On Co-sleeping

Since my daughter was born she has slept with me, beginning skin to skin, always lying on me, heart against heart - a beautiful thing. I know co-sleeping is not for everyone, but it has definitely been the right choice for me and my baby. I have enjoyed the closeness, the beauty and trust of that arrangement and I believe that since people have been sleeping like that throughout the ages and only in this culture do we put newborn babies into their own rooms and expect them not to be afraid or lonely; it just seems right. I have heard a lot of noise about SIDS and co-sleeping but I thoroughly researched it and always felt comfortable that my child was safe with me - no pillows anywhere, no blankets, no smoking, drinking or drugs and certainly no obesity (those pregnancy pounds don't count, even for me). I have loved it, every minute of it, watching her tiny face relax into sleep, watching her laugh and smile through her dreams - it has been a great part of my experience as a new mother. Ez has been wonderfully supportive in this as in everything with her, never asking me to change even though he was terrified of rolling over on her (again, highly unlikely as long as the aformentionned things are taken into account) but he has mainly been sleeping on the couch, or worse, at the foot of the bed, wrapped in blankets. Of course, I know that he has to come back, so I knew it was time to start moving forward with the sleeping. She has been taking one or two of her naps in her own crib in her own room, though nighttime is our together sleep-time, but we wanted Daddy back too, so Kate lent us her co-sleeper and last night was the first night with that. I was nervous about how reactive I would be with her not immediately beside me - I wake up for anything she needs, I am so aware of her in the night. I was worried that she wouldn't accept it, that she would fuss and cry - but I am proud and amazed that she was again a superstar - not a peep out of her, she was brilliant again - and momma survived too, it was actually a really great night, all of us really together the way it should be. This child continually amazes me with how good she is, how wonderful and good-natured and fabulous she is - we are indeed extremely lucky people to have a baby like this. And we will live to sleep another day...

Thinking Back...

So much to write, so little time. I have a small window of opportunity right now, morning nap time, but there is so much in my head that I would like to write about, so much that I have been thinking.
To begin with, I realize that I have never talked about her name, how we decided upon it. I have to say, it was surprisingly easy to agree upon considering two such head-strong people (and the fact that when I was pitching names like Maverick and Pixie I was getting nowhere with my guy, whose favourite choice continued to be Lucifer). She'd been home with us for 5 days or so, and we were still saying that we didn't know when people asked what her name was. We had bought a book the day I went into labour, a book of 20,000 names from around the world, something to peruse while we tried to hold out for Monday when the full midwifery team would be available and we could be assured our home birth(of course, my water broke at midnight that night and she was born at 10:02 am on Good Friday). It was the day after we had decided to stop stretch and sweeps, tired of the 'you're going to have a baby today' cycle of disappointment and I remember leafing through it and seeing the name 'Shyama' in the Indian/Hindu names section. I recall being instantly struck by its meaning 'dark beauty', thinking surely we would have a dark child and I thought it was so beautiful. Here is what the book says:

Shyama - Derived from the Sanskrit syama (black, dark beauty) The name is borne in Indian mythology by the daughter of Meru, the mountain at the centre of the universe. She is seen as an incarnation of the Ganges River.

It just seemed so fitting for us as people who love the mountains and the river, especially knowing that we made her in the midst of that fabulous river trip in the Yukon, surrounded by just that. Nahanni was a name we knew we liked, it was just so pretty and of course, Ez had been dreaming of the river for many, many years. I remember promising him once, years ago that if he hadn't yet done the Nahanni by the time he was 50 that I would take him there for his birthday - and now he is already talking of the trip he will take his girl on, to her namesake river, the year we both turn 50. Nahanni is a Dene word which means 'the people who wander the mountains and the valleys' and we also thought that appropriate. I remember holding her in my arms, still so new, me still so weak yet full of wonder about this whole new experience, whispering into her tiny ear 'Is this your name? Nahanni Shyama?' I wrote it out over and over again in the margins of the little book I was using to record her nursing times, like a schoolgirl practicing her married name with the teen idol she loved. I wrote it over and over, staring at it, saying it, letting the syllables slide over my tongue. I loved the sound of it, I loved the beautiful symmetry of its letters and the more we whispered it, the more it seemed to fit - and so that is how we chose her lovely name. It thrills me when people stop me to look at her, saying how pretty she is and asking her name. I have learned to love the little high I get when I tell them and they sigh - 'Oh, what a pretty name, that's beautiful!' - almost every single time; it's wonderful, just like her.

