Parasites: The Next Generation

The thing I dreaded the most before I even became a parent happened on New Year's Eve. My son puked - a lot. And, I'm the kind of person who upon inhaling that acrid smell, I begin to wretch myself. The evening started out in fine order. Our family braved our first ever outing for an evening at a friends house. The kind that I remember as a child where the parents pack up the kids - pjs, favourite blankies and all - and head over to a friends house with the intention of staying late. Corbin was even excited that Auntie Naomi had a bed he could retire to when he was tired. We arrived to a warm house full of food, fine beverages & friendship. I fed Hamish while sipping on a G&T and Loch got Corbin settled in front of the television with snacks and a DVD of a train documentary of the Flying Scotsman. After Hamish was fed and happy, Naomi and I puttered around her kitchen getting more appies ready, listening to Christmas music - which is still allowed on New Year's Eve - and chatting. She even made me a fancy - but small - martini drink. I felt deliciously carefree.

At about 9pm, poor wee Hamish - who had a cold - became really unhappy. Suddenly, managing both him and 2.5, who now was up one and half hours past bedtime became a challenge. So, we packed it in and headed for home. I was feeling a bit off and not long after I tucked Corbin in, I lost all the appies and the martini. I felt better afterwards, but completely chilled to the bone. I pumped some milk for Hamish and then decided to head for bed. I quickly became achy as well as cold and was trying my best to warm myself with a heating pad and lull myself to sleep with a bit of Handel when I heard Corbin cry and Loch yell, "I need some help!" In that moment, I knew two things. 1. That it wasn't the booze and 2. That Corbin was also throwing up.

My poor lad was standing in the bathroom covered in vomit having puked on his bed, on the bathroom floor, in the toilet and in the sink. He had never really thrown up before and stood there with a sad look of shock and dismay on his face & jammies covered in chunks. I got him out of his wet clothes and ran him a bath. Once we had him in clean PJs and back into bed, I myself crawled into bed but not before being sick again.

Then, not 45 minutes later it all happened again. This time, Loch had got Corbin a bucket - well the roast pan to be precise. There are many things we, as parents, have to teach our children. And one of them is how to puke in a bucket instead of all over the front of your Thomas the Tank Engine jammies. Having already been sick myself, it didn't make me feel any worse to be around him. His puke did not make me puke. And, interestingly enough, when he puked the next day I did not have the urge to lose my cookies. Perhaps it is true that when you become a mom there are things you can do that before you were incapable of.

Be that as it may, I was still feeling ill and had to take care of Hamish. So, Loch took up residence on the couch so that he could hear Corbin's first cry and get to him to help the wee man learn to puke in a roast pan.

Somewhere in all of this the clock struck twelve and we swiftly moved from 2008 to 2009. Corbin was standing on the bathroom counter looking green with fluiids dripping down his face - tears, snot & vomit. Loch said, "Happy New Year Corbin - you look awful. Perhaps you'll look better when 2009 ends."

Poor Corbin was sick every 45 minutes or so throughout the rest of the night. I was cold and achy and not one of us - except Hamish - actually got to sleep before 4:30am. It was a dreadful night. We divided and conquered. He watched over Corbin and I took care of Hamish.

As I lay in bed in the wee hours of 2009 curled around my heating pad, I thought about my family and how in a crisis we pull together perfectly. Loch was amazing that night, completely attentive and so caring. He wiped Corbin's sweaty brow and he held my hair back when I threw up in the kitchen sink and in the midst of it all I found myself feeling completely and utterly grateful for my family.

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.
~The Wassail Song

I am the dinner table. I am breakfast, lunch and supper. I am a mid-morning, afternoon and midnight snack. You can call me blue plate special or fine dining. We have just finished four days of cluster feeding. The four week growth spurt took us by surprise. Apparently, it is not a given that you will remember everything from the first time ‘round. There we were, my husband and I, in our living room, on the couch last Wednesday with a fussy baby that viewed my breasts as an all-evening buffet. He was on and off the boob and crankier than the crane on the Island of Sodor. Loch googled ‘fussiness’ – how did the generation ahead of us survive parenthood without the internet? – only to learn that Hamish was simply growing. He ate and he ate and he ate and he was still hungry.

The dinner table is mobile. At 7am, I feed Hamish while reclining like a queen in my bed amidst stacks of pillows. Mid-morning, he has a snack in the ML section of the MacPherson Library. I’ve come to visit my co-workers to show off my newest addition. It is so quiet here in the stacks and I know that I’m a bit out of place when a young male student rounds the corner, sees me and immediately shifts his gaze away. But, even still I think to myself that the music score section of an academic library is a fine place to nourish both brain and body. At lunch, he eats snuggled in the cow patterned breasfeeding pillow while I supp on tuna melts and creamy tomato soup and watch a tapped episode of House. Crumbs from my toast falling and coming to rest on Hamish’s brown and red Please Mum outfit.

