I have a confession.

[altarflame]

I've been pouring all of my most sincere moments into a private journal. It's for Jake, and most of it is directed to him, and it makes me feel like we're more connected and together than we are. I've been on the internet very little, and have all kinds of things I need to say, like Noel I DO hear you, your email made me really happy and I'm glad you're doing well with God - I'm sorry I'm not around more for you lately...and actually, Babs I think they threw my placenta away long ago and it was too late to test it by the time they knew anything at all was wrong with the baby. They're acting like the final word on where the infection came from is "who knows". I thought your skin puncturing idea was right on, though.

When I got to the hospital this morning his nurse told me that when SHE got there, the night nurse she was relieving had him out in the seat again, and was just leaning her head near him looking at him. And he was looking back at her. And she said that he hadn't gone back to sleep since his 5 am feeding, and just didn't want to be alone. These little anecdotes effect me so much. He's trying to sleep through the night, not letting them wake him to eat, and staying alert more and more through the day. He is a constant hum in the back of my mind. The nurses there cannot believe that I make it there everyday, what with living an hour away, having three other small children, gas prices, hurricanes, etc. I cannot believe I only make it up there once a day (even though it's for hours, sometimes). They tell me it's too much trouble, that I need to rest, and I wonder if any of them have ever had a freaking baby.

It's Saturday at 1:00, btw. Bring my picture ID, a carseat and his footprints, they told me. Let's just say I'll be there.


We have this tradition, Ananda and I and more recently, Aaron, that when it gets cold we make hot chocolate and go sit on the sidewalk under the stars and drink it and sing songs. It's usually close to Christmas so we sing Christmas songs, but we're having unseasonably cold weather right now. So Grant and Ananda and Aaron and I all went outside, with a big tray of homemade chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa from scratch (with whip cream and cinnamon powder on top, no less) and sang silly songs, like Old MacDonald and The Littlest Worm. Aaron gave me a big hug and said, "Mommy, you make the best food in the woy-old". These sorts of things are very normal to my kids, like the annual carving of a pumpkin and roasting of the seeds, to eat, and Green Eggs and Ham for Easter breakfast, but whenever I'm doing them, I'm constantly aware of how great it is, how much I wish I had had stuff like that, and how good they've got it. Especially tonight...none of our neighbors even have power for things like HOT chocolate or baking. We've been giving homeless people money as often as we can, but I keep wishing there was something more. Like, somebody on this block needs to run an extension cord to our house or we could deliver something to them or...something. I love all of our neighbors. We know everyone on our street on at least a passing hello and basic living situation basis.

For whoever it's relevant to (i.e., Bobby and nobody else local cares) Santa's Enchanted Forest is DECIMATED. Like half the trees are gone and half the remaining ones are ripped up/hanging askew. I drive by there on the way to the hospital, and it's just...pathetic. Some guy in a cherry picker was stringing a single strand of lights on this tree with no other trees around it and I was like...I don't know, I hope there's an asplundh truck on it's way with several dozen fully grown australian pines. Otherwise this year is going to be lame.

I'm sure I had lots of other things to say. All of it seems silly and disconnected right now. Maybe I'll go see if Grant and I can stay up through a (recorded) episode of Smallville and get some laundry folded in the process.

Comments

[housepoet.livejournal.com]

I know you hear me even if you don't answer. :)

[evrydayjnglbtch.livejournal.com]

saturday is sooooo close!

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow, actually :)

[brightsoul.livejournal.com]

They tell me it's too much trouble, that I need to rest, and I wonder if any of them have ever had a freaking baby.

seriously, i feel you on this one, but sadly i think they're used to seeing really sick babies whose mothers abandon them or make them a low-lying priority for whatever reasons.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Well, the only fair thing I can try to say on those parents' behalf is that most of the babies in there are in there for months (sometimes a year or more), not weeks, and so I suppose that on some level they have to resume "life as usual" (i.e. working, sleeping at night, etc...) I've actually struggled with this to some degree, too...I feel like I'm suspended, dangling, in between having a baby and HAVING the baby, and so long as I'm pumping milk, traveling, journaling for him, sitting at his bedside, yada yada yada, it feels like it will be over soon, like we still love him, etc. But after a week had passed and we knew another one was coming, I started thinking it wasn't fair, to the big kids, to have their routines gone, their nutrition absent, their school halted, and spend all of their time in the van or watching PBS or eating Wendy's, with a distracted basketcase mommy. Yet...trying to act as if we are/were a functioning complete family for a chunk of every day, with normal bedtimes and lessons and dinners, feels somehow like such a BETRAYAL. Like...we're denying that one of us isn't there. I compared it to moving on after someone close to you has died, to Grant, even though it is not that extreme.

Does this make sense?

