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My father died on Saturday.
My son took his first steps last night.Current Mood: joy and grief can coexist
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So. Summary update on the baby: he's crawling, he's cruising, he's currently sick for the first time ever and hating it, he still desperately wants to walk. He's practicing standing up without holding on to anything (his record is about four seconds) and trying to figure out how to stand up without pulling himself up (he gets to hands and feet, and then is stuck, but he can pull to stand one-handed). He has no teeth.
I'm struggling to stay afloat because my father's cancer treatment wasn't going well, he's been in and out of hospital (currently in), and a week ago I was told he's been given 3-6 months to live.
So that's why I'm still a lousy correspondent.
Tuesday is my birthday. 15 days after that is Christmas. I was really excited about those firsts with my son, now they might also be my lasts with my dad.
It's been quite a year.
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Okay, so. Several months into parenthood, and how is it?
Wonderful. Yesterday I unironically started crying because of how much I love him and how amazing it is when his little face lights up to see me.
He's just the cutest, and he's the sweetest, happiest baby ever. We're very lucky.
( Just baby ramblings. )
Also I had the first of my annual "see if the cancer came back" scans. I have a followup with the oncologist, but they didn't call me with any urgent comments so I assume it's probably fine, I hope.
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I should update this icon. That picture is about twenty years old.
Because of a silly Star Wars tumblr post we saw we refer to the baby's crying exclusively as "screm". He screm, he scremming, he scremmed.
He's actually a fairly cheerful baby by nature, but his digestive system causes him to Suffer.
I've learned things! I think some of these things weren't things last time I was dealing with babies a lot.
For example, you can get a feed thickener you can mix with a bit of milk and give the baby before and partway through feeding, which helps with reflux. It has the side-effect of causing constipation, which in our case is a secondary benefit because adjusting his poo frequency from "30-40 times per day" to "every day or two" is a significant improvement. His little butt was so raw it was distressing for all of us.
Especially since the first treatment option we tried gave him a rash.
Fortunately, C's cousin is a child health nurse and had some great suggestions, including the feed thickener, which also has him throwing up less. And choking less.
The combination of The Modern World plus her profession created the very weird situation that is texting someone close-up photos of our child's unhappy butt. As she noted: not really up to the usual standard of the pictures I text to various family members.
He's started smiling at me. This is, of course, the most joyful thing ever.
Updates on his likes and dislikes:
Likes: His parents, being cuddled, milk, dummies (sometimes), having his feet tickled (mood-specific, but when he's not in the mood he doesn't care)
Dislikes: The touch of moisture (his nemesis), his thickened gel, being dressed or undressed, two specific bodysuits we have for him
Later this week we will probably add "getting needles", since he's due for his first round of vaccinations. In the hospital he got the Hep B vaccine and only cried for a couple of seconds, then didn't care at all about the heel pricks, but he was all of two days old then and was very "this might as well happen" about most things. He's since acquired a lot more opinions.
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So the baby is three weeks and three days old and sometimes he lifts his head, and I'll often praise him for it. Especially because sometimes it's inconvenient but I'm aiming for praising the good because he is not even a month old, obviously he can't actually do anything wrong.
When I say, "Good head lifting! So strong!" I sometimes get the Barenaked Ladies song What A Good Boy stuck in my head.
I sing to him a lot, but the unedited words don't seem appropriate for such a tiny baby, so I've been gradually filking it.
What A Good Boy (Sami Singing To A Newborn Version)
When you were born, we looked at you and said
What a good boy, what a smart boy, what a strong boy
And when you were born, we looked at you and said
What a good boy, what a smart boy, what a pretty boy
You've got these hands hitting you in the face
They don't wanna do anything that it seems like you want to do
They push your food, they wave around
When you get control, that will be good
It's a work in progress.
Talking to babies is important, so I say a lot of nonsense at the moment.
The baby continues well. He is growing freakishly rapidly (I mean, at a normal rate, but at this age, that's freakishly fast.)
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So, the baby had a rough afternoon. Midwife visit which meant health checks (which he hates) and a bit of schedule disruption. By about 5pm he was a bit overtired and ratty and wouldn't settle down at all.
I decided it was worth seeing if he was overstimulated, so I took him upstairs to my room and basically had him in a dim, quiet room (I had white noise on until there was a risk I'd fall asleep because it's the white noise I usually sleep to) and he finally settled down.
He really needed to sleep, so... three hours of lying on my bed with him sleeping on my chest for me!
While I was doing that, I called my dad (speaking softly) for some information I urgently needed.
The baby made a little noise while I was talking to Dad. Just one of those little baby noises newborns make.
My dad - who is, normally, kind of a robot, he's never been officially assessed but we're pretty damn sure he's autistic - broke off mid-sentence to coo and get audibly choked up about the existence of his grandson. Who has, and I quote, "Won [his] heart."
I'm having feelings of my own about it.
Dad's going through a rough time with his cancer right now and a friend of his died last week. I think the baby might be giving my father a reason to keep going.
And just... my daddy loves my baby.
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So my concussion specialist is currently giving me a break from pretty much all of my brain exercises, because the combination of stress and excitement about the baby is basically guaranteed to be frying my brain.
Braining is really hard right now. I should experience significant improvement once V and the squirmloaf are safely separated.
The baby is very squirmy. He is also very loaf. He's still horizontal - at 38 and a half weeks, this is unusual - and various movements make V's tummy form a very emphatic loaf shape. So for these last few days: squirmloaf.
We're pretty much ready for him, which at least has stopped my stress levels from increasing.
