We made it half a year and we haven't collapsed!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog.  Funny, it seems caring for a baby is occupying all of my free time.  Who would have thought? Honestly though, despite the lack of sleep, despite balancing a full time job with motherhood, I’m loving it. Augusto and I still can’t quite believe that we have been parents for more than 6 months now, but somehow, we are managing it, and not just managing it, but really thriving. A lot of things came together in a way that has really allowed us to make the best of what could have been a really stressful time:

1)      Augusto runs his own courier business, which gave him the freedom to decide to give up his mornings to be with Luca.  That way, he can spend quality time with his son, and he works in the afternoons.  He’s also been playing the drums in a cover band 2 to 3 times a week, and he makes enough money from playing music that it makes it worthwhile for him to only work part time.

2)      We found an awesome nanny. Nolvia comes in the afternoons and looks after Luca, and double bonus, she cleans! She and Luca adore each other, and for a while there I was pretty sure Luca preferred her over both Augusto and I.

3)      I live literally around the corner from my office.  This allows me to go home every lunch hour, and makes the logistics of breast feeding and pumping much easier.  I do, however, often feel like all I am doing is either pumping or nursing.  Luca’s decided that the only way he is happy to nurse without getting too distracted is in a quiet room lying down in bed, so working actually gives me a bit of a break from feeling like a milk cow.

4)      Augusto is a morning person, and will get up with Luca to give me a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep in the mornings.  This literally has saved me, as there are nights when Luca is up every couple of hours all night long, and I don’t think I could survive if it wasn’t for the fact that Augusto lets me sleep from 6-8am on weekdays.  Often by the time I go downstairs, my coffee and breakfast is ready and waiting on the table. My commute of 2 minutes means I get extra sleep and extra time with my son.

5)      Our families have been very supportive – my sister Sara came all the way from Canada with her (at the time) 17 month old baby to help after Luca was born, and Augusto’s mom and sister came as well, so there was a good six weeks of help.  My family was amazing in helping us out financially, (if it weren’t for my brother, mom and dad, I may have not been able to go to a private hospital for Luca’s birth, and I wouldn’t have been able to afford the trip back home to visit family in July) and Augusto’s family put together an online baby registry and sent us a huge box full of wonderful things.

Don’t get me wrong.  There are a lot of challenges to this new life of ours. 

We acutely feel the absence of grandparents in our lives, and we haven’t been alone just the two of us since May.  Luca goes to bed around 7pm and it means that after that one or both of us are housebound, as Nolvia lives quite far away and we haven’t managed to plan far enough ahead to get her to babysit in the evening yet. We keep saying we are going to do it, and so far we haven’t. 

I haven’t managed to find time to exercise, I tried joining a gym, and then once I calculated how much I was basically paying per session,  it just wasn’t worth it, as I could never get there more than twice a week.  

C’mon, if you knew this face was waiting for you at home, would you want to go to the gym?

We did just buy a bicycle, which I took for a little spin yesterday.  I am absolutely terrified of riding on the main roads, as even yesterday, a Sunday with very little traffic I felt like I might have brushed with death at least three times. So there is some logistical planning involved with riding a bike in this city, but I think my love for bike riding is deep enough that it might inspire me to get some exercise.

My social life is pretty limited these days, as I don’t know any other mom’s in my age group, and I find staying up later than 10pm to be a big challenge.  Little by little I’ve been re-entering into the realm of life outside the walls of my house, and it’s almost like I lost all my social skills.  My lack of sleep and desire to only talk about Luca means my small talk is pretty limited.  Luckily I have friends who can look past my communication skills and enjoy (or maybe they are just humouring me) hearing about Luca non-stop.

I feel very blessed to have such a supporting, loving partner and that Luca is such a happy guy – even with a cold you can’t wipe the smile off his face.  I can’t even get mad at him when it’s 5 am and he decides it’s time for everyone to start the day (he often ends up in our bed at some point during the night, so his duty to wake us up in the morning is even easier) and starts head butting, sticking fingers up nostrils, kicking, or lovingly smacking our faces until we wake up, he’s just too darn adorable to be mad at. He takes his job of morning wake up very seriously, using all of his energy so that by the time mom and dad are wide awake, he’s ready for his first morning nap. But, he’s a dedicated guy, and he hasn’t missed a day yet. 

Being a mother has me feeling at peace.  Ironically, in a city where I feel the least safe, I feel more at peace than I ever have in my life.  Sunday mornings when all three of us are in bed, playing and chatting, I feel full –there is nothing else I need in my life to feel complete.

