Perfect

Over the weekend, Louise posted about the times when you should put the camera down, sit back and just enjoy. But at other times, it is important to pick the camera up, and snap away.

~

I have the reputation for being a bit of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to photography. "No, no," the instructor of my Tuesday night Intro to Photography class is prone to saying. "It's really good, especially for a beginner." I hear it a lot, in all walks of my life: "You need to cut yourself slack." But I hardly ever do, especially when it comes to photography. One unfortunate shadow, the blur of an eyelid, a chopped-off hand? Delete, delete, delete.

So how is it, then, that some of the pictures I love best are some of the most imperfect?

This is our first photo with Lulu. There wasn't time to take a proper one before she was whisked down to the NICU. So we posed--my parents, my mother-in-law, my husband and me--with a cell phone photo of Lu that J.D. snapped as the nurses were wheeling her away.


It wasn't the kind of newborn photo I'd hoped to get, the kind you see over at Kelle Hampton's blog, of a soft-lighted mother and baby looking joyfully at each other in their first wondrous moments together. But still: I love it.

~

This is our first family photo, just the three of us. Taken in the NICU the next morning, the first time we were able to hold our girl. A kind nurse asked, "Would you like a family picture?" and we said, "Guh," which in stunned new-parent speak can mean "No problem" or "Is it serious?" or "We are over the moon with happiness." In this case, it meant yes, thank you. She translated, and whipped out a non-digital, 35-mm point and shoot. She printed out our picture on a printer in the corner of the nurses's station, handed to us as we left, the ink still wet, along with a lot of pamphlets on PPD and proper handwashing procedures.


The pixels are as big and square as my hand. You can't actually see the features on Lulu's face very well. There's just a baby-head-shaped red splotch that denotes her presence. But still: I love it.

~

We meant to take a picture to replace that one shortly after Lulu came home. We figured out the tripod and the self-timer on the camera. But lugging all of this stuff out, setting it up, finding a time when all of us had hair brushed and matching clothes on and no drool or pee or vomit on any part of our person was a little hard. I know that family pictures are important, and sometimes difficult, to get. So whenever I see a family with a new baby all out together, I will go right up to them and ask them, "Do you want me to take a picture of you all together?" I will pose them, snap a few shots, get their email addresses and send them copies.

But somehow, I couldn't get it together to do this for myself.

Until this weekend. We were at a pumpkin patch with friends, we were walking to the car, we passed a platform of pumpkins and I said, "Stop!" I moved things around, adjusted the exposure, handed the SLR to my friend who has never SLR-ed before. She waited for us to get in position and snapped the shot.

When I got home and opened the file in Photoshop, I saw that for all my careful adjustment, it was kind of a funky picture. The spot I'd picked was backlit by the setting sun; I had to play around a lot with levels and fill light so that we didn't look like zombies. The sky is weirdly exposed in a nuclear-fallout kind of way, and I have a strange Joan-of-Arc thing going on with my hair. It's not a perfect picture by any means.



But it is still perfect because it's us, all of us, together. And so I love it.

The question

A few months ago, people didn't dare to ask. Lulu was scrawny and bald-patchy and newborn-screamy. They would be insane to ask. But now that she's sleek and fat and so so so cute, they can't help themselves.

I don't blame them for asking. I like to think that my baby girl is so freaking ADORABLE and winsome and charming that people think it's my responsibility to bring more like her into the world. So these people--never family and friends, they know better--want to know:

When do you think you'll have another?

And I really don't know what to say.

I suppose I could tell them, these people in the park, the grocery story, these high school friends, these neighbors, about the one perfect week I had after seeing that positive pregnancy test before my pregnancy went entirely to shit. I could tell them about the half-dozen middle of the night ER visits in the first trimester alone, the blase faces of the doctors who told me that they really couldn't say whether my pregnancy would continue. Wait and see. My least favorite words in the English language. I could tell them about the horrible night in the ER at 8 weeks, when the triage nurse gave me detailed instructions on what to expect from the miscarriage she was sure was imminent. About the followup sonograms, laying on the table with my stomach in knots, hoping to see that little flickering heartbeat and being shocked and not shocked, each time, that it was still there.

I could tell them more than they wanted to know about slow-doubling HCG levels, progesterone suppositories, subchorionic hematomas. I could tell them about how I learned at a glance to tell whether the amount of blood on the toilet paper was "normal."

I could tell them about cervical insufficiency, about the thirteen weeks I spent in bed on my left side. I could tell them about the deep, soul-crushing boredom, the resentment, the two full seasons that I missed completely. About the crown I had to get on my upper back molar because nobody told me that spending 91 days with your hand propping up your jaw could put so much pressure on your teeth that they'd crack. How when I bought a pair of skinny jeans after Lulu's birth, I was so happy to fit into a smaller size than I'd worn before I was pregnant--until I realized that the only reason I could was because my leg muscles had atrophied from months of disuse.

