my-ass-titis

On Saturday morning my dad came over to give me a hand with the little ones, and my choice was either to take a nap (which I desperately needed) or go for a run (which I also desperately needed). D was out of town again, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to run for almost a week, so I pressed myself into my two sports bras, and headed out the door. It was sunny and cool—the perfect weather for running, and as I plodded along the river road, I felt so calm. I thought about how glad I was that breastfeeding was so much easier with Zoe than it had been with Stella, and I thought about how I was finally getting the hang of two kids—how two now felt normal to me.

Well, a mere two hours later, on the way to Stella’s dance class, I started to feel some pain in my right breast. A plugged duct? Hmm. I wasn’t too worried about it, but when we got home, I soaked myself in the tub and tried to unplug it. No luck.

By 5 p.m. I had the chills and was shaking so much that my lips turned purple and I could hardly change Zoe’s diaper. (I kid you not.) By 5:30, I had a throbbing headache and a temperature of 102. I had heard how fast and furious mastitis was, but it seemed impossible to get that sick that fast. It felt like I had the worst flu of my life. I felt like I was going to die. I called my mom and burst into tears. (What if this interferes with nursing? Did it happen because of my tight sports bras? Why didn’t I take a nap instead of going for a run? Why did D have to be out of town?)

She said she’d be over as soon as possible.

I called my doctors, and the on-call physician agreed that it was mastitis and prescribed antibiotics for me. Luckily, a friend was coming over with dinner, and after making me some food (which I was too sick to eat) she went and picked up the pills for me. But then other worries set in: what if Zoe has a reaction to the medication? What if it makes her even gassier? What if I don’t really need them?

I was clearly very ill, though, and I remembered my sister’s horrible bout of mastitis, so I ended up taking the antibiotics (which I now need to take four times a day for two weeks). Another friend, who is a doctor, told me that the two main things I needed now were fluids and rest. “Kate,” she said, “you just started back to work and just started running again and you’re not getting enough sleep and Zoe isn’t even three months old yet.”

Oh right. I’ve been doing what I always do—too much. And even though I’m back to work only five hours a week, I’ve also been working on a freelance assignment, and there is my own writing—an essay with which I’m struggling—and then the details of keeping up the house, which now that D is traveling so much, fall primarily to me. Indeed, I’m doing too much.

So Sunday, I canceled everything, sent Stella to her grandparents’ house, and spent the day in bed. Warm breeze blew the curtains into the room as I lay next to Zoe on the bed, nursing her. I drifted in and out of sleep to the chirping of birds and the sounds of our neighborhood—lawn mowers and neighbors’ voices and the ice-cream truck tooling up and down the streets. And I realized I wanted to do this every day, all summer—lie in bed next to my baby, resting.

This won’t happen, of course. Stella will be out of pre-school in July and August, which translates into very little napping for me. And I do need to work—whether at this job or by picking up freelance projects—because we need the money. But I must find a way to balance it all without so much stress because I don’t want to end up here again—in mastitis hell.

What to do? What to do?

Road Map to Holland

I’m always on the look-out for good motherhood memoirs, but I was recently lamenting the fact that there aren’t that many out there. Some would have us believe that the market is positively flooded with them, that there exists a glut of so-called “momoir,” but it’s not true. There are, certainly, a number of fine anthologies available, but really good book-length memoirs by women writing about motherhood? There aren’t that many. (And this, you understand, is not because I don’t think they’ve been written, but rather because they haven’t been published.)

So imagine my joy when I picked up Jennifer Graf Groneberg’s Road Map to Holland, which details Jennifer’s journey as a mother after one of her twin boys is diagnosed with Down syndrome.

I had read Jennifer’s writing—she blogs regularly at pinwheels and ParentDish, has a column at mamazine, and was the editor of the wonderful anthology My Heart’s First Steps. I had forgotten, however, that her twins were born prematurely, so I was startled to find myself diving into the NICU in the first part of her book. She writes it well. I kept thinking, yes, that’s how I experienced it as well. It’s full of the disorientation and confusion and the trying-to-make-sense-of-it-all to which most NICU parents will relate. And as Jennifer learns about Down syndrome, I learn about it, as well. I learned it is not Down’s or Down Syndrome, but “a baby with Down syndrome.” She writes: “I understand the desire to find language that honors the spirit of the child, and that also includes the medical diagnosis…”

All good memoirs are about an author’s relationship with the subject at hand. Thus Road Map is not about Avery’s Down syndrome as much as it is about Jennifer’s experience accepting the diagnosis and moving past it.

