We were staying, of course, in a tiny French beach house/condo in the Languedoc, with a lovely little front and back porch, and just enough beds and inflatable mattresses and folding couches to sleep us all: me and E and Y, and Y's uncle and cousin and cousin's ex-boyfriend: it was the uncle's house. And the half of us were upstairs and the ceilings upstairs were quite low, and the ceiling beams were lower, and i was ever so careful to not bump my head on them because they were large and solid and wooden and very low, especially over the stairs. (Ominous.) The ex-boyfriend bumped his head on them just about daily or at least twice in the three and a half days that we were there that i saw, as our space was in front of the stairs, with a very clear view of everyone bumping their heads on the damned ceiling beams. I was luckier, back then.

On the very last morning, cleaning out the little space and packing everything into the little-but-not-so-little rented car (it was a bimmer, with sixteen kilometers on it when we stared, and five and a half thousand kilometers on it when we gave it back later) i was carrying too many things and looking around and as i was rotating my head from looking around to see what was left to be picked up to back forwards to go down the stairs - the ceilings were not so low that one couldn't stand up straight, except for the ceiling beams - i whaled my temple on this old black wood. I thought nothing of it. I whaled my temple; so what? (Please note: mechanical trauma, ding ding ding. gatti 2010, thomas 2004.)

It hurt the whole day. We drove halfway across France. There was a small museum, some wine. (I whaled my temple; so what?)

The next day continued to be headachey and, hmm, it hurt as well around my cheekbone, which was not where I had whaled my head. A bit of being sleepy but it was so sunny and warm driving south to Spain, everyone was a bit sleepy, so we had a nice family nap/quiet read upon arriving at the little vacation hotel to meet Y's friend and his kid. But why did it still hurt? Anyway we hiked up and wandered around the little cobblestoned historic Spanish medieval city and had many tapas as well as beer, being mostly Germans. E ate all the calamari, again. That night it hurt behind my ear, and around the back-end of my jaw, which were also decidedly not where I had whaled my head. I was getting confused because I had had exactly zero concussion symptoms: no nausea, no dizziness, no forgetting of anything (which is obvious to you, dear reader), no confusion. No more sleepiness than anyone else driving south in the sunshine. It couldn't be a concussion, then, right, with nothing? What the hell? Sleep was hard. I was nervous as fuck all.

The next next day it hurt on my jaw, and behind my ear, and across my cheekbone, and above my eyebrow, and across my forehead. Also my temple hurt, still, continuously. It was a weird sort of hurt, for a headache: not throbby, not at all, but perfectly constant, like a distant air horn. Not, also, what i would call debilitating, at that point. We drove and walked to a funny little river not too far away (they'd recommended it at the little vacation hotel) and E dipped her feet in the water playing with the friend's kid, and Y actually went swimming in the mountain stream, but i can only imagine how cold it was because mountain stream? No thank you. The friend's kid had an utter fascination with rocks, and the breaking of them, being of course seven and a boy. And we had a picnic by the little stream and more and more people kept coming (they brought their dogs, too, and the dogs looked so desperately at our picnic) and it was very sunny but we were also rather high up and there was a continuous breeze off the peaks, so it didn't seem particularly hot but one had to keep reapplying suntan lotion all the same. Everyone stopped to pee in the bushes before we said goodbye.

After the picnic we drove back to France again, dropped E off at an aunt's, and took little old me to the Urgences. It was very quiet in the hospital - i think they are mostly set up for skiing accidents, and this was high summer, being a Sunday in the middle of August - and the poor radiologist on duty kept going back and forth to the coffee machine, to the wc, to flirt with the also bored triage nurse - one nurse walked through with a patient in a wheelchair, to get a coffee, and (later) once i was in a proper room i saw one other proper ER patient come in. I felt like a hideous, self-centered, hysterical moron for going to the fucking ER two days after bumping my head. I think they triaged that i was nothing serious and the doctor could finish his card game. I felt better that it was taking so long for the doctor to show up when absolutely nothing else was going on; it couldn't be threatening, it couldn't be anything at all. Moron, but otherwise generally okay. They also figured out right proper quick that Y was of an important family in the town and we could, for example, give them the Austrian insurance card and they'd try and figure out how Austria would pay for it and we could come back tomorrow and they'd tell us what it would cost then. The waiting room had two buzzing flies in it, and an untouched stack of magazines. Three childrens' books were on top of the magazines, for parents to have immediate access. Very kind, very well thought of. The newest magazine - the spines with dates on them were all facing out - was three years old; most were about home decorating.