I could tell these people who ask about how it felt to go into labor two months early, the prick of the needle as the nurses gave me steroids that would develop my baby's premature lungs. How there was talk of giving me magnesium, of keeping me in a weird twilight state between labor and delivery so that "the fetus" had more time to develop. How I panicked at the words HOSPITAL BEDREST, because as shitty as regular bedrest was, at least I could be at home with J.D. during it. I could tell them how the neonatal doctors came in to talk to me when it became apparent that I was having a baby that night, that it couldn't be put off, and how it felt when they used words like "ventilator" and "cerebral palsy." The long, long, long, long few seconds between pushing Lu out and hearing her finally give the squalling cry that meant that she could breathe.

How I got to hold her on my chest for thirty seconds before they took her away.

I could tell them about those two weeks in the NICU, the angry, jaundiced red color of my baby's skin, her skinny, skinny arms and legs, the IV in her HEAD. How she didn't have the energy to eat and lost so much weight--weight she didn't have to lose. How her heart rate plummeted and she stopped breathing when we tried to feed her. How it felt to leave the hospital with just J.D. I could talk about the visits to the hospital, four times a day, and then three after I nearly collapsed from exhaustion and hunger next to my daughter's isolette. About the baby in the isolette next to Lulu, who needed a machine to breathe, who looked more like a piece of fruit than an actual human being. He was Baby B Miller, a twin, and I couldn't see a Baby A, and to this day, I worry about where he was, what happened to him. I could expound for hours about the nurses whose kindness I still can't talk about without wanting to cry.

I could also go on and on about all the people who tried to "comfort" me by saying things like, "Well, at least you'll be able to catch up on sleep!" and "She's getting better care than you could give her," about the people who were upset about not being able to see the baby, and let me know how disappointed they were, like I had just decided not to let them come over today, like she wasn't hooked up to a bunch of monitors in the HOSPITAL. Like it was my fault.

I could tell them how I wonder to this day if it IS my fault, if there was something I could have done to make my pregnancy last longer. How I go back over those 33 weeks, trying to pinpoint the place where I did something that made her come earlier than she should have.

But then, on the other hand, I could tell them about how awesome it was to have Lulu inside of me, how every day I was pregnant felt like Christmas, full of the same excitement and promise. How I finally liked the way I looked, for the first time ever in my life, even though I couldn't see my toes or shave my legs. How I wonder what on earth I was doing with my life before I had her to fill my hours with smiles and coos and Lulu-ness.

I could tell them that we feel so complete, so perfect together, just the three of us. How I can't imagine loving anybody else that much, how when I do contemplate having another child, I feel a little sorry for those other kids of mine, because I know I will always love Lulu the most out of anybody on the planet, and nobody else--not even them--could possibly compare. How Lulu has made every moment I've ever been miserable in my life WORTH IT, because without them, I never would have gotten to meet her.

I could tell them how I can't imagine not doing this again.
But this all seems really TMI. Nobody wants to be that crazy lady talking about her cervix in the produce aisle.

So instead I just say I'm not sure.

I'll keep it with mine

My mother's family--cousins, aunts, uncles, greats--all lives in the same town I (and they) grew up in. My dad's family, however, is scattered across the country, from the East Coast to the West Coast and all in between. When I go home for a visit, I usually see bits and pieces of the large puzzle of my mom's family. I hardly ever get to see dad's all in one place.

But over Labor Day weekend, the stars aligned. My dad's sister came into D.C. from the Pacific Northwest for a work conference. My aunt and uncle, who live an hour out of the city, decided to drive in to see her. Not wanting to feel excluded, their sister, who lives in the Midwest, decided to drive down. Then we all drove down to the beach, where my parents and extended family live, as one big wagon train of folks and fun. So much of my family--mom's side and dad's--all in one place. It was heaven.

The visit was perfectly timed. Not only because the weather was perfect, or that we could all say goodbye to summer together, or that there were no hurricanes or earthquakes, but because, selfishly, I wanted to show off my child at her best. And Lulu is just a peach at this stage of her development. She's little enough still to be squishy and cuddly, a perfect helpless smoosh of baby who just wants to be held and cuddled. But she's old enough now to be fun. She smiles and coos and jabbers and leans over toward people when she likes someone and wants them to hold her up, the first compliment she's ever been able to give. She laughs at everybody's jokes. She's obliging that way. I loved being able to see my family interact with her. And I loved seeing her interact with them.


She was very popular, as you can see.

