The wealth of time when the kids are away

My kids are away with the in laws, and have been for the past month.  As such, it's been an interesting experiment of living as an empty nester, a parallel universe of "what if we never had kids?" and how our lives would be otherwise.  Jason and I continue to work at our respective jobs. Immediately new routines are in play now.  We are much more relaxed about our evenings. Many evenings are spent in vegetative states in front of the computer.  I'm working myself up to significant eye strain as I read articles after articles, or working through the pile of books I've been meaning to read for a long time now.   After work, we either eat out if we feel like it, or we each slurp down something hastily put together. Instead of 30-40 minute affairs, our dinners are much simpler and perfunctory.  We both are not big foodies, food is a necessity, not something emphasized or prioritized, at least not by me.  We have gone bike riding a few evenings.  Or would take a walk.  Last night we went out for a movie on a Friday night (when was the last time we did something so prosaic?)  It is liberating to be able to do so just because we want to.  Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the freedom and latitude, but....(you know this was coming)

Two things - we both know this is a temporary reprieve from our parenting duties, an amazing gift from Jason's parents.  Therefore we enjoy this time very much so.  But now that we have become parents, it's not really possible to become non-parents again.  Meaning, this is now ingrained into our psyche and makes us our identity.  If we were ever so unfortunate to lose our children for whatever reason, we would still not become non-parents, we would simply become bereft parents of lost children.  That is a big difference.  And the lack of these precious two in our lives will forever be a minus.

Second thing - again, because it is only temporary, I'm giving myself license to not be quite as productive as I otherwise could be.  Still every evening after work there seems to be a wealth of time stretched out in front of me to do as I please - quite luxurious in fact.  Jason, more disciplined than I, practices his piano and works on his languages.  As for me, I just putter the evening away doing various things, as my heart desires.  It underscores a fact to me.  When we are very busy, we often bemoan the lack of time to do what we want.  To some extent it is true, but on the other hand, when we are given a wealth of time, it is easy to waste said time too.  It's not easy to truly manage our time wisely and schedule accordingly the things we want to do.  Far easier it is to be busy with the trivial routines of life and then complain of lack of time, then to actively schedule things we want to do when we want to do them given the time we have.  If I were truly disciplined, I could have used this past month to acquire a new skill by now with all the evening hours at my disposal.

This reminds me that I've been meaning to sit down and schedule out my evenings, much like doing a budget.  Instead of budgeting my money, I should budget my time.

And now...a parent of two!

I realize that I've missed some key years of Matthew's life in documenting the really cute or memorable things that he's done.  These things would not matter to anyone else, but they would provide hours of wonderful recall and reflection for me years later when the children are grown.  I imagine the kids would love to hear about what they were like too, from "fresh" eyewitness accounts that were faithfully documented close to when they happened.  So I think going forward, I'm going to make blogging about my children a key part of my life, for their sake and for my own interest.

To start, I think it's fair to talk about the newest addition to our little family.  Penelope Grace Tu joined us on 1/10/15 at exactly 5:09 PM.  Her arrival was defined by many ambivalent starts and stops, slow progression of labor.  I arrived at the hospital at around 3:30 AM that day.  I had already been having 1 minute long contractions every 4 minutes for close to 2-3 hours.  However, with Matthew, my contractions rapidly progressed to becoming VERY uncomfortable within that span of time. With Penelope, the contractions simply came along and then went on their merry way, and I was still simply...waiting.  The reason I finally decided to come to the hospital though was that I was passing bloody mucous, much more frequently and much more copiously than I can remember with Matthew.  I figured, I must be in early labor, even if it's still not uncomfortable at all and I was curious as to how dilated I may be.  I thought, this being my second full term pregnancy, I should be progressing fairly rapidly.

I arrived at the hospital, thankfully having made arrangements with a sweet family friend to stay over with us to watch Matthew.  We had a very friendly nurse in Observation settle us in.  I wish she could have been my nurse all night.  Then the Ob came in, and unfortunately, I was only found to be 3 cm dilated at that point.  However, based on the tocometer, my contractions were actually every 2-3 minutes apart.  I was told to just wait another 2 hours (this became a running joke and recurring theme that day - "wait another 2 hours"), but was encouraged to walk around the unit.  Which I did with Jason, one of the many waddling laboring women, slowly making a promenade and having to stop every few minutes due to contraction pain or shortness of breath.  Two hours later, I had advanced 1 whole cm.  The kind OB decided to admit me, it was a judgment call and completely within her rights to tell me to go home.  But thankfully she did admit me, because by then, the contractions were getting more uncomfortable.