A nurse brought me to a room, eventually, and took all my vitals. The doctor will be right with you, eventually. The machine showing my vitals was, of course, behind my head so i couldn't see it. I am sure they put it there on purpose so that patients don't freak out. Y was next to me, translating the six signs posted above the sink about proper washing of hands, as well as everything else. The doctor came in and - was confused. Why did i have a fever? My head hurt. I had bumped it, and it hurt in a different place, and the different place was too far away from the bumping place for it to be a migrating bruise, and my ears were perfect, my eyes were fine, i clearly had no concussion, no worries there. The red spot on my forehead, well, this was a migrating bruise. But where was this fever coming from? (All of this, all of this in the ER, was basically entirely in French. The doctor understood English, so i could talk, and i could understand, oh, the majority of what he said. But not all of it. I am lucky to have Y.) The doctor took my temperature again and the fever was higher than it had been twenty minutes ago when the nurse did it. He consulted his Giant French Doctors' Book on the desk in the corner. Two nurses came in and watched Dr. Maison at work; everything was very mysterious. He came back and said, Okay, we'll try something else - stand up, feet together, hands out straight, eyes shut - now don't fall over. Sit down, hands out straight, eyes shut, hold my hands as steady as possible. Shake hands without looking, squeeze as hard as I can, now the other one. I think he was checking for a brain tumor, now. He squeezed my legs, he asked if i had a bladder infection, if this hurt, if this hurt, if this hurt. He would press somewhere, Ca fait mal?, and I kept saying, rien, rien, rien, rien, rien, until he got to behind my jaw and behind my ear, and then i yelped and squirmed away because la, ca fait mal très très très fort. The other side of my head did not hurt. My teeth did not hurt. Eating did not hurt any more than anything else. Why was there this fever? Why was the one side of my head so swollen? I have a history of sinus infections. It hurt behind my ear, behind my jaw. The doctor tried everything and what felt like aeons later decided an infection, mastoiditis, was maybe just starting in the spongy bit of my skull, and that the behind my ear thing had nothing to do with the head bumping from earlier. I felt like less of an idiot.

(I googled it later. Mastoiditis would also have sucked.)

He gave me ten days' worth of antibiotics and three days' worth of paracetamol. I call it three days' worth because of the max dosage on the packaging to avoid the bad parts of liver toxicity. I was on the max dosage of paracetamol for ... several days, after this. With the paracetamol, i could sleep. Kinda. For a little while. Which was a fucking gift of god, let me tell you. French Dr. House said, if it doesn't get better by Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, see a doctor again, either come back here (i.e. the ER) or another doctor.

The next day, Monday, i was very hopeful and expecting all the best from the antibiotic, but Y said i looked worse than the day before. I had funny hives on my forehead, inside the red, branching, linear shape. Because i am a genius at explaining to everybody that i am perfectly okay, all the time, no matter what, i decided that they must be brennesseln from when we stopped to pee in the bushes by the little Spanish river - in a line, after all, more or less, and i've never learned to notice what brennesseln look like because it's not poison ivy and anyway it goes away in an hour. Genius, like i said. We walked to a little restaurant in town and saw some friend of the aunt's on the street, and in the restaurant, stopped to chat, all kinds of people. It is a very small town. Monday night, as well as the rest of the time between paracetamols, everything that had ever hurt, hurt. About four a.m on Tuesday morning i decided i had to go back to the doctor because dear god stop the pain. I ate another paracetamol.

We went in the morning to the aunt's GP, twenty minutes' drive out of town, up closer to the skiing. He had me lie down on fresh paper and, wordlessly, and veryvery fast, he appeared with a tiny little sterile vial of something yellow and poured it into my eye and then switched on the brightest light i have ever seen and shined it at me, and then, bless him, turned off the light and rinsed out the yellow with something clear. (Really, certain people are very like tigers.) And that was it: i was diagnosed, he was done, his ex-wife in town (see her, there, that's the friend of the aunt's - it is a very small town) had called him the day before to say i'd be coming and looked funny with those blisters, and he'd diagnosed me before we'd met, only needing the yellow to confirm it, and he was totally right. (Note that i hadn't had the characteristic blisters on the Sunday, so it wasn't at all the ER guy's fault, and props to him for knowing that something, anything, was coming.) The only thing remaining was to somehow communicate to me what i had, because Y did not know how to say "shingles" in English and i had never heard of it in any other language because that is some very specific and in-depth vocabulary. But la varicelle is similar enough and it's a childhood illness and then it restes in les ganglions nerveux and i go, I HAVE SHINGLES? and they all have no idea because nobody else knows what it is en Anglais. I make a spots and scratching gesture, la varicelle, c'est avec les trucs? Et ca reste à l'intérieur? and, yeah, that, yesyes. Fucking hell. Fucking hell. I recover the information that he put something fluorescéine in my eye: no shit, sherlock; that was glowy as anything. I get ten days' worth of two different antivirals, more paracetamol, a topical disinfectant. This three times a day, this two, this as needed, this two, this three, this two. This not in your eye. This in, because of the BLISTER ON MY MOTHERFUCKING CORNEA. I am on more drugs than i have ever been on in my life.