There were so many wonder moments for me in this weekend visit. Seeing Lulu with her cousin, Kay, who's eleven and the most awesome kid. That was one. They already love each other so much. Kay is an only child, and after the difficult pregnancy I had, there's a very real chance that Lulu might be, too. I worry about that, about her possibly lacking the kind of bond that I have with my own sister. But Kay calls Lulu "Sissy," the way my sister does with me. "She's my sister," is how Kay introduces Lulu to people. "My sister of the heart," she says.
A quick kiss isn't just a kiss, then, you see. It's a sweet little moment between sisters. It's the start of a lifelong friendship.

Seeing Lulu with my Aunt Judy, who is young and cool and who I always have looked up to--I like to think that I was the Lulu to her Kay. She has two great, creative, funny, passionate, super-smart kids, a wicked sense of humor, an adventurous spirit and is pretty much my role model for all things parenting, if not all things in general. I don't get to see her often, and when I do, I want to get her opinion on everything, to talk things over, to study her and learn about how to do the things she's done. During this visit, I found myself watching her with Lulu, watching so intently, to see how to do it, to make sure that I do things the right way.


There was one picture I took, of Lulu and her Mammaw, my mom, that reminded me so much of a picture of me and my own Mammaw, one that is creased and a little worn from being carried to every law school final, so that I could have her smile there with me for support, urging me on.

I love the thought that one day she'll take this picture with her to her first surgery or when she plays for the first time at Carnegie Hall or to clown college for her make-it-or-break-it juggling final. We're setting the bar high for her, obviously.) I know Lulu's not really laying down memories yet, but until she can, I'll keep them for her.

_________________________

On our last day in town, we caught up with some old friends--both mine and Lulu's. Mike is my oldest friend in the world--I met him the first day of kindergarten, twenty-six years ago this month. We went all through school together, elementary and middle and high school, where we met Sarah, and Erin, who became Mike's wife. Almost a year ago exactly we all found out that we were having babies, and that we were due exactly one week after another, like stairsteps. Of course life is full of ups and downs, and we ended up, thanks to prematurity and going over due, missing our due dates by a mile. But our kids are still like stairsteps: Lulu was born in March, Erin and Mike's little boy in April, and Sarah's in May, a week or two later than expected. Whenever J.D. and I are in town, we like to catch up with our friends and favorite little fledgling families.


As you can see from the photo, the kids don't seem to take too much notice of each other right now. But I know that they'll be fast friends someday. And I love it so hard, the symmetry of it: my oldest friend's kid being my kid's oldest friend. I love that Lulu has friends, already, even if she doesn't have, you know, fine motor skills and control of her bladder. Friends are far more important than those things, anyway. Right?

By the time we left, Monday evening, I was fighting allergies and sunburn, nursing an ear infection, worrying about work. I was also about ready to kill all of these people I love so dearly, as my sleep-deprived child wailed for the third day straight for her nap and was denied it by all of the people who wanted to play with her and love on her. I just wanted to go home and go to sleep, but we had a four-hour drive ahead of us, made even longer by the myriad stops I knew we would have to take to soothe our screaming infant. My mother and I started World War III as we packed the car over whether or not the baby would succumb to overheating and fry like an egg if I made her wear SOCKS on the long ride home.

"Why the shit do I put up with them?" I asked J.D., as we drove northward, homeward. It was finally quiet--except for Lulu grizzling and the ringing that had started up in my sinus-goop-logged ear. "They're so crazy. They're all insane."

"Yeah," he said. "They are. But they're worth it."

And I didn't say so--it would only encourage him!--but he's right, you know.

In which I discuss my boobs.

Oh, breastfeeding. I had such high hopes for you.

It seems like every mother I know has had some problem with breastfeeding, with supply, with weight gain, with latch. I kind of couldn't believe all the drama: it's breastfeeding. You put the baby to the boob and it eats. Cavewoman did it. How hard can it be? I definitely didn't believe it would be difficult for me. Still, I tried to prepare myself. Just in case. I read all the books, and marked relevant passages. I hired a doula to give me tips. I visited lactation consultants, had my nipples examined, took lots of notes. I felt pretty confident that I could do it, that it would be easy.

And then Lulu was born two months early, and all of my plans and preparations went right out the window. We've had so many bumps on the road of our breastfeeding journey--SO many, and it's only been five months.

Bump #1: Prematurity.

I wrote in my birth plan that I wanted to try and breastfeed right away after Lu was born. I wanted to try the breast crawl, where the just-born baby is placed on its mother's chest and pulls itself up to latch onto the breast when it's ready. It sounded pretty cool to me. But when your baby is born at 33 weeks, they don't really give you a lot of time to try things like this. Lulu was whisked away the second she came out--I got to see her for about half a minute before she was rushed down to the NICU and attached to host of wires and monitors. I didn't see her again for four hours; I didn't get to hold her until well into the next day. I wasn't able to try to breastfeed for a few days after that, and by the time we tried it, we had missed that easy introductory period. We were already playing catchup. Only we didn't get a lot of time to practice, since Lulu was pretty badly jaundiced and couldn't be out from under the bilirubin lights for very long. And she was so weak and small that she couldn't really feed properly when we did get the chance to try it. Which leads us to...

