Misadventures in Baby Sitting: WWYD?

Picking up Little A from daycare, I pause to coo at the newest kid there, a bright-eyed baby who is perhaps five months old. The baby sucks fervently on a bottle. I ask Susanne, the owner/operator, if the transition is going well for the little one.

"She had a good day," Susanne says as she cradles the baby and smiles at her warmly. "I'm just so THRILLED she's finally taking the bottle! The first couple days can be hit or miss for babies who are used to the breast alone."

I nod, remembering that particular hell when Big A started daycare. Just then the mother of the new baby enters and the baby throws off the bottle and lunges for mommy with a joyous chortle. I say hello but must turn back to my brood rather than make more small talk. Big A holds her sister's beloved blankie over Little A's head just beyond reach, and Little A is ready to poke every finger through whatever orifice she hits first. I separate and haul both kids toward the door, tossing a goodbye over my shoulder.

When my head is turned toward them, I watch as Susanne asks the new mom if she can give the bottle to someone else. "It's seems such a shame to waste it!" She says. And next moment, another child who happened to toddle by is happily guzzling the beverage.

I'm curious: What would you do?

Now Repeat After Me: "I'm So Sorry for Your Loss." Great! Now STOP TALKING ...

Just a quick note to say I have eluded the stomach flu thus far! Alas, poor DH fell ill yesterday. Here's hoping my good luck sticks ...

I was reading Ann's recent posts (Raw, and Raw Part 2) over at The Unlucky Twenty Percent She reminds me so vividly of the conundrum of early pregnancy after loss. I didn't have a blog when I was fresh in my grief and newly pregnant with Little A. But most of what I would have written about back then is stuff she talks about now. Ann's description of certain health care professionals who are inappropriately gushy over a new pregnancy announcement on the heels of a loss? Boy, I remember that.

Thankfully many things change over time. The blast crater left in my life by pregnancy woes has been camouflaged by the new things (children, work, holidays, home renovations, vacations, etc.). Most of the time others don't sense that anything catastrophic happened to me and my family in the not-too-distant past anymore. I actually take solace in that. We're different, but still chugging along the best we can these days.

Yet the one place where my loss still always seems like a huge, ugly tattoo remains the doctor office. For instance, I went to my primary care doctor this January. I wanted a prescription for antibiotics to clear up a month-long sinus infection. But I haven't seen my PCP in about 18 months, since before that I'd been under the OB's care. Understandably, my PCP needed to update my chart. "Gee, what have you been up to since 2006?" she asked. "Any changes in your life that relate to your health?"

And so it begins. Mind you, I'm there for my nose. Or other times, I might be in a physician's office on behalf of my kid's wheezy lungs. Yet my damaged uterus keeps butting her scarred little self into the conversation. It always goes the same way during medical history:

Well ... not quite a normal delivery.

Not during VBAC. I'd never had a c section before Little A. The rupture was spontaneous and preterm.

No hysterectomy, but no more pregnancies allowed, either.

Yeah, they say it's a great outcome given what usually happens.

Actually it was a perforation scar that ruptured. A prior surgical complication.

A D&E.

Yeah, second trimester. Due to trisomy 18.

The surreal thing? I find doctors don't react in caring-empathetic mode. I can't remember the last time someone said, "Oh, that sounds dreadful," or "Sorry for your loss." Instead doctors (and some nurses, but especially doctors) eat this stuff up with a spoon. They are obviously excited to hear about what happened to me and Little A and tend to linger and ask detailed questions. Which might reap benefits, IF they were staying to talk about the sinus infection or lung problem at hand. But Little A and I get the standard 90 seconds of conversation on that, and then doctors want to talk about the crazy medical history that is completely unrelated to our chief complaint of the day. We are obviously the caliente in their otherwise lukewarm medical-history-taking day.

Maybe I'm putting out an "I'm ok" vibe by not choking up or crying myself, and that's why I get the borderline gleeful reaction? Perhaps they are all unfeeling dolts? Something else?

