U

Walking through the kitchen, feet bare on flagstone, I look down and see an upside U. It's a magnet--part of an alphabet set that covers the lower-half of the fridge. Seeing it there pierces me right in the heart with gratitude. I don't know how an inch-long shape, black on gray because its colored side is face down, can conjure up the images of my two Big kids and fill my heart with warm love in an instant. I see their faces turned up to the big chrome door, reaching up to grab letters and move them, drop them, taste them. On their knees reaching up but more recently on their feet. They are growing so much. Learning so much. So curious, such big wide open eyes. I pick those magnets up from the floor every day, just as I pick up the pile of books they spread off the shelves and onto the wood floor every day. Once, twice, three times a day. As many times as we put them back, they'll find their way back to take them off. Why do I bother putting them back? Because it gives them such pleasure to take them off. They don't sweep them off in a fit of destruction or to see what happens when they move an arm. They reach up and pick one off, look at it. Sometimes they look up at me and say something I don't understand, indicating the book as though we're discussing literature. Sometimes they point at pictures. Sometimes the book is upside down. Often they babble to each other as they explore, sometimes they sit quietly. Sometimes they carry a book over to me to read. I love to watch them and I love that re-shelving the books beckons them back to the shelves to explore.

An upside magnet does not always speak to me but I'm glad I really saw it tonight. Saw my life for a second as I passed from room to room, mind on other things.

Stuff

I'm sitting at our dining room table, facing East and eating tuna noodle salad. My laptop is in the center of a circle of stuff with me at six o'clock. Going clockwise, the table is covered with:

-two sunhats that the little girls have yet to wear
-the house phone whose number no one but telemarketers and one department at the hospital have yet
-a gift bag full of stationary that I took out so I could finally write a thank-you note for a gift we received a month ago (stationary stored in the bag because I didn't want to be wasteful and throw it away)
-the box my new crock pot came in, empty of crock pot, quarter-full of bibs we're giving away
-pile of grown-up laundry
-pile of kid laundry
-pile of kid laundry
-6 socks
-my calendar

Behind the stacked laundry is one of the vibrating baby chairs we sit the Itty Bitties in. It's on the table to be out of reach of the Bigs who have a tendency to grab pacifiers or stick inquisitive fingers into tiny baby sister faces.

This is one little snapshot of the inside of our house which is quite reflective of the inside of my mind. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

I feel good these days. My mood is up. The babies are doing well. I'm back in the swing of things at work, actually getting stuff done. My body is in good shape for the most part. I think about blogging every day. When I first started this blog I declared to myself that I would write every day! The thing is, I'm not someone who does anything every day. I am not a routine person.

Someone I know everyday makes a list of things to do the next day. He codifies each item very specifically, indicating the importance and priority, breaking them up into need-to-do and want-to-do. I consider him to be someone who has his shit together. What I admire about this particular guy is that he makes time to do things that are important to him, while also getting work done and staying on top of his responsibilities. I think it's time to face the facts--that is just not how I roll.

To describe how I am different than that, I offer the following example. When I did Weight Watchers a few years ago, I realized that the main thing it did for me was to give me a reason to plan what I would eat ahead of time. Making sure to have food that would keep me within my allotted points showed me that my usual experience was more like "Oh hey! It's one o'clock and I am starving! What should I eat for lunch??" As though the arrival of lunchtime was a mysterious, unpredictable event every day. This happens to me all the time.

"You mean the dishes need to be done again?!"

"You mean I need to pay that credit card bill again?!"

"You mean I need to go to the bank again?!"

I do not have a plan. I have a whirl of half-remembered ideas that pop in and out of my brain vying for attention.

I painted a picture of the table. Here is a similar picture of my thought process during the time I've been writing this:

"Oh! The NICU reunion is this Saturday. I need to call them and find out what time it starts because I lost the flier."

"Let me check to see what time Aunt Roberta gets in tomorrow. Did I write down the right date in my calendar? Yes, ok good. I should make a plan for Saturday morning and let my sister know when to come over. Oh, and we need to pick up the sandbox on Saturday. I wonder if it will fit in the van."

"I need to check the library to see if they have the book we're reading for book club. Wait, what is the date of the next book club? I should write that down before I forget."

Send an email to a colleague asking for feedback on the project we've worked on together.