I ate my antivirals and paracetamol and smeared my eye and my face all up and tried to sleep. It didn't work, the trying to sleep. Ever. I could come out and eat, some - Tantine gave me a pair of Dior sunglasses and a Christian Lacroix giant silk scarf, to hide the disfigurement of my head. That was the up side: that and the food. (Tantine takes excellent care of us, always.) E got to watch French cartoons and have all the croque-monsieur she could eat. I hurt, and counted the seconds until i could take more paracetamol. The paracetamol helped, a little.

I tried to meditate, but could not empty myself. I visualized a flame that would draw away the pain but it was too burny and didn't help anyway. I recited the Litany against Fear - after all, my head was in the box, my head was the box, that scene has always stuck with me, except Paul was done in only moments and (as i write this later) he was unmarked afterwards, unlike some people i might mention - and i wasn't scared, i can let the pain pass over me and through me, but letting it pass did not reduce it, because more always came.

An aura healer lady came who was known, in the town, for being able to heal shingles pain, specifically. She put her hands on my shoulders, and near my head, near my eye, and before she was started i couldn't open my eye - it had been swollen shut - and after she was done, i could open it. Things were bright and weird, but i could open it, and it hurt much less, much less, a much bigger difference than the paracetamol, and i could eat, a little bit, and i could sleep. I could sleep and it was such a gift, and the aura healer lady wouldn't take any money, and i am going to send her the most beautiful christmas present EVER because i could sleep, finally, finally. All i had ever wanted in the world was that the pain would either make me pass out, somehow, like one always reads about in war novels and such, or else wane enough that i could sleep, instead of being so - tenacious. So possessive. And this magical French country witch was now my best friend in the entire world.

Labels: health, travel

four teeth (the canines) in one week. Just saying.

Labels: health, toddler

that Heels Wearing Pregnant Lady is a superhero. She is not like us mortals.

NO. I am talking about Dooce, people, really. She must be impervious to something. But i bought a pair of three inchers, yellow ones, for this upcoming ball, and i so can't walk in them. And how can i practice when it is so awful and slushy out? I can't, that's how. Especially because in a completely odd development, they make the tops of my big toes hurt. Not the first thing i would think of. Lucky they're still just big enough that i think i can smush them with Dr Scholls and have an improvement.

Labels: health

and there is a scan, and then a surgery, and afterwards there is a long, long wait on the cytology, or the biopsy, or the histology, and all i have is a stupid, old-school, staticky telephone to the hospital, full of delay, and it's like everything stops, hanging in the air with visible, shattered dust. Everything stops, somewhere outside the window, the world is still going, it must be, but everything stops, until the test comes back and then it is over, or it all begins again.

and i'm not close, and i'm not near, but the immediacy is still an eighteen wheeler to the face. If i weren't so damn good at keeping it together i think i'd have moments of reeling.

Labels: family, health

Monday i was too sick to feel like anything. I have no recollection of it.

Tuesday i felt like the walking dead. Except that i was not walking, only to the doctor around the corner and the pharmacist on the next block and then straight back home again. The doctor was nicer this time - i think he had done some more recent research - and said i didn't have to stop breastfeeding, and prescribed me Imodium and charcoal tablets.

Wednesday i felt like the Angry Pink River of Eastern European Angriness from Ghostbusters II was my gastrointestinal tract. And it was angry. And i was still not particularly walking, or doing anything else. But i had a cracker and some apple juice. Charcoal tablets are big fat horse pills and hard to swallow.

Thursday i felt like that time Coach swallowed the tequila worm with one eye. Also ate some rice.

Friday i felt like that moment just before the Alien pops out of Secondary Character's belly. I think i had some soup.

Saturday i just felt awful but had a quesadilla. (Here in Vienna, quesadillas consist of plastic-packaged wheat tortillas, which are the only ones easily found, since i haven't tried making my own tortillas yet, and gouda cheese, which is the closest thing to anything.)

Sunday, today, i feel almost like a person with an upset tummy. See how every day is just a little bit better than the day before? This is a discouragingly slow recovery.

