Random Tidbits

I feared for his life near constantly while he was inside, but I really think I only feared for his existence once after he was out and in the NICU

I may have answered what's behind space with "space, the final frontier"

There's this link going around of 10 things not to say to preemie parents and I've got to say, these generally don't bother me.  I guess I credit most people with good intentions.  When you congratulate us on our savings that he can stay in small clothes longer, you don't mean anything bad by this, just commenting.  And recognizing that he's just a part of existence.

I love Chiron's face when his brother cries:

Luckily, Trajan doesn't cry often, but this is consistently Chiron's response to it, great concern.  This particular night, Paul actually had to just take him outside until Trajan was calmed down.

Trajan is a goober and I love him immensely:

Including his fashion sense and his energy:

And Chiron has giant eyes:

And in celebration of being about to hit 6 months now fits in 3-6 month clothes!

And I just realized that it will be a blink of an eye until he goes from that Bumbo to the Learning Tower in the edge of the picture.

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Dead Baby Blogs II

Why does this phrase stick with me so much? It's still true that " I can not do anything more for Aurelia. Period."

My other thought from reviewing this post was that I never wrote down what my real fear was.  My real fear was that Chiron would be dead too.  That they would go for fetal heart tones or a non-stress test and there would be nothing.  I honestly think it was over three weeks before I stopped thinking he was dead everytime they hooked the monitors up (which was several times a day).

I love that he was " galloping like a good centaur".

So, is there such a thing as a normal day-to-day experience type blog with a minor side of dead baby?  Is that a field?  Or just something to disturb the other dead baby seekers (because of the everyday banalities of the rest of my life) and the normal blog readers (because of said dead baby). 

We shall see.

See the Flipside

I said it once, but I need to remind myself, Attitude Matters.

I got stuck in meetings and discussions yesterday afternoon at work and so had to leave to pick up the boys having not pumped since noon or one or so.  So, I told Trajan that we would need to pump when we got to the house and then get on with our normal stuff.  He followed this up with a question of why.  I without much thought said something to the effect of "because Chiron likes milk." His response was "yes, but we need to pump more because of the hospital babies, right?  The sick babies need milk and so we pump extra to help them."

Stopped me in my tracks.  I've been whining about pumping, because it's a hassle.  But it took my three-year-old to drive home how important it is.  Not only am I providing Chiron with the food that is supposed to be best for his reflux, but I am also helping multiple preemies and sick infants.  Donor milk can be the difference between life and death due to NEC.  So, thanks Trajan.

Similarly, I've had this odd funk about the fact that Trajan will never have the luxury of just assuming that a pregnancy will be fine.  (Yes, I have been bothered about something my three-year-old might experience whenever he becomes a father.  I never said I wasn't crazy).  Well, I didn't see the flipside of all he has learned from this experience.  That life is precious.  That amazing things can be done.  That science and study are all important. 

My three-year-old declared the other day that there are some things that doctors can not fix.  Not a sentiment that you normally hear from a three-year-old, but it's true.  And I think his awareness of this is good because he also coupled with a statement that showed an understanding of personal responsibility.

So, time to see the good.  To see the magic.  To see what has been learned and achieved and conquered.  It doesn't mean I will not be aware of the sad and the bad, but I want to make a conscious effort to see the flipside.

Labels

aWhy our labels so challenging? Miscarriage versus stillborn? I know with almost every definition she was a stillborn, but I feel like a cheater in the stillborn club. She died at 24,0 or 24,1 which is the very edge of viability.

And then wasn't born for another six weeks.

And we also got a live baby when she was born.

Would I really feel better if there was a perfect label? No, but that doesn't stop it from bothering me.


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Cheers, Trajan Style

While we were in Dallas, we spent some time with my pseudo-aunt and her family.  Pseudo-aunt means she was one of my grandparents' exchange students during high school, but I've known her my whole life.  They came into the states from various European locations to drive Route 66 in RVs.

We went out to eat with her and Trajan asked to sit next to my cousin Matthew.  Now, Matthew is a pretty cool guy, but definitely from a preschoolers perspective.  He played professional baseball, is in great shape, smart and just all-around a good guy.  See:

Now my favorite memory of the two of them together was when the food arrived.  Trajan picked up his cheeseburger, looked at Matthew who also got a cheeseburger and said, "Cheers!"  Matt looked confused for a half-second then picked up his cheeseburger and bumped burgers with Trajan saying, "Cheers!"  He followed this up with the statement, "Cheers, not just for drinks anymore." 

This really amused the heck out of me.

I sadly didn't get a shot or video of the actual event, but you can see from Trajan's face how much fan Matt is for him.  Just wish we got to see him more often!