I don't even know how I'd like doctors to react to the news. But having to swallow to keep from salivating all over the chart is quite creepy.

California Is Burning

As I write this the sun sets over the San Francisco Bay. Tangerine rays glint off the windows of houses with better views up the ridge, thereby sharing some of their wealth with my street further downhill. But as lovely as the scene is, something is wrong. When the breeze blows from the south it smells like a neighbor must be having a cozy night by the fireplace. But it's too warm for a log in the hearth tonight. What I'm smelling are the wildfires down in Los Angeles and San Diego.

My being able to smell anything that originates in Los Angeles, let alone San Diego, is just twelve kinds of wrong. Distance-wise, it is equivalent to someone in Toronto inhaling and saying, "Ah, they're burning the autumn leaves in the NYC burbs." Or someone in Lisbon, Portugal catching a whiff of tagine smoldering in Casablanca.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Little Mysteries

This is the third time in the past few weeks that I have reached into my underwear drawer and pulled out a pair of cotton briefs that belong to Big A. I know we're both female and potty trained and live with DH (the person responsible for putting the underwear away). But I'm also 100 pounds heavier and twenty-six inches taller than Big A, so our butts are not NEARLY the same size. Yet DH has been getting confused about whom wears which undergarments when he sorts the clean laundry.

Worth bringing up in marital discussion? Probably not. But I still find myself a little alarmed that he might think I own Dora underpants.

The Princess Thing

Like a lot of three year olds, Big A plays at being a princess. This usually involved putting on every necklace she owns, pairing a frilly skirt with jeans and rain boots, and topping it all off with a beat-up plastic crown. Then she would march around the house proclaiming "I am so fancy!" Sometimes we'd go to the park and I'd share a wink with another mom accompanied by a similarly festooned little girl. "Did you pick out your clothes all by yourself today?" one of us would ask the other's child while they nodded vigorously and we tried not to laugh.

Even for a non-frilly woman like me, it was silly and sweet. Cute enough that I even bought Big A a fairy costume when I saw it on sale, because I knew she'd probably like to wear it while riding her tricycle.

However, I'm currently suffering from a bad case of the princess heebies. It all started when a friend of mine had Big A over to her house for a play date. In addition to her preschooler boy, my friend has a teenage daughter. Big A stumbled upon some old toys that belonged to the teenager. One of them was a copy of the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty. My friend said "Oh, my daughter never looks at that anymore. Take it home with you ." And I thought, "Sure, why not?"

But after reading it from the parent-of-a-female child perspective, I'm suffering from a real case of the heebie jeebies. Because in Sleeping Beauty, the princess:

• Dances around the forest with a strange dude who snuck up from behind and put his hands on her without asking permission
• Falls instantly in love with the stranger, despite his use of the pickup line: "Don't worry, we've already met -- I'm the man in your dreams!"
• Does whatever dumb ass thing anyone tells her (like marry a guy she doesn't know, or touch the spinning wheel spindle when an evil-looking fairy beckons her to do so)
• Gets married ... at age sixteen!

I know, I know, these complaints are very lame and gosh-shucks of me. Very unsophisticated, that I am so lathered up about this. But three year olds are such earnest little sponges. Mine has been wandering around the house saying, "Mommy, when can I get married? I need to get married!" And "Where is my prince? I need him to take care of me!" Gah. I ask, would you not also turn into Tipper Gore circa 1985 for at least a few minutes if you heard your little girl say she needed a man to take care of her?

I was going to remove Sleeping Beauty from the house. But like a virus, it's already done its damage, so taking away the source of the infection now is kind of pointless. I figured it might make her even more obsessed if the book suddenly disappeared. So instead I brought home some modern princess-related stories into the mix, to broaden Big A's perceptions of how crown-wearing folks can act. We'll see if she switches her preference to the books I like. God, I hope so.