Financially, this is not smart. But. If he were not going to have good quality of life, if he were a vegetable, if we had to squeeze his belly to make him poop, if he had a feeding tube the rest of his life . . . all that would be one thing. I don’t think it’s smart to save an animal’s life if they’re not going to enjoy their time on earth. But I honestly couldn’t live with myself if we let him go when he had a good chance of having a good, normal life.

Chris is at the other emergency vet right now with a very beat-up looking Kramer. I would post a pic but I can’t look at it so I won’t. I’ll update as I get more news. Please, some healthy kitty vibes, prayers, positive thoughts, whatever would be much appreciated.

I ran over one of our cats this morning. Specifically, MY cat, Kramer, that I had before I even met Chris. I felt it when I ran him over and I immediately knew what happened. He was alive when I last saw him.

Between Chris and I, we spent four hours looking for him. Neither of us had any luck.

Late tonight, Chris was plagued by guilt from watching “The Dog Whisperer” and decided to take the dog out on a random walk. That’s when he found the cat.

They’re at the emergency vet right now. Kramer’s eyes are pretty messed up and his jaw is quite obviously broken. But he meowed a few times and is alive and breathing.

Update when I can.