The hands of a mother

I’m thinking about my mother’s hands.  How, at a very young age, I remember looking at her hands and knowing that her hands looked exactly like mother’s hands should look like.  Weathered, thin, callused.  Long hours of physical labour had made her arms and hands ropy and freckled - and I knew without a doubt that that was what a mother’s hand should look like.

Now, 2 months into my own adventure of motherhood, I am looking at my hands and they don’t live up to my standard at all.  Stubby fingered, hang nailed, they look too much like my own hands to be considered those of a mother.  Will Luca hold these hands one day and consider them worthy?  Although in action I am in all ways a mother, I haven’t yet mentalized the reality - it still sounds strange to me… The other day when my mother-in-law referred to ‘my son’, my response was, ‘who?”  

I realize that until now, I thought all mothers had superpowers - and perhaps they do. Somehow, though,  I don’t feel like I qualify to be a mother yet.  I am a mother - but I don’t feel any wiser, and stronger or like the superhuman being I remember my mother to be as small child.  I feel tired, smelly, overwhelmed, and it’s a miracle if I get out of the house before noon.

I know as Luca grows he will trust me completely, as I trusted completely in my mother, to always be there and to love him unconditionally.  I feel like to be worthy of that trust, I better get my shit together before he realizes I’m just an ordinary human being!

On the other hand, perhaps I do have a mother’s superpowers and I just haven’t realized it, as I have completely and utterly changed.  I have developed patience I didn’t know I had, shushing and rocking my baby to sleep in the middle of the night without resentment.  The most delicious feeling is feeling his cheek against my cheek, or being bestowed one of his early morning smiles.  I am constantly worried, checking that he is breathing, feeling guilty for putting him down and taking a shower or doing anything for myself.   At his 2 month vaccinations yesterday, I wanted to cry even after his tears had stopped, knowing that he felt pain.  I have somehow become a patient, empathetic, selfless worrywart - if that doesn’t qualify me as a strong candidate for motherhood, I don’t know what does!

In the meantime, as I wait for my brain to catch up to the reality, I will be Luca’s mother whole heartedly, even though my hands don’t look like mother’s hands.

Welcome to the real world: I'm a mom!

The last week of pregnancy was the longest.  I was being threatened with induction if I hadn’t given birth my my due date because of low amniotic fluid levels and the fact that Luca appeared to be a big big baby according to ultrasounds, so I was doing everything I could to induce labour naturally. Eating pineapple, drinking cinnamon tea, going for walks, having sex, doing squats and lunges, and waiting impatiently.  It was Semana Santa, and Tegucigalpa was dead, all the shops were closed, everyone was on vacation, and Augusto and I were in a state of suspense, willing Luca to hurry up already.

It’s the hottest time of year, and I felt massive, uncomfortable and anxious.  Finally, Saturday night, 2 days before my induction date on Monday, Augusto and I went for a walk.  We were passing in front of the American Embassy when I stopped suddenly.

“Augusto, I think I’m peeing myself!” I said, “I think I’ve lost control of my bladder!”

“Do you want to go back home?” he asked.

“I don’t know, why am I peeing myself?”  We both looked at each other.

“Wait...do you think…”

“Could it be…?”

We hurried home, me waddling uncomfortably, worried that I had lost bladder control and that it wasn’t my waters, but upon arrival at home and another gush, I confirmed I was not, in fact, peeing myself.

Soon after, we were in the hospital and because my contractions had not started, I was induced.  Within an hour, my contractions had started, and shortly thereafter, Luca’s heartbeat began to surge and drop, and the monitor’s alert light was going on and off.  The baby was in distress.

In tears, I was carted off to the operating theatre, Augusto told to wait outside.  Within an hour, Luca Mateo was born, in the early morning of Easter Sunday, by emergency cesarean section, weighing 8 pounds, 3 ounces.

Nothing about his birth went the way I had hoped, but in the end, having a healthy baby in my arms is the most important thing.  I struggled with feelings of failure and somehow felt cheated out of a natural birth.  For any future mothers out there, having a c-section is no joke.  Bedridden for days, pain, discomfort, and 6 weeks (at least) of recovery time, all while learning how to care for a new baby  meant that the first week was overwhelming and scary at times. With Augusto back to work within a few days, and myself limited to the house and struggling with cracked and bleeding nipples and a painful recovery from surgery, I felt lonely, isolated, and anxious most days.  I cried every night for the first week out of exhaustion.  