Realize I've written down two separate dates for the Bigs' pediatrician appointment next week. Is it on Tuesday or Wednesday?

"Oh, I want to write that thank-you note for the diaper service he and his wife gifted us two months ago that I finally started. . ."

"Blog!"


I don't feel stressed. Life feels full and even still, I'm more likely to sit down and read a book in the evening than I am to do one of the many, many things on my list of to-dos. There are lots of to-dos. If I were to make a plan or a goal for each day it would be to:

-Spend time with the kids
-Get some work done
-Do at least one thing to improve the house
-Spend some time outside
-Write
-Do some exercise, especially yoga
-Talk to a friend

Usually it ends up being at least one, sometimes two or three of those things. Yesterday I swept up half of the leaves around the pool. Monday I worked almost all day to finish a project. Today I'm finally writing. I haven't done yoga in. . .one million years.


I don't strive for balance. At least not using that word. There might have been a time when I sought it but now I'm not aware of having that goal in mind. I would like to reach a point where all of the surfaces in our house are cleared of stuff that doesn't belong there. I don't think I've ever reached that particular state in my entire life. Stuff is everywhere. On every surface and in most corners of my mind. When I turn around to put something away or jot down an idea, a child is reaching up for me or making a noise to indicate that I am wanted. If it's not a child, it's a chorus of other things whose voices get drowned out by my need to sit and not do anything. I do not strive to work all the time in an effort to get things done. I want things to be done, but not if it means I don't get to rest. This is why I cut only a small portion of the overgrown juniper bush bordering our driveway two days ago. I started it but my son did not want me to leave his side at that particular moment. So instead I joined Stephanie, my cousin, and all four babies under a big blue umbrella, on top of a soft quilt on the grass of our front yard. We looked at books and ants until it got too hot and then we went back inside. It wasn't part of the plan but it was good stuff.

If you wait for me

When I got sick with liver failure I was living in Orange County, commuting to a secretarial job I didn't like much. I started feeling sick in September, moved back up to San Francisco to live with my mom in October and got admitted to the ICU on November 6th. The doctors weren't quite sure what was going on with me so it took a little while for them to decide whether or not to list me for a transplant. Once I was put on the list I waited 8 days. I got transplanted on November 22nd, had another surgery a week later to have an errant ligament clipped because it was constricting the blood flood to my liver and was discharged a few days after that. The whole thing was a total whirlwind, with time moving both fast and slow depending on the day. It felt like falling down the rabbit hole and I think all of us moved around (or in my case laid around) in a state of dumbfounded shock.

I had an anxiety attack a few days before getting discharged. I'd never had one before but I felt it stalking me for hours before it arrived. I was reading a book and I felt like the words were coming faster and faster and if I could just keep reading, just stay ahead of it, I'd be okay. I started writing a thank-you note for a pair of blue and bronze tiger striped silk pajamas that my dad's friend had given to me. I wrote five words and it all came crashing down on me--total panic. The only pictures we have of me from my hospital stay are right in the middle of this attack. A nursing assistant named Rodney who had loved me and adopted me right from the beginning of my hospital stay brought me a big white teddy bear and wanted to take some pictures with us. I think I'm the only one who can look at those pictures and see how wide my eyes are. Wide from panic and from the high-dose steroids all transplant recipients receive in the beginning.

When my doctors and nurses came to round on me the next day I asked to talk to them all. I explained to them what was going on with me. I said that I was a thinker, always had been. In my liver failure my mind really deteriorated as the toxins that were supposed to be filtered by a functioning liver built up. I was still in there, still somewhat knew what was going on. But I didn't really get it. Now, I was coming back to myself and it was freaking me the hell out. Everything that had happened, the fact that I hadn't really slept for a month, the long list of medications I was being told to take every day for the rest of my life, the fact that I'd almost died--it was all hitting me at once and I needed them to know that I was having a hard time. I needed them to know that I was really there now, really present and paying attention.

The first few times I went back to the hospital for my follow-up appointments, I looked at the long hallways from the sidewalk to the front door, from the front door to the elevator, and wondered why they didn't have handrails for the patients who had to walk them. My belly ached with each step, my severed abdominal muscles screamed as I stood up or sat down. I hurt all over. I watched a recently transplanted woman leap out of her chair and stride across the room and despaired at ever feeling that good again. Of course I did feel that good again and it happened more quickly than I expected.

