Trouble Brewing- The Emergence of Evil Corinne

An email written to family and friends when Corinne was 6 months old. The pictures I referred to were a series of about 20 photos, each and every one depicting Corinne screaming, crying, or both. Sadly, despite the optimism in the latter part of the e-mail, the era of Evil Corinne was just beginning.

Hi everyone,

Hopefully you all got the last batch of Corinne pictures, which I feel pretty much speak for themselves. First let me start off by saying that she has been 1000% better for the past week, which is why I am now able to calmly sit and write about this with somewhat of a sense of humor. Prior to that I was most definitely not laughing because I sincerely thought that this screaming, humorless, perpetually unhappy banshee was going to be the permanent personality of my demon-spawn daughter. I couldn't remember what it was like to have a nice baby. We uttered phrases like "why did we have kids?!?!" and "are you KIDDING me?!?!" and "you are SO going to be an only child!" and "F--- this!!!" It was definitely the lowest point for me in the 6 months of her existence so far. It started some time after the holidays without warning or obvious cause. She was utterly, positively unbearable. She just cried and cried and screamed and nothing made her happy for long. Her attention span for all those great toys she got for Christmas was all of 10 minutes. Once we had cycled through all the baby stations I was at a loss. She wasn't happy being held for very long either. And the most frustrating thing was that you could tell that she wasn't in pain- she was just PISSED OFF. She has this horrible angry sounding temper tantrum thing that she does where she loses her voice and her face gets all red and her veins in her little bald head all pop out. She is SO stubborn (just like her father- ha ha!). She went to the doctor because we thought she had an ear infection but no, that wasn't it either. We told ourselves that she must be teething because we needed to believe that such behavior had to have a really good reason behind it, and that there would eventually be a light at the end of the tunnel. In retrospect I'm not sure that that was the cause, as she still doesn't have any teeth. I think she was in a downward spiral of overtiredness that had become self-perpetuating. I also think we weren't feeding her enough. We had started her on solids (cereal and we were just getting to vegetables), so it could be that her digestive system wasn't ready. We did it by the book, introducing one new food at a time and giving it a few days to make sure she had no allergic reaction. We still can't say for sure that allergies aren't the problem. To be sure, we cut off all solids all together last weekend and went without for a whole week. The improvement started immediately, but it could be a coincidence or other variables (As people of science we didn't approach this very scientifically. Far too many variables going on at once). I also started feeding her more breast milk and formula to compensate and I started putting her down for a nap after two hours of awake time whether she seemed tired or not. This combination seems to have done the trick because the difference in her demeanor is like night and day. She has started taking longer naps, up to 2 hours, a couple times a day, instead of the "20 minute specials" that she had formerly been a fan of. She also started waking earlier (as early as 6am), but the pay off is that she sleeps through the night. Most importantly, she is my sweet baby again. She smiles and laughs (sometimes- she still kind of has the personality of the little girl from the Addams family- is it Wednesday Addams?) and plays with her toys and can actually amuse herself for short periods of time. I have slowly started her back on cereal again today and am cautiously optimistic. Believe me, I thought long and hard about never feeding her solids, not wanting to do anything to tip the delicate balance that is "Good Corinne". But I figured at some point child services would be after me for neglect and malnutrition if my teenage child had never had anything to eat except formula. Anyway, so far so good. KNOCK ON WOOD!

I feel like there's not much else to report on other than that. It really has been all encompassing in our lives this month. I guess the biggest news is that I am trying to start my own mural painting business. I already have a client. I met a woman at a M*** Family event who was looking for someone to paint a mural for her daughter who is a month older than Corinne (this turned out to be S@L, who became a good friend in the year before she moved to California). I guess she surfed the web and couldn't find anyone in our area (can you say "untapped market?! Especially in the very well-to-do neighboring towns) I am going to do a castle/ dragon/ gnome/ fairy kind of theme and am getting $1000 for it- yay! If I can make a go of this I won't need to go back to real work. It would be my dream come true. I am hoping to put together a web site (does anyone have any advice? I know absolutely nothing about this!) and some fliers to give out at the many family events that the M***** Family Association puts on. I'm calling myself "Bouncing Off the Walls", which is pretty clever, if I do say so myself! I'm very excited for it and hope I can actually make a living doing something I love.

