now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

i.

Being pregnant almost killed me. So did giving birth. I’m pretty open about the former, though I did not blog extensively about the latter. I went into preterm labor at 15 weeks, far before viability, before a NICU could do a damn thing. We got it under control enough that I could go to Green Bay with friends for a football game, and ignore the elephant in the corner for a while. The rest of the pregnancy was a never ending cycle of contractions- drugs and rest- fine for a week. Unlike so many women, left with no explanation as to why them, why their baby, why are they the ones with a fragile 1 pound baby after a labor they could not stop, we knew exactly why. For some reason, my body was under an onslaught of infection after infection, which with damnable Mister Miyagi With Freakin Chopsticks like precision kept hitting my right kidney, and nothing in the arsenal of badass antibiotics was stopping it once and for all. And that did shitty things to my body chemistry, and pissed off my uterus (leading to the fabulous phrase ‘irritable uterus’- by that time, far more than just the baby hut was irritabile in Wenchville, population Me).

Among other things, it meant the Lad and I had been forced to have the hard conversations. The ones where we discussed me versus baby. And perhaps it was selfish, some would say inhuman of us, but we invariably, under any scenario, swiftly came down to the same decision.

My life trumped the baby’s.

When during delivery, we both began to slip away, the doctor told the Lad they might lose us both. Obviously, they did not. The next day, when my regular OB returned from her vacation and came in to see me, she said both wonderingly and sadly that I should never be pregnant again, the risk was too great, my kidney likely too damaged and our sheer luck and medical wizardry in getting to 39 weeks was no guarantee of future performance. It was no loss to me, it meant nothing. We were committed to one child, we had that child, boom, we were done.

ii.

I spent New Year’s Eve 06/07 curled into a chair at the end of the table at the restaurant, pressing my back against the wall. It was day 3 of a miscarriage. I’m so sorry the nurse said as she drew my blood for a beta, pat patting my hand and closing the door to shield me from the happy expectant mothers. Don’t be. We can’t have another child. This was an accident despite two kinds of birth control.

She looked at me as though I was insane or deep in denial. When I explained she nodded. Probably for the best, then. Getting an abortion around here… She trailed off and shrugged. At least we no longer had the AG who had trampled all over women’s privacy demanding abortion clinic records. I called my mom afterwards, marveling that at least even in Kansas I could find a health professional willing to say the A word. 34 years earlier, my mother had been barred from uttering the word in all but the most dire health circumstances at the public family planning and health clinic she worked at.

In 8 months, she had one patient who met the then-standard for medically necessary.

iii.

Mom, why are those people holding signs?

I had been praying for over a mile and a half that he’d be so riveted on his game that he wouldn’t notice. When I’d plotted our route on an errand, I had taken into account construction, not anti-choice activists choosing today to line an east-west artery, holding aloft signs and propping them on their children’s strollers. Abortion, they stated, kills children. It’s murder. Adoption is a beautiful choice (and you know what, it is. But it is not for everyone). Jesus forgives. Jesus loves all children. Abortion is wrong. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. I took note of the school van from a private preschool we had considered for the kid parked with a clutch of the protesters, and made a mental thank you that we were not inadvertently funding these people. I squinched my eyes shut at a stoplight and uttered a fervent invocation that the kid’s newfound sound-out-the-word skills would not choose this particular moment to manifest in splendid, look mom 3 syllables long! technicolor. I sighed, and started and stopped, and then backed up and said, “It’s complicated.”

But what does it say on the signs? Why are they there?

Haltingly, I explained that people disagreed about some pretty big things in this world. And that sometimes people do something called protest. Those people were holding up protest signs, trying to convince other people they were right. And that exactly what they were arguing about was an adult thing, even though yes, he was right, there were kids there holding up signs too. As we were in the store, the heavens opened, the kind of biblical rain that creates swirling eddies and rivulets in nothing flat. Driving home, all but the last few hardy protesters had disappeared.

iv.
Mom, how are you doing?

I’m okay. My hand strays to my right side, where another infection is ravaging my kidney yet again. The doctor is worried that I’ve had so many, that it might be time for an ultrasound of said kidney if things do not improve rapidly. That if I don’t get significantly better, get to the ER and be admitted. There’s an old couple, holding up signs that are dripping ink, the last two people standing at the corner. The river of water in the gutter swirls around their sensible shoes and Sunday best.

No, I think. It is not what you say it is. It is what would let my child grow up with a mother, not a memory.

Because I haven’t blogged what is, without question, the best meal Jerry and I have had together in 6 years. Easily.

Elliot, I swear, I’m blogging it this weekend. You and your staff RULE.

Sean’s idea of helping with the big chore of cleaning Dad’s closet is to grab an old tux shirt and tie and get ready for a hot date.

Yeah. That’s the baby. On a swing.

And he adores feeding the ducks.

The end of last week was a refreshing, zesty slap across the face. Lah de dah! The big stuff is handled! The kid’s doing spiffingly!

Heh.

He had a meltdown of nigh epic proportions at school. Behavior that will likely make me cringe to think about for the next several years. Behavior so bad I kind of half expected it to be shown on Fox! or some VH1 reality show. To their credit, the school leapt on it immediately, called me, asked for my perspective, said straight up this was unlike him, something must be going on. Well what was going on was he promptly spiked a fever and took a 5 hour nap. But why should getting sick flip him out so badly?

