My Lady of the Lantern

self-explanatory

The results will be out in a few hours.  I had cramping (uncharacteristic) all of late afternoon/evening yesterday. It freaked me out. Yesterday, while driving towards her daycare, I realized that I had not asked God for anything yet. I still did not. Yesterday evening, I hugged her more for calming myself than for loving her.  Last night, while washing my face before going to bed, I almost said, "Please", and did not follow it up with any request. 

(Uncharacteristic of me, this post has been typed and deleted, and then rephrased and re-typed.) I have run through three HPTs - 2 faint positives, and 1 invalid. Both the faint positives have emerged after the 'right' time of reading the results. Like I was wisely told in the last post, I am being prudent with my heart. I am acting normal with as much grace I can muster, and I am surprising myself at the outward calm. Inside, a tempest is passing though.  There is a reason why I was never able to draw straight lines free hand. I am incapable of it.  My blood test result will be available tomorrow.

Call it gut check .  I had reason to believe that we got our timing right this month.  I had symptoms too: out of whack bowels, drowsiness.  My periods are still a couple of days away. I decided to test anyways. Figlia did not ask for milk all night but she was fidgety and I slept fitfully last night. I woke up around 3 a.m. There was lightning outside. I desperately wanted to pee.  I decided to 'save my pee'.  At 5:25, I left the bed and did the deed.  A single line appeared.  Experience has taught me to not discard pee sticks. I kept this one on its appropriate place - any surface which is beyond Figlia's reach.  Around 7:30 a.m., I peered at the stick again. The pink on it looked mottled. A short time later, I saw a faint second line. I must be imagining it. I stared at it, took it to the window and burned it with my x-ray vision. The white other line was pinkish.  It would have helped to ha...

I hardly interfere with the daycare's working, care and handling of Figlia. She is well-adjusted there, they give her medicines on time, and she is getting fed, and changed, and is playing well.  There are only two points in the past where I have "taken up" with them. One was that her napping was all over the place, the other was that I wanted them to be gentle with the cleaning when she had diarrhoea in December, because her bums were sore from rubbing. However, I have two more issues now. Figlia appears to be allergic to the national birds of mention - mosquitoes. Once bitten, that spot becomes red, or develops a brownish scab, and the mark will go away in its own sweet time. And the daycare is in the middle of the swamp, I suppose. She has been coming back with bites regularly. One of her leg has got eight bite marks as of now.  And the other thing which has arrived like crisis o'clock is that I have 'lost' eight pajamas in the last ten days o...

I have walked two tangential chords in dealing with my grief recently. I was flipping through pics in my phone gallery, and I stopped and stared at pics of CBub. I was observing her features in a cant-have-enough-slash-seeing-for-the-first-time-way and then I wondered if this has actually happened. That she ever existed. It felt like I just had a bad dream. Her whole episode and presence/absence was just a dream, nothing real, just a fantasy.  And then I got up from the bed, and shook out of the self-induced stupor. On another angle, I seem to suffer the guilt that had I been more assertive* in my one encounter, my one chance of holding my baby girl, I would not have suffered that tumble of emotions that sprint painfully in me often. If I had been more assertive, I would have insisted that I be allowed to touch her beyond keeping a finger on her.  My daughter went to her grave from my womb. She did not get the warmth of her mother's arms. Strangers handled he...

Someone at the workplace said something to me yesterday which bugged me every time I recalled it. If you know me any better, you would know that I recalled it often.  It was not what she said. It was what I think she meant.  I don't know how many years of my lifetime I have expended on first assessing and then trying to separate what was said and what I perceive what was said, and here I was - bugged again. Feeling hurt is the first thing that happens to me. My spontaneity then becomes my next enemy. I cannot hide my hurt. I cannot hide my happiness. It will take me (sometimes when I am lucky), just a minute to be composed again. Otherwise, the simmering brew of replaying episodes, and re-living the incident will stay with me for on and on. I was thinking of this today morning too when I chanced upon this quote in the newspaper, which seemed very opportune. I smiled, and my answer was before me. I need to teach myself to overlook. Somethings deserve to be forg...

We are doing better on the appetite department, and I am feeling better because of that. When the kid refuses to eat, she goes on milk which does not fill her up, which makes her irritable and whiny. Since the appetite re-emerged, the whine quotient has definitely nosedived.  But meal times are now major mess times. I have to change her clothes and my clothes after she is done. I lay a newspaper on the floor before she eats because I am not turning into a mopping superwoman ever - not my perfect career choice. I am still trying to persuade her to not wipe her hands on me or her clothes (I do not dress her down before meals)- which she then points to me to clean.  She needs spoons in both her hands, and I keep a feeding weapon spoon in my hand, so I also sneak in a few bites into her mouth, which she takes in, and then will either spit out or chew. Spitting out is not because she does not want it, it is because she has detected mummy-sneak on it. And since she has not...