So I continued to truck along, waiting for my labor to progress.  By 8 AM, my pain was fairly great.  I finally gave in and asked for epidural.  I held out for as long as I could because I know getting an epidural may slow things down more, but the pain was getting to be fairly intolerable.  Of course, by the time I requested the epidural, the anesthesiologist was otherwise occupied elsewhere.  It would be another hour before I could get it.  Meanwhile, my nurse gave me a 50 mcg of fentanyl.  I felt its effects immediately, in the form of becoming very pleasantly woozy, everything started to come to me at a much slower warped pace.  I didn't mind the drugged out feeling, as it dulled the pains, but made it hard for me to respond coherently to my nurse.  Even in my drugged out state, I wondered if I would start to get nauseous, or experience other side effects of fentanyl.  

When I finally got my epidural, a curious thing happened...again!  My pain was utterly controlled on the left side, but I continued to feel pain on my right.  This had happened with Matthew too, which I told the anesthesiologist.  She told me it's likely to be an anatomical issue, I wondered if I had a septum in my spine.  She set me up with a PCA though and told me to lie on my right side for gravity to work on the medication.  It worked!  I was able to gain relief on both sides and relax into sleep.

From 9:30 AM then, until about 4:30 PM, every few hours or so, I would get checked out by the OB, and was told that I was progressing, cervix effaced, baby descending, etc, but the dilation is still taking its sweet time.  Thankfully, the baby's heart rate remained strong the entire time, and I had no other signs of distress.  Finally at 4:30, right when the OB came in again for a checkup, my water broke, I was 100% dilated, and ready to go.  Things moved quickly from then on, and before I knew it, I was asked to push hard hard hard.  For some reason, when it's pushing time, inevitably it reminds me of being in sports. It's game time and the spotlight is on me, there are these people surrounding me, egging me on, coaching me, telling me to push push push and I'm complying as best as I could, with one very singular goal in mind.  This part was easy with Matthew and thankfully easy with Penelope as well.  I birthed her in about 15 minutes and this beautiful little floppy screaming thing was suddenly on my body.  

The whole process was so prolonged that Jason was able to savor it more this time.  He scrounged up enough courage to see Penelope delivered and also cut the cord. My daughter came out into the world very distraught at losing her cozy warm womb.  She was inconsolable for a good 30 minutes, it seems like.  But she finally calmed down enough to get her measurements.  At birth, she was 6 lbs 11 oz, though I still have trouble seeing how she's 2 oz heavier than Matthew when her head is so much smaller, she's shorter, and she's not noticeably chubbier.  I think it was all meconium, personally....

With Matthew, everything happened so fast that emotionally I had no time to process his birth.  When he came out, I remember being very calm, methodical, checking to see if he has his ten fingers and ten toes.  I didn't have nor even felt close to having an emotional outburst of any sort.  However, that doesn't mean I was not emotional, I think it just took much longer to catch up with me and did so in the days that followed.  With Penelope, I simply felt gratitude and relief that we are safely done with the birth process, but I had no illusions the coming days will be any easier.

So this is my birth story of Penelope.

  

In which Emily takes up blogging again...

Today Jason and I brought our little guy to the Discovery Museum. Actually it is my day off from work and the day started off quite eventfully with a very unpleasant encounter. A few weeks ago our house was over-run by ants and Jason and I started a very aggressive defense and counterattack on this ant invasion. The short version of the story was, we thought we were victorious and had banished the ants back to the netherlands, where they belong. Unfortunately, my aunt went into baby's room today and discovered a swarm on his dresser, evidently attracted to drops of milk spilt from time past. We moved the dresser away from the wall only to find a more devastating discovery -- thousands of ants milling around in a frenzy!! My god, were they feeding on a cow there? I have no idea why there was so many ants. So we set to work (for you see, we are ant terminator experts by now) and poisoned them mercilessly with our advanced killing sprays, then vaccuumed up the entire brigade of ant carcasses, and then plugged up our scraggly walls with caulk. That was that - but it was quite a bit of work. I crawled back to bed at noon exhausted (because it is my day off and I can!!) and I slept for about 30 minutes or so.

Then Jason guilted me into getting up and performing my motherly duties in taking the babe out. So we bundled up baby and loaded him in the car and trounced off to the local museum. We spent the next 3 hours there mostly watching our baby deliriously happy, running from one station to the next. The museum is not large, but it was thoughtfully built. There is a section for kids 4 and under which I really liked. It was designed purely for the little ones in mind and it was perfect for babe. He was in heaven. He especially liked (go figure) this little table designed for little girls for tea time. But I guess little boys like them too, because he could hardly be dragged away from this table full of delectable plates and cups and tea kettles for which he actually mimicked pouring tea into cup and slurping it away. He seems to be most interested in doing the things that he sees his parents doing, hence the meal times and the pretend shopping for groceries. We saved the best for last and had him run around in the Water works area where he happily splashed at water until he was sopping wet despite being covered from neck down with a plastic apron with sleeves. And through it all, we followed him like faithful and dogged papparazzis, snapping every 15 seconds ever in search of the next kodak moment.

