How I Got Tank the Triceratops (I take "dictation")

that blog was good.  did you
make a good pradikson?

 The Dictator and the Anarchist watched an Arthur episode yesterday that was all about blogs.  The Dictator--already a prolific writer--was highly interested and asked if I could help her write a blog.  I thought we'd better start with a guest entry on this blog before she jumps into taking over the blogosphere.  She wanted to type the whole thing herself, but as you may be aware, I'm simply not patient enough for that.  So I took dictation.  The caption underneath the picture, however, was all her typing.  Enjoy.

I went to the mall.  And...I got a snack before going to get it.

Um, I got to go to the toy store and pick out a toy.  At first I couldn't pick which one.  Which one will you think I would choose?  Will you think I would choose Tank, Morris, or Ned?  I picked Tank the triceratops.  He's from Dinosaur Train.  His frill is big and it gets stuck in everything.  My mom paid for it with credit card debt.  And that's how I got Tank.

Aftershock: A Postlude, Part I (Can you have more than one part in a postlude? I can!)

So the trauma is ended, the Anarchist is born and released from the caring arms of the NICU and all is back to usual in Mortlandia (which sounds cooler than "Morton Land," I've decided).

Well, not exactly usual.  It turns out that even traumatic experiences that end well have lasting effects...on every member of the household...for a long time...like, maybe, forever.

The Bureaucrat:

After meeting this little miraculous bundle of
anarchy, nothing else mattered as much to the
Bureaucrat.  Aww...he was just a baby, here!
(As was she)

The Bureaucrat had the unpleasant position of attempting to continue life-as-usual at work during the whole prematurity crisis, all the while juggling a hospitalized wife (and then, baby) and a displaced toddler.  Not so fun.  But he handled it beautifully.  I'm sure he dealt with a lot on a deep, psychological level, but as the Bureaucrat is a cool customer with little show of emotion, I'm not going to venture a guess at all the emotional turmoil raging deep below the surface.  I'll just tell you what I noticed.

To be blunt, the Bureaucrat became somewhat less worried about money.  This is a big deal.  The Bureaucrat has always been obsessively worried about money.  Most likely this is because we are dirt poor and he is very responsible (I never worry because I operate under the misapprehension that money grows on trees).  But the poor Bureaucrat used to worry to excess.  Now he just seems to worry an appropriate amount.  Maybe things have been put into perspective?   (Alternatively, this is entirely unrelated and he just gave up caring because we're so poor it's absolutely futile to even attempt to do anything about it.  Maybe he's already resigned himself to our living in our parents' basements...)


The Fat Assassin:

At first, the effects on the Fat Assassin went unnoticed.  This is probably because she has always been extra-neurotic, even for a cat.  But we soon discovered that the Fat Assassin had developed trust issues.  For about three years after the birth of the Anarchist, the Fat Assassin became decidedly uncuddly.  Not that anyone ever dared cuddle her in the first place (she's a biter), but she had--in her earlier days with us--often climbed on our laps, chests, beds, laptop keyboards, important documents in order to cuddle us.  During the whole Anarchist fiasco, she was often left alone until very late at night when the Bureaucrat would stumble into the house and she would get to curl up next to him for a few hours and assure herself that people still existed.  Then the Anarchist came home, surrounded by plastic tubing essential to her very life and breath, and the Fat Assassin (who had a propensity to gnaw on said plastic tubing) was kicked out of any interesting area of the house.

The Fat Assassin keeps her distance.  Humans will just
break your heart, anyway.  (One of these days we're going to
discover her journal of angsty cat poetry from this period).

Cue trust issues:  humans aren't to be counted on to be present; when humans are present they bring with them tasty tubing and then deny tasty tubing to sweet kitties; sweet kitties are apparently no longer welcome in the vicinity of nice-smelling babies or tasty tubing; no one loves sweet kitties; sweet kitties might as well turn aloof/vicious/or throw sweet kitteny selves off of cliffs; sweet kitties aren't feeling particularly suicidal and (sigh) no one would even notice sweet kitteny absence anyway; sweet kitty chooses aloof/vicious, but remains very much alive.

Thus, a three year period of uncuddliness ensued.  Just recently, we have been accosted by excessive displays of affection from the Fat Assassin.  It appears she's getting her snuggle back.  It takes a while to process trauma, and even cats aren't immune.  Luckily, even felines can overcome.