Teaser - Chiron

Ok, so there is a slighter possibility that I might actually document the start of Chiron's life as I got pictures onto a computer the other day.  Here's a teaser:

Driving Duo

Last week, Trajan went to Dallas and Oklahoma for the week.  I dropped him off and then headed back to Austin (about 200 miles) for the week.  He had a roaring good time.  Paul had to work, but Chiron and I headed up Friday to see some family/friends, for me to go to a board meeting and to pick Trajan up.  The drive up there was completely uneventful.  Stopped once for about fifteen minutes to feed him.

The drive back, not so much.  I'm sad because I took some moments to stick some notes in blogpress, but apparently didn't save it or publish as a draft, so my little notes are done.  Oh well, you mainly miss out on some quotes.

Headed out and made it about ten minutes before Chiron started crying.  I found an exit, got him out, changed an identified poopy diaper and determined that he wasn't hungry.  Put him back in and within a couple minutes he was crying again.  Pulled off the highway again and this time could find nothing I could address.  Started driving again, crying started again.  Decided to wait five minutes and then pulled off again. 

At this point I decided to try a modified cry-it-out procedure.  After that five minute period, I next drove for ten minutes with the crying, then fifteen and then twenty.  At the break after the twenty minute period I decided to try giving him a dose of one of his acid reflux medicines even though it wasn't due for another five hours.  Could have been coincidence, but there was silence for almost twelve minutes after that.  Then the wailing came back with a vengeance. 

Being the quick thinker that I am, I searched in maps for "elementary school" and found one less than four miles from our location at that point, so I proceeded there thinking that Trajan could play and Chiron could at least have some more substantial time out of the car and perhaps he was hungry at this point.

Note: google for shade.

We were in Lorena, Texas and let it be known that the Lorena Elementary School playground has no shade.  However, there was a nice treed area near the front entrance, so I decided we would go over there and Trajan could run around while I changed Chiron again and fed him.  He did for a while and dug in the dirt, but then said he wanted to go see if the playground was too hot.  It was 102 degrees.  But, I didn't see any real reason to not let him go see for himself that it was too hot and there was a shaded walkway from the school to the playground that Chiron and I could sit under, so we went over.

He had a ball.  Declared it was not too hot at all.  Slid, climbed, spun, laddered and more.  I didn't want to take Chiron into the direct sun, so I didn't go touch it, but it sure did look hot.

I shot some video of him because he was just carrying on so impressively with playing and singing, but between my being off under the walkway and some serious wind, not really worth showing.
Then back into the car where the screaming began again.  Trajan fell asleep and Chiron was still screaming.  Finally, during the 35 minute period he fell asleep and slept all the way to the house.  Phew.

Apparently Chiron wasn't traumatized for life, as he looked quite happy when we got home and he was playing a game with Daddy for game night:

Known Issue - Blogger Comments

So, apparently some of us are special: http://knownissues.blogspot.com/2011/05/were-investigating-issue-which-is.html.  So it's been a known issue since May 24. Apparently they have fixed it for some people, but I've logged out of all google sites, emptied cache and cookies, unclicked remember me, danced the voodoo dance recommended in the blogger help forums and still no luck. I've experimented with logging in as all kind of other things now, but I really want to just be able to login with my normal google account.

I know I'm whining about my free service, but I'm agitated.

Anniversaries and Birthdays

I recently read a blog post about the anniversay of the stillbirth of the author's child and it hit me like a ton of bricks that this is different with stillbirth in multiple birth.  The day Aurelia was born still is Chiron's birthday.  That seems like a pretty shitty thing to have to have on your birthday.  Am I right?

So, while I fully anticipate that I'll be a bit conflicted on his birthday (above and beyond the conflicted emotions that come from giving birth to any child ten weeks early), I don't want to intentionally be setting out to remember her "anniversary".  I started thinking that perhaps I should instead think of her "anniversary" as the day she died. 

While we don't know for sure when she died, she was labeled perfect and viable late morning on November 10 and was found to have no heartbeat early morning of November 12, so in my mind her date of death is November 11. 

At the time, I actually made a conscious effort to get a little confused on the date so that I wouldn't have a certain date to get myself all worked up except while this succeeded in my not knowing the dates (I just looked them up), it really was a complete failure because the day that she most likely died was Veteran's Day.  And unlike those polite holidays that move around so that you can't know their exact date, this one happens on the same date every year.

So, even without setting out to have an anniversary, I imagine I will never be a big fan of Veteran's Day.  So maybe Veteran's Day is just what I should take as her day?

