Intensity or A Fitting Final Post

From the moment my parents first saw my son in the hospital they were declaring him to be not just the most beautiful, but also the easiest baby in the world. “He’s going to be a good sleeper.” Never mind that his dangerously high bilirubin levels had him completely conked out. “He’s going to be a good eater.” Never mind that nursing for more than an hour at a time wasn’t exactly my definition of a “good eater.” “He’s just so calm. This baby has his father’s personality, that’s for sure.”

And despite all of my never minded frustration, they were right. For the first 10 weeks,* big G. was a dream. He slept long stretches from an early age. Once I figured out what the hell I was doing, he nursed well and on a pretty regular schedule of his own making. And when he wasn’t eating or sleeping, he spent long stretches of time in the “quiet alert” state. And now, at nearly three years old, he’s generally very easygoing and sweet and compassionate.** Just like his dad.***

And from almost the first day: “You certainly did nothing to deserve such an easy baby. Just wait, the next one will be just like you. Then you’ll see what it’s really like.”

Well, we all know that “the next one” was easier said than conceived. But again, they were right. Lil’ G. seems to be a lot like I was.

When she’s asleep, she’s really very peaceful. But if she’s awake, even if she’s nursing, she’s pretty pissed off. Most of the day is spent in cranky, but placatable despot mode. But as 7 pm draws nigh, she decides she’s been rather too lenient in tolerating the injustice of the world. Every time, I try to feed her, but she acts as though the boob is just getting in the way of her plans to raise a ruckus. By 7:45 she unleashes the full power of her wrath.

Her wails sound remarkably like a car alarm. Rhythmic and piercing and nerve jangling. Occasionally punctuated by a bone-chillingly guttural sound that makes me think of nothing so much as what the Wicked Witch of the West sounded like as she was melting into a puddle of witchy goo. There are very brief moments of relative calm, acheived by tightly swaddling her, taking her out into the humid night air long enough to get her to suck on the pacifier, then popping her into the swing at its highest speed, complete with its electronic music (which segues nicely from "Love me Tender" to "Edleweiss" to "Home on the Range").**** The only way I’ve found to bring her to her senses enough to latch on and nurse herself into a drunken stupor is to give her a bath, which she despises. After wailing her way to cleanliness and screaming like a horror movie victim while I dress her in a fresh sleeper, she’s finally willing to latch on, nurse like a bulldog, and then pass out at around 11 pm.

These three or four hours each night are their own brand of frantic, chaotic hell for me. It is physically painful to hear her scream like that. And the fact that it runs from 7 to 11 is making it nearly impossible to get big G. into bed for the night when I’m by myself (which is most of the time now that my mom has gone home for good). Last night, I bravely soldiered on, attempting to read big G. his bedtime story by shouting over the wails coming from the sling at my chest and bouncing around the room like a kid in need of a Ritalin fix. I finally gave up and just begged big G. to go to sleep without the rest of the story when he declared “Baby Gwen is crying, Mommy. Big, big crying. Can’t hear you, Mommy. Big, big crying.”

The advantage of being a mom for the second time around is that I know, really know that this will get better. That she’ll get older and may one day even smile and be happy, if only for fleeting moments.

And if not… well, what is there to be so happy about most of the time, anyway? After all, I have to say that being like me has served me pretty well. Most of the time, I like me, even if a lot of other people don’t.

And I think I could be a pretty good mother to someone like me. For starters, I need to work out a way to remember what she’s like now without labeling her the “difficult” kid for the rest of her life. Every family gathering of my life has eventually led to swapping stories about what an awfully difficult baby and toddler and preschooler I was. The crying and temper tantrums and stubbornness. The time I tried to kick out the back window of our Datsun stationwagon. The cute way I refused to wear underwear until I was five and would wear only loose “Jesus” sandals until I was seven (rain, wind, sleet or snow be damned). My first memory is of my mother dumping every one of the several dozen pairs of shoes she had bought me into the floorboard of the car and dropping me off at preschool with a note pinned to my chest declaring “If you really want her to wear closed-toed shoes, you’re welcome to try it.” One of the first things my husband knew about me was that I bit a girl’s earlobe off when I was 18 months old.*****

