My Lady of the Lantern

When I had one of those neighbour-neighbour talk with the lady next door. She is parenting a toddler and twins, and the latter are just a couple of months older than Figlia * . In September, Figlia had a bout of viral fever, and it was one of the worst ever things we had health-wise. My daughter was miserable and whiny and vomiting, and refusing medicines, and not sure what she wanted. She was tired, we were tired. One morning, as I was leaving for work, I met the NextDoorLady....the twins were awake since 2:30 am. They were a month away from their birthday, and had been running a fever. Figlia had been awake all night and finally slept at 2:30/3:00 am ish . I realized that we slept just as our neighbours woke up. In union, we had been up all night. Figlia is also less than a month away from her first birthday. And boy, we are in the thick of whimpering sleeplessness. Is that some crazy rite of passage to the first birthday? BTW, y'day, we noticed a giant boil on o...

a) Please do tell me that I am, in fact, Charlie Sheen style winning for the longest title ever. b) After the title, the post must be appearing redundant? Alert: There is some yuck/eew element mentioned in the paras ahead. You have been warned.  I caught head lice that Figlia caught from her creche buddies. Figlia's problem was solved.  My issues were different. I had no time, sometimes for a whole week, to wash my hair. Combing hair was a chore, and often done very superfluously. Lately, there was copious amount of hair that could be picked up from the floor. And I was awfully affected.  I wanted a haircut, and I took y'day noon off to get the haircut. It was supposed to be me. I planned on spending the noon on myself, and myself.  The first problem was going to the salon. I wanted to sink and die in the chair, thinking someone would be touching my lice-infested hair. I have not had lice in decades now. I was so dead embarrassed.  I...

Lot of pending Congratulations seem to be due on me. Remember my ICSIgirl ? Her son was born in November end, a little early, but both mum and baby are doing fine, and already home. Such a huge, massive relief and joy for me.  Kakunaa is pregnant and so is Michele . Two women with very different stories to tell, and different TTC histories, and different life scripts, and yet, they are people I have been keeping a tab on, albeit very silently.  - - -  DH has been coming late every night this week. So much so that he has always breezed in after dear girl has fallen asleep.  We keep running through the 'What do you want?' question.  I want to retain the adjective that Lori gave me - kindness.  I am grateful for far too many things, and one day Figlia will be grown up enough for me to not need another person to look out for her, when I am in the loo.  I am not accusing him of avoiding his paternal duty. In fact, he is lovely...

Boy 1: Oh look at them. They were born last night.             Boy 2: Wow, she had eight puppies last time as well.                     Boy 1: Didn't they take those away last time? Boy 3: Oh, so are these the same puppies? Boy 2: No, you fool. She won't have the same puppies again. Children understand what adults do not. Sigh. Yes, I have a daughter. Yes, she is gorgeous. Yes, I feel incredibly fulfilled. Yes, I love her. But no, she is not CBub.

I attempted to change Figlia that evening, and I was welcomed by loud, pained crying. A bout of diarrhoea  and mechanical cleaning at the daycare had left her bums red and sore. I kept singing to her, almost as mechanically, because it was difficult for me to do anything, or even try to apply a diaper rash cream, had I not absorbed my emotions in the act of being right with the lyrics. Next morning was much better, and there was no hint of the soreness induced crying.  I kept thinking of a particular short film I saw in Paris, je t'aime where a woman sings a lullaby to her baby and then travels to this wealthy lady's house and sings the same thing to the infant she is in charge of, and yet, there is a huge difference in what she does out of love, and what she does as labour. It was also the context of the first formal complaint, I lodged at the daycare. It was also the context of another realization. If the baby wakes up from a nap of just 15 minutes, and if the mood is r...