But then I wonder if I really want to think of her, who really does just exist in my mind, on the day that she died?  The day that we lost her?  This is the argument for her being a part of December 23, it is the day that I met her.  The day that I held her in my arms.  The day I touched her skin, felt her hair, dressed and undressed her.  The day I knew her. 

Final thought: screw it all, she is a part of every day.  Yes, including Veteran's Day and December 23.


[This whole thought process is what produced my revelation on balance.  Obviously I haven't mastered it yet!]

Blogger - Ye Smite Me

Ok, it's worse.  Now not only can I not comment on my own blog, it won't let me comment on ANY blog logged in as google account.  This is a calamity, because while I may very seldom write blogs of my own, I comment all the time.

The world needs to hear my thoughts.  My feedback is integral to many people's continued competent existence! 

Seriously folks.

Blogger/Blogspot help

Ok, someone help me out here.  What am I doing wrong that I can't comment on my own posts?  It has the pulldown with select google account like normal, but then it leads me to sign in again.  After I sign in it goes back to what I've written, but in the preview shows "anonymous says" and then won't let me post...

Wrapped Baby

Balance

I've spent a fair bit of time in the last few weeks/months trying to think of what is the appropriate amount to think about/write about Aurelia.  Too much and I worry that I'm harping and not moving on, too little and it's like I'm trying to make her never have existed.  I've finally come to a big old revelation:

There is no right balance.

She is going to play into my thoughts.  She is going to likely take more of a written presence because she does not exist as a concrete presence.  Writing about her less will not mean that I'm wanting to just make Chiron into a singleton and be done with it.  Writing about her more will not mean that I am not healthy or not present in my relationships with others.  Accepting her and her death as a part of reality and dealing with it as it is is my best course of action.

Social Networking

So, I am still considering writing out Chiron's (and thus our whole family's) story, but just haven't really made strides in that direction.  The one thing I did do a couple months ago was to download my Facebook data so I could look through what I wrote there to help give me context and information.  I found this status:

has realized one thing she realy values about facebook: recognizing that in the good and the bad of life, you're not alone.  Others do and are experiencing similar things.  And more than that, people care.  Thank you all for existing.

I wrote this on April 19, 2010.  Before I was even pregnant.  While I believed it at the time, I did not know the degree to which it was true yet.  Another status I found was written on November 12, 2010 at 23:44:

is processing.  Sometime between Wednesday morning and before this morning, the girl twin died.  No abnormalies or infections to give an idea of why, so focusing now on giving the boy twin as long as possible to grow and develop.  This was just past 24 weeks.  No guarantees obviously, but hopeful thoughts.

The response to this showed the absolute truth of the first status.  So, thanks for existing social network. I knew I needed to update through Facebook and so I did and both the act of doing so and the responses I received really helped me through the following weeks/months.  Had it not been for Facebook, I know I wouldn't have reached out to tell people who reached out to help me since they knew through Facebook. 

And that's a convoluted enough sentence to justify stopping here.

Quantification

I quantify things, by nature and for a living. But I've come to realize you can't quantify a loss.

I am so thankful for Chiron that sometimes I feel I shouldn't mourn for Aurelia or feel like she counts as a true stillbirth.

I sometimes realize that I have a living, breathing, squirming example of exactly how old she would be.

I have just come to realize that it's impossible the rank the loss as either better or worse because they were twins. It is neither.

I hope my continued (not sure what the right word is: pain, loss, unhappiness, grief) over her death doesn't somehow mean I do not value him enough. Somehow they are independent at least in my mind.


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Quick Followup

So,  I went with a real light discussion of how he should sleep (re: my under or over reaction) and it seemed to go really well and he's been sleeping SIDS-appropriate everytime we have seen him since.  Also gave a good occasion for a reminder to the teacher of his adjusted age (the director is definitely very clear on this) which seemed to really help since he is the third child of his gestational age they've had at this small (100ish) daycare in the last year.

We remain very, very happy with all other aspects of his care and are really happy with this placement so far.

I'm either overreacting or underreacting...

So, Chiron had his first day of daycare yesterday. We placed him in the daycare that we'd picked back in late summer/early fall for the two of them. It's different from the two we used for Trajan, but we were happy with the choice. It's smaller (109 is what they are licensed for and they only have six infant spots), but they really seem to care about the kids and interact well. Paul described it something to the effect of less "show" and more "care". We received glowing recommendations from parents current and past, found a great state inspection record and just liked them. Chiron and I visited a couple times the week before and all seemed good.

Dropped him off for the first morning. He seemed happy and contented and responded well to some songs and rhymes and the like.

Picked him up and this was what I saw:

My first reaction was that he looked peaceful and content, then it hit me "oh my gosh, he looks different because he's on his stomach!" I didn't say anything, got him and left. Paul wasn't concerned. Trajan could roll from his back to his stomach by like five weeks and did so.

