Disjointed Psuedo-Rant

Posted about 6 weeks ago on Facebook...

I am still grieving before... Insulin is not a cure... It is life-support. Please Heart, beat from love, not from fear...

Dumb and Lucky

"She made some comment about being thirsty at the end of school. It was right when it was really hot. Then the wounds that took a while to heal. And the insomnia... And I didn't know she had actually lost weight until they weighed her at the er. Each thing could be explained alone, and none was so glaring. But put it all together... I had an actual conversation with Rich musing that sometimes I thought she might be diabetic, but then put it off until her physical. I'm just so glad she wasn't in dka. I'd feel so guilty then. Now I just feel dumb and lucky."

This was a conversation with my friend C, written last night. This post will not be eloquent, or cogent. I'm too raw for that.

Isabella has diabetes. My daughter is a diabetic. MY DAUGHTER HAS A CHRONIC DISEASE. IT WILL NOT GO AWAY. IT MIGHT EVEN KILL HER. And I had an inkling, a hunch, and I ignored it. I wrote it off. I am a fucking paramedic and I didn't see it. My baby was sick. I did not see it.

I took Isabella to have an infected finger drained Sunday morning. In the evening she ran a temp so we went back to our local ER as per discharge instructions. They did a urine dip just o rule out a UTI. It came back. Our focus then changed. Massive amounts of glucose in her piss. A finger stick. 438. Fuck fuck fuck. There's no other real reason. An IV, labs,. Some good news, no DKA yet, only slightly elevated creatinine, her kidneys were not yet in a bad way. Transfer to boston, drive to MGH in the middle of the night because GOD DAMMIT I will not be that medically unnecessary BLS transfer at 1 am. Pedi ER, insulin, IV fluids, tears creeping up when she isn't' looking. Admission. Specialists. So many doctors. I give our history just like she was my patient, they call me on it. Time to be a mommy.

We met our team. Dr McGill is sweet and kind, reassuring. First round of education so we can go home. I give my girl her insulin. It feels unreal. I haven't slept. Rich went home, Kat came to be a ride home and the rock that she is. I pick up all of our medicine and syringes, we are discharged. Home. 38 hours. No sleep.

"I'll never feel like a normal kid again."
"I can't believe I have to do this for the rest of my life."

Me neither.

She is amazing, my girl. The next day she did her own finger stick in the morning, and by evening had done her own insulin injections. She's taking this and running with it. New normal. We will find it.

Let's talk for a moment about insurance and gratitude. Before insurance a month supply of insulin, both kinds, and the test strips and syringes, all the bells and whistles... TWO THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS. After...Two Hundred and Thirty. Gratitude.

HOLY SHIT. Isabella is diabetic. It sounds so strange. She tells everyone she meets, strangers. I ask her if she's trying it out, to see how sounds. She nods.

I blinked. Life changed.

What I've been up to

Oh hai blog. It's been a couple of months, and here you are. I'd really like to make posting here more than the occasional mental purge from the soapbox. Don't worry, I will stand on my soapbox from time to time, but I'd love to have more of a record of the day to day, particularly as I prepare to move on to the rest of my life.

Oh yes, I said prepare. Eighteen months post separation, I'm still not divorced. It's been frustrating and souls sucking, but I keep walking. It will end.

Medic school - done! State Practical exam - taken! On to clinicals, hopefully starting in march.

Work - so much of getting divorced has been waiting for things to happen to me. This past week I decided to make something happen FOR me. I gave notice at 2 of my part time jobs, and upgraded to full time at the Ambulance Company. I will start my new schedule in march, and have benefits in April. This is huge. I am so happy with this decision.

Life - it moves on. The kids keep me crazy happy content scared whole all the time. The Squish, code for my partner of the past 18 months or so, is still defining all that a partner should be. The ponies have settled into their home and provide me with contentment and an empty bank account each day. I knit a lot lately - stress relief I guess. It's ski season, and I sometimes wish I could just have a weekend to catch up at home, but I know nothing else. So we go.

Here are some photos of the past while...

Wear my love

I am knitting furiously for my little man. He has been asking for fingerless mitts for quite sometime, anxiously wanting a pair like mine and his big sissy's. I want to finish them, give him another piece of my intention, whispered prayers, my heart wrapped around those little fingers. I want to give them pieces of me to keep them warm and safe. To serve as tangible reminders of what my love is.

Mother's Day

Bittersweet as this past weekend was, there was certainly more sweet than bitter. A quick getaway to Killington, lazy walks through our beloved mountain, dinner with a dear friend, making breakfast with my littles. Soothing, slow time.