I should also probably try to nip this “big G is like his dad and lil’ G is like her mom” thing in the bud, too. I listened to a refrain about how I was just like my father (who's a pretty great guy but comes from a long line of crazy) and my brother was just like my mother (meaning, according to my mother at least, that he’s sensitive and basically optimistic and generally good) for my entire childhood and it sucked. It’s still a source of tension between me and my mother, who is so convinced that I’m a clone of my father that she refuses to believe that I don’t suffer from chronic constipation like he does. It’s pretty annoying to be on the receiving end of a constant stream of advice about how to get more fiber into my diet when, in fact, I’ve always been quite regular, thank you very much.

Of course, my brother, simply angelic until he turned eleven, made up for lost time later. And I figure if everyone goes crazy once in their life, going crazy at an age when you’re still small enough to be contained in a playpen isn’t such a burdensome way to do it.

As I’m sure you can imagine, my parents are loving this. “Yep, just like you.” “Mmm hmm, you usually started screaming around seven too.” “Oh, I remember bouncing you around the house for hours and hours and hours.” “Really wears you down, doesn’t it?”

One thing I’ve noticed though is that there isn’t any talk of the “next one” this time. My parents had two children and they’re assuming (despite my past comments to the contrary) that we’ll do the same.

I had always (well, since I was old enough to imagine having a family, anyway) thought I’d want to have three kids. It just seemed like a nice round number. When my brother and I were locked in a fight to the death (and by the time he was eleven, there was a genuine fear that it could have come to that for one of us, probably me), I’d always think “if there were another one of us, this wouldn’t be such a big deal.” And I still have those thoughts that a group of three siblings is better than two. But maybe I was (and am) wrong.

Starting at around the middle of this last pregnancy, when I look at moms with three kids, I don’t see anything that could resemble my future self. I mean, I’m sure it’s great. I’m just not picturing it for me anymore.

I don’t want to make this decision based on the daunting prospect of doing IVF again (besides, ironically enough, it seems that our new insurance might actually cover part of it) or on the difficulty of dealing with my “intense” daughter. I want to make it based on whether I feel like there’s a person missing from our family. After big G. was born, as happy as I was, I knew from the first moment that I wanted and needed to love and raise another child too. And I knew that I would make that happen one way or another, come hell or high water.

I don’t feel that way now. Obviously, that could change. But I’m feeling comfortable enough with the idea of my family of four that I don’t picture an Infertility 3.0. And let’s be honest, you were all good sports for putting up with my bitching and moaning about trying to have a second child anyway.

And so, I’ve decided that this will be my last post. A post about meeting my daughter’s intense screaming with the equally intense love of a kindred spirit. And a post about finally feeling (however tentatively) that my family is complete.

I can never thank you enough for the love and support and laughter that you all have given me in the last fifteen months. And I’ll certainly stay in touch through your own blogs and other means.


* The happy days ended when his reflux got bad enough that he screamed bloody murder any time I tried to feed him and eventually went for as long as 48 hours without ingesting anything but a few drops of water. But once we found the right dosage of Zantac (at around 5 months) and gave it time to work, he was back to his happy self.

** Except when he’s sick, as he is now. Then he’s whiny and clingy and generally maddening. But, you know, sick. So I put up with it without complaining too much.

*** His dad is also dramatically unpleasant to be around when sick.

**** This morning, I was trying to figure out whether it would be feasible to leave both kids with a babysitter for a couple of hours after big G. has gone to bed so that I could make it out to my book club in a couple of weeks. Imagining myself explaining to a sitter this swaddle, outside, pacifier, swing, music routine as a means to getting 10-20 minutes of silence out of my daughter, I realized that there's just no way I could pay anyone enough to do this for a baby who isn't their own. What would your going rate be? Fifty... a hundred bucks an hour? Suffice it to say that mine would be pretty high. You know, if she weren't mine.

***** Yes, off. I ran into the poor girl years later when we were both in high school and she still has a noticeable scar from where it was reattached. I only recently learned that this incident occurred when our mothers plopped us into a small playpen together so they could enjoy a game of tennis. So, in my defense, what do you think is going to happen when you put two 18-month-olds into a playpen together unsupervised?