"No, Don't" seems to get repeated a noticeable number of times in the household. Figlia can be found sucking her own socks, pulling or scrunching doormats, licking railings and throwing stuff around. She threw my cell phone on the floor today morning. And proceeded to bend down from the bed to watch its helpless plight.  "No, Don't!" I picked up the phone and put it back on the bed. Not many seconds passed before the phone verified the law of gravity again. She again tried to make her way to the bed's edge to watch it. That's when, my "No, Don't" changed its pitch, and I gave Figlia a momentary glare.  Oh boy! Her face immediately melted into one of deep pain, and she put her head down and began crying.  She had been scolded, and she understood it. It is not the first time Figlia has picked up my sentiment and reacted to it, but still. I immediately picked her up, soothed her while the snot flowed onto my sweater and te...

Figlia had a routine immunization on 7th November evening. I found her having developed a cough on the morning of 8th. By evening, she had red rashes all over her body. It was an allergic reaction to the shot. As of today, we are through with the medication, and the marks are taking their own sweet time to go. Plus, the cough is still there.  Since the last post of mine, we have also successfully survived a visit to DH's family and then again had guests at home.  Figlia is now on a single digit countdown to her birthday, and I can hardly believe it. She has suddenly developed, (and suddenly is the perfect adjective because one fine day, she just started!), an affinity for actual solids. Remember when I spoke of how the biscuit never ever landed in her mouth? Well, she started eating it She has also started biting on and eating other food stuff. I am now quite relieved from the puree business. She is refusing apples and veggie soups, but that's okay.  This is ...

My parents leave tonight. I have had some or the other sort of company at home since 24th October.  Figlia had the doting-grandparents attention all this time that my parents were here. They would stand outside the door to wave her goodbye when she left for the creche. She would be taken from my arms when I came home. Most importantly, there was someone who would make and pour the tea for me at home when I came back. Even more significantly, I was not worried at all about how she would fare, given that I kept longer than the normal working hours for the last few days.  I must admit, I feel especially bad for a couple of days after my mother/parents leave. I get so used to support, that as soon as the net is withdrawn, I feel even more 'stretched' than before.  Figlia is now randomly picking up words from our conversation and repeating them. No, she will not say them if we ask her to. One word, once in a while, and a whooooole lot of babbling is my daughter's ...

All of them really. Between the last post and this one, there had to be several posts. I can see them mentally, but I haven't been able to find the calm to write anything down.  The last few days have just whizzed by...I wish I could prolong some of them, and I am glad to see some having passed by me. The operating keyword is - coping.  Figlia isn't stopping anywhere either. We have four teeth now. And I have some very sore body parts to show for it. How sharp are baby teeth really? I know the answer to that question. She clapped her hands spontaneously last evening.  I have managed a few nights of great sleep. To wake up only twice within a night, is great sleep. I can't wait for her to be a confident, independent walker. Between guests at home, and office and the Figliaization of my life, and marriage, and the race for deadlines, there is some secret lubricant that has kept me sliding off every day into the next.

Possibly inspired by this post , I am wearing funky earrings with a semi-dreary office outfit today.  I guess I could make efforts to get out of the unkempt, cavewoman garb that I seem to be in lately.  Somedays, I am just glad to have been able to run a comb though my luxurious mane. 

- She has finally figured sitting up on her own. She learnt standing (by pulling herself up) faster than this sitting part. But now she is done with both those things.  - She is definitely making me the winner in the first word category. She goes with twisted forms of "Emma, Umma, Mumma" when she is vying for my attention and desperate. She also has a seemingly fixed word that she repeats often.  - People come through doors. Papa comes through the door. Awesome. I call his name, and she fixes her gaze in that direction, knowing that's where the grand entry of the Dad will be from. - We are doing better with food now. September was hard because of all the snowballing things from her viral fever. We are again back to three feeds of solids in a day.  - DH and I continue to have communication issues, and we are surviving it. - She now has two shining bottom teeth, that are in different stages of eruption. And there is unexplained crankiness since yesterday,...

( This post is a rare one. Not because it is fantastic, but because it was composed a while back and not published, which is not the norm with me. It's not too stale already, I hope. ) I have been trying to articulate my thoughts over this for a while, but nothing seems very eloquent to me.  I was asking someone (of a previous generation) about how they managed with the lack of sleep, and how they coped with the general disruption of everything post-baby.  "We never thought about whether we will be able to cope or not. We just did what had to be done. The baby needed to be fed, changed, rocked to sleep. If it was hunger, there would be food. If it would be sleep, there would be a lullaby. There was no coping. There was only doing." ## One way of looking at this is thinking of how low one puts oneself in terms of personal space. The other way is that there is nothing but 'surrender', as the underlying emotion. There is involved detachment. The wo...