Bump #2: The Nipple Shield.

Lulu weighed less than five pounds when she was born and within a day or two, had dropped down to four. She was tiny all over: hands that were too tiny to grasp, feet that were too tiny for the monitors that slipped right off, a mouth that was too tiny to latch on to my ginormous boobs. When we finally did get the chance to breastfeed, we needed a nipple shield, a flexible piece of plastic--a lot like the nipple that goes on a bottle--that is placed over the breast. It's usually smaller, narrower, and longer than an actual nipple, and a premature baby finds it easier to latch onto it.

I remember crying when the NICU nurses handed the nipple shield to me, being so supremely grateful that someone had thought to invent this marvelous device. We could use it for a while, the nurses said, and then wean off of it. But that's easier said than done. By the time we brought Lulu home, 15 days after she was born, she was bigger and stronger...and firmly addicted to the nipple shield. Trying to wean her from the shield caused her to scream and scream, presumably in order to alert CPS to the fact that we were trying to starve her. In the end, I stopped trying to wean her off of it. But as she grew, her mouth got too big for the shield. Then she wouldn't take the breast at all, which leads us to...

Bump #3: Bottles.

Lulu had colic. For four months. The only thing that came remotely close to soothing her was food. Tons and tons of food. I fed her as best I could from the breast, but it wasn't ever enough to sate her. So I pumped and pumped and PUMPED, and we gave her bottle after bottle after bottle. It didn't take long for her to develop "bottle preference," which is exactly what it sounds like: she preferred the bottle to me. It was easier to eat from the bottle. She got her fix faster, and didn't have to work as hard for it. Finally, she had had so many bottles that my supply of frozen milk was gone. Which leads to...

Bump #4: Formula.

We already had to give her four ounces of formula a day, doctors orders, to help with weight gain. And formula was so EASY. I didn't have to spend a half-hour hooked up to the pump. I could just go into the kitchen and mix a little powder with a little distilled water, dump it into a bottle. And voila: quiet, happy, satisfied baby. Four ounces a day became six, which became ten, which became thirteen. And then...

Bump #5: My supply dropped accordingly. I was giving Lulu so much formula that my body didn't need to make as much breastmilk as before.

The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for two years in order to reap the maximum health benefits. I had wanted to do that. I had resolved to do that. But over the last week, I started to face the possibility--the very real probability--that, with the way things were going, we wouldn't make it to six months. And that made me so sad; it made me feel like I had failed my preemie, who needed the health benefits of breastfeeding even more than other babies. It was a relief that Lulu would take her bottle so peacefully, without screaming. But I missed breastfeeding. I missed the sleepy, happy noises she made when she was curled up with me, I missed the way she would put her little hands up under my chin and sigh. I had missed out on so much time with her, early on--I needed this bonding experience to make up for that loss. But every day my supply dropped more. I had a decision to make: use it or lose it. Breastfeed the kid exclusively or wean her entirely.

So J.D. and I replaced the bottle with a sippy cup, to be used in cases of emergency ONLY. We put the formula up on the top shelf of the cupboard, and resolved not to use it at all. We don't need to; Lulu is a tubby baby now, with Michelin-man style fat roles on her arms and thighs. I hooked myself back up to that blasted turquoise hospital-grade breast pump, the pump I had thought was so pretty in the beginning, the pump I hate now. I drank cups and cups of tea that tasted like licorice-flavored feet, and took so much fenugreek that my sweat now reeks of maple syrup. My supply bounced back all at once, right in the middle of the Safeway, so that I had to pay for my groceries with my arms carefully folded over the wet spots on my shirt.

Now, when Lulu hollers for her supper, I pick her up and wait patiently--as patiently as I can--for her to latch on. It takes a long time, and she isn't too pleased about it. She misses her bottle. She screams, she uses her tiny fingers to pinch me, her nails to scratch me, her feet to kick me while she thrashes in protest. I know, rationally, that it has nothing to do with how she feels about me as her mother. It's nothing personal. She just wants her baba back. I know that...but still, it's hard not to feel rejected, to feel like my child doesn't want this thing that I am trying and trying so hard to give her.

I try to be calm while I feed her, to sing to her and soothe her. But afterward, sometimes, I can't help crying out of defeat and pure tiredness. I wonder if we will ever get it right? In times of extreme pessimism, I know that we won't, that we'll be back to formula in a week, if that long.

But then, at other times, Lulu latches perfectly; she cuddles up to me and makes those happy noises that I love and feeds like she's been doing it like this all along. Sometimes we get it right, so right that I know I have to keep pushing. And it feels so right that I know all of this hard work is worth it, no matter what bumps are waiting for us down the road from here.