Two months after my transplant I felt good enough to go back to work. The doctors response was "Um. Why don't you wait a bit longer? Take your time."

So I did. I ended up taking the whole year off work--quit my job, moved permanently back up to San Francisco. Collected disability insurance and had a lot of free time, visiting friends at work, driving around the city discovering new routes from one place to another. I was healing, but I don't think I really thought of it that way. I didn't hurt all over anymore so I didn't think of myself as needing to heal. Even as I dealt with the huge emotions that came in the aftermath of the life-saving surgery. Even as I dealt with feeling like a huge bear had lumbered along and casually cuffed me off the path I'd been walking, sending me flying off the road that had been my life into the unknown. Even as I got admitted to the hospital for a week with an infection. I felt so much better than I had before  the transplant that I thought I was back to normal.

A year and a half after my transplant I was walking down the street in downtown San Francisco. I can't remember where I was going or where I was coming from. The light was the glowing, crisp light that filters between buildings bringing their edges into soft relief. The air was warm. I don't know what I was wearing. I stopped dead in my tracks and took myself in as I realized that I was really myself again. It was like recognizing an old friend whom you didn't know you were missing. "Ohhhhhh," I sighed. "I thought I was better before but this, this is really better. I'm better now."

It was amazing.

Last Thursday I took my older twins to a park to meet a new friend for a walk. We got there early so the three of us--my son, my eldest daughter and I--walked the loop around the park for the first time. The air was warm. The light was bright, almost harsh, on the dry hills around us. We passed a pond full of swans and ducks. The kids were quiet, taking it all in. Our friend arrived and we did another loop, the kids getting fussier as they struggled against the confines of the stroller. We did a third lap when another woman from our moms' group arrived and then I sat down on a blanket with my kids as the other women kept walking. We sat in the dirt, in the shade, between the playground and the soccer fields. The playground was lined with tan bark so we stayed outside because I knew my guys would want to stretch and move without being hindered by splinters. They were wearing shoes outside for the first time and they explored the area, soft and hard, rough and smooth, chain link fence between finger tips, standing and crawling and kneeling on the world. Each one of them fell hard one time, bonking their heads and scaring themselves, coming into my arms for snuggles and reassurance. We loaded back into the stroller and rolled back to the minivan, tired and soothed by being outside, together.

They were quiet as we drove home and the songs on the radio soaked into the silence, marking the day. And it happened again. I looked in wonder at myself, realizing "Oh, THIS is how I felt the last time I felt like myself."

Last fall it was the three of us. During the day, I changed all of the diapers, changed all of the clothes, did all of the feeding and soothing and bathing. We went out everyday, sometimes just got into the van and drove so I could breathe in the quiet and enjoy having baby-free hands. We sat under trees and watch the leaves blow in the wind. We napped on the couch together. We danced in the afternoon together. Sometimes we walked the dog, with one baby in each of my arms. It was not idyllic. It was hard and boring at times. I worried about going back to work. I worried that I would never make any friends nearby. I sank into the couch tiredly at the end of the day, feeling guilty for not having made dinner or not having a cleaner house. I was tired. I was in it though. I was myself--a new mom, a new wife, a constant thinker, a sometime worrier.

Coming back to myself, with my son and first daughter in their car seats behind me, was such a gift. To recognize it and to feel grateful for it. To see these last many months of surprise pregnancy, surprise twins, exhaustion, moving to a new house, having a baby-sitter join our daily routine, another premature delivery, another NICU stay, postpartum depression, two more people joining our family--all of that was falling down the rabbit hole again. I've been sitting in dumbfounded shock. Once you hear a secret, you can never unknow it. Once you find out you're pregnant, you can never go back to not knowing. You can make different decisions with the news but you can't unknow that there is another baby. Or in our case two more babies. Everything changed.

In the van I stopped at a light and turned off the radio, turning on a song from my iPhone instead. Tracy Chapman's The Promise filled the car. It's a song from the olden days--pre-babies, pre-adulthood. It's a song of longing for love--I used to hear it as longing for romantic love. It made me think of high school and college.