Anyway, I was pleased with this museum overall, one that offers a good alternative to shopping malls and grocery stores to entertain a bored youngster. I am especially impressed that the museum employs developmentally handicapped individuals in their cafetaria. It shows that the people who run this place have their hearts in the right place, I think.

Now I bid you fellows adieu.

The joys and trials of new parenthood

Baby is approaching his 3rd week come tomorrow. So far, my emotions regarding being a new mother seems to swing towards the low end. I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that my mother is virtually keeping me prisoner in my own apartment, citing all sorts of dire health consequences lest I dare venture out during my first month post-partum. That said, the larger issue of course, is that now we have this little human being in our hands, in our lives, in our complete responsibility. It is overwhelming at times to think about, even though I had tried to "mentally prepare" myself for this in the previous months.

Prior to July 23rd, my mind fixated constantly on that date. As if, once that day arrives, I will deliver this beautiful baby and then a little heart will appear that encapsulates me, my baby and my husband, and the caption would read, "And they lived happily ever after. The end!"

Of course what really happened was, July 20th, his birthday, became the portal through which Jason, me and baby were transported into a completely new reality, an alternate universe. We wake up as parents, an altogether unfamiliar and strange new role for us.

The first few days were truly honeymoon days, we were in the hospital, we had all this support, food was delivered, and baby was quiet and sleeping most of the time. We gazed and gazed at his little face, smitten, awed, disbelieving and so so thrilled. Ah but reality sets in soon enough.

The baby is beautiful, don't get me wrong. But of course, I would think that, right? He is adorable, he is precious, he is the cutest thing I've ever seen. Yet he has quite a formidable temper packaged into his 6 lb 9 oz body. When he doesn't get his needs met satisfactorily, he isn't shy about thundering his immense displeasure. And of course, there's the fact that now we have to worry about everything, since it's all so new to us. Is his poop normal? Why does he have little acne? Why does he grunt like a pig? My mother too, a veteran in her role of the worrying parent, does little to ease my worries.

It's not so much the everyday worries too. I lay in bed at night sometimes gripped in icy fear of "what ifs." None of the scenarios running in my head are technically impossible, it is their very probability that haunts me and keeps me up. What if I were to drop him one day? What if I went mad one day? What if he choked and I forget how to do CPR? (note to self, I should refresh myself on that) Sigh, all negative thoughts, I agree and surely does little to help me in any way be a better parent, but oh! if I could only help myself.

In short, perhaps having a child will ultimately reap many rewards and it may be too early at this point. But right now, as we head into our third week as parents, I can only say, the trials of parenthood outweigh the joys.

Today is a brighter day

I'm recovering from the surprise news I received yesterday. I admit that I was so sure that I was having a girl that I really didn't allot much of my brain cells to contemplating parenting a boy. To be sure, I'm over-simplifying parenting a daughter as well, imagining days of brushing hair, holding her hand and taking her shopping, delighting in pretty clothes and colorful trifles. Is it that simple? Of course not. I'm sure being the parent of a girl will also be challenging in ways that I've yet to imagine.

But I suppose part of my reluctance of even contemplating being mother to a boy stems from my fundamental ignorance of this entire half of the human race. Boys, men, young and old, continue to befuddle me. I can understand on an abstract level that we are all fundamentally human, more alike than different. Yet there are clear differences in how men and women see the world, see themselves, and how they think. I understand it to be partly a result of cultural indoctrinations, socialization, as well as some biological components. Teasing out what specifically results in the various differences is beyond the scope of this post, but suffice to say, I know it's a complicated amalgam of various factors.

Yet, today, I'm feeling better and more adjusted to the idea of mothering a boy. Little boys are of course adorable, and I know I will fall in love with my son as fervently as I would have with a daughter. And I went on amazon and started researching the market for books to gather more information. It turns out there's a vast supply of literature written on the subject of mothering and raising sons. I'm significantly heartened to see that, because I realize I wasn't alone in my feeling of insecurities about raising a child of the opposite gender. As the good little nerd I've always been, I'm always reassured when I see a stack of books chock full of information, just waiting to be plucked, imbibed and nourish my hitherto narrow universe of a brain.

The somewhat less complicated problem now is deciding which book to read. It's funny, just a few months back I gave nary a thought to actually being a parent. My focus was on the pregnancy and the delivery. I didn't even bother reading anything else. But now that I've hit my 20th week, the ever looming reality is that after D-day, it's just the beginning. Then it's worrying about how to be a good parent to a newborn, then a toddler, then before you know it, you'd have to worry about all sorts of things, as the child become more and more alert, receptive and aware of the world around him. That's when you really have to be careful, faithfully keeping in mind your wishes and desires in how you want to nurture your child and how you want to guide him/her into adulthood. Sigh....it's gonna to a long haul folks.

