My big kid today told me this: "Everyone in school hates their parents, but I love mine". I asked her if she actually said that out loud. Her reply? "Of course, what do I have to lose?"
So today I fed them all chips, seltzer, choc chip cookies, donuts and pound cake. They're happy, I'm happy.
Today, I am a good mother.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
WARNING: Dream Post
This morning my husband told me that no matter how fat and flabby I get, that he'll never leave me. And I believe him.
I've recently lost 15 or so pounds and I can firmly put my ass back into pre-Ruby pants. And that's alright. Alright indeed.
That feat is made all the more miraculous by the fact that I've been taking 20mg's of Lexapro for the past 3 months. If the FDA wouldn't have my head, I'd invite all the ladies over for daily trick-or-treating for some of this sweet mama candy. Side effects be damned! I'm skinny AND my libido is through the roof. UNH!
Anyway I *have* been having extra bizarro and off the wall dreams, though. Never a slouch in that department, I think the Lexapro brain is making all kinds of random connections while I sleep and churning out some fucked up fodder for my nightly visions.
Last night, I was (for some reason), bounding around my yard in teeny, tiny chinos and a tight grey tshirt. This get-up was really a bonus for enhancing my santa-esque midriff. Jiggles like a bowl full of jelly indeed. I was short, chubby and flabby and dancing around my yard IN FRONT OF MY HUSBAND'S NEW GIRLFRIEND. She was really nice, though. The kids seemed to like her.
I've recently lost 15 or so pounds and I can firmly put my ass back into pre-Ruby pants. And that's alright. Alright indeed.
That feat is made all the more miraculous by the fact that I've been taking 20mg's of Lexapro for the past 3 months. If the FDA wouldn't have my head, I'd invite all the ladies over for daily trick-or-treating for some of this sweet mama candy. Side effects be damned! I'm skinny AND my libido is through the roof. UNH!
Anyway I *have* been having extra bizarro and off the wall dreams, though. Never a slouch in that department, I think the Lexapro brain is making all kinds of random connections while I sleep and churning out some fucked up fodder for my nightly visions.
Last night, I was (for some reason), bounding around my yard in teeny, tiny chinos and a tight grey tshirt. This get-up was really a bonus for enhancing my santa-esque midriff. Jiggles like a bowl full of jelly indeed. I was short, chubby and flabby and dancing around my yard IN FRONT OF MY HUSBAND'S NEW GIRLFRIEND. She was really nice, though. The kids seemed to like her.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Hell & D Part II
We certainly take for granted the amount of and intensity of experience we have every single day on our unit. We hold and process on a spectrum of "healthy". Some of us keep it all in, some of us pretty much wear it from the inside out but most are in the middle. And most of the time, most of us just get through the day. We see what we see and we get through the damn day.
So when you get sucker punched in the face with the reality of your job it's kind of unnerving. Whenever I have the privilege of taking care of a deceased baby I feel the hit. I take my time, take care and talk to the sweet, limp, cold body and try to make the two of us not so alone in the room where these things take place. I don't always cry, but I always weigh the moment. I'm seeing so many things at once: A dead body, an infant who most likely wasn't old enough to live outside it's mother's belly. I'm seeing a mystery, science, love, fear... all of it. I weigh the moment and it is dense and heavy like stone.
The day after our patient dropped to the floor I was given the opportunity to see her. Her 36 hour postpartum body needed to be assessed by an L&D nurse. She was so still. Her uterus hard as a rock (as it should be) and her skin warm and pink. Tubes everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Machines thumping and whizzing. Her ICU nurse asked me about her breasts, should she be lactating? We developed a plan to try to get her breasts producing in the one in a million chance she'd be able to feel her sweet baby's sucks one day. I went to talk to her family about our thoughts. I never saw our patient again.
Back on my unit I went to the room where her husband, family and friends had been staying. I did my quick "nurse knock" and I walked in. Holymotherfuckingshit. HOLY SHIT. I was twisted instantly. I did not, could not understand what I was seeing. Nothing about the scene in that room made sense to me and I wanted to cry and run and leave. I had no intrinsic skills. Everything I did and said felt like it was coming from another mouth. Another brain.
I take care of women and babies. My patients are always women and are most always accompanied by women. Husbands, boyfriends and baby-daddies aren't foreign, are mostly welcomed but are never my patients.
When I walked in the room and faced the husband of our patient and I saw him laying in a patient bed, under the covers, eyes red, arm across his forehead, exhausted, pale, I took a bowling ball to the chest. It's not supposed to be like that. And to make the scene more marked with the absurd, he was surrounded entirely by other men. Men who looked at the floor, who were touching his bed, holding his hand & comforting their tortured, devastated friend, brother, son.