The Dictator

Many people speculate that the reason our Dictator is, much like our pet, so neurotic, is that she was semi-separated from both her parents for a period of time at a very young age (whereas it is theorized that the Fat Assassin's initial neuroses stem from her lack of lady parts).  While I don't disagree that witnessing your mother wailing, "Please, God, no!  Don't take my baby!" in the middle of the night and then vanishing into the mist for three months might potentially trigger some sort of deep emotional scarring, I also wish to point out that there was never a point at which the Dictator wasn't neurotic.  Recall, she came out of the womb skittish and suspicious.  She trusted no one.  She still doesn't.  This is not because of some sort of traumatic separation, but because she's utterly convinced that she is the only competent creature in the universe and that everyone else is going--to sound utterly British--to muck everything up.  She doesn't trust me to make her sandwich correctly, for heaven's sake!  What all this preemie business did do was create a completely justifiable situation in which not to trust.  Now we can point to those traumatic three months and say, "she's been through a lot," whenever teachers/friends/neighbors/perfect strangers raise their eyebrows at her dictatorial behavior.  Little do they know!

The Dictator returns to her room (or, kingdom) after a three
month sojourn to the place of the grandparents.  She now
attempts to reestablish authority over her plush subjects.

 *****

Now, these souls have been through quite a bit.  I won't deny them that.  But let's be honest.  I am a whole lot more screwed up than any of them.  Mind you, this is not because I somehow have suffered more (there are many perfectly sane people who have been through far worse trauma than I), but because I have frail nerves...like a mother from a Jane Austen novel.  The Anarchist, too, has experienced several lasting effects of all this because she is the actual preemie in the situation.  She is completely justified in having been impacted to such a degree...me, not so much.  But what can you do?

I will delve further into the psychological depths of the Anarchist and myself (lucky you) next time.  Until then, should you encounter an obese and overly-affectionate cat with a tendency to bite, or a kindergartener who insists upon overseeing your every move as you make her lunch/shop for your own clothing/get her sister dressed, cut them some slack.  They've been through a lot.

Part VI: Bad Summer Camp

On the day we packed up our little bundle of anarchy and left the NICU for good, I felt a sudden rush of emptiness in my chest.  I lingered at the empty crib, even though the Anarchist--who had taken the car seat challenge twice before being allowed this moment--was wearing real clothes and was securely fastened in her car seat.*  I kept sniffing the air, which smelled of new born baby, medical supplies, and my beloved hospital soap.  I closed my eyes and took in the no-longer-terrifying, but actually-somehow-comforting sound of the rhythmic beeping of heart monitors.  I forced myself onto the elevator and past the first floor gift shop where a nice Labor and Delivery nurse had once taken me for a walk/wheelchair ride some four months before.  I passed the coffee stand where, on my own first day of freedom three months ago, I had purchased a large frozen mocha to sip as I ran outside and spun in circles rejoicing in the fresh air and the fact that my legs still worked.

This is me feigning joy at leaving my little haven.
This is the Anarchist looking like an angry pirate.

But on this day, I had no desire to run outside and spin.  Everyone told me that this would be the happiest day of all.  I would be so happy to finally go home and be with my baby, the way it was supposed to be.  But I wasn't happy.  I was terrified.  But more than that, I was sad.  I was experiencing the trauma of separation, not from a child--as I had expected--but from my little NICU family, from the smells and sounds that I now associated with my baby, from my new normal.  The cheerful nurse and my very favorite respiratory technician, whom I adored, smiled as they helped us pack anarchy-in-a-car-seat into the back of our car.  I made a deliberate effort to smile...and then burst into tears.  All the way home, I planned my new career as a NICU nurse.  I had to get back in!

See?  She doesn't want to go home either!

Even before the Anarchist's unlikely and phenomenal birth, the Bureaucrat and I had decided that the whole experience was something like bad summer camp.  Allow me to explain.  If you've ever been to summer camp for an extended period of time, you'll know how easy it is to form intense bonds with unlikely people in a short period of time.  When I went to Interlochen for a couple of weeks in high school, for example, we all hugged and cried and swore we could not live without each other on the last day of camp.  Being in the hospital was kind of like that.  The nurses and doctors--who poked and prodded my belly, denied me meals, brought me extra cake and juice when I was sad, told me things that made me cry, did things that cheered me up--were kind of like the camp counselors who wake you up (cruelly) for a frigid polar bear swim at six in the morning, but who you still love anyway and feel like you will die without when you leave.  It was a similar phenomenon in the NICU, but of course the nurses were the Anarchist's counselors; and instead of polar bear swims, it was spinal taps, feeding tubes shoved down noses, and needles jammed into miniscule baby veins.  Sigh...I still miss those days.