Littles and the canine companion

Walking across Snowshed Slope

Ice Cream in Woodstock

Siblings making mom pancakes

Apple Blossoms

Lacy Woo!

Bella

A Boy, and His Dog

The view from Dominic's

Bella

Bridger

Squee!

On Superstar Quad

These were abundant in the woods - I love them.

Why hello, wild strawberry.

Just before Bridger fell in a hole. Priceless moments...

On the last of the snow pack.

My Family, in a heart shape.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning

How things have changed in six months, and my, how they are still the same.

Divorce is a long, ugly, painful process. I am still getting divorced. It is a soul-sucking process. Some days I wake up and marvel that there is still any light in my being. But then I think that fire is a purifying element. I am walking through hell, and will emerge stronger, distilled, free. Even this, as awful as it is, is better than what I was living in for years.

But I don't want this space to only be tears and woe. I am multifaceted, and there is much joy and beauty in my daily life. So I will still post about food and knitting and yoga and school (I am finally back in school - my life on my terms!!) and kids and politics and triumphantly crow from this soapbox.

So pull up a chair, let's brew a pot of tea and chat. Welcome back.

Almost Three

Yesterday Bridger got to hang out with his Uncle Mike for a little bit in the morning. They watched 'The Best of Michael Jordan'. Bridger was a pretty quick study, particularly in the fancy footwork before the throw.

There is no baby left in my baby. He's lanky, a little boy. Sweet and smiley and mischievous. I look at him and hear Puck, from Midsummer Night's Dream. But still snugly, and cuddly, sometimes. He starts preschool on his birthday, next week. Little by little we let them go. Knowing it's what must be done, it still makes for a wistful mother waving as they walk away.

Sacred Space

I can't tell you how much I look forward to my time on my mat. Although I keep setting my alarm to try and do my practice early in the morning, before the kids wake up, I typically can't drag my ass out of bed. I mean really, it took two and half years to get Bridger to sleep past 6:30 (ok, past 5:30, but ok), I really really am enjoying being asleep at 6! So, most days, after The Wild Life are in tucked into bed, I unroll my mat, and have my time in my body. 

Admittedly, that means most days I'm a little tired for super vigorous anything, and I tend not to work too hard. That's what studio classes are for. I do try to get to at least one a week. But just the time to notice nothing but my breath, to observe my universe, at a cellular, pranic, macro-cosmic level is lovely. 

I love ritual. When I was a smoker, it was the ceremonial taps of the pack on the heel of my hand, unwrapping the foil, turning up a 'lucky', the raisiny smell before the flame touched and ignited, that first long draw. The evaporation of my near-constant anxiety. I don't smoke anymore. I need ritual. I am still an overwrought, anxious mental being. The shadows are near, and times are unstable. The ingrained coping mechanisms, the urges to cut, or puke, or just not eat at all never go away. That could be exhausting. But it's not. Because most nights, I unroll my mat. I stand at the top, and bring my hands together. My feet and hands tap in time with my long breath. I observe. I choose not to attach reaction to that which is observed. Things evaporate. I finish, laying in savasana, floating on a sea of chi, sometimes in the flesh, sometimes not. I sit, hands in anjali mudra, prayer. I speak.

Om. Shanti, shanti, shanti.

Peace in my mind, peace in my body, peace in our world.

Namaste.

By the numbers

I recently jumped on the scale, for the first time in months. 

Before my children, I was always trim, athletic, thin. Oh, and eating disordered. Pregnancy was a total mind fuck for a recovered/ing 'eating disorder not otherwise specified' woman. But after Isabella was born, the 32 pounds I gained fell off in three short months. Three months later I had lost an additional 20 pounds or so. Extreme stress did that to me. I wore a zero. I stopped lactating. Not awesome. 

With Bridger I gained the same 32 pounds. But three months after giving birth to a nearly 10 pound baby, plus a large placenta, I was just 10 pounds lighter than the morning my water broke. Two years later I was still 18 pounds heavier than when he was conceived. He is still as of this post breastfeeding. It did not melt off the pounds the second time around. I feel cheated.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered I am now within five pounds of my pre-Bridger weight. 12 pounds of my pre-Isabella weight. And how? Living. Loving. Eating real food. Baking from scratch. Following, more or less, Michael Pollan's advice: Eat Food. Mainly Plants. In Moderate Amounts. Having a celebratory relationship to my fuel. Daily yoga. Mindfulness.