Labels: health

Mommy has food poisoning. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Labels: health

happy birth day to M
happy birth day to M
with your sprained wrist men-is-cus
happy birth day to M

happy birth day to M
happy birth day to M
hope your Lyme disease goes a-way
happy birth day to M

happy birth day to M
happy birth day to M
O, he's the best dad-dy
happy birth day to M

happy birth day to M
we live in a zoo
our girl is a mon-key
but Darwin was too.

yes, yes, i have been busy. And it was last week, yeah. But we were travelling and there were people here and it's far more fun to do those things than blog. This is why i put down the camera sometimes - because people are starting to call me a bit of a shutterbug when i have it, i take photos like a paparazzo - so i resist the urge to document it all. Deliberately. And this means that i miss shots and that i skip writing things that i should write (see also: M's family's thank you letters) but living this is what i am doing, first, not archiving. So now M is off playing poker at B's and E is sleeping and the fam is off in their rented apartment on the other side of Rennweg, they're staying in the Balkans, ha, and A and L have flown away home, and there's me and the dog and the dog is asleep on the floor. But this is still me going to bed instead of uploading more things to Flickr like i said i would. Meh, maybe tomorrow.

Labels: blogging, family, festivities, health, writing

so in order to get Austrian drivers' licenses we have to get a physical, pass an eye exam, not faint, get weighed and measured (not to mention, injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected) and they weighed me and HOLY SHIT it is no wonder my pants are falling off. I can has cheeseburger. Shit, i can has ten. Will it come back when i stop breastfeeding? Even a little of it? Please? I feel weird. And i don't know what size pants i need, because i think if i try to buy the littler ones they won't even hit my ankles, and that would not be cool. Um, but one thing i really like and would be very excited to keep, would be the going down a cup size. Also, bastards, could losing more than thirty pounds please make that little half-extra right under my chin ever go away? There is photographic evidence of it still existing as of yesterday. How is that fair? But, now i will never try to deliberately do anything in order to get rid of it, because it clearly won't go with diet or exercise or losing an extra kajillion calories a day. If it is stubborn enough to stick around when i am twenty percent less then i will learn to love it. By god. So there.

If i eat this entire bar of chocolate to feel better about being so damn skinny, does that count as two birds with one stone? ... Bleh. It's getting stuck in my crooked teeth. Stupid nougat.

And my dog is fat and i'm feeding her the rest of the rice, because i'm full and she likes it. And is desperate for attention this week.

Labels: breastfeeding, health

10. (This reason is new) Now i have a pretty pretty celebrity i can point at. And she was in that silly movie with the hit man, the one with the crumby sequel. Woot! (This is not a proper reason, but works well as filler.)

9. I am very, very happy to be living in a country where i can go to the doctor with my baby whenever i want, and where all the standard vaccinations are covered, for everybody, for free, because we have Government Health Care and i am taking full advantage.

8. Better living through chemistry, man. (Dude. Dude! Dude.) Not that i think traditional medicine is wrongheaded - i just think, well, i can have both. This is the twenty-first century, not the Dark Ages.

7. I am well acquainted with the scientific method, and a lot of my friends are scientists, on top of that, and holy shit are we ever not in this for the money. (Meaning: They been tested. They safe. They are there to help, and they fuckin' work. I know the process.)

6. M is on board. This wouldn't stop me if he wasn't, but does make it easier, because first, i think he's pretty smart, so i'm not second-guessing myself, and second, i don't have to sneak around and trick him.

5. I like to travel. My friends like to travel. (I saw G between Norway and Slovakia, in the Czech Republic. N stopped here between Myanmar and Azerbaijan.) I live in an international city. People move around a lot. The likelihood of me, or of E, now or later, going to a place where things are endemic, or coming in contact with a person who has recently been somewhere where things are endemic, is very very very high. I'd like to not worry about that. Plus, she can go to whatever schools and camps and other things sound interesting and not be disallowed or have extra paperwork or special waivers. Small perk. Baby not referred to as - or, anyway, that much less, as - "germ factory," "snot machine," "walking biohazard." Small perk.

4. My friends are also starting to like to have babies. Diseases are communicable. I would feel like awful shit if somebody got sick with something (like the real people who NEED herd immunity, newborns, the elderly, immunocompromised, already sick, have had actual negative responses to other vaxes, allergic to eggs, whatever, et c) and it could be even vaguely our fault. This is the only reason to feel weird about other people not vaccinating. All the other reasons are completely invalid to apply to any other family making any other decision, ever. But E is still too small to get the MMR shot, for instance. So if somebody else infects her i will be royally pissed off, because that is a preventable thing. If it was just their kids they were putting at risk, fine, no big. And while it mostly is, it isn't just their kids. And they are piggybacking on everybody else being immune and they are betting on there not being an outbreak, hoping that not too many other people will make the decision they have made, and that is not very socially responsible, is it? No, no it isn't. Y'know, modern society. Leviathan, Rousseau, and a little bit Socialist, but that's okay, that's just how reason number four likes to roll.

3. With the autistic spectrum known and diagnosed in my family, i already know we are at an elevated, preexisting risk. But i also know what to look out for, and i know the early signals, and i know that early intervention can - can, not always does - work wonders. I also know that autistic spectrum disorders are things that can be lived with, and if my choice is between a live personbabychild with autism, or a sad and empty freedom after a not entirely unlikely (given the fact that measles and other infectious, preventable, vaccine-prevented diseases are on the RISE in certain countries like, oh, for instance, the U.S.A.) bout with something awful and infectious, i will choose the healthy-and-living but-with-an-autistic-spectrum-disorder every fucking time.