Corinne and I are flying to Philadelphia to visit my friend Diane and her daughter (who is 1 1/2) next month. I hope I am not tempting the fates taking her on a plane. At least it's only an hour or so flight, in case she cries the whole way (tell that to the people around me- God, I'll be THAT mother!). This is kind of practice for when we fly to Florida in March to visit Pete's mom and go to Universal (a 3 1/2 hour flight- God help us!) Also Pete is going to New Orleans for a conference in the spring (it was planned before the hurricane. I guess the French Quarter is OK for the most part). I have the option of going with him, but we'll see. New Orleans is not really a baby's town, ya know what I mean? And I don't feel right leaving her for 4 or 5 days yet- she's still too young and too needy, not that there's any shortage of willing and able grandparents to babysit.

Some of the aforementioned photos:

Good times, people!

Whole Lotta Poop Talk- Baby Update (2 1/2 months old)

An e-mail to family and friends, written when Corinne was 2 1/2 months old. My favorite part is how I signed it.

Hi all,

Well, this would be the second time that I am writing this email. I am so frustrated. Last Wednesday Pete took the baby to the mall (to buy my birthday presents) and I had a glorious 2 1/2 hours to myself. I thought, what shall I do with this rare and wonderful opportunity? Why, I think I will email my beloved family and friends. It's been on my To Do list for weeks. So I sat down and spent a good hour typing it out, choosing to miss Little House on the Prairie, of which I am a closet fan of, and never get to watch when Pete is around because he makes fun of it the whole time. I hit send and the log-in window popped up for no particular reason. I logged in and blip! The email was gone. I prayed it went through anyway but no such luck. I had to add "Email family and friends" back onto my to do list. One step forward, one step back. So this email is probably not going to be as interesting, creative or insightful as the original, or at least I'll tell you that and you'll never know if you missed the world's best email or not.

Speaking of one step forward, one step back, Corinne is doing pretty well. That really does sum up new parenthood. You think you've got yourself a nice little routine, even "a schedule" and you think, I've got the hang of this parenting thing! I know what to expect on any given day! Look at me being a mom- I'm a pro at this. Then the baby slaps you back into reality. Babies don't want to be predictable. They think you may get bored with them so they decide to do funny things like stop pooping on a daily basis. Instead they poop every other day, and when they do, they go so much that it explodes out of their diaper up their back, down their legs, you name it. You thank God that you were at home and not in the car or at Babies R Us or worse- out on a walk with baby in that wraparound snuggly carrier thingie. Then you notice that baby poops at exactly 2:15 every other day, so you plan your day around that diaper change- clothes off ahead of time, fresh, non urine saturated diaper for maximum poopie absorbability, paper towels ready (baby wipes are not enough to clean up the 2 gallons of poopie that comes out). Then baby poops at 10:30 instead, in a new outfit that she's never worn before, and boy does baby poop stain if you don't get it rinsed immediately. So now diaper changing also involves laundry washing, and sometimes a bath, too. One time I managed to extricate the outfit without mishap, only to have her pee all over herself while her diaper was off, which has become Corinne's MO. At least bath time has become more bearable. Corinne hated bath time for the first 11 weeks. She acted like we were washing her in hydrochloric acid, followed by a brisk rub down with the barbed wire towel. She screamed much harder during bath time than she did for her first set of vaccinations, which consisted of four rapid-fire needle jabs, one in each limb. It really is the very definition of "screaming bloody murder". I'm always afraid the police are going to knock on the door to look into a report of child abuse. So one day we decided to video tape this spectacle so we can laugh about later, when she grows up to be a quiet, demure young lady (don't see that happening!). Always one step ahead of us, Corinne decided that now bath time is OK, even mildly amusing. Oh well. She may have won the battle, but I think we won the war on that one.