I will never forget it. And I never want to see it again.
So when you get sucker punched in the face with the reality of your job it's kind of unnerving. Whenever I have the privilege of taking care of a deceased baby I feel the hit. I take my time, take care and talk to the sweet, limp, cold body and try to make the two of us not so alone in the room where these things take place. I don't always cry, but I always weigh the moment. I'm seeing so many things at once: A dead body, an infant who most likely wasn't old enough to live outside it's mother's belly. I'm seeing a mystery, science, love, fear... all of it. I weigh the moment and it is dense and heavy like stone.
The day after our patient dropped to the floor I was given the opportunity to see her. Her 36 hour postpartum body needed to be assessed by an L&D nurse. She was so still. Her uterus hard as a rock (as it should be) and her skin warm and pink. Tubes everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Machines thumping and whizzing. Her ICU nurse asked me about her breasts, should she be lactating? We developed a plan to try to get her breasts producing in the one in a million chance she'd be able to feel her sweet baby's sucks one day. I went to talk to her family about our thoughts. I never saw our patient again.
Back on my unit I went to the room where her husband, family and friends had been staying. I did my quick "nurse knock" and I walked in. Holymotherfuckingshit. HOLY SHIT. I was twisted instantly. I did not, could not understand what I was seeing. Nothing about the scene in that room made sense to me and I wanted to cry and run and leave. I had no intrinsic skills. Everything I did and said felt like it was coming from another mouth. Another brain.
I take care of women and babies. My patients are always women and are most always accompanied by women. Husbands, boyfriends and baby-daddies aren't foreign, are mostly welcomed but are never my patients.
When I walked in the room and faced the husband of our patient and I saw him laying in a patient bed, under the covers, eyes red, arm across his forehead, exhausted, pale, I took a bowling ball to the chest. It's not supposed to be like that. And to make the scene more marked with the absurd, he was surrounded entirely by other men. Men who looked at the floor, who were touching his bed, holding his hand & comforting their tortured, devastated friend, brother, son.
I will never forget it. And I never want to see it again.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Hell & D, part I
So, you know... life is a bitch. A bitch because that shit is closely followed by death.
I think a lot about what will be the thing to tug me back to the keyboard and write. When I'm driving a million, jillion things drift in and out of my mind and for moments of time every single day, I am brilliant! I have the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD TO SAY. But then I get home and someone needs a hug, a sandwich, a clean ass, a stern word or a damn drink.
It has been a month of flux. And while I can say I am happier than I have been in years, there has been damage. Sadness. Grief. Stress. Tears. Layers have been peeled and the icky sticky underneaths have revealed gifts I wasn't ever prepared to have. I don't think I'm particularly worthy of good things (not feeling sorry for myself, it's just the way it is in the mind of Chez OBrien) but I am receiving my bounty with gratitude (a gift in itself).
Yesterday afternoon, at the memorial service for the 32 year old patient who died on our unit last week, I was thrust into the infinite space of love and light of a friend so precious. I don't touch her enough but yesterday, I couldn't let go.
How do you pound on the chest of a dead woman for an hour to give her newborn baby one sliver of a chance to feel her mother's warm skin one last time and then come face to face with her mourning and devastated family? How do you do that with grace and humility? My friend did that. My badass, beautiful, brutally strong friend.
I think a lot about what will be the thing to tug me back to the keyboard and write. When I'm driving a million, jillion things drift in and out of my mind and for moments of time every single day, I am brilliant! I have the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD TO SAY. But then I get home and someone needs a hug, a sandwich, a clean ass, a stern word or a damn drink.
It has been a month of flux. And while I can say I am happier than I have been in years, there has been damage. Sadness. Grief. Stress. Tears. Layers have been peeled and the icky sticky underneaths have revealed gifts I wasn't ever prepared to have. I don't think I'm particularly worthy of good things (not feeling sorry for myself, it's just the way it is in the mind of Chez OBrien) but I am receiving my bounty with gratitude (a gift in itself).
Yesterday afternoon, at the memorial service for the 32 year old patient who died on our unit last week, I was thrust into the infinite space of love and light of a friend so precious. I don't touch her enough but yesterday, I couldn't let go.
How do you pound on the chest of a dead woman for an hour to give her newborn baby one sliver of a chance to feel her mother's warm skin one last time and then come face to face with her mourning and devastated family? How do you do that with grace and humility? My friend did that. My badass, beautiful, brutally strong friend.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Not far from the tree... sort of
Yesterday I realized that there is one fantasy I've had for my son's future is actually a guarantee. Guaranteed only by his Fragile X-dom.