I have been under stress (surprise!), mostly mental and emotional because of my workplace. I have been in this place for a few years now. People have come and gone. I used to lunch with a group of women, and the composition has fluctuated almost all these years. Two of the women I was will-call-you-from-home close have now left and joined other places.  I was on leave, and then I came back. New faces, old faces; New equations, old equations; New interactions, old interactions. New rules of the game. In the old days, we gossiped but also had other topics to spend precious lunch minutes on. Now it's changed.  I kept sticking to the same group after I came back, but suddenly it is too many like-minded people together. Suddenly, the gossipers have been bolstered with new people who are eager members of the bitchf.est tribe.  I enjoy gossip. But I can't tolerate constant tearing down people. Especially when my perception of what people were like collided dir...

Upon visiting the hospital where CBub spent her last days, I couldn't help but get the feeling again to barge into the NICU, fully expecting her lying in the incubator. That image of seeing her on it, is pasted on my brain. The machine sounds are pasted on my brain. The impulse, and indecision about how I touched her are pasted on my brain. I still keep thinking over which finger was it. And then I realize that it does not matter because either way it belonged to one of my hands, and either way, I was never able to scoop her up, squeeze her or gaze into open eyes. I never saw the pupils of my child dilate. I never saw her eyes blinking. She never felt the warmth of my arms, and when Figlia squirms and tries to get free of that hold, I enter an alternate universe of how she never got to choose. My daughter never touched my breast. I did not get the chance to soothe her, or hear her scream her lungs off. Through poops and vomits and sleepless fidgeting, and crying and laughing...

My modesty is inspiring, I suppose. Anyways, some days I really dig deep into the dish of my weaknesses. Saturday morning, I ended a conversation with dear hubby with "Shut Up" and then snapped back on the phone when we were talking in the afternoon. Both the conversations were in different contexts, and the first one was specifically around Figlia. Somehow I am stacked against perceived inefficiency these days. If I want you to do something, you must drop everything you are doing instantly and scoot straight to the instruction I have given. If you don't, you will hear my lungs heaving and watch my ears giving out steam. I am turning that awful. I noticed what I was doing, and sort of controlled this tendency. Which means that the heaving and the steam still happen, but only  if reasonable time has passed and you are still singing in La La Land rather than doing what I want you to do. The other thing is that somehow, mentally the following statements in various s...

There was a post clear and lucid just as I began to type, but I think I am losing the sand of thought already. The last few days have been busy busy busy. I do not know how I shuttle between work and home, and exactly how much time passes between 5 p.m to 9 p.m. I have no time to look at the clock...everything gets dictated. The hands of time keep pushing me to forge ahead, and somehow I am just floating through. I pause to think, but it seems to be waste of time. There is no time to think. I am on the verge of being utterly inefficient at work. At home, I am dealing with a baby who has a new flavour of sleep every night, a cold and cough we are not over with, and the star of this week has been the projectile puking. I keep thinking of making a to-do list, except that I seem to have no time for the list, and if I have free time, I want to sit down and do nothing. Lately, every evening, I come home before I go and pick her up from the daycare. That allows me to finish up stuff...

I no longer post assvice-y stuff that enters my ears. Unless. Two children at Figlia's daycare are special. One of them has Down's Syndrome. That boy's mum and I sometimes pick our wards from the daycare at the same time.  On Friday evening, when I was taking Figlia in my arms from those of a helper there, this mum was standing right next to me wiping the kid's nose. And looking at Figlia she commented something about how Figlia's nose was not as sharp or pointed as me, and 'if I would have massaged her nose bridge when she was younger....'. Really?  I was momentarily taken aback and I just said that I think Figlia's nose is fine.  When she went away, I realized that I was still feeling very irritated. And I wondered that I could be pretty vicious in my snap-back at her if I thought of it.  Shouldn't she use her grey matter before passing comments on other people's kids? Does her own position and progeny not strike her refere...