2. (But, the ASD's in my family aren't the regressive kind, they're the right-off-the-bat kind. Plus, i have a girl.)

1. (And really, this is the only reason.) Because i knew a kid with polio. And the kid i knew was lucky enough to live through it.

We are getting every shot, every oral vaccine, every sticker, every immunization i can get my paws on, any vehicle, any disease. I get the flu shot every year. If i could stab myself with cowpox i would in a heartbeat because that shit scares me - smallpox still exists. And we have found this way, this power, to prevent it! Like gods. If i could talk a doctor into malaria preventatives, or - what is it, that they give you before you go to the tropics? Tuberculosis. Typhoid. Anything. Everything. And i will tell anyone about it, anyone at all.

Labels: health, mamadom

and i still have it and i went to the apotheke and they gave me this weird magickal stuff that combats biofilms and has aloe in it and it made me feel better, yeah, but the thrush didn't really go away, and now i'm all out of anti-biofilm magick, it was some "galactoarabinan polyglucoronic acid crosspolymer" and aloe, so hooray for better living through any kind of desperate chemistry, anyway, better, didn't get rid of it, gone, so this morning i'm skipping work and going to the doctor (nicely, there's a doctor on the next street who is not only on our insurance (though nearly all the doctors in vienna are on the vienna city insurance) and also reportedly speaks english, and while i could have gone to the nice egyptian doctor in texas and stripped for him and not batted an eye, i don't know how it will be showing my nipple to the austrian man - weird weird weird, and why are there no women doctors in my district? What the hell?) but first i googled it once more, just to see, and i come across an Australian website and it says to do all the normal things, air, sunlight, washing, and to avoid sugar and alcohol, and then it also says to avoid -

Vegemite.

Yes. When one has thrush vegemite might be a thing to not go anywhere vaguely near. i wonder if australians with thrush still find vegemite appetizing? Hee.

Labels: breastfeeding, health

i am just sick enough that i can deny it to myself and pretend like i can do everything i can do, that i can go out and walk around all day and not pass out of exhaustion, quite, that if i have just a few sore throat drops then i can ignore it, while still being completely overwhelmed and brought all the way to tears by every tiny little thing. Jambalaya for dinner, by god, because i don't know if hot and sour soup even exists here, and i don't think the fried rice would be quite right and i can't even make it on a good day, let alone when my head is all craptastic, and i think if i tried now it would be a massive disappointment and would not end well. I hate how easy i cry when i'm sick. And then if i stop denying it then i can say it's just a stuffy nose and i think when you are at the tagesmutter's tomorrow i am going to come back and sleep and sleep and sleep and i might stop and get a fifth or so so that i can have tea with lemon and honey and whiskey in it because i have heard that that is a good idea. And it sure sounds like a good idea. Um, i'd have to get lemons, too, then.

Labels: food, health

have i mentioned how i love being in a country with proper health care? I love it. I was ridiculously excited before we came, and remain so, that I get to pay into this system, where everybody can see a doctor when they need to and the prices of prescriptions are so low. LOVE IT. We have had nothing but positive experiences in the universal-health-care model, the government-provided, the socialist, the single-payer gorgeousness. If we were in the States, working, we'd have perfectly acceptable health care, for us, being solidly in the middle class (if not better, depending on your definitions) of wage-earning; the cost to us would be roughly equivalent, with all the copays you have to pay in the US being probably about the same in the end as the higher tax rate here; but there, it would be stinky and exclusive and mean and nasty and profit-oriented-bastardy. Whereas here we get, for pretty much the same price, decent health care for us, and also decent health care for everybody else, and it is awesome.

I am a little bit smug about it. Sorry.

Labels: health, vienna

October 2nd, 1:36 in the morning, 3.2 kilos/7 lbs, 52 cm/20.5", Erica Renee came into the world after fifty-odd hours of labor and some week and a half overdue......

Oy. So. Saturday morning, the 29th, i had contractions that were Different, being very regular and a bit painful, and i hopefully took the dogs for a good long walk, but they went away when we got back. Le sigh. Around 7:30 or 8:00 PM they started up again, which is where i'm counting from, and we went off to have proper Mexican food, which involved going on the streetcar and walking a pretty long way, again, and slowly, with many stops, and it was really good Mexican and spicy and the bean dip was absolutely delicious and the contrax went on all the way through. I took some Tylenol and tried to go to bed, but couldn't sleep. I started having bloody show (or blood, anyway) around eleven. By midnight the contrax were five minutes apart and lasting about fifty seconds; around two they were lasting a minute, and we obediently called a taxi and went to the hospital. The taxi driver was Turkish and very sweet and excited for us.