Finally,  a few nights ago, I cried tears of happiness.  Have you ever seen a drunk person bawling their eyes out and exclaiming “ I love you guys so much, you are the best” etc etc?  That was me, overwhelmed with love for my new family. Luca and I are learning how to breastfeed correctly, I am coming down from a roller-coaster of hormones, my pain is less, and Luca is getting fatter and cuter every day.  Augusto has taken a few days off this week to spend time at home, and I my heart is feeling full. I can’t describe what a mother’s love is like except to say that it is so big it almost hurts.  The human body is truly amazing, and I have been in awe of the instincts that kicked in as soon as I had my baby in my arms.  

We are learning a little more every day, have been peed on, pooped on, spit-up on, and basically life revolves around bodily fluids at the moment.  

I am lucky to have a partner who continuously tells me how beautiful I am, when I feel at my worst, my stomach soft and poochy, an angry scar running along the bottom, my breasts engorged and leaking, constantly sweating, dark circles and with barely the energy to get dressed, Augusto can somehow look at me and see beauty.  Without his support, and the support of my family (thank God for modern technology) I could never have managed any of this.  I am so grateful for my family and friends for coming together and doing what they could to help us out in this new phase, and now I can’t begin to describe how excited I am to be in this new phase of my life: motherhood!

Making a Baby in Honduras

I haven´t written in a while as life has been busy with moving, work, and well, being pregnant.  The weather has been getting hotter and hotter as we move into Honduras´ “summer”, and I am feeling more like an overheated sweaty incubator than a normal human being.

Augusto and I have settled into our new place, a two level duplex with a lot more space (and a lot more surface area to clean), and have been slowly putting the house together.  January was a miserable month in which I promptly got sick the day we moved to the new house and stayed ill with a brutal case of bronchitis for the next 3 weeks, leaving poor Augusto to do most of the work in cleaning and painting the old apartment and unpacking in the new place. Just as I started to feel better, Augusto succumbed, but luckily his immune system battled the bug a lot better than I did.  Suffice it to say, our diet was mostly chicken soup for the month of January.

I have started taking prenatal classes at the public hospital where I am planning on giving birth. The chosen method of teaching here seems to be a combination of scolding and the sharing of old wives tales. 

Today for example, we all had to tell the nurse how much we weighed.  Most of us got scolded for weighing too much, and when one plump young lady to be declared her weight to be lower than what the nurse thought she weighed, she took her and weighed her in front of the group and loudly declared the (higher) number in triumph to the rest of the group.  Once that mortifying experience was over, we then got scolded about a) not drinking enough water,  b) wearing our pants too tight,  c) eating too much spicy food (that was aimed directly at me) ,  d) touching our baby bumps too much –apparently it stimulates the uterus and leads to early labour, information which I am taking with a lot of salt, and finally e) allowing our babies to become too big  - better a 5 or 6 lb baby than a large baby, according to the nurse, it’s easier to birth a small baby  (I have a whole handful of grains of salt by this point).

Needless to say, the beliefs and practices here in Honduras are quite different than those of Canada, and I am finding myself biting my tongue a lot at the advice I am receiving from not just the nurses, but from well-meaning coworkers and friends as well.  

As I am giving birth in a public hospital, I really don’t have any freedom in choosing how I want to give birth – the rule is, no one comes in with me to the birthing room, and birthing always happens on my back.  I actually sat and read the entire birthing policies document for Honduras, and was pleased by what I read in the document, but apparently those policies don´t actually get followed, as in the document it said women can be accompanied by a family member, and can choose the position they give birth in.  I am trying hard to let go of my Canadian viewpoint when it comes to my labour and delivery, as the more I think of how little control I will have, the more nervous I get.  I take comfort in the fact that Honduras has twice the birth rate of Canada, so they must know what they´re doing when it comes to birthing babies.

The great thing is, the hospital is literally two blocks away from our house, so I am thinking of walking to the hospital when the time comes – albeit two blocks while in labour may be a lot more than I bargained for.

I can´t believe I am so close to the end of this pregnancy – it has flown by, but at the same time, it´s been an eternity.  I had no idea how many changes a body goes through during this period, and it’s been a whole new learning experience.  For example, some interesting fun facts:

At this point, I literally have 50% more blood flowing through my body than a non-pregnant person.

The amount of fluid in my body has affected my vision – my focal point has changed due to the excess fluid, so my prescription glasses now give me headaches.  I have managed to do without glasses for the past few months, because I want to wait to get a regular body back before checking my prescription again.

My levels of hormones have changed the way I smell – we all have a smell that we don´t notice because we´ve always smelled the same.  Well, now I smell different, even to me, and it´s weirding me out, because I don’t recognize myself sometimes.