Dear Daughter, The diary says you are 36 weeks 6 days old today. At this point of time, you have been outside in the world for exactly the same amount of time as you have been inside my womb. And you have been whipping my rear for almost all of that while. Good going. I love you. -Mummy

Figlia almost tipped over today, because she managed to curl her legs under her, and snugly holding a rod, she almost stood. Almost. Mummy saved the day, and a possible head-on fall.  She still has not figured sitting on her own (from the lying down position), but she is pretty smooth at efforts to stand up from the sitting position. If left standing against some support (such as a table), she holds her weight well. And on the Sunday just gone by, she actually took two baby steps towards the newspaper that was far from her reach otherwise. I am not sure if I should claim that this was her first 'walk', but there were two tiny feet that rhythmically paced themselves on intention. She sort of stands also, with either of us (hubby or me) holding her palms. The ground rule is that it is she who curls her fingers around our hands, but we maintain a loose fist around hers too. And she will often release one hand, and explore surfaces with the free hand.  I passed her a ...

Figlia has received a lot of gifts in cash and kind from friends and family. She recently got one that has DH and me stumped. P gave her a set of books. It's not the books. It is their cost. She has given in a single sweep, books of over $2500 to Figlia. (The context: P is Figlia's aunt. She is a SAHM mostly and by appointment, sells these overpriced books to families. The books are expensive and sold in modules/sets.) I and hubby are stumped. Even if she had a discount on the books, it couldn't be more than 50 percent off. I have received gifts which were not quite right (usually clothes that are already too small, or unwieldy/un-Figlia type). I have given them away (almost always) to someone who was willing to take them in. The old me, would have been unable to part with the unused items simply for their emotional value, but I am now affected by the huge amount of baby stuff that is depositing itself within the household. There has to be a pressure valve for things ...

I was approached by someone who is battling infertility, last week. I was trying to keep it real for her. She curiously ran through the standard vocab that we here are pretty familiar with. My recounting of experience with her new dictionary made me go back in time. My D&C was 2008. My laparoscopy was 2008. ( 2008? How distant is that? ). 2008, I was already blogging. 2008, I was not any near to and not sure of how far off from progeny I was. I felt relieved. I am done with all that. I can't live through more years of hanging by the hair. Anyways, listening to her, I kind of told her to go to a proper consult. She shared her history with me. She has PCOS, raised thyroid levels and irregular periods. That's all. That's all? I told her, that I could see three red flags in her history. All of them, were either symptoms or causes of infertility. But she stuck to adding the 'that's all' to her story. She still does not think that they are that big issues....

Counting August and this half of September, I am currently running my third period. Yes, you can read that again. Again. The flow is heavy but not painful .This time around, I had crazy gas for two days prior to yesterday (CD1). I am not happy with the fact that my cycles are now just 17 days long. Not happy that when the period ends, rather than the finality of a CD5 climactic flow, I tend to have sporadic spotting requiring me to be on protection for longer than the five days of flapping the red flag. My body has definitely not gone back to square one on the drawing board, post-pregnancy. p.s. Figlia is on the mend. Thank God.

Dear Daughter woke up coughing yesterday morning. I felt lucky to have caught it in time. Her nose was not congested, it was just the cough. I sent her medicine with her to the daycare, and told them how it was to be administered. I thought it would be good in no time. Evening, when I was already on my way back, I got a call from the daycare that she had a low-grade fever. Once home, I gave her an paracetamol, and she responded well to it. The fever was gone. I was at ease. She was still coughing, but things looked okay. She slept by 8 o'clock. At 9:15 p m, I was doing random bits of neglected housework when DH and I heard her talking loudly. I went in. She was awake. I shushed her and she fell asleep. It still looked good. I went to sleep at 10. DH came to bed at around 11. Daughter was awake, demanding me in the human pacifier role, and I wanted her comfortable, so I gave in. She wouldn't let go at all. The cough began harassing her even more. If I kept her raised, sh...