I have also been thinking that I have yet to write out how everything went on the day. You think you'll never forget the details of things, giant events like this, but as we were sitting on the patio on Granville Island the other day, Ez pointed out the balcony of the Sands, where he proposed to me and we realized that neither of us could remember what he'd said. It really illustrated the fact that even the most important details can slip away (although we did manage to recover it; for the record he said 'will you stay with me in this life so I can find you in the next?') You think you will never lose them, but you do. I was thinking of it the other day as I was lying with Nahanni in bed, looking around as she slipped into her dreams. I am trying to be very conscious of my time with her, of subjugating the desire to put her down and go do things, to remember that she will only be small for a very short time and that all the rest can wait. I try to relish every little moment with her in my arms, her small, silky hand in mine, her vanilla sighs in my ear. I had a flash of insight that told me that when she is twenty years old, I will scarcely remember this red room, these gold-trimmed doors, the feel of this time. It seems like something that will not go away, but I know that it will, so I try to capture it, ethereal as it may be; I try to bottle it like a magic elixir of the heart. I take pictures, I write about it, try to etch it into memory but I know that just as the real memories of the intensity of her birth have already softened, so too will all the rest until there are only traces of them, like pencil lines erased that you can still barely trace with your finger. I know it's true because I finally watched the video of her birth and I was shocked by how intense it was, it truly stopped me in my tracks. I had already blurred the edges of that pain, placed a fine filter over the memories of the experience and seeing that video, the little snatches filmed from far back, I was still able to see what an incredibly intense experience it really was and I saw how my memory had shuffled and redealt the experience to me, it was crazy. I was shocked to see how, well, shocked I was, how clearly exhausted and overwhelmed and sort of dead, I was right after she was born. I had always imagined the birth of my child to be a huge emotional experience, tears and joy and smiles and laughter, but I could see that it was more sedate, more introverted, stalled almost. Ez handed her to me from below and I held her for a mere moment before they cut the cord from around her neck (mercifully loose as it was) and whisked her away. I am simply there, on hands and knees, gasping for breath, staring at my hands, now empty but covered in the red and white and cream of her birth. I don't rejoice, I don't weep, I simply collapse onto the chair in front of me, alone for a few moments while all eyes are focussed on her. You can hear Ez's voice cracking 'It's a girl! We have a girl!' as he returns to me, hugs me and covers me with a towel before going back to the baby's room where they are working on her. He tells me she is alert, they tell me her heart rate is 140 ("perfect") but I don't hear her at all - and in the early moments, I cannot believe that I don't care, I simply don't have enough life back into me yet. I ask soon after, and in watching it now, from this perspective of knowing her, I am frantic to hear her cry, but then, I was in a sort of fugue state, an exhausted, emotionally and physically overwhelmed trance. I was happy to see in the video that I do begin to come around shortly thereafter, obviously still tired but coming alive. I begin to talk to her as she gasps a little, trying to regulate her breathing as we both get shots - she Vitamin K and me Oxytocin as my placenta is not coming away (likely the cause of the severe hemmorhage that is waiting in the wings for me). I keep saying the same thing over and over again as if to soothe us both, "That was tough, wasn't it? That was hard." I do remember though, one true and shining detail - her eyes. I remember looking into her little face,her tired little eyes falling open and shut, and thinking how beautiful and long they were, how marvelously almond shaped they were, how exotic. I was blown away that she was a girl, so convinced was I that she was going to be a boy, and I remember thinking over and over 'I have a daughter!' and feeling gloriously happy about it, a little girl. Then there is a giant blank spot until we are in bed, the three of us, getting ready to settle into our day. Ez had cleaned up the worst of the birth and we were just about the share a Guinness and put the baby to breast when I began to have increasingly harsh contractions with gushing blood. I remember looking at Gill, the midwife, asking 'Is this normal?'