In the afternoon, he has a picnic on a wooden bench on the Westshore Walkway. Joggers pass by as he suckles his way to a brand new second chin. The air is autumn crisp and his fingers are cold, but the vanilla steamed milk pouring out of my breast is warm, sweet and fully of fatty goodness. A woman runs by and says, “Oh, I miss that – have fun for me.” I think for just a moment that I’d rather be jogging. At dinnertime, he feasts in the rocking chair. The slow back and forth motion matching the bobbing of his head as he drains me one more time. Before bath time, Corbin is the engineer and I am the conductor and Hamish is the passenger. He eats while I sit in a child sized blue plastic Ikea chair. I can do both at the same time, I tell myself.

After the bath and before I go to bed, he has one more snack. This time he is once again curled into the breasfeeding pillow while I eat my dessert. Chocolate sauce drizzles onto the favourite elephant jammies – the brownies made by my god sent chef of a husband. It’s 2am, Loch has fed him his midnight bottle to give me a break, and now it is my turn again. I sit on the couch with my feet extended but one knee up to help support my arm, which supports Hamish’s head. He latches on sleepily and consumes more milk. I am sleepy too. I gaze down at him affectionately. My neck is sore from the proud mama pull - that muscle ache that comes with gazing down at your infant adoringly while he eats. My own head is bobbing as I fight the urge to fall asleep while holding my son. At 5am, we resume that same position on the couch. This time the cat comes out believing that it is morning and believing that I will want to cuddle with him. I tuck my feet into the spaces between couch cushions to avoid them being smooched and drooled on by the feline cuddle monster. My son eats and he eats and he eats and he is still hungry.

When I’m not the dinner table, I’m employing a borrowed electric pump to extract four ounces of liquid gold. This will be used in the night when Loch is still up and I am resting – making more milk. My older son, Corbin, comes into the kitchen. He looks at me and then at the pump. “What’s that?” inquiring 2.5 year old minds want to know. I remind him of the episode of Teletubbies that he watched the previous week – the one where they marched the cows into the barn and hooked them up to a machine that sucked the milk out of them. “It’s the same thing,” I tell him. This satisfies his curiosity and he is off again to finish his puzzle. I am left on my own in the kitchen to watch the electric device suck my poor purple nipple into a chamber. The sound of the pump is rhythmic and soothing. The effects of its efforts are amazing. I watch as streams of milk come out of me, warm and fogging up the chamber of the pump. I can see the evidence of my body’s hard work as the bottle fills up. I am amazed that this liquid contains all that is necessary to not just sustain him but make him grow – he lives off of me and only me. He is thriving and lengthening and starting to fit into the clothes that he was swimming in just a month ago.

*written for the Momoir Project writing class on November 17, 2008

Today we visited the Doctor and our Wee little Hamish has grown from the 6.6lbs and 19 inches that he was when we left Victoria General Hospital to 9lbs, 16oz and 23 inches.

He's also grown another chin.

Corbin is 2.5 years and my newborn is 2.5 weeks. I’ve been feeling fabulous since Hamish’s birth until now. I wake up with the most excruciating tooth pain reminiscent of an infection I had 7 years ago pre root canal. Despite the nagging ache in my mouth, I am joyfully making bat, witch, pumpkin and cat shaped pancakes for breakfast. After all, it’s Halloween and being a Mom supersedes everything. I pour the wholegrain pancake mix into a measuring cup and Corbin dumps it into the mixing bowl while making cement truck type noises. I crack an egg in time with the rhythm of the throb in my tooth. Corbin starts to combine the egg and the mix as I pop a couple of pain killers and reach for the protein powder. I add some milk and help Corbin to mix the batter completely. The pan is warming on the stove as I spray the metal cookie cutters with cooking oil. Together we pour the batter into the shapes and Corbin sprinkles them with colourful sprinkles – a concession I make to create a fun cooking and eating experience at the expense of added sugar. When the pancakes are finished we ease them out of their molds and Corbin chooses to eat the pumpkin. I gingerly eat a bat, chewing ever so carefully to avoid aggravating that one tooth.

This morning, Corbin and his friend Lily are going to have their photos taken in Costum. We are having our friend, Erin, take professional photos just for the fun of it. Lily is a princess and Corbin is a prince. My girlfriend Kim and I hide on the stairwell just out of site with our babies. The toddlers listen to Erin much better when we are absent. I rub my sore left cheek and relay my toothache woes to Kim in the same story line that I tell her about the Halloween pancakes. The photo shoot is done and now Corbin needs to be taxied to his daycare Halloween party. After dropping him off, I decide to pick up a coffee. Afterall, I am still operating under sleep deprivation mode.