Road Map to Holland is certainly is a must-read for all parents whose children have Down syndrome, but parents who have lived through the NICU, parents of twins, and I believe all parents will find something in these pages that will resonate with them. It’s about more than coming to terms with a Down syndrome diagnosis; it’s about adjusting a worldview, breaking stereotypes, and opening oneself to the possibility of finding love in unexpected ways.

I had a chance to correspond with Jennifer about Road Map, and what follows is our e-mail interview:


Kate: One of the things I strive for in my writing and admire in yours is your honesty. Was it difficult for you to get to an emotional place where you could lay it all out there?

Jennifer: Perhaps oddly, no. Part of my experience with Avery had been sorting through the mistruths, and the half-truths, to find what was real. It never occurred to me to offer anything but my very most honest thoughts about it all, because to do less would just add to the problem, as I saw it.

Kate: Now that Road Map is published, how does it feel to see your lives in print and have people react to your experiences?

Jennifer: It feels very raw and vulnerable; really, a lot like it felt when the diagnosis was still brand new.

Kate: The book is chronological, except for the very beginning where you begin the story, and go back and begin again, repeating the events that lead up to Avery’s diagnosis. For me, this disjointedness so clearly reflects what it feels like to have a child in the NICU (and what I imagine it would feel like to first hear your child has DS), and it increases the narrative urgency of the book. Can you tell me a little about this? Did you always know the book would begin this way or did this opening come later in your process?

Jennifer: It always felt like the way to begin. Telling the story in a straightforward way would make it seem as if things were more clear than they were: in the beginning, I felt very lost, very confused. So the story begins with that confusion, and circles in and around itself, sometimes going over old ground, then new, then back over old territory again, as I tried to find a foothold. That's what it felt like to me as I was experiencing it, and I wanted the writing to reflect these emotions. As I find my way, so too does the story, and it eventually lines out in a more traditional manner.

Kate: Who are some of your literary influences? Why?

Jennifer: I love strong women's voices, and for a long while now, I've been obsessed with literary nonfiction. But recently, at the recommendation of my mother-in-law Joyce, I read Lisa See's Peony in Love. Her lyricism captivated me, and I so enjoyed reading a story set in the afterlife, which is something only fiction can do. Maybe I'm switching loyalties?

Kate: Are you working on another book?

At the moment, I'm still working on Road Map. I know that it's almost cliché to speak about writing a book in comparison to having a baby, but to me, it really feels that way. And right now, I'm in the fourth trimester. I'm not writing this story any longer, but I haven't quite let go of it yet, either.

One thought that keeps flitting through my mind relates to education. As Avery grows, and we approach school-age, I'm finding more confusion and misinformation and even discrimination. I'm not sure that these experiences will gel into a complete book, but they are much on my mind.

Thanks, Jennifer, for taking the time to answer my questions and for writing this lovely book.

happy mother's day

It was beautiful here. D and Stella woke me up with a vanilla latte and a bowl of strawberries. Stella was very silly, dancing around the bed, singing, “My boootis, my boootis” as she shook her little tush. Then she collapsed, laughing. (Zoe was sleeping in her car seat and missed all the fun.) After the silliness, we went out for breakfast and to the garden store, where we bought a few plants for the front garden. Then I went for run, which, well, hurt because I’m really out of shape. But after the first ½ mile, it was as if my body remembered how to run, as if the rhythm of my gate had been there all fall and winter, waiting. I didn’t go much more three miles (probably less), but I felt completely high. Running is one of those things that I do alone, and I felt a little more myself with each step—it was the perfect gift for me on mother’s day.

I hope you all had a lovely day, as well, and that your darlings hugged you a ton.

there is always something

Zoe’s hair and eyelashes are coming in. Her hair, a lovely auburn red, stands on end after a bath, and there are five or six long strands (each about an inch and half long) sprouting from the crown of her head. I admire their tenacity, hanging on they way do.