[brightsoul.livejournal.com]

yeah, it does. and that's maybe just the guilt that comes with being a mother - how do you spread the attention/love/etc to all children when something arises that disrupts the norm.

all children are mightly resilient and yours are young enough to bounce back quickly, but also old enough to respect (even if they don't quite know the extent of what's going on) that these changes are temporary. i think you and your family are amazing - and tomorrow he comes home!!!!

i am so excited for you ;)

[mommydama.livejournal.com]

It definately does my heart good to know that the nurses are really trying to be there for Jake. It makes me incredibly sad to think they might be *used* to people not visiting their very sick babies, however! Lord, have mercy!

I was just thinking recently that we need more "rituals" around here. We don't have enough of them around holidays especially. I've been tryiing hard to incorporate more Orthodox traditons, espcially ethnic Slavonic things as Zoe and Luci are both Slavonic (and Italian, but I'm totally clueness about Italian traditions other than pasta!), but it is hard because they are so unfamiliar to me. My MIL had sweet Scandinavian traditions she did with her kids around Christmas, that I really love and want to use. And I need to learn some Guatemalan traditions for Mari to incorporate too. I get overwhelmed. Ack! I think too much.

Saturday cannot come fast enough.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

It makes me incredibly sad to think they might be *used* to people not visiting their very sick babies, however!

I said some things about this in a comment above, but there is another thing at work, too - demographics :/ I cringe to say it, because it sounds horribly judgemental and even hypocritical, given my own situation, but I think youth and poverty play in a lot. Most of the babies - 95% at least - in there are premature. And most really premature babies seem to be connected to poor mothers who didn't have any prenatal care or research, or nutrition, or are on drugs/smoking, or only young teens. So you take a girl who didn't know how to be a mother or even want to be, really, to begin with, and then you put her through a medical emergency and discharge her from the hospital without her baby. And tell her that to see him/her, she has to pay these big parking fees (it's $8 a day) and walk through all these buildings and enter a security code, and scrub her hands, take off her jewelry, put on a hospital gown and stuff her purse into some plastic, and then she'll get to sit in a chair by an incubator with a nurse hovering, feeling awkward and out of place and maybe trying not to cry in front of all these medical people, with monitors for other babies going off constantly in the background...It's a hard situation.

The other really represented group seems to be premature multiples born to affluent couples who used IVF. There is a 3 month old quadruplet in the same area as Jake, who is still only a third Jake's weight. Her parents have got her little isolette LAYERED in pink patterned linens that they come and change daily, and taped over with pictures of saints. Even though there are four of them to visit, mommy or daddy have been there holding that one three different times when I've been in with Jake. There are triplets in there, too, and quite a few sets of twins, and all of the multiples seem to have very overdressed (for an NICU, I mean), older parents (like 40-ish and up) who really revolve around the hospital.

I think too much, too, and I talk too much! Look how long this is...and Saturday cannot come fast enough. I'm sitting here, foolishly enough, because I don't know what to do with myself...spend the whole day up there? Or get this dump cleaned up? I have to get up now!

[mommydama.livejournal.com]

I felt this little lurch in the pit of my stomach when you were describing the affluent couples with the multiples. Because...well...that could have sooooo easily been me. Brad's entire extended family wanted that to be me. They weren't happy with our choice not to even try that route at first. I sometimes get these creepy sensations that there is another me in some other dimension living all these lives that I *might* have had, making the choices that I *almost* made. It wasn't easy to turn my back on the fertility drug/intervention method and choose not to even try it. I had moral problems with that route, but it was still so hard to let go of it. Sometimes I think I still haven't let go of it.

That was completely and totally off-topic. Sorry. I just had such an intense picture in my mind when you were describing them.

For that matter I had some really intense reactions to the descriptions of the young mothers. I'll have to journal about this whole issue soon. I'm having some thoughts that need to be purged.

[ariellejuliana.livejournal.com]

Tina, I'm often amazed at how empathetic you are. Reading your description of these moms, especially the young ones, made me immediately feel for them and understand them, even just a little bit.

Maybe you should write for publication sometime. I bet you'd be good at it. I bet your ability to be so empathetic and help others understand other people would be a good talent for writing children's books.

[ice-queen-ash.livejournal.com]

Not santas enchanted forest!
*cries*

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I'm praying for you.

[schleppermom.livejournal.com]

Ever since Monday night, I light the candels in the living room to knit, and my elder son climbs up to the couch and gets his "Thomas The Tank Engine" story read to him... the same four stories (we have only one book of Thomas).
Well, when we got our power back, the lights worked, but it was too early to turn any on, so I lit the candels. And there he was, with his Thomas book, climbing up the couch, expecting to be read his stories.

Gosh, I don't know what the sky looks like in Homestead, but my whole life, in the suburbs of Miami, I could spot no more than 11 stars. When most of the county lost its power, it was really nice to see the milky white sky, wasn't it? The first few nights, we went outside and looked at the stars... and now that everyone has their power and street lights are on, we really can't see much anymore. But it's cool to witness how traditions are born, still. =)

I'm so glad that your Jake is well enough to come home. How exciting!