But wait! I said today is a brighter day! I really ought to have a mechanical slapper that literally smacks me out of my melancholic moods which I have a tendency to spiral into with very low threshold. It's true though. The flip side to all my worrying and insecurities is that I'm getting excited about having a little boy. I was musing to myself John Lennon's song tribute to his son, Sean, "Beautiful boy." It's truly a wondrous song and I picture myself singing that song (horribly off-key) to my precious boy as well, because I believe that song captures brilliantly the emotions a parent feels when looking at his progeny.

Not to mention, I fully intend to be that cool parent who's up for rough and tumble play with my baby boy if he's so inclined, at all times loving and emotionally grounded. I take from my inspiration, Frances, from Death Be Not Proud, she seems to have been a superb mother to her son, Johnny, in his tragically short life of 17 years. I feel that she did it by simply treating her son with respect, love and gentle guidance, and related to him as a friend and confidante, especially in his later years. It is also humbling to know that despite what I feel was an excellent example of good mothering, she nonetheless expressed some regrets in an essay in the book, wondering if she could have done things differently in some respects. We women can be very hard on ourselves and we will always feel like we could do "better."

Thus, I will try to keep that other principle in mind. If I do my best, I may be "good enough."

Boy oh boy!

Today was a big day! I found out that I am expecting a little boy, courtesy of a very insistent pecker on the ultrasound. Oh the happiness! Oh the fear! The blessed mixed emotions that I felt.

I had been so sure, you see, that I was having a girl, that I had gone ahead to pick out a girl name for my baby. It's not that I thought it inconceivable for me to have a boy, but I had not really come across a boy's name that I liked and so, with part wishful thinking, part willfulness, I decided to pre-emptively decide on my baby's gender. So much for that!

Still the bigger questions still remain, and loom ever so large in my mind. Will I be a good mother? How will I guide and raise my child to become a good kid, a good teen, a good man fundamentally? I picture so many scenarios in my head (it's really very taxing on the brain, and basically amounts to idle worrying) of how my child will turn out. But first, let's focus on the good news!

According to the very fastidious U/S tech who looked at my baby today, he has ten fingers, ten toes, nicely formed humerus, tibia, fibula. All his heart valves are intact and performing as it should be. He has his requisite two veins and an artery supplying nutrients and removing waste. My two uterine arteries are also pulsing very gamely and responsibily. He has well formed upper lips (no cleft), he has nice buttocks, knees, shoulders. He doesn't have extra padding at the back of his neck, head is of perfect size, well formed vertebrae (no spina bifida - despite this mom's sporadic use of folic acid, yay!) So far so good, my little one!

I think I shall post more musings as the days go on, mostly for my own amusement, and hopefully for some of yours.

Cheers, my friends.

Currently watching....

with great delight and pleasure, a korean drama called "The Woman Who Still Wants to Marry."

This drama features the lives of three women in their mid-30's, their loves, their losses, their neuroses. The lead is a reporter, who ended a long term relationship with a college sweetheart because she was focused on her career ambitions. She eventually falls in love with a much younger man (10 years her junior) and struggles with the insecurities as typical for an older woman, especially in a society that's not particularly kind to women beyond a certain age. The second lady is a renowned and accomplished translator, but absolutely desperate to find a man. She represents one extreme. The third friend is the coolest of the bunch, featuring an asymmetrical haircut, she is a woman who knows what she wants and won't settle for less. She is also a loyal friend, underneath a stylish and whip smart demeanor.

The best part of this drama is not the guys, though I have to admit that 21 year old Kim Bum, who plays the young amour (and supposedly 24 in the drama) is so yummy and drool worthy, I wish I could eat him up like cake. The best part of the drama however really is seeing the interaction of the three ladies as they support each other through the ups and downs of life's cruelties and capriciousness.

And what's up with korean dramas and coffee? and eating bbq meat for that matter? And drinking soju at small food stands while complaining and bitching about life? Life seems so very good there! Feeling down? Text someone and inevitably, the next shot would be of the coffee mugs being filled at some trendy and beautifully spaced cafe in downtown Seoul.

Anyway, I digress.

The acting in the drama is commendable, because it's not too ridiculous as to be slapstick, though it does have its moments and laugh out loud scenes. The actor who plays the doctor is somewhat over the top, he seems to be that way in other dramas as well, but he always plays the nice guy who has redeemable and lovable qualities, otherwise, he could be painful to watch with his in your face acting. His counterpart, the translator, is wonderful to watch, and has a great comedic touch. In my humblest of opinion, she is probably even better than the main actress, but they are all pretty good. The dialogue is not bad either, i don't speak a lick of korean, but I'm a voracious reader of subtitles and this drama is really quite well written.

I'm glad I stumbled on this show, because it's keeping this bored slug very well entertained in the midst of a not very fun cold and wintry season.

Stay tuned!