Back when things were really bad, they wouldn't let us touch her...

...then we were allowed to semi-touch her...

...and then she got big enough for silly hats, and it was all
uphill from there!

Shortly after the Anarchist graduated from a
baby crate to a real, big-preemie crib. 
She got a certificate and everything!

The Anarchist opens her eyes for the first time, catches sight of
her adorably ridiculous hat in the reflection of the Bureaucrat's eyes,
instantly becomes an Anarchist in protest.

The strange thing was that what started as an awkward experience turned into something beautiful.  At first, we were told how much our baby needed our presence, and then warned not to touch her.  We heard loud beeping, saw doctors panicking and nurses running, and then were told that it was normal.  Being a NICU parent took a lot of getting used to, especially for someone who is afraid of intruding...even on her own baby.  But things began to turn.  We watched some of the most high-risk babies go through ridiculous amounts and come out all the stronger.  We met little friends who seemed to be going through exactly what we were going through.  We may have even arranged a marriage between the Anarchist and the lovely little guy next door, although I doubt it's legally binding.  I finally got to hold her tiny little body, feed her (an area in which, according to the lactation consultant, I was impressively skilled**), dress her in real clothes and watch her as she committed acts of anarchy.***   The NICU even arranged for special crafts and pizza nights for the parents, so that we could connect with one another and stop feeling so isolated.  We made friends with the nurses, other moms and dads, and even the doctors.  Our children were given matching, silly, fluffy hats to wear so that we could laugh at them instead of cry about them.  There was a sense of fear, but also a sense of community.  So yeah...bad summer camp.

Random acts of anarchy.

The Dictator visits the Anarchist in
the NICU.

 And I didn't want to leave it.  I didn't want to leave Trendy Baby and her caretakers who badgered the nurses and decorated her crib in zebra stripes.  I didn't want to leave The Baby Next Door, the Anarchist's love interest who had a neato mobile and friendly parents.  I didn't want to leave the nurse who shared my exact--not so favorable--sentiments about the new pope.  I didn't want to leave the nurse who realized that the Anarchist loved music and played soft lullabies in her crib to put her to sleep.  I didn't want to leave the receptionist who always gave the Dictator stickers when she came to visit, or the nurse who gave her tiny preemie diapers and bottles to play with, or the respiratory therapist who was basically one of the all-around greatest people I've ever met.  Nope.  I would have turned the car around and gone straight back.  But I wasn't driving.  

So we went home.  And it turns out that, even though I pride myself in being a pretty mediocre mother, the Anarchist thrived.  She started smiling, laughing, snuggling, and of course, screaming.  She developed a sense of humor and started singing.  She learned to crawl, walk, and--most recently--run and jump.  She threw all the books off the shelves in the public library, escaped church by crawling under rows and rows of seats, attacked strangers with love and friendliness, made up songs about "dirty poop," and basically became an all-around delightful little anarchist.  Truth be told, despite the fact that the NICU gave her the very best start possible where she received immeasurable care and support, maybe coming home was the best thing for her...even if it meant I had to leave bad summer camp.

Note that the oxygen tubing is not actually entering her nose.
Instead, she is using it as a teether.  She mastered this trick
during her days in the NICU.

* Yes, they make preemies take a car seat challenge before they allow them to leave the NICU.  The challenge consists of a fully-ripened preemie sitting, for minutes on end, in an uprightish position in a car seat.  If their vitals don't spike they get the go-ahead to pack their tiny onesies and go.  If not, they are sentenced to several more days of chillin' in the NICU.  Is it wrong that I was glad when the Anarchist failed her first challenge?

** Thanks to the Dictator refusing to wean--right until the moment I was admitted to the hospital--I had lots of practice.  If it hadn't been for this unfortunate turn of events, I would be one of those moms still suckling my kindergartener.  And let's face it...in my heart, I am not that mom.  Mostly I'm just a pushover.  


*** Preemie acts of anarchy include, but are not limited to: turning head to right when NICU staff expressly wants head turned to left, yanking out feeding tube/oxygen tubing/etc., pulling of c-pap (i.e., wind tunnel mask) in record time, and screaming like banshee when meals are not forthcoming (I could hear her scream straight through the walls of the NICU and into the hallway...she was the only preemie I ever heard do that).