. She assured me it was but as they grew in intensity it was obvious something was not normal. She suggested that it might be a full bladder and that I should try to empty it and perhaps that would make it better. She was helping me to my feet when I fainted, eyes wide open and fell back into the bed. I remember waking up, feeling like I'd slept for an hour, since the extreme pain of those contractions was now gone, and when I looked up, confused to see Gill still there, I saw Ez at the foot of the bed, eyes like saucers. I heard Gill saying 'Call 911' and I looked down to where she was palpating my belly and saw huge gushes of blood arcing out in waves and a clot the size of a football. Oddly, I remember thinking 'That's not good...' and certainly it was not. We went from a beautiful home water birth to an emergency evacuation in the space of an hour - not exactly the birth story I had been after. It was so many different things, snatches of memories I have. It seemed like an eternity for the ambulance to arrive while I tried to remain focussed and alert, knowing what I know about shock, I just knew that I had to stay awake. I remember how beautiful the blue sky was above me, the scent and the whiteness of the magnolias blowing in the breeze as they wheeled me out the front doors, the sound of the water in the fountains. I remember staring intently at a box of medicine in the ambulance cabinet in front of me, running the picture of the baby in her tiny pink hat over and over in my brain, willing myself to stay awake and see her again. Thinking of how scary it must have been for Ez to be driving with this one hour old infant in the car, following the ambulance with his wife in it, not knowing how I was doing at all. I remember thinking that despite them telling me I'd be okay, knowing that they would tell me that even if I were dying and that scared me. From there, the longest car ride of my life, the maze of the hospital, the fear, the fatigue, the poking, the prodding. It was a series of small intrusions, the IVs, the stitches, the cold speculum, the horror of a catheter that they could not get in, the area already so swollen and traumatized from birth. But most of all, I remember just waiting for Ez to arrive, to see him again, to see her. I remember him coming finally around the corner, his red sleeveless vest and black baseball hat (Sin for Sale) holding this tiny little bundle, her pink striped hat the only part I could see and I burst into tears to see him - and what we shared in that look said everything, everything that we'd been through in those last hours, those last days, in all the years we'd been together. We'd been tested that day, more than any other day in our lives and in that one shared look welled up every emotion we'd ever felt about each other and everything we were going to feel about this beautiful, vulnerable baby girl. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he cuddled her close in his arms, a tiny white bundle. "We're here", he said, and it was all I needed to know.
Thinking back on that day, I remember thinking 'How could we ever part after that?' and I think it illuminates something that we both learned and want to hold dear from that experience - that we had been through something so challenging on our first day as a family, we really need to try to always keep it present in our minds. To harken back to that day is to remember that we are able to rise to the greatest of challenges, that we are strong and powerful, that we need each other, that we fought to be a family. I think to hold onto the power of that experience is a way of reconnecting to why we are together as a couple, why we chose to start a family, and what we went through to have it. There will be days when we are not in love, days when Nahanni is not the placid little angel of these early times, and it will be in those moments of weakness that we will most need to recall the power of that day and what it meant to us. There will be many more challenges and difficulties along this golden road, but hopefully ones of this magnitude will be few and far between and the lessons of this day will carry us through them. I admit freely that the drama was something I did not want, it was certainly not part of my birth plan to have hemmorhage and an ambulance ride and three days in hospital and 2 bouts of mastitis and all that went with it, but I will not say that I would necessarily change it. The hardest times in my life have always been the times I learned the most from and I know this is no exception. I still fell blessed and honoured by this whole experience and I can honestly say - it was worth it. I need only look into my daughter's ever-changing eyes and know it to be true.