But the truth is, my navel is a different shape. My breasts no longer stand at attention. My hips have spread. Two people grew within the confines of my abdomen. No number can change that fact. And finally, finally, I have surrendered my need for control enough for that to be ok. I am two children away from my pre-pregnancy body. And that is beautiful.

The World is a Playground

"First one to Ramshead is a... umm... ah..."

"The winner?"

"oh, yeah. Thanks Mom.

My rocket banana girl has grown so much she's earned a new ski moniker, Purple Plum Satellite. We whoop and holler, flying down the mountain. Giggles on the chair, hours together, precious minutes that are fewer as she grows into herself. I'm reaping what has been sown. It is fantastic.

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Seven

Seven years ago I was a new mother.

Today I am still a new mother, because she morphs and evolves so quickly, I feel I am always a step behind.

Happy Birthday my sweet shining star. I love you. 

Control

Riding the waves of life. I used that imagery giving birth to my children. Riding the wave, looking over my shoulder to know when to paddle, staying with the crest, being in the moment so as to not become overcome by what I can not control. Knowing that really, truly, we are powerless. Being willing to surrender any notion of 'control' of the situation. Breathing, observing, being.

Rob is out of work again. My Grandmother has cancer. Things I can not control. The economy. The speed at which cells in Grandma's breasts divided. 

What I can control. The direction that I look. Whom I vote for. Where in my body I send my breath. My ability to still sit in the sun with a cup of coffee, watching the golden strands of my children's hair intermingled as they examine dirt, and say to my self "life is good". 

Because it is. Life is sweet. Regardless of the size of waves, or where I am in relation to the pounding surf. 

Teach Your Children Well

Still Life Sunday:

Captain Obvious

One must first be lost in order to be found.

The brilliant and profound C has once again sent my mind-cogs into action. Yesterday as we sat with toddler chaos all around, and coffee to soothe the ragged edges, she began to muse about how much more comfortable she is in her own skin as she walks through life as N's mother. As a mother, you just do what needs to be done. And after a while what used to be gross, or awkward, or someone else's job just gets done, or is ignored. Because it just is. Screaming child in store? Check. Shirtless baby on a (thankfully) 70 degree October day coming into YOUR doctor's appointment because they puked all over themselves and the car and you were too sick to remember a change of clothes? Check. Grabbing visible boogers from the nostril entrance? Check. What once would have cringe-inducing, or embarrassing, we just do. And that kind of comfort in one's life is such a revelation.

And that made me realize: it took me becoming not myself to truly become myself. The early days and months of motherhood truly made me not myself. At birth I transformed from the vessel that grew another human being to the being that was now charged with sustaining this human being. There was no room for Mira at that time. I was just Mother. This phenomenon was not relegated to just the first child either. I so clearly remember, as I began the descent into PPD, thinking out loud 'I was a perfectly competent mother of one child. What the fuck made me think I have any business being a mother of two children?????'. I said this to my mother (god love her). Please, never tell an overwhelmed mother of less children than you have that she has it easy. Guarantee you've just made her feel like shit. (And Mom, you were not the only one who shared that sentiment. You are amazing. I love you and thank you for all of your gifts.) But I digress... I had to learn to be the mother of two children. I had to abandon all that I thought that knew of the mother of Isabella alone, in order to become the mother of Isabella and Bridger. And now, I find, that in delving so deeply into being someone who is not Mira, I have found who I am.

In yoga we talk of duhka, the cause of suffering. It is the sand at the bottom of the glass, that when stirred, makes the water cloudy. It prevents us from seeing the truth of things. A block of marble looks like nothing more than a cube of rock, until the sculptor chips away everything that is not the statue. It is then we see the art within. It is with that intent that yoga aims to unify the body and mind, to quiet the inner chatter so our essence can be found. I find it a little ironic that it was my practice before I returned to the mat that allowed me to find myself. Malasana as I squatted to birth my babies. Ardha Chandrasana while picking up toys. Tadasana to be stern. All before I knew... It makes me wonder how many incarnations of myself I will be privileged enough to discover in the years to come.

Birthday Boy

Happy First Birthday Bridger!

When I woke up this morning, I had bits and pieces of a post in my head, reminiscing on the day of his birth, rainbows and sunshine. And I will get to that, but first...

He is certainly a second child. For Isabella's first birthday I baked her an apple pie from scratch, and knit her a hat. Bridger's cake was store-bought, and I FORGOT A FUCKING PRESENT FOR MY SON. I am a shitty mother.