My joints and articulations are all stretching and becoming loosy goosy in preparation for birth – this makes me really clumsy and prone to silly accidents.  I twisted my ankle the other day while walking, and luckily it only took a few days to recover from, but it reminded me to be extra careful.

My abdominal muscles have separated to make room for the baby, which causes a weird cone shape as my insides squeeze through the middle when I flex my abs.  Hopefully this separation heals on its own after birth.

Anyways, this is all probably too much information for those of you who are slightly squeamish, so I’ll leave it at that, even though I  could go on for quite a bit more.

Next month is baby month! Eeeek!

What the @#%& are we getting ourselves into?

Sitting down to breakfast the other day, I turned to Augusto, my fiancé and said

“I’m falling in love with another man.”  He didn’t even miss a beat, taking my hand, smiling and saying,

“Me too:”

I am now 23 weeks pregnant with a little boy we have named Luca.   I feel him move almost constantly, and he has become a part of our daily discourse.  Augusto greets me after work with 2 kisses, one for me and one for my growing belly.  His over-protective nature has kicked into overdrive- I am not just his partner, but his child’s mother, and therefore all possible future bad scenarios are always considered.  It can be frustrating, especially as we are currently house-hunting, and while I am appreciating the large garden space a potential house has, he is eyeing the surrounding wall and assessing break-in possibilities.  He’d happily set up in an underground bunker if he had his way.

At times, we both look at each other with a look that says “What the @#%& are we getting ourselves into?”

Luckily, neither of us has a clue as to what’s in store for us, so we are gleefully enjoying pregnancy with the blissful innocence of first-time to be parents.  Sometimes I hear a certain satisfied/sinister tone coming from my friends and family who have had children when they tell me, “Just you wait…” but I choose not to focus on it.

I have been musing a lot about selfishness.  I am aware that this is the last time in my life that I will be able to take actions without considering the fate of my child, but it hasn’t sunk in what that implies.  If it means taking 30 years of self-absorption and wanton choices and molding them into a caring and responsible mother-figure, I’m not quite sure how that’s supposed to happen.  Is it automatic? Or do I have a long and painful road of learning patience and selflessness ahead of me? (Something tells me it’s the latter…)

There are a lot of what ifs rolling around in my head, and the biggest one is what if I’m not a good mother?  What if I become the mother rewarding her screaming child in the grocery store with candy because she just can’t take it anymore? What if I create a monster by being inconsistent and lacking discipline? What if I can’t shake my selfishness and I resent the child for demanding so much time and attention? I have to stop myself and take a deep breath when I get going down the what if rollercoaster, because I have an overactive imagination and usually don’t stop until Luca is in his 20’s and the head of an international crime ring.

This year in Honduras has completely changed the course of my life.  I had no idea when I first arrived in Tegucigalpa that by the end of the year I’d be looking at the prices of diapers and cribs and discussing the pros and cons of circumcisions. When I consider the crazy changes that have happened in such a short time, it makes me realize that there is no use playing the what if game, because time moves so fast, the only thing to do is breathe and take one day at a time.  Or more likely, hold my breath and take it one poopy diaper at a time. 

Happy Holidays to all my friends and family around the world!

Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans…

So, I missed writing a blog in the month of October.  To be fair, it’s been an incredibly busy month, and I have a legitimate excuse that’s been keeping me distracted.  I’m 16 weeks pregnant. Yup – I’ve told most of my friends and family, but I wanted to avoid a massive Facebook announcement, as I’m feeling overwhelmed enough as it is, what with this wonderful unplanned surprise and all.

Also this month – bought a car, went to visit family in Houston, and got engaged.  So…I legitimately don’t even know where to begin to try to recap the onslaught of emotions, stresses and changes that have happened in the last short period of time!

The bottom line is, I’m feeling happy – although if someone were to have told me a year ago that within a year I’d be pregnant and engaged I would have laughed them out of town.  Everything has happened very quickly, and in the moments of downtime, I try to savor the small joys of what life is bringing me these days.

 I have met the one – I always had read that when you know, you just know, and that’s exactly how I feel about Augusto, so even though in an ideal, planning-ahead scenario, we would have waited to start a family, in the end, I am thrilled to have found myself in this situation with him. He has been incredibly supportive throughout this whole process – I keep telling him to remember that I’m not normally like this (cranky, tired, bloated, nauseous etc), because he has now known me as a pregnant woman longer than the total time we were together before I got pregnant.