It’s odd to think back to the pregnancy and recall how worried I was—about her being full-term and healthy, and about the birth and whether I should have another C-section. It all seems so far away now—she is here, and I’m counting her lovely hairs.

But there is always something to worry about, isn’t there? Yesterday I took her in for her two-month check up and I felt so stressed out about immunizations. I’m not against immunizing, but I don’t trust pharmaceutical companies, and I recently read “The Needle and the Studies Done,” an article by Sari Weston in Brain, Child. It raised some concerns for me about the levels of aluminum in immunization shots. (I’m already paranoid about thimerosal in flu shots.)

The article, which I thought was very helpful, quotes Dr. Robert Sears and sites his new book, The Vaccine Book. He suggests that vaccines are spaced out, so an infant doesn’t receive, say, six shots in one day. Since no one has studied the effects of large doses of aluminum on infants, and many of the shots do contain aluminum, it makes sense to space them out, so your baby isn’t getting mega doses in one day.

I was a little worried about what our pediatrician would say. Would he think I didn’t trust him because I wanted to do things a little differently? But he was wonderful, as always, and agreed to space the shots out for us. It means we have to go in every month for three, but that feels so much safer than giving them all to Zoe at once.

That said, I still hate to give my kids shots. And the nurse yesterday seemed to man-handle Zoe, pressing her weight against Zoe’s legs to keep them still. It’s a problem if your kid is crying before the shot, no? But it all happened so fast, the pressing of her legs to the table, the shots, little Zoe wailing. I wish I had told the nurse to stop. I could have held Zoe’s arms and legs (she’s only 12 pounds—I think I can handle it), but I didn’t act quickly enough. And she just wailed and wailed.

I felt bad for the rest of the day, and kept checking on her as she slept, just to make sure she wasn’t having some weird reaction to the vaccines.

8 weeks old

It's hard to believe that Zoe is already 8 weeks old. I'm not sure exactly how big she is, but it's somewhere around 11 pounds. She seems huge, wearing clothes that Stella wore when she was five months old! As hard as these infants months are for me, I feel myself grasping, trying to hold on to certain moments. How can I want time to move faster and slower all at once? How can I want to hold her forever in my arms at the same time I want her to learn to take a bottle, to give me a little breathing room?

I know these conflicting emotions have something to do with the fact that this is it for us, our last baby. And knowing this makes me want to somehow preserve the moments I love: holding Zoe to my chest as she sleeps, staring into her smiling eyes, pressing my lips to her so-soft temple.

This makes me think of Deborah Garrison's poem "Square and Round" from The Second Child.

It begins:

You moments I court --

Back of the head settled
in arm's crook,
rump in my palm,
the whole half of a body
just the length of my forearm,
small face twitching toward
repose. From the window
lamplight or moonlight slides
on the creamy forehead,
the new-bulb smoothness
at the temples both squared
and rounding, the flickering play
of shapes suggesting, mysteriously,
intelligence within...

It ends:

What was it, just
then, I swore to myself
I'd keep?

As though I could hold
a magnifying glass
to time

and slow its shaping
us."

I love this poem. I love the whole collection.

on narrative urgency and single parenting

I’ve been thinking a lot about narrative urgency the last couple of weeks because I recently went to see Charles Baxter talk about and read from his new novel, The Soul Thief. (I dragged both Stella and Zoe out in the cold so I could get my literary fix.) He used the term narrative urgency, which makes sense because The Soul Thief is thick with it. I didn’t want to put the book down. He, quite simply, rocks.

Then I was reading Beth Kephart’s blog, and she posted about a similar thing: the use of present tense and the need for forward movement. Or rather, how you must be sure that you continue the forward momentum of your book or your writing will become precious. (She quoted McEwan.)

It makes me want to dive back into my memoir and make sure I maintain the sense of narrative urgency until the end of the book. I think I do, but I guess I’ll have to see. And if it lags in the middle, what does one do about it?

Am I obsessing about narrative urgency in my book because my life currently seems to lack narrative urgency? Because I am definitely challenged in that department.