Corinne and Seven are developing an interesting relationship. Corinne finds the texture of Seven's fur to be quite overstimulating. If we lay her down on Seven she grabs her fur and goes crazy. She makes these funny yelling noises and starts flailing around. Seven's goal is to lick Corinne's tonsils at every available opportunity. She is smart enough to know that this is most easily done when the baby is crying, thereby adding fuel to the fire. Quid pro quo, Corinne also likes to lick Seven's fur. It's pretty gross all around. Seven is adjusting pretty well to this invasion to her little world, overall. She comes and gets me if Corinne is crying downstairs and I am upstairs (like every time I try to go to the bathroom), not that I can't hear her loud and clear on my own, mind you. We have noticed that Seven seems to be showing her age for the first time, though. She's becoming an old dog, I'm sad to say. She's starting to slow down a lot and gets tired faster. She also has old dog farts.

On the work-front, I officially put in my notice last week. Pete, Corinne, Seven and I went to Ogunquit Maine for a few days and my boss called three times while we were away. Turns out she's quitting, too, which made giving my notice much easier. A vet and one of the vet techs quit, too. Way to go H****- they're dropping like flies. Of course they don't see it as a problem within the department- they blame the "industry" companies for stealing people away. Couldn't possibly be a problem with their archaic operational structure of such a prestigious institution. Anyway, within a half hour my bosses boss called me to "bounce some ideas off of me about the possibility working part time". Hmm, does anyone recall how I asked about working part time about 6 months ago and was given a resounding "no way- can't be done" by this very same man? Now suddenly we're thinking of hiring a training manager (dangling carrot, anyone?) to oversee the new trainers that we'll be hiring and surely the coordination of said training could be done on a part time basis. I told him that I was not prepared to return to work right now, both because I don't have day care lined up and because I am simply not emotionally ready to put Corinne in day care right now. Frankly, she's way to high maintenance and demanding. She would need one staff member devoted just to her to cater to her every whim and need like I do. She is a demanding, unreasonable, ungrateful boss and I just don't think anyone could put up with it like her devoted parents do. Well, Big Boss said they'd wait until Spring, when I had mentioned to my boss that I would have to go back to work by due to our money running out. I left it pretty open ended and non-committal. It's not my first choice to return there, but it is nice to have something to fall back on if need be.

Pete's work is going pretty well. He's working on a paper that will be published in a trade magazine for our field. I am very proud of him. He'll be happy to be done with it, though. He's co-writing it with another supervisor who has not been overly helpful with it, and their deadline for this second round of edits is next week.

We're having a Halloween party next weekend, so we're looking forward to that. Halloween is our favorite. Pete wants to build a coffin for Corinne to sleep in during the party. He's a sick, sick man. OK, I think I repeated most of what was in my original email and anything I forgot must not have been that important anyway. I saved this one to drafts several times, which seems to have wreaked havoc with my spacing for some reason, so I apologize for that. #$%^&* computer! I'll write again when I have something to talk about.

Love A,

Corinne's personal servant and court jester

(True to his word, here's a photo of said coffin. And yeah, that's a tombstone she's next to. We made one for each family member, including Seven. Hey, I warned you that we love the inappropriate!)

Corinne's Birth Story

This is Corinne's birth story, as I wrote it for her scrap book. It's for the women who, like me, enjoy reading about other women's childbirthing experiences to determine if their own was worse/ scarier/ longer/ more painful, as thought this wins you some sort of an award. Men, you'll probably just want to skip this one. Move along, there's nothing to see here.

Officially Corinne was due on Friday July 31st, although there was some confusion on this, and August 4th was also a possibility, depending on who you talked to. Either way it was a moot point, because that girl was in no hurry to leave the womb. My last day at H**** was Wednesday July 20th. I wanted to allow myself plenty of time to do my final cleaning/ organizing/ shopping/ nesting. I decided that she was welcome to come any time on or after Monday the 25th, which would give me plenty of time to prepare. By then the house was spotless and I was ready. I went to the doctor on Wednesday the 29th only to find that there was absolutely nothing going on down there. Now I was starting to get antsy. I had done nothing but watch episodes of “A Baby Story”, seeing other women give birth time and time again, crying every time, getting progressively more impatient as I awaited my turn. I had a couple false alarms, where I thought for sure I was getting crampy when I went to bed, expecting to wake up in labor, only to wake up in the morning just fine. I tried all the things I had heard could induce labor: long walks (in the unbearable heat and humidity), foot rubs, spicy foods, sex… still nothing.