My son will always be sweet. Will always love and respect women. Will never be a dick-head or a bully. He won't be aggressive or mean. Thanks to Fragile X, my son will be a good man and for that, I am grateful.
My son will always be sweet. Will always love and respect women. Will never be a dick-head or a bully. He won't be aggressive or mean. Thanks to Fragile X, my son will be a good man and for that, I am grateful.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
11/16/2010
Dearest, loveliest, sweetest most confounding baby,
Happy birthday, son. Today you turn two. Today you embark upon your third year tucked up deep inside my heart & guts. The day you were born was strange and wonderful as we all knew it would be. Windy and warm and submerged in fluid. So much fluid. And then there you were: purple, motionless and HUGE. Within seconds, you were wailing, I was wailing and our adventure began.
Two years later, you are loving, tiny and endlessly sweet and trusting. Aside from your size, you haven't changed a bit. You have always been Lincoln. And you always will be.
I try and try and try to take the beautiful advice that we haven't lost a thing; that that imagined boy never existed. That it's been you all along. It's hard, though. Hard.
Maybe next year I'll tell you that I've stopped crying every day. Maybe next year I'll be braver, calmer and less itching for a fight. Maybe next year I will be closer to having figured out how to make my world smaller yet more infinite at the same time. Maybe next year, maybe next year.
I love you, Link and maybe next year you'll be able to say it back to me.
Happy birthday, son. Today you turn two. Today you embark upon your third year tucked up deep inside my heart & guts. The day you were born was strange and wonderful as we all knew it would be. Windy and warm and submerged in fluid. So much fluid. And then there you were: purple, motionless and HUGE. Within seconds, you were wailing, I was wailing and our adventure began.
Two years later, you are loving, tiny and endlessly sweet and trusting. Aside from your size, you haven't changed a bit. You have always been Lincoln. And you always will be.
I try and try and try to take the beautiful advice that we haven't lost a thing; that that imagined boy never existed. That it's been you all along. It's hard, though. Hard.
Maybe next year I'll tell you that I've stopped crying every day. Maybe next year I'll be braver, calmer and less itching for a fight. Maybe next year I will be closer to having figured out how to make my world smaller yet more infinite at the same time. Maybe next year, maybe next year.
I love you, Link and maybe next year you'll be able to say it back to me.
Friday, November 12, 2010
The unkindest cut of all
Yesterday morning I had a patient for about an hour post-partum. Lovely woman with the purest, sweetest smile. I walked in to meet her and found her baby ravenous at her breast, cooing in between gulps.
I read in her chart that she was from Somalia and while I wanted to ask her how she came to be in the States, it just never came up.
When the babe was whisked away to the nursery for his bath, it was time to get my peaceful, happy patient up to the bathroom to pee, change her gown and get washed up.
I'm a bit of an over-achiever when it comes to assessing perineums after delivery. While the mom is perched on the toilet, I hunker down like Johnny Bench with my peri-bottle filled with warm water and get a good look at the situation. Holy-fucking-bat-shit-craziness-from-hell. I was not prepared for what I saw. Was. Not. Prepared.
The nurse I got report from is a bit of a dolt and often leaves out pertinent pieces of information. I know this, so I am always geared up to do extra work when I take over on of her patients.
Yesterday, though? Yesterday I wanted to reach out and punch that nurse square in her face for neglecting to tell me that this woman had been subjected to a full, radical, female circumcision.
I wanted to curl up and cry right there on the bathroom floor. I'll never, never forget it.
I read in her chart that she was from Somalia and while I wanted to ask her how she came to be in the States, it just never came up.
When the babe was whisked away to the nursery for his bath, it was time to get my peaceful, happy patient up to the bathroom to pee, change her gown and get washed up.
I'm a bit of an over-achiever when it comes to assessing perineums after delivery. While the mom is perched on the toilet, I hunker down like Johnny Bench with my peri-bottle filled with warm water and get a good look at the situation. Holy-fucking-bat-shit-craziness-from-hell. I was not prepared for what I saw. Was. Not. Prepared.
The nurse I got report from is a bit of a dolt and often leaves out pertinent pieces of information. I know this, so I am always geared up to do extra work when I take over on of her patients.
Yesterday, though? Yesterday I wanted to reach out and punch that nurse square in her face for neglecting to tell me that this woman had been subjected to a full, radical, female circumcision.
I wanted to curl up and cry right there on the bathroom floor. I'll never, never forget it.
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