However, my uncle died this morning.
Not my biological uncle, but the uncle first-gen kids have who is probably also first-gen - mine's Italian - who is much, much closer than your biological family.
It's hard to even process. I think because my brain is so fried.
My physio told me yesterday about the conversation he had when he was doing handover to one of my other physios - at varying frequencies, I see three, at the moment - and there was a bit that has helped me put into perspective my frustrations with the slow progress of my rehab.
Physio 1: She had this surgery on this date, and this surgery on this date, and then a few months ago she had surgery on her lung.
Physio 2: So she's in a wheelchair?
Physio 1: No, she'll just walk right in.
Physio 2: Are you serious?
So even if I can't walk that far or stand that long (currently I can walk longer than I can stand, it's a thing) I'm probably doing quite well actually.
(I said as much to Physio 1. He said YES, YOU ARE DOING GREAT.)
Maybe by the time the kid is running around I'll be doing okay for keeping up.
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Christmas was EXHAUSTING.
I come from a first-generation immigrant family. Christmas growing up was my parents and sister, maybe we go see some family friends.
Quiet. Peaceful. Admittedly somewhat dull.
This year? THIS YEAR? Hoo boy.
Obviously it's somewhat my own fault, what with how I got myself into a committed relationship with a partner who not only has a family but also has a husband and he has a family, so on Christmas Day we had V's older sister and her husband and kids over for morning tea, then her younger sister and her husband and kids and their parents for lunch, and then my parents for dinner... and then on Boxing Day we went to C's family lunch.
V's brother and one of C's brothers weren't even there. Still kinda overwhelming!
With the help of V's sisters and one of her nieces we've made substantial progress in getting the house ready for the baby. We're talking about plans for decorating the nursery. So far in terms of Unique and Special Decorations all that's really there is a little drawing of a Totoro on the wall inside his cupboard, it's super cute and I'll have to show a picture of it at some point.
I drew it. Helpfully, I got paint markers for C's family's secret Santa.
The baby is, of course, continuing to grow and be more active. Highlights in externally observable development:
- I startled him. I didn't mean to, but I was lying with my head in V's lap and I was being performatively outraged about something for her entertainment and I was maybe slightly loud. He had been asleep, but he jumped.
- Last night, he was very active, but it was getting close to V's bedtime and I've been encouraging him all along to make sure he doesn't keep her from sleeping. I sang him a lullaby... and it worked. He stopped kicking and moving around.
- Today I had to sing him two lullabies. He'd been quiet during the first one, but started kicking again as soon as I stopped singing. The second one he stayed quiet.
- Sometimes he presses and holds against V's tummy instead of just kicking. If you press back gently a couple of times, he stops. (It gets uncomfortable for her.) I'm not sure it's required to say, "High five, baby! High five!" when you do it, but I do.
I still suck at reading my reading page. In my defence the last couple of weeks have been rough for concussion stuff. Going through all the stuff for reorganising to clear baby room is a lot of memory things that are still very taxing for me, and then So Many People and so many screaming children at Christmas.
I'm not sure I could have managed Boxing Day, actually, but for the first couple of hours I wasn't out with the crowds, I was in one of the bedrooms playing Lego with one of the nephews.
Before that he gave me a tour of the house (or at least, of all his toys in all the rooms in which they were located). As he was showing me around, he noted: "You're very big! And fat. But really big!"
It is hilarious to me that he clearly wanted to be clear that he wasn't calling me fat... by specifically drawing the distinction between the fact that I am fat and the thing where I am very big, because he is three feet tall (and four years old).
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Surgery update: I am recovering well. I am home. I am astonishing and impressing every doctor and physiotherapist with how generally sprightly I am.
The physio I saw this morning was also slightly awed by my collection of doctors, since I have basically The Best Respiratory Physician, The Best Sleep Specialist, The Best Oncologist [For Lungs], and The Best Cardiothoracic Surgeon.
It just sort of happened? I needed a respiratory specialist and The Best One was still taking new patients at that time, and he referred me on to the sleep specialist (who works with him) and the oncologist, and the oncologist referred me to the surgeon.
Exciting Life News Update:
So. In 2021 I had a hysterectomy I didn't want (also because cancer; I continue to blend Very Lucky and Very Unlucky, in that I've had TWO cancer findings at the age of 42, which is A Lot and Very Unfair, but also they've both been caught early enough that it was handled surgically with no chemo/radiotherapy required).
I was devastated. It was a whole grief process, especially because I hadn't quite given up hope of motherhood, which I desperately wanted. I thought I'd never have the chance to be a mother and I cried a lot and all of that.
Except.
IT TURNS OUT.
I am in fact going to be a mother.
I'm just not going to be the one getting pregnant. I will be one of my kid's three parents, because ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) velithya is pregnant and I'm going to be co-parenting.
Special mention of gratitude goes to the sonographer who did the fourteen-week anatomical scan (everything looks perfect!). She worked late to add us to the end of her list a couple of days before I had lung surgery specifically so that I could be there for the scan.
I would have been devastated to miss it. The baby was doing somersaults and flips and kicky feet and I got to see it, and it means so much to me. I got to watch as the sonographer zoomed in to count fingers and thumbs and have the reassurance of watching as she checked that blood vessels are going the right way, all four heart chambers are there, all of the everything.
When my child is old enough to understand the words, I will never be saying, "Just be normal!"
But at this point, "everything's normal" are sweet, sweet words to hear.
There's no range for being, like, better than normal at this point. At this point I want normal. Most of all I just want healthy.
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