At the hospital they determined that i was a fingertip dilated and not terribly effaced, and said i could spend the night or go home and come back in the morning. Yeah, we live an hour from the hospital and i was starting to think that this was back labor - i stayed. By morning i was 2cm and pretty damn sure that this was back labor; i'd had about an hour and a half of sleep and had a cup of fennel tea and some yogurt for breakfast; they said it was good that i'd stayed, and that i'd have a baby that afternoon. Ha. I was on fetal monitors for twenty minutes every two or three hours throughout but didn't much feel like moving except to try and see if sitting up helped, if bending over helped, if this side helped, et c. Sitting was best at this point (and M was amazingly helpful and completely awesome). My legs kept shaking. Sunday afternoon i was still at 2cm and they gave me some homeopathic pessary to help with pain and, therefore, help me relax - lavender and something else, prostaglandins, maybe. Sunday evening i had an enema (which was unpleasant) and a shower (which was pleasant) followed by cervical massage (which was also not pleasant), but was still at 2cm. I can't remember if i ate anything else, but M said i didn't eat for two days, and i tend to believe him. Around ten p.m. they gave me an injection combo of nabufin and prepetil, neither of which i can spell, to help me sleep and speed cervical ripening, respectively. I slept for about two hours. Monday morning i think i had a banana and some more fennel tea, and was found to be at 3cm and they gave me little round white homeopathic pills to take five of every fifteen minutes: Caulophyllum thalactroides and Gelsemium sempervirens. M copied the names off the bottle. Monday afternoon i had another enema (still unpleasant) and a bath (which didn't help with the pain in the slightest, and was very disappointing) and more lavender suppositories to help with pain and another sleeping-and-cervix injection, but i couldn't sleep. I was loopy and out of it (the nabufin (sp.) was something like morphine), but still very much having very fucking painful back labor, and not sleeping. I was starting to be not able to breathe through things any more and started saying things like "i can't" and "i am pretty sure i am going to want an epidural later." I was on my side in bed most of the time and would get up and try to walk every so often. Sitting started to be worse than laying down. At some point i threw up. We think my water broke with the enema or bath because it wasn't there later, but we hadn't noticed anything new. Monday evening - after the hospital dinner time, which was around 5:30, but hell if i could eat - i was finally at 5 cm and went to the delivery room, which was lovely because i could have an epidural.

So i had the epidural. After they pumped in a liter of saline, at about 6cm, but whatever. Two days of back labor was enough of a natural childbirth for me. It wasn't quite a walking epidural - my right leg I wouldn't have trusted with my weight on it, and they were both still shaking - but I could move on the bed pretty well. The midwife we had on duty was cool and funny and spoke better English than she would admit to if you asked. The epidural was delicious. The pain was almost gone - just almost, and I pushed the button for more relief twice - but I could still feel contrax. Three contractions after it went in, i fell asleep, and essentially slept through transition - the midwife would come in and check how dilated i was every so often, but oh, it was wonderful to sleep. I need to find the patron saint of anaesthesiologists and thank her profusely. The midwife was able to rotate the baby's head into a better position so i didn't need to push the extra-epidural button any more. At about eight (i think) they started me on some form of pitocin, coupled with a belladonna pessary to finish the cervix. At eleven forty-five i was ten centimeters dilated. I don't know if there is a different standard in the States, but here they start a two hour timer when they tell you it's okay to push. An actual, ticking, timer, that you can hear. The baby was slow to descend. The midwife brought in the doctor on duty, who upped the pitocin. I'd met the doctor before. They said i was pushing the right way - it was hard for me to tell with the epidural - but even so, with half an hour to go on the timer, they wanted the baby out. And the doctor came back, and a nurse, and a pediatrician too, so with M and the midwife it was fairly dense. They decided on a vacuum and episiotomy - and with the fetal monitor going, i wasn't about to say no. The midwife did the episotomy and i don't know why but it made me feel a lot better that it was a woman doing it. I saw them holding the scissors and looked away - i couldn't feel it, i couldn't hear it, i could hear the doctor saying things like "maybe angle it a little more" in German. And then they went in with the vaccuum, and I pushed, and they pulled, and the nurse pushed on the top of my belly, too, and the baby finally came out. The cord was wrapped around her neck just once, but it was long. It looked like a plastic-covered bicycle lock. It - and she - were a little purple. It was Tuesday morning.

