sleep

When going through our most recent photos, I couldn't help noticing a theme.





We're all really tired, apparently.

I busted out some of the six month toys he received in the baby showers or shortly after he was born. He's completely surrounded in colorful plastic. He's adding more playfulness to his all-I-want-is-for-it-to-fit-in-my-mouth phase, so things are going to keep getting more fun.

He's reached every milestone there seems to be for a five-month-old. I read that six-month-old milestones include sleeping less -- taking a few naps in a day, totaling three or four hours of sleep.

Our morning routine has been off this week and I can't help panicking that it isn't going to work anymore. If he isn't going to sleep in the morning when I leave for work, then he's going to have to scream to get the attention he wants, as he did today. And Andy is not going to sleep.

It isn't Fletcher's fault or anyone else's that we need to work. I have to remind myself of that in the morning when I turn away from his smiling, eager face and leave him.

Recent videos:

I don't pull my hand out of the alligator's mouth until I get bit.

I'm scared of the Internet.

There's been a big twitter/blogosphere explosion today, in the circle I follow anyway, regarding online plagiarism. I won't attempt to recap. This story won't be the last of its kind and, as links to links to more links show, it isn't the first.

I got sucked in and disappeared into the mists of the linky web, lost in the horror stories about stolen words, stolen heartache, stolen photos, stolen lives.

From the first moment I used my name, my husband's name, and worst of all my baby's name in this little corner of the Internet, I've been terrified of everything I've willingly offered up to whoever wants it. All of my family's private photos and personal information is gathered here in one accessible, searchable place.

I'm not worried about being plagiarized. But I'm terrified of identity theft. So why am I doing this? It isn't because I'm naive. I'm not brave. I'm not even rebellious.

I drive as fast as I can get away with. I procrastinate until I can't anymore. I have a nasty habit of assuming bad things on the news won't happen to me.

I don't pull my hand out of the alligator's mouth until I get bit. Then I'm careful, cautious, smart until the statute of limitations on my memory is reached.

But I can't delude myself on this one. My baby's safety is potentially on the line, and I continue to balance on the edge of action. Do I stop everything? Change everything, though information is forever available to someone with enough time and energy?

YouTube. Facebook. Twitter. Blogger. The office website. Old school websites. Bylines and news clips. CCAP. Our lives, up for the taking.

12w 5d fear

I don't know how soon I was supposed to return to being a completely calm, confident, well-adjusted, happy person.

What's wrong? Why are you sad?

I still have horrible moments, sometimes horrible days, where I'm so completely happy that I have Fletcher, and yet so irrationally wrecked. I can feel, almost see, the waves of hormones washing over me, the undertow dragging me through my lowest emotions.

Sometimes, it comes in a flash and I'm able to soften it just by thinking happy thoughts. Maybe not enough to fly like Tinkerbell, but enough so that I avoid the What's wrong? questions.

I found a hair today. That's all it took to set me off. That one little hair, which had come from my baby's head, made the dam holding back a build-up of surprising emotion crumble.

Having that strand of hair meant so much to me now, when I'm just 6.14 miles from home, where he is healthy and happy with his father.

What if he wasn't? my morbid thoughts wondered. What would finding this hair mean to me if he were gone?

When writing a story, I've always felt that it's important to be able to pinpoint a main character's absolute greatest fear. And then to have that fear come into play in some way during the course of the story, as an obstacle or a kind of villain that the hero has to overcome.

For myself I never had, or never knew of, a "greatest fear." There was too much gray area in the haphazard collection of things that I feared, everything from abandonment to bankruptcy, from disfigurement to not being liked, from death to making mistakes. It was all a murky cloud of awful, which I tried to come out from under, in order to live my life without constantly looking up at that potentially-falling sky.

Is it better or worse now that I have and know my absolute, 100 percent, greatest fear? The one wrong that would trump all others, the one disaster that would render me useless, broken, destroyed?

Does it make all the other fears milder or less oppressive by comparison? Now that I know there is a single thing that would kill my soul, a single thing that I can't survive, can I be relieved knowing any other horror can be survived?

I haven't been able to step out from under this particular dark cloud, though. I've read that morbid thoughts are common for new mothers, whether they have depression or not.

They say it's a mother's job to worry, but when the fear rises up my throat to choke me, it isn't a "job." It's the villain of the story.

11w 1d limit

The act of discovery, both for baby and for me, never fails to surprise. Baby is discovering himself, and his world. I am discovering things I never knew about myself, new experiences and capabilities and emotions.

Finding my own limits is especially interesting to me. I didn't know I had a limit to what I could handle watching on TV or in movies until this whole new parent-world was opened up to me. I first tasted this limit last year, in August, when I turned down an offer to see "The Time Traveler's Wife" in the theater, and when I agreed with Andy that I shouldn't watch "Revolutionary Road." After the miscarriage, there were limits to what I could handle watching.

Then last night, channel surfing, the best thing on TV was "House." Part way into the episode, I became filled with anxiety. I tried to force myself to watch -- after all, I loved this show and had never had trouble with any of its gore or drama -- but it was too much. A baby had died, and the postmortem autopsy and emotional exchange between House and the mother incited too much panic.

The list of new discoveries since Fletcher's arrival is endless, and each discovery has been a kind of surprise. How it's possible to feel such powerful love and attachment. How I don't have any trouble with the concept of changing diapers, don't even notice a smell. How fragile life is. How I depend on him. How sometimes, when I look into his eyes, I can see his independent soul thinking away. This person we were able to create. This miracle.

I find it comforting that there are still things I don't know about myself. Limits I have time yet to test, emotions I've yet to feel, experiences I've yet to have. I can be a part of Fletcher's journey while continuing my own.

7DPO fear

Even when I'm so busy I can barely breathe, the wait is slow and unchanging. Each new moment is as unanswered as the last.

In four days, I'll test for the first time since the miscarriage. I'm scared through.

There are stretches of time where I forget what it was like. Then I remember. Happiness like I've never known before, powerful, complete, a living dream, as tied to my beating heart as I was.

What will I do if that's gone, and my heart just keeps on beating for me alone? A negative test will kill off another part of me. There won't be much left. I can't go back to the mere frustration I felt in the months of nothing before the pregnancy. It's all or nothing now. A life or a kind of death.

From "Little Earthquakes" by Tori Amos.

I can't reach you
Give me life
Give me pain
Give me myself again

Oh these little earthquakes
Here we go again
These little earthquakes
Doesn't take much to rip us into pieces