I heard it again on the radio last July. My daughter Lily had been released from the hospital, my son was still in the NICU. She and I moved into an apartment across the street from the hospital and for the first time I was a mom with a baby living with me all the time. She cried a lot, screamed actually. I was scared to give her a bath because she was so tiny. It was quiet in that apartment--no TV, no other people except when my husband would come spend the night. The song came on and I held my baby girl in my arms, breathing her in and hearing the words anew. I had been waiting and waiting, yearning. And they had finally come for me.

Improvement

I'm feeling better. The Zoloft kicked in sometime last week. I was curious what it would be like--would I feel a change in my body, similar to the sensation of having other types of drugs seep into the system? So far, I haven't felt any physical changes like that. The main change is that, when I think of doing something such as working on a project for work, or imagining a new career for myself sometime in the future, I don't immediately feel like "Ugh, what is the point of even thinking about this. I hate this idea. I have no motivation to work on it at all. Bleh." So hooray for feeling better.

The responses to my last post were really wonderful. A few women wrote me back on Facebook, sharing their own experiences with PPD. An ex-colleague wrote me a note sharing what a hard time she had after the birth of her first child. It was so reassuring to hear "me too" from people. Especially from people who seem like fun, thoughtful mamas. In fact, any time I've opened my mouth about how hard this whole four babies thing has been the people I'm talking to essentially say, "Um yeah, DUH!" Except in kinder, more supportive words.

Perspective is a funny thing. I knew this would be hard. I couldn't imagine it and I didn't spend too much time or energy worrying about it because I knew we would somehow make it through. That's the thing about "making it through" though. It feels different and hard in different ways than you expect. I expected to be exhausted and to have a hard time juggling so many babies. I didn't expect the emotional toll.

I have lots more things to write, so many thoughts that have been flitting around in my head. But the little girls (the Itty Bitties) are crying and my husband is feeding them both as I sit on the couch pumping and typing away. Off to join forces with my partner in the hands-full arena.

More soon.

Down

Ha. Well. Here I've been walking around feeling the weight of this blog on my shoulders (which is actually a good weight and the reason I shared my blog with all of you in the first place, to keep me motivated to come back here even when it feels tough). I didn't realize I actually posted the partial-post that appears before this one--I thought it was still in draft form. So! I didn't mean to share that quite yet and was actually mortified to see it up there but oh well! Half-finished thoughts are representative of where I am these days.

I have been having a tough time. The girls came home from the NICU almost two weeks ago and I was in the middle of a brutal colitis flare. Colitis--blood in the toilet that comes from the insides of your large intestine being sloughed off. Stomach cramps. Urgent runs to the bathroom. A feeling of wrongness that starts at your core and radiates out to your fingers and toes. It feels like someone took a vegetable peeler and scraped it up and down the walls of your colon--this raw, exposed ache of yuckiness. It sucks.

When I'm sick, I get very down emotionally. This happens when I have a cold and it definitely happens when I'm in the thick of colitis. All my energy drains away and I can't see the positive side of anything. I just want to lay on the couch under a blanket and watch crappy TV and hide from the world. Motherhood is not conducive to this desire. I have been dragging, physically and emotionally and taking care of babies has seemed to require more oopmh that I could ever imagine dredging up from somewhere inside myself.

It was into this mindset and bodyset that our daughters came home from the hospital. Not what I imagined. It has felt so very hard. My husband is on leave and he has been wonderful. He takes such good care of these babies and does not complain. Our babysitter Stephanie has been wonderful--juggling the four kids and cleaning the house while she goes. I don't know how she does it but I bow down in gratitude to her. She also reminds me that I'm doing a good job, even when I really, really don't feel like it. My brother and sister-in-law have come to help us several times and they have saved the day, especially on a Sunday when I knew I did not have it in me to do anything but lay in bed. My mom has come, my dad is here. People are helping and want to help. I know this and feel grateful. And yet, no amount of help touches the lonely, afraid feeling that has been lodged in my chest since the babies came home.

It is a weird feeling to know that you can't take care of your own kids by yourself. A bad feeling. My husband and Stephanie have each assured me that they can do it and yet I feel, deep in my heart, that I can't do it. The idea of both of them leaving me alone with the four kids fills me with dread.  I've been alone with all of them for a few hours at a time and it was so hard, so draining. I've found it difficult to take things a minute at a time. Instead I look ahead to the weeks and months to come and think "Oh my god, this is my life, how in the hell am I going to do this?"