Knowing that this is my last child has made this birthday hard - all of his firsts are my lasts.

All that being said, he did have a lovely day. We went to the beach.

My little surfer boy stood in the cold water, and tried to crawl out to sea.

All four of his grandparents came for cake, and he does love his drum and puppy (a toy one, not a canine).

And, I have nursed this child for a whole year, with no plans to stop anytime soon. I didn't get there with Isabella, and wanted so desperately to. Score for me. Score for him.

Bridger was born on a Monday. The remnants of Hurricane Ike were swirling by, but it was sunny and humid. I had had weeks of prodromal labor, and was thoroughly cooked. The turkey timer had popped for sure.

One day I will write out his birth story in full, but not now. His birth was amazing. Two hours from water breaking to his appearance. He was born at the North Shore Birth Center, in a tub. I remember how surreal I felt during the labor, like I (monkey mind) was looking at my animal self just DOING it. Labor was like being pounded by surf, but the water made it work, not hurt. I lifted my son to my chest, and he gave this tiny cough, and looked at me, and then we climbed out of the water together. Got to go home that afternoon, pure magic.

My sunny boy.

Happy Birthday little B.

A Shift in the Seasons

Today was a most perfect beach day, one of the few we've had this summer. And it's September. Yes, I know that it's still summer until the equinox, but really, summer didn't arrive in New England until a few weeks ago. We had a long extended spring, that dwelled into July, and then proceeded to have a monsoon season through most of August.

I feel sometimes like the seasons are shifting - the weather associated with each seems to come much later into that calendar period. As a child, I remember snowfall well before Christmas, and summer weather that began in May. It seems that in the past ten years or so, we don't get winter snows until February, but they last into April, and then spring rains crowd out those perfect beach days until school starts again. Global warming? Weirdness in the earth's axis? I don't know, but it feels, quite literally, like something is wrong in the universe.

So on to the pic (and video!) whoring - of our perfect September beach day.

B always looks like he's surfing...

My little super-model... I mean really, look at the length of those legs!

Sweetness and light

Yes, Isabella is fishing. Off the porch. This photo just says everything that is best and beautiful about being 5.

We had a wonderful trip, despite the tailend of April showers in July. Fourth of July weekend was spent at my in-laws lakeside cottage. On Monday morning we packed up and spent the next few days in Acadia National Park. It was MAGNIFICENT. Isabella is a seasoned camper, but this was Bridger's first trip. He loved it - particularly playing peek-a-boo in the tent:

Tuesday was overcast and cool, but we did go biking on the carriage roads. Being in such a beautiful place was soothing to my being. It seemed every few breaths was a moment of 'stop, look, be here'.

The rain came in Tuesday night (it was downright raw - 52 degrees!), who knew we'd need hot cocoa in July. Wednesday morning was still pretty foul, so we had lunch at Jordan Pond House, famous for their popovers and jam - yum! By early afternoon, the rain had passed, so we went for a hike around the pond. Although a popular route, the scenery is just beyond belief. There was a loon in the pond, and mist around the bubbles. It felt other-worldly.

Thursday, the day we had to drive home, the sun finally made a real appearance. We ended up hiking from our campground along Somes Sound to Thunder Hole, where we had lunch. It was bluebird, just wonderful. There was time for a little yoga by the water:

This trip definately got two thumbs up :)

And a few other notes, as I've been such a bum about posting... Garden is ... a bit wild. But I think not all is lost after the ridiculous abount of rain we had. I have zucchini blossoms, a few green tomatoes going, and I think there will be cukes as well.

I am now off zoloft. Not entirely by choice, but I'm coping. Truth is it just got to be too expensive to throw $300 a month into appointments and meds - although I wish I could have weaned off it more slowly. The withdrawal was pretty unpleasant. Pranayama has been a very important tool in managing the anxiety that is still gnawing at my edges. So has the occasional smokey treat (boo - I hadn't smoked in over four years...). But I am managing, and now feel like this is a battle I can at least think about losing, rather than a battle I can't even fight.

I'm feeling pretty hopeful on the whole though. A few months ago I felt as if I was a dead zone of sorts - like a sailboat with luffing sails, waiting for some wind to come take me to in some direction. Now there is both purpose, and quiet attention to a path. I have reconciled with my self that right now, in this moment my JOB is to mother my children. I've put together a hodge-podge of things that will help pay some bills, that can be scheduled around my kids. That all speak to my passions and interests, and use my strengths. This is the most secure I've felt in myself and my future in a long time. And it is a lovely feeling.