Vivi News (Feb 2 - Feb 17)

Feb 2:

I go back to work next week. Awake in the middle of the night to nurse Vivi am almost overcome with sadness, worry, tenderness, pain.

Everyone keeps telling me Vivian will be fine, that it is worse for me than for her. This is probably true. It strikes me as a strange comfort -- to be told you are the one who will suffer the most. It's the sort of comfort only a mother would be offered; it feeds into an ethic of self-sacrifice which does no one any favours.

But it is comforting. I am comforted.

Vivian is three months old today.

Feb 3:

We’re giving up on the bottles.

This is the thing about Vivi: she's a smart little mongoose. This is a delight, but it’s also like having a smart dog. The kind that dog that, books will tell you, needs “enrichment activities.” Or to be in charge of a large flock of sheep. Mom’s dog, for instance, is part border collie and could run a nuclear power plant. She needs lots of enrichment activities, or she’s gonna destroy furniture. As opposed to my sort of dog -- an afghan, say -- that notices you’re gone right around the time you’re getting back.

Anyway, Vivi is smart. She knows I'm around. Scream long enough and I'll come. No need to put up with nasty plastic nipples when the real thing is wincing and cowering in the next room. So the revised plan is I’ll just nurse her this week, and hope she’ll take bottles when I’m not around.

Besides, I can't bear to fight her this week. I feel as if we must cling together in the little time we have left. My internal melodrama-engine, chugging away. I thought becoming a mom might help with that. Nope.

Feb 6

My first day back at work.

Vivi never did take that bottle. I thought she might today, while I was out of the house, but no. She came up and joined me for lunch as planned. Was starving but not screaming. Likewise she decided to hang out till dinner. Seems content.

In fact James says she cooed and chatted through day. Has a brand new interest in re-enacting the flood with her Noah's ark animals – drowning them in drool! A happy, bright day.

I'm so relieved.

And crushed.

At least she was clingy tonight. Maybe she'll be really sad and miserable tomorrow.

Feb 7

Another good day for Vivi, says James. No bottles, no screaming in hunger. And no sad-eyed pining for Mom. She's taking it well.

I on the other hand am aching and soaking through two set of breast pads an hour. Pumping in the purple room – a little cinder block box off the woman's bathroom, actually painted beige but the lair of a lurid and dubious purple coach that tints the walls – just isn't the same.

At home, Vivi has learned to grab yellow giraffe by the mane and bring it to her mouth. Hurray! Unfortunately, yellow giraffe's long neck means that when Viv sucks her fist, she puts his snout right in her eye.

Feb 8

The first thing that hit me at work, right through the door on Monday morning, was a call from the Assoc. Dean for Research, phoning from a conference in California. He got up at 5:30 his time to let me know a multi-million dollar supposed-to-be-a-sure-thing grant application had in fact failed its internal review, and needs to be re-written. It's forty pages long, bogglingly technical, and due Thursday.

I note this by way of saying I have a challenging job.

It's so easy. They let me pee whenever I want.

Feb 9

Vivi slept through the night last night -- and so did I, for the first time in about a year. We were all in bed by 11:00. James was up at 6:00, realized Vivi hadn't been up, and then couldn't get back to sleep himself. He said he checked her three times and even poked her once -- just to be sure she was still breathing. (I feel vindicated.) She had a nice nurse this morning, but James says she was really mad mid morning -- missing that missed feeding, perhaps. I did too. By lunch I was at the little-discussed squirt-gun phase of lactation.

We're coping with our new jobs. I am proud of how the big grant is turning out. With a week I could work miracles. I actually like being here. Naturally, though, I feel terrible about not feeling terrible. Yes, I have guilt about not having guilt. Uncomplicated guilt is for amateurs, and I'm Catholic.

James seems so happy, though also slightly glassy. The thousand-diaper stare....

Feb 10:

Hey, hey, she slept through the night again. Does twice in a row qualify as a trend? I live in hope. If she doesn't start soon, they're going to have to add "zombie walking" under "other duties as assigned" next week.

Feb 11:

More night sleeping! Three days in a row! Hurray!

The books say she has no language. But I stick out my thumbs and say “sit up?” She grabs ahold; she curls up her back and legs to make a rocking arc of her little bum. The words? The gesture? I would swear she knows.

Feb 12:

Vivi is getting so good at holding up her neck, we decided she was ready to ride in her snugli face forward. Much better view for our little Hubble Telescope. So we strapped her in (which itself requires NASA-level expertise), pulled up her hood, zipped her dad's coat up over her, and ventured out into the brilliant, cold day.

No trouble with the neck, but it was all a little much. She ended up with her eyes squinted nearly shut and drool bubbles freezing on her lips, making an unhappy hum, like a computer trying to read a CD. We weren't out long.

Feb 13:

Remember that night sleeping? I do, fondly.

Hated going back in again, another Monday. This weekend made me realize how much I loved holding Vivi to my body for just hours at a time. Sleeping on my chest, sitting on my lap and leaning her fuzzy little curls right under my chin. She is so warm and strong, and she smells like unlit candles: holy.

Still, work is going well. I hate to admit that, but it is. I spent today reading and thinking and talking about nanotechnology. I used words with several syllables, and the left
side of my brain. I quoted Feynman. People were impressed. It felt good. Also, I am officially a working Mom: I arrived this morning looking extra spiffy, with a pink broach on one shoulder and milk barf on the other.

Big tummy-time breakthrough today. She quit gumming the blanket she was lying on, picked her head right up like a lion from the grass, and looked around. An open-mouthed look of: gosh!

I was starting to think that she was going to stay nose-down until she learned to pull herself around with her tongue.

Feb 14:

A new song for Valentine's day! It goes:

Oh my Vivi,
oh my Vivi,
you have filled your pants again!
Yes, I heard you
make a turd, you
must come with me, Vivian.

There are three more verses.

I sort of remember that I used to have a love life. I believe there was at least one occasion of sex. Right around this time last year.

Feb 15:

I thought the milk barf was the badge of working momhood. No. That would be the bright yellow poo on the shoulder of my jade green vintage men's dress-shirt, the one with the French cuffs. Big as a badge, and smelling of honour.

Feb 16:

Breaking Vivi news! She can roll over! We have proof!
http://www.bowjamesbow.ca/images/Vivian%20Rolls%20Over%21.mov

She was working on rolling over three weeks ago, but then she -- seemingly -- quit. But she was just developing a strategy, ready to be put into flawless operation. How we cheered! She rolled over five times in a row, then decided she'd had enough for now.

Roll number one surprised us. And Vivi, too, I think. Again that look: well, gosh. Roll two, just to check. Roll three we filmed. Then we called everyone.

Dangerous, beautiful weather today: world thickened and chiming in ice. The University was closed. A good day. I had to write about nanotechnology, but I also held Vivian, and she did this amazing thing, and the sun in the trees was almost ultraviolet. I wanted to call Wendy about all of it....

Feb 17:

Video of Vivi rolling over is the hit of James's political commentary website.

I have made it through two weeks of work. It is hard but easy. People yell at me sometimes. But they aren’t important people. I can tell because their screaming doesn’t make me lactate.