I was scheduled to come in on Friday August 5th for a stress test. I brought my packed suitcase just in case they decided to induce. It was a good thing I did. The stress test consisted of being hooked up to a fetal monitor, and they would observe the baby’s heart rate whenever the baby moved. I guess the results were mildly concerning because they decided to do an ultrasound to “check the fluid levels”. Again, borderline troubling. They decided to let my doctor make the call. Well, my blood pressure was higher than normal, too, so that clinched it- she decided to induce as opposed to waiting for Monday, which had been her original plan. We got ourselves lunch at Au Bon Pain at the hospital, anticipating a long haul, and then checked ourselves in.

First we went to triage around 2:00, where they inserted some sort of drug that would “ripen my cervix”. Then we had to kill 2 hours before they would check again to see how we were progressing. They warned us that this process could take hours, sometimes even an overnighter at home, before they would officially admit me. So we went to Pete's work so he could tie up loose ends. We planned to go see “Willy Wonka” and get dinner to kill time after our next check-in. The whole time it felt so surreal. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that soon, possibly that night, I would finally give birth.

We left our car in Pete's work parking lot and headed back to the hospital via shuttle. When they rechecked me, again there was some concern about the baby’s heart rate and the effect that the drug was having on the baby. They decided to admit me and start me on Pitocin rather than giving another dose, because if the baby was having a bad reaction to the drug there was no reversing it. So much for dinner and a movie. Either way, I was excited and glad that we didn’t need to go home for the night. I had all my stuff with me and plans had already been squared away for someone to take care of Seven. Pete didn’t have any change of clothes with him, but we figured he could go home and get something the next day once the baby was born.

That evening was fairly uneventful. We called the parents to give them the heads-up, and then it was time for walking the hallways and rocking in a chair to try to get the baby to start to move down. I had minor cramps, but nothing I couldn’t deal with, and I actually said something to the effect that this child birthing thing wasn’t too bad. Ha!

Some time around 10pm or so I was walking the hallway with the nurse when she casually said that we should head back to the room and sit down. After sitting down she casually said I should lie down. Then she said I should curl up on my side as much as I could. Then suddenly there was a roomful of people and I was on oxygen. The baby’s heart rate had dropped alarmingly and wasn’t going back up, and then they lost it all together. Well, to make a long story short, the monitor had come unplugged, thus the disappearing heartbeat, but it took an agonizing several minutes that seemed like a lifetime to figure this out, all the while with well-hidden panic on the part of the medical staff. And the baby was in distress, that much was clear. Following that Pete and I had meltdown number one, as the scary reality that there might be something wrong with our daughter hit home. She seemed to be going into distress every time I sat up, so I became bed-ridden, and suddenly I was filling out authorization for surgery forms “just in case”.

We had one or two more similar incidents like that that first night. I could only lie on my right side, and could only move to use a bed pan. My plans to walk around and shower and use the birthing ball to kill time and make myself feel better were no longer feasible. My legs were cramped from not moving and I was still showing no signs of dilating past the initial 1 cm that I started at.

The next morning at around 6 am my water broke and there was meconium in it, which is a sign that the baby is in distress, but the doctors didn’t seem concerned and were glad that finally something was happening. I was still only 1cm dilated, though. After that the cramps started to kick in. I was glad at first, because at least something was happening. That day seemed to drag on forever. It was Saturday, so there was nothing to watch on TV. I couldn’t concentrate on reading anything, so I couldn’t take my mind off the pain that was starting to build. By 2 o’clock or so the cramps were starting to get bad, coming every 2 minutes or so. I asked for pain meds and they gave me something by IV that allowed me to sleep for a couple hours, but it was a restless sleep and I dreamed about contractions. When I woke up, it got bad pretty quickly. I was tired and uncomfortable and scared and discouraged. Still at 1 cm, I finally asked for an epidural. They tried to talk me out of it, saying that they preferred to wait until I was at least 5 cm’s because an epidural could slow down the labor. I didn’t see how the labor could possibly get any slower, given that it had been over24 hours since we checked in (Pete had read the entire new Harry Potter book in the time it had taken so far!), and I insisted on it. I felt like a wimp for needing pain meds at only 1 cm, but it was taking so long, and the contractions were coming too fast and furious for me to regroup in between.