Come Out Come Out wherever you are, You send those crazy clouds of thunder and light, And there is drooling and fussiness and biting; And since Sunday you again are. Do you wear watches or time pieces Or do clocks shine on your head For you strike right in the evening, On my frazzled nerves. Come out Come out wherever you are! And I have felt your first prickly appearance Yesterday. My finger couldn't believe itself When it felt a tiny point jutting out of a gum; Come out Come out wherever you are Daughter won't let her mouth open long enough for a satisfying inspection. So, just come out come out wherever you are.

The Good I love her daycare. I like the family, and the helpers appear child-friendly. When I leave Figlia there, I like to hang around for a few minutes, and chat with the kids, and the staff. Initially, I thought that would help me get to know them better. Now, I like to do it because I like to do it. If I give medicines for Figlia, they are given on time. They ensure that she has her meal at reasonable time. I don't get soiled nappies/pajamas....they are rinsed with water before being handed over to me. I appreciate it. The general class of children there are mostly from families who are neither filthy rich nor very poor. It translates to children who are not hugely divided by what each of them are wearing or bringing with them to the creche. Figlia now recognizes the people there. She smiles at them and does not cry about going from my arms into theirs. The Not So Dear Daughter's sleep is completely tossed there. She takes two naps there and they are mostly 15-20 mi...

*TMI Alert* *TMI Alert* July was a good month for my uterus. The August periods were right on time, and declared august themselves. Beginning last Saturday, I again had brown, turn to red spotting for three to four days. I did not want to surprised, so I wore protection for two more days after the darned spotting sputtered and died. That spotting came 12 days after my periods ended. Will I label the spotting as periods? Will I have to re-calculate the probable date of next periods? I am sore. Can I apply for discounts on pads and tampons? Can I? Can I? And the Little Lady is doing well. Things do get better when the infant begins to sit. She was a shaky sitter at the beginning of the month. She sits comfortably now. She still flops to one side, but that is getting rarer now. She enjoys standing, and refuses to flex her knees, which means that we sometimes have to play tricks to make her sit. She is talking...and there are definite consonants in her speech. She throws her toys, ...

In case you are not aware, I just want to say that I have a major bone with the 'Am Fine' response. Of course, it can be true. Usually, it is misleading. I am fine. I am having trouble slipping into the rhythm of my workplace. I have been a part of that system since 2007, and yet when I rejoined, it feels like number of things have changed. People have changed, the 'game' has changed, the equations have changed. Lot of new people have come in, and they are completely untested waters for me. It seems people are working on auto-pilot.  We just wrapped up a workshop recently. It seems all the committees just did what they did without much help from the coordinator of the event. It is a good thing obviously, but it signals a change in tendency, that was not present before. I am fine. People have raced ahead of me. In terms of position, salary, number of publications, weight-carrying assignments on the resume. I feel a little lost. I am fine. There is a lot of catchin...

It had been a wake up (rinse-repeat) kind of a night. I left the bed at 5:30 am. It was still little dark outside. The baby appeared asleep, and hubby was half-asleep. I made my tea and did what I do on mornings. Hubby got up, got ready for the gym and left. I sat on the balcony, had my tea, wrote Figlia's diary, and read the newspaper. She woke up finally around 7 am, and I laid beside her, and closed my eyes. She went: "Oooba Oooobay Tuuucccchi Oooba Obay Buuuuu" Her soft hand reached my face. The fingers flitted ... cheek... nose... lips ...I do not think she had some specific touch-sequence in mind. A finger went up my nostril. I opened my eyes. Perfect morning. P.S. She does not usually go up the nostril really. (I can't see Lori's PM post yet...I will link to it, when I see her post go up.) Edited: More Perfect Moments are here ! Thank you Lori for linking me up! :-)

We survived an 8 o'clock birthday party on Friday night very well. 8 o'clock is a dangerous time because we (as in the girl) are ready to hit the bed at that time. Right on cue, at 1930, she gave out her first yawn. I was sure it would turn bad. I changed her into a romper, and gave her a bottle of milk. Then we went to the venue. She slept in the car, and remained so for the next 45 minutes. She woke up fresh, and was charming there. And she danced (sort of). We came home, and she was ready to go down, but she remained fidgety the rest of the night. But I am glad for the party, and a non-meltdown time of dinner eating for mummy and papa. - - - For all the nights post August 7th, Figlia has been exhibiting a new hobby - mummy as a human pacifier. I had used that trick on the night train on August 7th (to keep her calm), but she has picked it up so nicely, that she continues to demand me frequently during the night, even though she is now actually taking milk just once withi...