They put her straight on my chest while the pediatrician suctioned out her lungs. We were a bloody pair. M and i dried her off and put her in a slightly cleaner towel; she nuzzled at my breast and latched on a bit while we waited for the placenta. They took her away for measurements and clothes after the placenta came out and M held her while they stitched me back up. We got to breastfeed and gape at each other in the delivery room for maybe another two hours before Erica and I went upstairs to go to sleep and M went home - there'd been a mini-boom that night and all the private rooms were already filled. We both got this crazy adrenaline high - after being exhausted, after all that long, but the tired went away for an hour or two at the sheer blinding miracle of it. And then the tired came back, and we slept, Erica and I upstairs in the hospital, and M at home.

And she's here. And she's perfect. And i can't quite believe, yet, that she's mine and I get to keep her. She takes my breath away.

Oh! And, there are pictures.

Labels: baby, drama, family, health, mamadom, people, reflection, writing

why is it that all proper outerwear is a fucking allergen? Wool puts me in the emergency room, now, historically, thanks. And of course down gives M headaches. so theoretically i could get a down coat for me - to go with his itchy scratchy wool one - and we'd lick the platter clean, or something. The sweater that put me in the ER was cashmere. really really. i have a pair of angora socks that are lovely, but angora comes from bunny rabbits, not stupid big ruminants. and every time someone reccomends things, let alone makes things, for baby, it's wool. Itchy blankets. Itchy hats. Itchy mittens. Itchy gifts and itchy heirlooms. And to go with all the itchy awfulness, they reccomend you avoid pasta and peanut butter? and eggs? and cut out all dairy products? Bitch, please.

off to eat something with walnuts and possibly shellfish.

On the other hand, if i could eat. like. this....

Labels: food, health

i hate exercise. Going to gyms. Being with all the muscley, superior people: you know what they're thinking, and you internalize it. being the one slow person on the elliptical. and it takes so long. Running, even jogging, is like torture, for many reasons. and it seems so pointless: nothing changes. When i can make myself go on a regular basis for a good period of time, nothing changes. five days a week for two months, nothing changes. i signed up for a gym. i went. Regularly. Nothing changes. Everything they tell you is that something should be changing, there, but no, it just makes every day sucky and tired and grouchy and busy and disappointed. And then after no time to make dinner. i hate thinking i need to exercise. thinking i should. the guilt they lay on you. and nothing changes.

i have never been on a diet. Ever. No atkins, no south beach, no follow-this-plan. But it's still there: if i eat an entire, delicious plate of carbs, this thing. if i stir fry a giant mound of fresh vegetables, i can tell myself it's healthy to eat them. A giant mound of fresh vegetables. Which ought to be healthy, by any stretch: green and yellow and red and white. but how can i go on a diet and not eat a giant mound of fresh vegetables? However easy it is to not buy the dirt-cheap Nutella (and, yes, it is dirt-cheap here, and i'm SURE it's still delicious), as often as i can say "yes, that ice cream looks great, but i don't particularly want any," i do not have the willpower to not eat tofu until i am stuffed full. Yum. so i have never been on a diet. and i do not want to ever be on a diet. I am not willing to sacrifice my mental health. Again.

and i like my body. (I AM A FUCKING GODDESS.) i like just about everything about it. i like the little bones that poke out just before my wrists. i like my knobbly, interlocking toes. i like the curve of my neck and the lines of my palm and the scar just on my hairline. so how does this liz, you're not anorexic enough thing get in my head? I never let it in. I like my body.

but having it change so quickly is disorienting. i weigh more now than i ever have. Not a lot more, but more. and even that, even with knowing that every doctor i have seen says i'm doing great, i'm the picture of health, even knowing that i'm not supposed to be thinking, now, about what the body-mass indicator might think of me (and, even now, i'm still not "overweight"), even though i concievably count as two people instead of one and therefore get a bit of a pass, and with me still on the very low end of how i should be changing, weighing more than i ever have, holy shit, that'll throw a girl for a loop. Holy shit, that'll throw a girl for a loop.

Labels: health

this was not a choice i wanted taken away. the feminist in me is really fucking pissed. i'm wondering if i need a career change or if i'd even be able to go back at all. they laughed at me. i am very smart. highly trained. more than highly capable. and while i may be too zen to have the ambition to go along with it, thinking of sitting at home for months and months and months, let alone years, suggests that i am at sky-high risk for PPD.

even though the, well, burgeoning mama is doing a happy dance.

it's all making me a little dizzy.