Mom and Baby Yoga - finally!

We finally made it to the Mom n' Baby Yoga class that Marsha bought us as a shower gift - I've been looking forward to it for so long, I just haven't been well until last month and then I kept having doctor's appointments and then working last week - so I was excited! Nahanni was not so super thrilled with it - she was fine until one of the babies started to cry, and then another and another - so she joined in. Really I could tell that she was just tired, it coincided with afternoon nap time (why schedule that class when ost babies are supposed to be sleeping??) So we danced around and I did what postures I could with her asleep in my arms. I was thinking she took after her nana in yoga - all she wanted to do was sleep! We did very well in relaxation pose, Nahanni asleep on my chest like she did for the first 6 weeks of her life. It was wonderful though, to lie there with her, looking into the same mirrors where I had gazed with her heavy in my belly, it was mind-twisting. And of course, it was wonderful for me to simply gaze upon her beautiful pink face in a new light, marvelling at how beautiful she really is.

She continues to learn and grow, her head is more stable and she's acing tummy time. And yesterday evening we were having our 'face time', singing and giggling and she laughed out loud for the first time - the most magnificent little sound I have ever heard!

Gotta go - hearing a different kind of sound now - not so happy!

10 weeks and working already

Well, here's our girl, ten weeks old and already spent 3 days on set, totaling almost 40 hours - and she was as good as gold. I don't know that you could expect more from such a small little girl, she really was a superstar. The BSG crew was great with us and allowed breaks, usually during set-ups, for me to go back and feed her so she actually never had to take a bottle. Ez did try once but she wouldn't take it but I arrived within minutes so it was still okay and we are going to try cup feeding next time. I know that I have fought so hard to keep a bottle out of her mouth, but it will be hard for me if she never takes one, so now we have to find the balance since my milk supply and nursing are well established.
As for the whole work experience, it definitely was better than I worried it would be and easier than I expected. My call times were reasonable and she was with her dad on the big days so really the only person who was freaking out was me - I could feel myself getting frantic sometimes and I would be fidgeting like a five year old boy after a Red Bull and I would run back to the trailer only to find her asleep in her dad's arms. I couldn't help but feel guilty though, making this little girl be on such a strange schedule, and making her essentially be at work for so long too, not to mention daddy, who was stuck on a trailer all day... I guess I can let guilt go for the most part though - it helped our family and we all came through very well. I felt torn to be on set again, at work - so distracted as I was. I wondered if I would be able to be present as an actress, let along make any character choices (or know my lines, for that matter) but, like riding a bike, it all comes back to you and I think I rose to occasion. I think I can even handle it if (when) they call back for more. I think I can, I think I can...
As for Nahanni (or Baby 'hanni, as Talulla calls her) she is growing and changing daily. Her slate blue eyes are changing quickly, filling with specks of brown and I don't think it will be long before they change completely - I hope they'll be dark brown and lovely like her cousin Brody's are. She has finally achieved her goal of doing the 'cluck' noise we've been practising (although she refuses to do it for the camera) and she can hold her head really well - we do our morning exercises and when I pull her by her arms she can sit and hold her head relatively still and high - which seems to delight her, and certainly delights me. Her eyes grow wide and she looks at me as if to say 'Wow! I really did it!' and I love to watch her discover herself. Being a mom is really the most wonderful job I've ever had and I am feeling really lucky and blessed. Ez and I are looking to the future and planning to take this little girl to the ends of the earth, since she's already sent us to the moon (corny, but true...)

Working Mother's Guilt...and fatigue

Well, well, we made it through day 1 of 3 on set...impressive in its own right. After Nahanni and I spent a lovely weekend on Salt Spring Island at Betsy & Derek's (Adrian's folks) with all the girls together (wow!) we packed up the little one and bundled her off to her first days on the film lot. Marsha (bless her) came with us as the official nanny-for-a-day and I have to say that Nahanni was as good as gold. Our call time was 9 am and we managed to get everyone and be on time and...then we sat around for 7 hours - the usual. Then, after one little Jelly Belly, my 'permanent bridge' fell out leaving a giant gaping hole in my head and then Nahanni started to fuss for eating - and of course, they called me to set! Well, I managed to power-feed Nahanni, call the dentist on the way (closed for 10 days!?) and do my little scene (2 lines) without totally falling apart - not too shabby. We wrapped the scene in about an hour, I packed up the baby, drove Marsha home (she was probably bored out of her head by this point) and then went in for an hour or so of dental work - super fun! Little girl was again, so good, she sat in her bouncy chair in the dentist's office (his sister drove in from Coquitlam to do it for me - bless her too) but after 40 minutes or so started to fuss and eventually cry inconsolably - with me in the chair, mouth agape and the dentist trying desperately to finish while the poor little thing wailed and sobbed - it was horrible for me to listen to her sobbing like that, knowing that it was a product in part of me having taken her away for the weekend (new place) and then to set all day (new place) and then having her on schedule that was not her own and then...well, it just seems a lot to ask of a little baby like that. I felt awful once I fed her and calmed her, having to stick her in that damned car seat again, but what could I do? All I could do was promise her that today we wouldn't have to go anywhere at all - and I kept my promise, mostly because we have both slept for most of the day - we're both worn out! She has had snuffles (or snurrgles as one book calls them) all weekend and now even has a little cough, which breaks my heart. She's still sleeping now, even though we've been in bed almost all day - I think all the moving and changes have made it such that she wasn't sleeping nearly as much as she would at home, so she's catching up and hopefully healing.
Myself, on the other hand, I am still feeling wiped, despite big naps and early nights on the weekend and this big sleep today. I guess worrying about how this gig will go hasn't helped, and even though they have been very amenable, I see that I am plucking her out of her home and putting her out there and she is working too in a way. I don't suppose I can find a way to not feel guilty about going to work so soon in her life, despite knowing that I'm doing it because I think it's best for our family's financial situation, but still... I mean, we will certainly survive, if a little tired, but we will be fine and she won't even remember it - like most things I worry about not - the stupid car seat, the shots, the bathtub bobble - whatever mishaps are to come. I guess it is the beginning is my quest to be the very best mother I can be for her, because I simply adore her little face and want it never to look sad. It's a pipe dream, I know... but a mother's gotta try.