Well, dumbass, it’s because he has Apraxia of Speech. But wait! Didn’t he finishtherapy for that? Turns out Apraxia of Speech isn’t…just about talking. It’s about processing. And expression. And to my immense, huge horror, the laundry list of crap we need to look out for once he hits a mainstream formal classroom (like…say…the formal pre-K room he’s in now, instead of waiting for kindergarten for this festival to begin) reads like a Guide to the Temperament and Psyche of the Pirate Lemur. Flippantly and glibly replying ‘I don’t know’ to questions you know he knows the answer? Check. Saying ‘I don’t want to tell you that’ or ‘I can’t tell you about that’? Check. Longer time to respond to direct commands when tired, hungry, or stressed? Check. Find yourself repeating yourself multiple times, moreso than one expects with a 4 year old? Well I’m not sure, but god knows the phrase ‘HOW MANY TIMES DID DAD SAY NO?!’ is in heavy rotation here. Flipping the fuck out and reverting to grunts, screams, or physical aggression when frustrated, hurt, or in pain? Triple check. (this is not a frequent occurance, please don’t get the wrong impression. But when it happens? Buckle up, kids.)

I’m pissed off at myself for not prepping myself years ahead on this. I’m pissed off at myself for believing the focus on speech. I’m royally ticked off at the local school district- aware of the diagnosis- for booting us out of speech without so much as a ‘this handout will tell you some things to look for!’. And for all of her total and complete freakin lack of tact or skill with patient interaction, I am blazingly angry at the speech pathologist who diagnosed it in the first place and framed it all in terms of speech and blazingly angry she was so damn right, when I felt so triumphant that she had underestimated our boy.

The fact is, the Pirate Lemur is a great, sweet, caring, hella smart kid. He has something that we have to manage. We are blessed that we have the brains and resources to get him a case plan, as it were, and he is now in a school that is open and caring enough to acknowledge there’s a problem with our kid that’s not behavior-based, and truly wants to work with us and find solutions and techniques for management. We’ve already implemented some strategies, and by all reports they are working well for diffusing issues. We knew, when frustrated, hurt, or scared he would retreat and ‘forget’ to talk. What we hadn’t realized was how all-encompassing the AoS can be, what a tower of Jenga blocks it is to handle. His brains- his reflexive skill with math and letters flies in the face of typical long term AoS effects- had helped us write off some things to typical preschoolerness, and not to whatever quirk of fate it is in his brain that does this. I feel like I will be brandishing the lionness costume for the rest of my mothering days now. I feel like I’ve just been handed a rock, slapped on the back, and pointed to a giant freaking hill.

We will get through this. Rather, we will endure and rise above it. Because now it’s clear you don’t get through it. You get around it.

This morning was calls from servicemaster, and hurried breakfasts, and loads of laundry and earning chore change by helping me sort and fold, and a DISTAR reading lesson. This morning was a frantic scramble for whale shark, and a consult to the calendar of ridiculousness to figure out when someone could give us a carpeting quote. It was email triage and schedule juggling, pounding coffee and spelunking for bagels.

This morning is the first morning I did not wake up at that minute, in 5 years. It is the first morning I did not look out at the crystal blue sky and try not to cry. Tomorrow is a New Year, and the Days of Awe begin. Mindfulness and reflection cannot come soon enough for this stretched- taut mother.

I want a new office. I realize this sounds capricious, like my usual come fall, nesting-must-do-house-projects instinct. But the fact is, we simply slammed stuff into my office when we moved here, and I have this job now, see, and have for a while, and this hobby, and the layout feels stifling, and I’d really like it to be my space- restive, serene, positive. The odd mishmosh of furniture feels entirely too heavy and cludgy and, well, it’s never been me per se. And so I have this rich little fantasy going. Alas, phase one of this rich little fantasy is ‘reduce by half my volume of crap’, which may require a flamethrower and a backhoe.

That dreadful beige carpeting? Gone. (As is, I might add, the terrifying popcorn ceiling of spider-web-hiding +12). In the beige carpet’s place is this , and the heinous strangely tilting towards flesh tone beige is replaced by the matte version (as opposed to gloss) of the paint in the master bath (it is the loveliest grey ever). The bought used and beaten up some 13 years ago big heavyass cherry veneer desk is gone, and the giant cludgy file cabinet is too. They, along with the now tilty dark red wood tone Billy bookcases from Ikea are all replaced with airier shelving and a desk, probably in black and glass. Behind the door, 3 rows of dark blue painted hat pegs are hung, to dangle skeins of yarn from. There’s a wood bench with a custom made cushion sitting under the window, and the two storage baskets under there are for sorting catalogs and magazines. The closet is completely reorganized, and in a perfect world, I have won the lottery and we now own one of these, and it’s downstairs behind the couch serving as a council table and cookbook storage. Meaning that one entire bookcase in my office is now emptied, and I can reclaim that space for other crap. Crap like yarn. I mean. Vital work material. Yes. Oh, and the inherited from my father giant friggen leather office chair which is way too big and clonky for me? GONE. GONE BABY GONE. This is all a pipe dream, but it’s a lovely one nonetheless.

I’m finding myself having the ‘I want this house to feel like ours’ sensation rather a lot- the paint in most of it? Not ours. Carpeting? Ditto. The remnants of the previous owners are everywhere, even though we’ve been here a while, because we had other priorities.

I suppose at the very least, I can get cracking on deaccessioning stuff from my office. On the off chance that the Pergo USA reps show up on my doorstep and inform me I’ve won a roomful of free maple flooring.