Labels: baby, family, health, reflection, work

standing still and letting strange drunk men beat me with sticks to honor a Czech easter "tradition" without castrating them for it

switching fingers for my wedding ring

apparently, haveing a fully knowledgeable glass of wine

things i can do include:

eating strange things, like, well, for instance, austrian blood sausage, which has a very interesting texture (nearly identical to canned tunafish) and is oddly spicy but one doesn't quite want to know why, but now we don't have to wonder what blunzen is any more, and also, i'm completely not anemic now, thanks

considering the possibility of wearing said wedding ring on a necklace, on a temporary basis

allowing the contents of my uterus to completely do their own thing without telling me, the prospective mama, at all, for three freaking months, which doesn't mean anything except that yes, this is definitely my kid.

i couldn't have posted on april fools' day. but. and also, don't think for a second that this means i like baking now, what with the whole thing-in-the-other-thing. and know that i'm a little disappointed (OH, OH, IT'S THE BLACK LINING) that i can't paint the apartment now because it does really need it. so because, if i squint at the mirror and stand just so and also if i am naked, then i can just pretend that i am almost perceptibly showing. gravida: 1, para: 0. ETA 29-09-07.

Labels: baby, drama, expat, family, health

scrawled @ 19:15

0 Comments

28.2.07

the skinny?

i have a pair of Job Interview Pants. and i don't even wear them at every job interview because they pick up dog hair like magnets, and sometimes i wear them to other things because they make my butt look fantastic, but mostly i don't ever wear them because of the dog hair issue. Especially Denali hair. so i maybe haven't worn them in two, three years or more.

(i always forget, also, that i should probably redo the hem.)

and, oddly, i put them on. Because we have no dogs until next week and i might as well, seeing as how they make my butt look fantastic. right? and, oddly, they are almost too big. One month ago, when i wore them to the most recent (and successful) job interview, they were not almost too big.

i sort of thought this might happen, what with all the walking and going up and down stairs. but it's weird, and i wasn't really going for it. if i brought all these clothes and none of them fit me in six months i'm going to be a little bit sad and i think clothes here are very expensive. plus, i was perfectly fine liking my body the way it is. Was. Thing. i was totally fucking hot before, thanks. i'm not supposed to be getting thinner. and i'm all conflicted about liking it.

please, goddess, don't let my chin get all pointy.

Labels: baby, health, reflection

scrawled @ 11:07

0 Comments

15.12.06

well, crap, mk 1: Record number of people travelling this year, which will suck if there are lots of people on the road and in my way, because with a seventeen hour drive and a eighteen hour drive we're probably just going to go, go, go straight through. And if there are lots of other people, especially while m is driving the uhaul and i am driving through big cities that make me nervous because everyone else on the road is trying to kill me, specifically, then it is going to suck. especially because over the next month or however long the driving is going to be the least stressful part.

well, crap, mk 2: Poor prognosis for movie-making of A Confederacy of Dunces. i'm pretty sure i haven't seen any of the movies that will ferrell is in for very long (checking: i've seen drowning mona, which he has about five seconds in, and jay and silent bob strike back, which i don't remember him being near at all, and the stupid, stupid austin powers ones that i've done my best to forget, eew) but knowing he's signed on for it, and knowing he's willing to take a pay cut for it, makes me like him. And Lily Tomlin and Mos Def are perfect. Especially Lily Tomlin. Perfect. so it is very sad that the book is cursed and that hollywood is stupid.

well, crap, mk 3: my hives are almost gone (thank you free-sample Clarinex, which i think is just like prescription-strength Claritin, and Pepcid AC, the alternate antihistamine, which is something to remember), but not entirely, and now i have extraordinarily dry skin and weird little blisters. and because i am a GIANT nerd i have popped the blisters and looked at them under the microscope we have in lab, and the pus is full of little air bubbles. weird! cool! still a little bit itchy. Dear Hives, Please fuck off already. i've gone through two whole bottles of lotion. and i don't use lotion.

well, crap, mk 4: presumably, after today i will be internet-free for an indefinite period of time. Sigh.

Labels: health, media

scrawled @ 16:40

0 Comments

4.12.06

ow ow ow ow ow

So, let's say, one has hives. Big, red, swollen and puffy, and clearly visible by anyone, by which i mean, if i wore a burka, you could tell by my fucking eyelids. And not red so much as hot pink. i'm spot-on sunset, only extra splotchy. so it's fairly obvious this is not a normal color for me, as there are normal-colored bits in between. A few. The hives take up most of it. but still. my fingers are normal-colored. but, um, that's about it as far as above the waist is concerned. and my ears are actually burning up. just by the way. which makes it hell on wearing glasses, especially becuase they no longer fit on my swolled-up nose. So. Giant puffy red warm-to-the-touch Elephant Girl. and what's worse: when, upon seeing you first thing in the morning, someone asks, why are you red?, or, they notice and do a cartoony double-take but then don't say anything in a clear attempt to be Polite, or, if they don't notice at all.

My preference is the askers.

Labels: health

scrawled @ 19:28

0 Comments

*not very factual on motorcycles either

:anmut: :annika: :chin: :dooce: :ewok mama: :food: :little frog school: :lj: :longform: :low odysseys: :natalya: :rich: :salon: :slate: :this is how: :unique yn:



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