Last Wednesday I went to get a massage. I sat in the hot tub in silence and breathed deeply, breathed in being alone. I laid flat on a table and felt strong fingers dig into the ropes of my muscles, pulling out knots formed by carrying other humans. My breasts filled with milk as I lay on my stomach and the pain of turning over was intense. Still, I relaxed. I thought often of the people at home. It wasn't until I was driving back that the anxiety that I hadn't known was there began to fill me up again. The closer I got to our house, the more anxious I felt. As it tightened my stomach I thought of my colitis and the inevitable relationship between fear and worry and my guts. I was all twisted up.

Someone once told me that digestive problems can cause depression, because you lose all the good vibes of oxytocin (I think) through your intestines. When I remembered that I felt better--like I wasn't crazy to be feeling so down, there might actually be a physical reason for it. I was telling myself that once the colitis flare passed I'd feel better. I'd feel happier about having the girls at home. I'd feel less afraid. I was prepared to wait to feel better. When the anxiety filled me up on my way back home from the massage, I knew I couldn't wait.

I called my OB's office and told them I thought I might be experiencing some post postpartum depression. I wasn't sure what they'd recommend. They told me to come in the next day. It was nice to be taken so seriously. At my four week follow-up appointment I'd been given a survey asking questions such as "Do you find it difficult to see the positive side of things?" and "Have you been feeling anxious for no reason?" I'd answered "No" to all the questions. But that was before the babies had come home. It was also when I was on a physical high from not being pregnant anymore. I felt so good that I thought I was fine.

At this appointment I answered "Yes" to almost every question. My doctor was not surprised. She was calm and gentle and she offered an anti-depressant. I said yes, gratefully. The relief I felt was immense. Immense.

During my first pregnancy I actually asked some of my friends to watch out for me and let me know if they saw signs of depression. I saw myself as someone at risk for the postpartum blues and I was afraid I wouldn't know to ask for help. Sometimes I think I get so used to doing hard things, to feeling bad or to feeling down, that I don't even think there might be an alternative. I gird my loins and look ahead, knowing that if necessary  I can get through anything. Gut it out. And look what it's doing to my guts. They are literally falling apart, in tatters, bloody shreds.

It's hard to admit that I'm having a tough time feeling connected to my daughters. It makes me want to weep, thinking of them reading this when they're older. I'm sorry I'm not happier, I think. I don't know what's the matter with me.

The silence on this blog has been due to a total inability to get myself up to write anything down. Too afraid. Too tired. Too sick. I've been hiding, because that's what I do when I feel bad.

I don't feel better yet. I still get hit mightily with the blues almost every day. I am reminding myself like a mantra to take it easy on myself. Be gentle with myself. This too shall pass.

If this blog were a pen, it would weigh one million pounds. That's how hard it's been to pick it up and write this past week. Or has it been longer? It's all been a blur.

When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that I've never shit my pants. Eww. That is such a vile statement and yet it truly describes some things in a way that prettier language could not. Last Tuesday I got on Bart to head into San Francisco for dinner and a movie with two of my best friends. Such a treat to get to do that. I sat down on the train, listened to the doors close and felt a familiar wave sweep through my body. It wasn't the normal poop chills, it was the colitis chill. The sudden, certain need to find a bathroom in a very urgent way. Except I was on a train, with no bathroom, with an hour ride ahead of me. So I focused my mind on my insides in a way I've done too many times to count and I willed my bowels to hold firm. And they did.

When my brother lived in Ghana he and his Peace Corps buddies took it as a right of passage that one day they would eventually poop their pants. It happened to almost all of them I think.

A snapshot

It rained this morning and we could look out the kitchen window at sheets of water falling into the dandelion forrest that is our front courtyard. The stalks of  some of those plants are so tall and thick that little birds can rest on them and frequently do. The sun still shone as the rain fell but I didn't see a rainbow.

I felt a little sad as I drove the well-worn route to the NICU. No specific reason.

I'm now sitting in the half-light of Room 3437 with a sleeping baby girl on either side of me, each in her own crib. My breasts ache because it's time to pump or nurse by neither one of them is waking up yet. Someday soon we'll work together to get on the same schedule but for now I have no say in the matter. It's peaceful in here and just being near them soothes me. I hope they come home soon.