When I seat her on my lap, Figlia snakes her arm out of my hold and keeps her hand on mine rather than letting me keep my hand on hers. "Mama, I will hold your hand, you don't hold mine." My hand will always be there for her to hold.

And now, twa da dee dum dee da , Figlia is a) making gagging noises or b)turning her face away or c)pursing her lips for solids. She is still not eating lumpy texture food. And well, she puts everything in her mouth, except food. And things she was eating well before are now being refused. The girl refused applesauce last night, and cereal the night before. The daycare lady has also reported the same. It was only recently that we went from solids once a day to solids twice a day, and I was planning to make it thrice in next 10 days or so. I am hoping that this is just a passing thing. She has been drooling a lot again in the last couple of days, and has been licking her upper lip since Sunday, so I am thinking that if this is teething-induced, maybe the refusal will last only as long as the teeth finally make an entrance?

I was peculiarly struck by the suggestion that my struggle must partly arise from the fact that Figlia is a girl. That maybe, it would have been easier if Figlia had been a boy. The truth is that I have never thought of this before. I am acutely conscious of how almost-colliding their birthdays (Figlia's and CBub's) are, but the gender similarity never really bleeped so high in my consciousness. And not in terms of loss, but I was relieved to have a girl when Figlia came in my life. Again, not as a replacement to who I lost before, but the fact was that I always did want a daughter. Maybe the gender is also an undercurrent to what I feel. I never explored that before, till your words came to my post. Thank you.

Went to show Figlia to an ENT specialist last night. It's not milk, it is her snot. Figlia, as I have mentioned before (maybe?)  is a cold magnet. She catches colds easily. Good news, her ears are a-ok. They looked recovered. Better news, I do not have to give up feeding her from the bottle. Now if I could only scram and whip some super cold-preventing formula, that would be the best news. And the bright light? The very bright light? As in the shining bright light? So, the bright light? She went to sleep at 8:45 pm. I went to bed at 10:15 pm. I woke up in the night a couple of times, wondering if she was about to wake up too. She stirred, but did not wake up. The bright light? She asked for milk. I thought, in my fused-eyes state, that it must be 11:45 pm or 2:00 am milk she wants. The clock said 5:15 pm. She had slept 8:45 pm to 5:15 am. I could not believe myself. She took the bottle. I burped her, and she went to sleep! I have had the most relaxed morning...

I have been thinking. And a lot of that has come from the comments I received the past couple of posts, and the FB message I received from a dear blogger. No, I have not replied to any of it. Not yet. I am not sure I will, even if I want to. What do I do when she wakes up early? Kick-in the speed mode, and I still get done most of what I usually do on a normal morning. My snail pace is compromised, there is extra whimpering, but things do get done. Right? I have not been able to grasp the magnitude of my own coping skills. There. I just simplified the whole bit. What if CBub would not have died, and I had been living ditto this life with her? Would I have taken it as a norm, not complicated by a loss and grief of a different kind? That question may seem distant, but it seems that she always remains on my horizon. Some frozen baby with whom I never hit the milestones that I am meeting with my new daughter. My fantasy for CBub, of her, and life with her will never disappear. It...

I apparently have lost the ability to finish my whole set of thoughts in one coherent post. That pushes me to a writing mojo overload, translating to publishing multiple posts in a day. Has your Ped ever asked you to stop bottle-feed for the baby? My doctors (as in Figlia's doctors) have. Apparently, there was some 'collection' in one of her ears which has caused the trouble. Superped and Dr. T both want me to stop bottle-feeding her. My contention is that the collection is most possibly from the projectile vomitathon of a couple of weeks back, and not milk having dripped any other way into her ear. I am not prepared to stop bottle-feeding. I am not prepared to give up the convenience it affords. DH has been clashing with me over this, and he wants me to follow the doctor's orders. Have you ever had to stop bottle-feeding the baby, and switch to using a bowl and spoon to feed milk to the baby? P.S. Not that it adds to the quality of the post, but I have been us...