When I get home, I call the dentist. I tell her receptionist that I need to see someone between the hours of now and 2pm since I have to pick up my son. What I don’t say is that my son has an afternoon tea party scheduled at our house with Lily and so I need to pick him up from daycare early. She gets me in for 12noon. They x-ray and deliver the bad news that I have a good-sized abscess in one of the top left molars - a tooth that has already had a root canal. The pain has been steadily increasing all morning and I’m thankful that they have at least found the problem. They tell me that they are going to prescribe me antibiotics and grind down the tooth a bit as the infection has shifted it. I wonder how long this will all take as I don’t want to be late picking up Corbin. Then, they tell me that I will either need a dental surgeon to extract the tooth or perform some kind of next stage root canal to attempt to save it. Save it? You already tried to do that once. Take it out, I hear myself tell them as I wonder what time it is. Can I go now? I’m grateful that I have to get the prescription filled as it means I can stop at the store to get some fruit for the Halloween tea party. When I drop off the prescription, I badger the pharmacist with questions about how the amoxicillin will affect my nearly 3week old infant. I then pick out my tea party food, go home to set up the party, pick up Corbin, have the tea party with Lily & then Kim and I head over to her place for dinner & an evening of trick or treating. By 7:30 the whole left side of my head feels like it is throbbing. I recall Corbin’s newly attained Halloween book about the monster who wanted to dance. Frank did a cartwheel, Frank did a flip … unzip. I coming unzipped, I think.

That was Friday. Friday night I get maybe two hours sleep. I’ve come to the end of painkillers. The recommended dose says that I can’t exceed 6 tabs of advil. I had taken six tabs before 8pm. I don’t dare take anymore since I am breasfeeding. I sit on the couch, look at my husband & cry. I tell him that I would rather be in labour. On Saturday I’m calling the BC Nurses Hotline to find out if I can exceed the recommended dose. What will it do to my milk? Will my infant be ok? Will I be ok? Is my infant niggly because his tummy is bothering him and is this because of the penicillin?

I am at the end of my rope and I don’t have the energy to tie a knot. Tired, worrying about what the hell is going on in my mouth. Burdened by the concern for Hamish as I pop painkillers and antibiotics. What if it doesn’t get better? The nurse told me to go to emergency if the antibiotics are not effective. How will I know? What if I have to be hospitalized? Can Hamish stay with me? Will I have to stop breastfeeding? I am riddled with questions and in the relatively pain free moments provided to me via a cocktail of Advil and Tylenol, I am building train track layouts for Corbin and reading him stories.

In these moments of sanity, I am even more aware of the difference between this infection and the one I had seven years ago – sans children. I am aware that I carry with me the blessing and burden of motherhood and that when small people rely on you, a tooth ache is never just a toothache.

*Written for my Momior writing course on November 2, 2008. Since writing this piece, I have had the nasty tooth (#26) removed. The Dentist assures me that the extraction and subsequent new tooth are not something the tooth-fairy will cover. So sad, too bad.

Dear Hamish,


Last night we sat on the couch from 8:00pm through to 10:30pm. Although you had eaten before your bath, you ate and ate and ate and ate. And then you ate some more with the same kind of frenzy that a survivor participant would exhibit at a buffet. When you were not eating you were crying. Convinced that something was wrong, your father and I tried to read your body language. Your feet were kicking angrily and you bucked and waved your clenched fists in the air. Suddenly, I was reminded of when your brother was your age. We were so helpless - wondering what the heck was going on with him when he was unhappy. It suddenly flooded back to me. Ah, yes babies have fussy times. The evening was Corbin's and it looks as though it is yours too. Your Dad was my trusty research assistant when your brother was a baby and last night as we calmly sat on the couch scratching our heads, the laptop came out and Dad was busy googling 'fussiness'. And then it was that we rediscovered Kellymom.com, the trusty website that had assisted us with many of our breast-feeding questions 2.5 years ago. Seeing the familiar logo made me feel instantly at ease. Your Dad read from the list of reasons for fussiness - a refresher course that led to our "Ah Ha!" moment: Growth Spurt.

You were cluster feeding and I had been commenting to both Auntie Naomi and Auntie Kim on how hungry and thirsty I had been feeling all day. Your Dad and I felt armed with information that would take us through the night. We felt justified that as parents of a newborn for the second time that we had the situation well in hand. I resigned myself to sitting on the couch with you for as long as it took to fill your tiny belly again and again and again. In a nutshell, we felt like experts.

As I nursed you and admired how your feet have finally started to reach the bottom of my favourite jammies, I marveled at how much you had already grown. I was sad to think that soon your feet will soon be straining against the soft cotton fabric. These jammies, my measuring tool to assess your life and growth will soon be traded up for a size 3-6 months. It happens so fast. I remain amazed at how you are able to lengthen and fill out simply by taking in milk that comes from me. I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment in being able to give this to you. And, while I am sad that the favourite jammies will one day no longer fit, I will happily pass them on to Auntie Roz who can put them on her own bean - a measuring tool for the your cousin who is right now growing in her tummy.

You are one month old today. You have been grunting and making faces at us to show that you are none too pleased with the whole digestive process and Auntie Naomi says you sometimes have a look on your face that says, "Damn It! This body is too small for me!" However, you are also starting to really notice the world. You know the sound of my voice, your Dad's voice and your brother's voice. When you are content, your lips purse in an "O" shape and your eyes are wide seeking new lines & shadows to study. You've smiled a few time out of pure gassiness, but on a couple of occasions your Dad and I are sure that you have given each of us an intentional gummy grin.

I will continue to give you milk and you will continue to grow. Your spirit will soon have more room in which to reside and I just know that we will be seeing more gummy grins in the near future.

Happy one month birthday, my sweet angel.

Love Mama.