I went and found the daycare regulations for Texas (http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/documents/Child_Care/pdf/746_weighted-formatted-pg_adopted_12-10_rules.pdf) and they say

Subchapter H, Basic Care Requirements for Infants

September 2003

High Infants not yet able to turn over on their own must be placed in a face-up sleeping position, unless the child’s parent presents written documentation from a health-care professional stating that a different sleeping position is allowed or will not harm the infant.

§746.2427 Are infants required to sleep on their backs?

I have not said anything. I think the appropriate response is just to ask about it when I pick him up today? Part of the paperwork we filled out included what position he likes to sleep in and I only checked back. Note: he does not rollover from back to front typically (it has happened, but I'm labelling that as a fluke).

So I'm pretty sure I'm either over or under reacting and I don't know what. Oh, other than the whole sleeping on his stomach with a blanket thing, was very happy with his care yesterday. They got enough food into him, got him to take nice regular sleep intervals and he was in great physical shape and mood.

Argh.

Admit Defeat

So, I started getting information and pictures together to document Chiron's life to date a few weeks ago, but I am now going to admit defeat.  Well, at least admit defeat until X is in daycare (hopefully starting May 2) and thus I am able to work at work full-time.  Right now Paul is going into his office two days a week and I am going into mine three.  Seems like it would be enough, but it's not.  Even with working remotely, I am absolutely drowning.  I anticipate that I will have to come back tonight as soon as Trajan gets to bed and am hoping to make it home before he wakes up.  And then I'm considering risking bringing Chiron into the office tomorrow, that's how much I'm drowning.

So, I'm not writing the life summaries.  I'm not writing a post about how Trajan seems to require absurd amounts of sleep that make it difficult to get to play and interact with him enough given that we work full-time.  I'm not going to write about how I still haven't gotten used to the fact that most people have forgotten that Aurelia ever existed and so they will say stupid things.  I'm not going to write about how meal planning is made more complicated by a spouse following the four-hour body (though it seems to be working great for him, so I'm definitely not complaining).

I am going to order Jimmy John's despite being tired of it because they will deliver it and thus it will take the least time.  I am going to suck down water like even more of a freak than normal to keep myself moving and energetic. I am going to do my best to pull off the impossible.  I am going to send emails to people on a few of these projects to see if there is any wiggle room.  I am going to give up and admit that I will just use the previous presentors powerpoint for a training I'm teaching in a few weeks because I will not get mine (which is only a third done) completed by the due date of tomorrow.

I am going to fly like a superhero.  Whoosh!

Random Short Thoughts II

• Progress from last Random Short Thoughts as the Bristol Zoo lions now only produce smiles from me.

• Sometimes I wonder why we bother to feed this kid.  Obviously, not really, but I do get frustrated with the reflux.  Paul has a better attitude: "net is a percentage of gross"

• I may never get these events/picture posts up recapping his life.  I really did start them as requested, but progress isn't too fast.  Maybe when we all get back at work full-time I'll get more productive.

• I have now thought I was depressed-like twice since Chiron was born.  Both turned out to be blocked ducts/mastitis/breast infection type things.  So, if I claim to be depressed again, someone tell me to do a breast exam.

• It's odd to have a living, breather example of exactly how old a stillborn child would be at any moment.

• I really am going to write my pumping summary guide.  Really, before a good friend who asked about it goes into labor.

• I find it very amusing when I read Wordless Wednesday posts that are chockfull of words

• I think this is a great article.  We aren't there yet, but it's nice to know people think about it.  And it happens to be written by my fabulous OB.

• And I love this picture.  There are some that are more traditionally "sweet", but this just makes me happy

• I am really having fun being able to experience both boys together "on my own".  This is probably a normal thing for most parents, but between Chiron being in the NICU and not being able to go most places, I'm just starting to have opportunities where I can do things with the two of them.  And I like it.

PTSD

Was reviewing the symptoms of PTSD in an article a friend sent me and while I don't quite meet the diagnostic criteria relating to the 2010 pregnancy as I've taken to calling it, I do find I completely meet the criteria when considering my experience with braces. Seriously, nightmares and all.

In all seriousness, I had a blah day today. I got through their due date without even really a moment of pause (3/4), but from the time I labelled some milk for the donor milk bank this morning with 4/4, I've been in a funk.

Intellectually, I completely get the optimize the reality in which you live, but I do have these occasion moments of regret (is that the right word?) for a lost reality even though it never actually was.

A funk might not even be the right word, I was a bit sensitive to the world.

That's all.



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