I know what you’re thinking: Kate, be in the moment. Enjoy these precious times. (How many people have said that to me in the last week?)

I am enjoying many moments, every day. It seems I could stare at Zoe’s sleeping face for hours, counting her expressions, each of which she inhabits for mere seconds. I can’t get enough of her chubby face when it breaks into a smile. Seriously adorable. And I love to listen to Stella singing along to her princess movies when she doesn’t think I can hear her or when she tells me stories about how the Huns are coming and she has to protect her babies. (This is after she has carried all her stuffed animals and baby dolls downstairs and lined them up on the couch under blankets.) Zoe and I, sitting in the nursing chair will, sadly, always be killed by the Huns.

What I’m not enjoying is how tired I am. Or the way Zoe screams—she’s inconsolable sometimes—even when I’ve bounced her and turned on the water in the kitchen and nothing works and my knees ache and my quads are sore from all that bouncing and carrying on. I’m exhausted. It doesn’t help that D was gone again for 5 days. Single parenthood, frankly, sucks.

I was talking to a friend on the phone the other day as I walked Zoe around the neighborhood in an effort to get her to fall asleep. (It wasn’t working.) Zoe was screaming and I started to laugh. My friend said, “Oh good. You sound relaxed.”

I don’t know if “relaxed” is the word I’d choose. Unless relaxed is a state of mind one inhabits somewhere on the path from exhausted and comatose. No, it’s not relaxed. That’s not right. It’s more like just putting your head down and doing what you have do—picking up the Barbies and stuffed animals and trying not to snap at the sassy four-year-old you love as you coo and bounce the fussy baby you love. And then, as you’re doing what you have to do, the only thing left to do is to laugh because otherwise you feel crazy.

when the escape might not be worth it

My darling Zoe is getting progressively fussier. It’s the must-be-bounced-and-carried-or-nursed-to-fall-and-stay-asleep kind of fussy. Yesterday I desperately needed a nap, but she wouldn’t stay asleep, so finally I gave up and strapped her in the bouncy chair so at least I could shower. Then, I wanted so badly to check e-mail and maybe even write a sentence or two—A SENTENCE, people. I wasn’t even shooting for a whole paragraph—so I drove her around the neighborhood until she fell asleep, then I snapped the car seat into the stroller and took her to a cafe. She slept for all of twelve minutes before she began screaming. I tried to nurse her, but she pulled back, apparently in pain. I was awkward with the nursing because I was sitting on a tall stool and trying not to flash the whole restaurant, so I didn’t notice until I had gotten her back in her car seat (still screaming because nothing I did would calm her) and frantically packed up my laptop that the front of my shirt was soaked with milk. Lovely.

I was finally able to calm her down when we got home, and she fell asleep for twenty minutes before we had to go pick up Stella at pre-school. More screaming, more of me singing the Twinkle variations.

But there was escape at the end of the day. I had a hefty gift certificate for a salon down the street, and I had decided that I would get my hair highlighted. This is a big deal for me—I’ve never colored my hair. So I pumped, nursed Zoe until she fell asleep, and passed her off to D, wishing him luck as I dashed (as fast as I could) out the door.

I left with enough time before the appointment to get a glass of wine at the fancy restaurant near our house, and I was giddy as the waitress seated me at a quiet table. I ordered a glass of Pinot Gris and a cabbage, beet, and bleu cheese salad. Then I opened Charles Baxter’s new novel, The Soul Thief. What could be more divine than a crisp, minerally glass of wine, a salad with bleu cheese, and a perfectly crafted sentence? I was only there for a half hour, but it was heavenly.

Midway through the hair appointment, D called and said that Zoe had been crying for two hours. She did drink a little of the milk, but he couldn’t do anything to calm her. I said I was sorry, but there was nothing I could do—squares of foil protruded from my head like many metallic wings.

D was exhausted when I got home. He was reading to Stella as Zoe wailed. I nursed the poor dear for a long time and she finally fell into deep sleep. She looks so peaceful when she sleeps. All I can do is press my lips to her head and breathe her in.

This morning, when I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I was startled by my hair. Instead of a washed up ‘80s rock star, I now look like the washed up girlfriend of an ‘80s rock star. I’m not sure this is an improvement.