I have been eyeing something for a while for Figlia. Eyeing means, I will keep going back to the link, see it again...look at the price, and close the window. Rinse. Repeat. Now there is a 10 percent discount on my rinse-repeat goodie. It is still expensive. No one I know has used it, so I have no real life peer input on it. And it would possibly go under the heading of 'frivolous items'. I keep opening that window and closing it. And my daughter has refused that frivolous item's predecessor with much elan. Which means that not only will the item be considered frivolous, it might actually not get used at all. Which would mean that the money I am spending on it, would be wasted. What would you do? Would you still buy the item?

I feel like I want to write more. And somehow, mentally there is this huge post in bright colours all written out, but it is not coming out in prose the way it should. Speaking and admitting my anxiety is a huge thing. That anxiety is on me all the time these days. I finally told DH that I feel better when he is around in the morning. That dear daughter sleeps better when he is there. But he has his gym, and irrespective of when he goes, there will be inconvenience for me anyhow. And taking away his joy is not really my idea. That is not what I want. I can't offer him a solution. And so, I kept thinking of how it would be to continue being the jumpy cat for a few more months. One of the pleasant things I realized was that in my mind, I continued to imagine baby girl at the age she is now. In a few months, she will be a different size, with a more definite range and competence with several activities. When will I feel better? When she starts to talk? When she gains her feet a...

- We came back yesterday. I did not go to office but sent Figlia to daycare. That allowed me time to unpack, get laundry done, run some errands and get random things organized. It still did not afford me the kind of winding-down that I would have wished. - Figlia's teething seems to have come to some sort of screeching halt. None of the stuff that seemed to be whirring and psyching the teeth to make an appearance are happening currently. - Travel on the night train? Figlia lived up to our fears when we were travelling towards the destination, but remained sweet on our return trip. However that involved her not letting go of my boo.bies all night. She just soothed herself with them. - I can't say that I have turned into a sunshine-y morning person, even though I have been waking up early morning almost every day for the past few months. I still wait for the day when it would be okay to just sleep to my old usual. - When I went to see Figlia in the NICU post-birth, my mind wa...

I want to tell you about how fried I was yesterday, watching Figlia being held still for her blood test. How fried I was looking at the needle approaching her and knowing that it was about to pierce her delicate skin. I want to tell you that I gave her to DH because I could not look at it. I looked inside the hall, just listening to her whining turn to crying to find out when they were collecting the blood. And I just kept having flashes of her sister in her incubator. I just kept having flashes of the needles on her skin. And I had flashes of Figlia's time in the NICU. Rather than that, I want to tell you that my mind is exploding because her report indicates that her hemoglobin is marginally lower (not worried about it, very correctable), raised lymphocytes (fighting cold anyone?) and well, abnormal sugar levels (she had taken her milk more than an hour before the test). She will be getting a re-test specifically for her blood sugar levels. And as of today, my father is in ...

My personal calls all get done wee early in the morning ( 6 am to 7 am anyone?) or when I am in office and making good use of the phone in my you-wouldn't-believe-how-big-and-ginormous cabin, and sometimes when I am returning to home from work. Yesterday, I was speaking to my mum on my trip back, when I managed to ask her if I was this way too - that fighting sleep bit. Yes, I was. How long? For a couple of months. My jaw dropped. I do remember references to my mother praying and carrying me around to make me sleep. I also recall references to the fact that I sometimes used to cry, and it was difficult for my mum to discern what was causing it. I remember those bits, but I had never digested that as well and as hard as I did, yesterday evening. And it never made as much sense to me as it did last evening. If Figlia is going my way, I do know that she will turn into a good sleeper eventually. But I now understand how hard it must have been for my mum. Last evening was ano...