Horrible!

Today I took my girl for her 8 week immunization shots and I have to say, it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. It was a microcosm of the horrible push-pull of parenthood, where sometimes you have to hurt them because you love them, and they cannot possibly understand why. Here we were in the doctor's office and she'd been so good all day (as usual, really). She had on her bright pink sleeper and she was cooing and smiling with me while we waited, her little pink tongue darting in and out. She was great through all her little checks, weigh-in etc, but eventually she started to fuss and I knew she was hungry so I put her to the breast while the Dr. went to get the vials. She told me to hold her as I was and then proceeded to give her the first of four (yes, four!) big shots into her little pink legs - needless to say she screamed! She went from this lovely, happy little girl, trusting completely in her mother to this frightened, wailing purple ball of fire, fat tears dripping down her little cheeks, arms flailing every which way. She gasped and sobbed in a way that really showed how much it hurt her and it was so spontaneous, the way it made me cry too, I couldn't help it, it was like a reflex. It hurt me physically to hear that awful cry from my child as I held her in my arms for the other three shots, pressing my face against hers, hot with tears, hoping that the skin-to-skin would calm her. I pressed her naked belly against mine and rocked and whispered to her until she gradually calmed herself, pulling in short stabs of breath and little sobs until I could get her back nursing again. I rocked her and crooned and calmed myself down and when she was done nursing I lay her on the table to dress her again and she looked up into my face, her eyes full of trust again and smiled at me, full and wide and brilliant, as though it had never happened. I almost cried again to see how much this lovely little girl trusts me even though I brought her there and it confirmed for me once again that I would walk to the ends of the earth for her.

Complaints? Nah....

Funny, I've heard a great deal about the supposed downside to becoming a mother and though I don't deny that there are moments, I have to say that I have surprisingly few complaints and I feel that despite numerous troubles and setbacks, I have remained remarkably upbeat and positive - especially for me, who tends toward the negative. I really feel so content and happy to be this little girl's mother and I am so proud of her and of us for this accomplishment. I feel like I should be bitching about not enough sleep and not a clean house and not enough social time, but I really am quite happy. Each new day brings some new little moment with her, a new smile or coo or sound, another 'a-ha' moment where mommy thinks 'I know what's going on here' (and she's right!), I find each day very rewarding. This is not to say that I won't eventually become bored with being home so much or being more tied to a schedule than i have ever been, but so far so good. I feel genuinely honoured and blessed by this experience, I am constant awe of having made this lovely little creature. I love to watch her sleep, watching her funny little faces, her mad dreams in which her eyes are half open and rolling back. I love the way her arms and legs twitch asunder - today I had placed a rattle of keys in her tiny little hand and in a fit of baby palsy she threw them halfway across the room, causing me to laugh uproariously and her to join in with me. One thing Ez and I have certainly noticed is that we have laughed a lot since we've had her, it's marvellous. She is the happiest part of every day for me and I am madly in love with my daughter.

I suppose that if I had to complain it would be that she grows so fast and that the little tiny baby moments passed so fast - even though I really was paying attention. I think there are also issues with trying to find the balance throughout the day - to hold her enough and engage her enough and yet try to find time to get things done, to find time for me. Email though...it's such a damned distraction. Yet another distraction is the whole work thing. While I would like to just be off, I am also torn as I am lucky enough to be in a very flexible industry (although sometimes so flexible you feel like you've been flung right out of it, but I digress...) I have been going out for voice auditions and that has been progressively less stressful (so far) as she has been very accommodating - and so has the industry. I have been fortunate to get some commercials which take very little time and I'm so thrilled to have that opportunity since I receive no mat-leave at all. Next week, however, I am going back to 'real' work on Battlestar Gallactica - and I am nervous as hell. Nervous that I won't be able to concentrate, that she'll be freaking out and who's going to be watching her and how will I get there on time and how long with the days be and will they find clothes that fit me (ok, that's a big complaint - what the hell happened there? I feel like I have retained half a baby still - nothing fits!!) etc etc etc . Certainly I am exceedingly fortunate to have them call up and offer me another episode and to be accomodating to the fact that I am a nursing mother of a very young baby - but still, I have guilt and fear about going back to work so soon - even if it is only for three days. Ahh...to have such complaints, non?

my 8 week birthday!

ok - this one's all about me! mommy is doing this one-handed so...
i'm 10 lbs now, i coo and smile and am generally fabulous! See for yourself!