Getting the epidural seemed to take forever. It was almost an hour before the anesthesiologist came. It then took him awhile to get ready, opening packages, creating a sterile field, and God knows what else. I couldn’t sit up and bend forward, the traditional way of positioning for the insertion of the catheter. I had to curl up on my side, not an easy feat when you are ten months pregnant. The anesthesiologist had to wait to insert between contractions, but there was only a minute or so between each one, so it took 7 or 8 contractions to even get started. Then, the final horror, just as he was inserting the catheter, the CD we were listening to (“The World’s Most Relaxing Classical Music”, ironically), which happened to be playing an opera song, started to skip on a high note. It was like being in hell. No one could smack the radio because it was behind me, in the sterile field. We just had to wait it out until he was done. I imagine this only made it more difficult for him to do with a high note playing over and over again. It would have been funny had I not been in agony. Finally he got the stupid thing in and the relief was instant and complete. It really is heavenly. Suddenly you can think rationally again and life seems OK.

The rest of that day and evening are a complete blur for me. I must have slept a lot because I don’t remember much of anything other than nurses occasionally coming in to check on the contractions, now that they were able to crank the pitocin levels. I was at 5 cm’s when I called my parents and told them they wouldn’t hear from us again until morning regardless of what happened(they were going crazy waiting and wanted frequent updates, which was driving me crazy).

Sometime around 11:30pm Saturday night the doctors were huddling around talking and checking the monitors and then the next thing I knew they had decided to do an “urgent C-section”. I just wasn’t progressing and the baby’s condition was not getting any better. The stress of the birth could be dangerous at that point. Part of me was relieved, because I felt so tired and didn’t think there was any way I could go through pushing, but part of me was disappointed. I had pictured delivering vaginally all along, and felt a little bit cheated of my romantic vision of how it would be to hold my daughter immediately after she was born, like I had seen so many times on “A Baby Story”. Also, I was frustrated because after all of the pain and waiting the outcome was going to end in a C-section regardless, so I wished we had just done it on Friday night when the trouble first began.

It was a scary few minutes as Pete was rudely awakened to a room full of doctors and nurses and anesthesiologists (poor Pete and his chair, in the way once again!) and I was whisked off to an operating room. Pete was given scrubs to change into while I was prepped. My arms were tied spread eagle and a drape was put up so I couldn’t see anything. Pete was brought in (I was so afraid they were going to forget about him in all the urgency) and apparently he had a very good view. I felt pushing and thought they were just cleaning me off and then I heard a baby crying. Pete reports that they literally pulled out my uterus and laid it on my stomach, and then one doctor pushed on it like a tube of toothpaste and the other doctor caught the baby as she came out. He said it was pretty horrifying. It was exactly midnight when she was born, and only about 20 minutes from the point when they had decided to do the surgery. Because it was midnight we actually got to pick the birth date, either August 6 or 7th. Well obviously we had to go with the seventh. Pete got to hold her right there in the OR, but I had to wait until they finished stitching me up.

After that things are kind of a blur again. I remember being absolutely freezing, and so tired that I could barely stay awake. They brought me back to the labor room and then finally I got to hold my baby for the first time. She had a head of dark brown hair, which was a surprise (so much for punnett squares!). She was such a tiny little peanut at 6 pounds, 15 ounces. I tried nursing her and she took to it right away like a little champ. We knew the time had come to finally pick a name, so on the count of three we both said the name we were leaning towards, now that we were seeing her for the first time. I chose Corinne, because for the past few months that was the name in my head whenever I thought of her. Pete chose Avery, but he said it was really Virginia, his grandmother’s name, as the middle name that he was leaning toward (it just sounded better with Avery) so we compromised and went with Corinne Virginia. They took us all up to our room on the maternity ward and then the baby went to the nursery for the rest of the night so we could get some much needed sleep. We called all the parents at around 3 am to give them the news (my dad slept through the phone call and will never forgive himself), and the rest is history!

(That's 34 hours from induction to birth, in case anyone was counting. That's got to get me at least an honorable mention!)