RRBB’s First Toque: O, Sweet Child Of Mine.
I am a woman who loves a toque. I wear them all the time, who cares if I look like Jay of Jay and Silent Bob, I love them. And, I am instilling this very real, very Canadian love on my child. This toque is a present from his Grantie Judy. And it’s awesome. Although I am afraid he’ll out grow it before too long and then I might have to frame it. Along with his umbilical cord stump and my pregnancy test. Is that weird to want to frame all that stuff and put it on my walls? I don’t think so, but someone might.
We aren’t sure if we are through the rough patch yet. Starting on Christmas, as I said, RRBB went through a period of intense fussiness at bedtime. It was almost too much to stand. A friend said, “Oh, yes, you think it’s done and then they break you.” And she was right. On New Year’s Eve, instead of starting at 830 or so, RRBB decided to start his fussing at 11 PM and go right until 4 AM. And we are now in week three or so of this phase. Everyone says that it’ll calm down around three months, but counting from his due date, that’s another five weeks or so. We can do it right? If people can climb Mount Everest, my RRHB and I can cope with a crying baby. The whole concept of The Witching Hour is fascinating — that his little brain/body is working so hard to grow at such a furious pace that it simply can’t contain itself — that it almost makes up for how rough the few evening hours are.
Luckily, he’s an utter delight during the day for the most part, and is a great napper. We take amazing walks along the rail path by our house, and he doesn’t mind at all being in the stroller (once he’s in and outside). We’ve even managed to go out for dinner twice, and tomorrow I think, if I am not so diseased, we might go to a Mommy and Me movie. Maybe. That might be pushing it. All in all, there’s little bits of life coming back into my life these days — I am clinging to them. He’s smiling a tonne, is awake and alert more, and is starting to really recognize us. But what I’ve been thinking all along is how different the idea of parenthood has always been for me, for someone who always imagined it was out of reach because of the disease and other factors, from the reality. The emotions are so much more intense in both directions. I never imagined I’d miss myself so much. Hell, I spent x-number of years hating myself intensely, why would I miss myself? But I do, and just those little bits of me coming back, along with some better test results from my blood work lately, I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
So, we might be a bit behind in terms of birth date/due date, and it might take a few more weeks of losing our evenings entirely to a wailing child, but by the summer, hell, by the spring, I think we’ll be in a much better place. I’m even feeling confident they won’t switch the drugs over… but we’ll see about that because I’m still having disease symptoms three months into treatment. I wish I wasn’t puffy. I wish my hair wasn’t falling out. I wish I wasn’t eating terrible predisone-induced food. I wish the baby wasn’t fussy. I wish we weren’t so broke. But I don’t at all wish for anything to be different because I am content in a way that I never knew possible. Things are miserable with my health, worse than ever, but I made it through, and sometimes being tough is just the point. Maybe there’s nothing else to it — and that’s what almost three weeks of fussy baby is pointing us too as well. You can battle it all with a good sense of humour, an awesome RRHB, and some really, really good drugs. But being tough, being strong, being someone who survives, these are not poor qualities to have, are they?