I had to quickly realize how skewed my view of pregnancy was before this – I had a vision of me blissfully going through my entire pregnancy with the only changes being a growing stomach.  This is not at all the case.  I had really never considered the massive changes the female body undergoes in order to create an entire new human being.  My first symptoms of pregnancy were the boobs – definitely the boobs – they were incredibly painful for the first 3 months (and still kind of are).  I changed from being a well-endowed woman who can shop anywhere to being laughed out of Honduran shops because the size of bra I wanted doesn’t exist in this country. (Thank God everything is bigger in Texas! I was able to get my shopping done while I was in Houston)  I also learned about the joys of the pregnant woman’s digestive system –it slows down, I mean sloooowww, almost to a complete halt, which creates lots of time for fermentation and gas.  Oh yay.

The weirdest part of pregnancy so far for me has been the food aversions and cravings – suddenly foods and drinks that I love (fish, eggs, fruit juice, chamomile tea) completely disgust me, and other food that never featured heavily in my diet: kidney beans (I literally ate beans every day for a month) and bagels (it took me a month to find the one store in Tegucigalpa that carries bagels) are now the only thing I want, again and again and again.

I have been lucky, I haven’t thrown up once.  Well technically I did just once, while I was cleaning the fridge, but to be fair there were some really nasty mysterious no-longer-recognizable containers of food to be thrown out.

I can still uncomfortably squeeze myself into my regular clothes, but it’s getting pretty evident that I’m actually pregnant – not just fat as a few of my coworkers and workshop participants have suggested.  (Bluntness about one’s physical appearance here is very accepted – telling someone they look like they’ve gained weight isn’t considered offensive, even though I definitely feel offended).

So, there you have it folks – I am going to be staying in Honduras for the foreseeable future, until Augusto and I (and baby) figure out where life is going to take us next.  This blog was originally going to be about my year in Honduras – well, now, it’s looking like it’s going to be about my life in Honduras for the next few years!

Resilience

This week, I participated in a national youth forum in the south of Honduras, focusing on human rights and how to be citizen overseers – they learned how to created observatories, databases and learn how to be advocates for their youth networks.

During dinner one evening, I spoke to one of the youth, Arnaldo, a young leader who has participated in various forums and events as a representative of his community´s youth network.  At some point, he uses a tissue to wipe his eye, which I notice is tearing constantly and is scarred. 

“Is your eye ok?” I ask.

“No,” he laughs, “It’s not my eye, it’s a fake.”

He goes on to tell me that a little over a year ago he was walking down the street when he noticed that a man was following him.  After a few blocks, he started running and the man started running after him.  At the last minute before the man caught up to him, he threw his backpack (which contained his laptop and his money) over the fence of a house.  Seeing this, the man realized he wouldn’t be able to rob him of anything, and so he shot Arnaldo in the face. Arnaldo tells me he turned his head just as the shot went off, so the bullet grazed his eye and nothing else.  After many surgeries (In Guatemala and in Mexico), the result was that he needed to have his eye removed and now wears a very believable prosthesis.  The only thing that stands out is that he is missing part of his eyelid, but it is slight and only noticeable close up. 

I ask him if he is scared all the time now.  He tells me no, that in fact his friends and family are surprised at how quickly he recovered and that he doesn’t have any lingering trauma from the event. I am blown away by his matter-of-factness, and the joie de vivre that I have observed in him as he leads group activities and jokes with the other youth. 

We continue to talk.  He tells me he is the oldest of 8 children, and that he tries to set an example for his siblings.  He tells me that despite his best efforts in trying to relay the education he has received to his family, his 14 year old sister still ended up getting pregnant.  Arnaldo then tells me that half of his siblings between the ages of 15-20 have gone illegally to the states to try to make a better life.

“I can´t blame them,” he says, “After all, the situation here is very bleak.  We are lucky to find jobs, and, I mean, look at what happened to me – I was shot for basically no reason. “  He tells me it’s hard, having the family scattered and facing hardships – he himself has had to leave the family home to live with an aunt in order to continue studying. “At one point,” he said, “I was walking 2 hours every day just to get to school.”

What strikes me more than anything is how this young man, at first glance, appears carefree and exactly how you expect any young adult to act. I would never have realized the deep physical and emotional scars he has to bear, and I admit to myself that I have underestimated him, and probably many other youth before him.  I still have very little understanding of the reality of growing up Honduran, and the hard choices one must face every day. 

I am, in fact, awed by the resilience shown by Arnaldo and thousands of others, and that keeps the spark burning that there is hope for positive change.