A Dash of Dash a Day: June 6

For those who might not have followed just yet or are coming to the blog late, about a year and a half ago we moved back into my childhood home with my parents to help take care of my mother. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2007, and living with her could really be an entire blog in and of itself. It is a scary, sad, bizarre disease that ultimately seems to hurt everyone except the person who's stricken with it, and it does not make life easy.

I had a lot of early apprehension about having a baby with Mom in the house. When it's Ann and I, it's a full time job with her as is, and adding a baby to the mix seemed to be crazy. Plus, without knowing how Mom would react to having a baby in the house? How we would be able to handle it, both as a couple and as parents? I had a lot of concerns. What I do have to keep reminding myself constantly, and what I needed to be reminded of when we started talking baby, is that my mother wouldn't have wanted me to change my entire life around her. She even said so herself early on when we had nearly moved into our condo in New Hampshire and I was starting to immediately have regrets about being so far away. Would she have wanted us to wait on having a baby on her account?

Obviously, we dove in and had the baby. What I'm not surprised about is how well Ann and I have handled it. Having a new focus, having a little meatball who is 80% joy, 15% frustration, 5% bodily fluids, it ain't bad. What I am surprised about is how Mom has handled it. Sometimes, when the baby is crying, she soothes him from the other room, talking to Dash as if she's right there (a common thing with Mom is to talk to people she perceives nearby, regardless of where they are). Sometimes, she comes and sees the baby and just babbles to it. Sometimes just lets him hold her finger. Always, always, always, however, storms into the room regardless of the situation with the exclamation "Here's the Nanny!" (She decided she'd be Nanny long, long before Ann was even in the picture, which is interesting that it stuck with her). Mom has really only tried to outright hold the baby once or twice, and has mostly been afraid of that sort of physical interaction otherwise, which we're frankly okay with. On a whole, though? Mom loves the baby. Absolutely adores Dash even if the name isn't really doing the trick for her. Instead of a horror show, it's been better than the best case scenario.

What's become very interesting, however, is the last few weeks. I don't remember exactly when Dash started smiling at familiar faces, but it's always nice to be the first one to run over to his swing after a nap, and see that huge smile come onto his face when he recognizes you. Ann and I get smiles constantly, and who else does? My mother. HUGE, laughing smiles, which just eggs my mother on that much more, which then causes more smiles and laughter from Dash. They're like old friends getting together, neither really understanding the other or making any coherent statements to each other, but it's just crazy how well Dash has taken to my mother as well as my mother has taken to Dash. It's to the point where Ann can put Dash on the kitchen table, strapped into a bouncy seat, and leave Dash and Mom to chat while she makes dinner. It's crazy.

I get pretty upset from time to time knowing that Dash will never know my mother the way I did. It's hard enough that Ann only got a bit of what made her great, but Dash deserves more than that. It's worse to think that Dash might grow up early on with Mom being at her worst, and will only know my mother as an angry, incoherent mess. But when I see the two of them together right now? I wonder if Dash will get lucky in the lottery of life and end up being a good thing for my mother, and my mother a good thing for him. Even if the best case scenario now is the best we get later, at least we have this and we can tell him about how he made my mother's life a little brighter without even trying.

My father sometimes says to his family that this house needed something good in it for once. I hope Dash someday understands that, when we talk about something going our way, that we meant him on so many levels.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 5

We interrupt our general standard feature for a baby who is probably too young for a Jumparoo absolutely loving his Jumparoo.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 4

Raymonds of a certain age have traditionally gone through a childhood hazing ritual of sorts. It came from my Aunt Jane, an Aunt I was always close to growing up and loved quite a bit. She'd call on the phone and just say the dirtiest things to you (well, dirty-appropriate for the age). Potty humor, some light cursing, always just to get you a little angry and perhaps give it right back to you. I went through it, my brother went through it, my cousins went through it. Talking to my cousin Meghan the other night, I also learned that her son would get it as well.

Aunt Jane had been sick for some time, and largely because we've largely had our hands full on our own (along with other issues, for certain), we hadn't gotten around to see her in some time. With the baby, I made it a point to go and say hi, and it was like things had never changed, which was great. My Aunt and I caught up a bit, had a bunch of great laughs, and then she held the baby for a bit, and immediately laid into the little guy just like she did to everyone else. He was only a month old, so it's not like he'll really remember it, but I will, and it'll be a good story. Even in some of her most painful times, she was like she was 20 years earlier, putting whatever pain she was going through aside to put a smile on someone else's face.

My Aunt Jane passed away on Friday. I'll miss her terribly, and I'll be sad that, like a lot of other family traditions that slide away with the people who pass on, Dash won't ever get the full Aunt Jane experience. While there are a lot of people in my life that Dash won't really know, that he'll never know my Memere and that he'll never know my mother as she once was are hard. That he'll have to hear the crazy stories about Aunt Jane second hand hurts as well, because she was really special, and really something else.

Thanks, Aunt Jane.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 3

On one side is Dashiell Clark, our little bundle of joy. On the other, Dashiell Hammett, author and the guy who's name we stole for our son. We have placed them both in hats because hats are cool and to make it harder to tell them apart.

There is a definite divide that comes along with people learning Dash's name. Chances are, you're basically in one of three camps:

1) You're under 40 and have grown up with or have friend who have given their children unique or strange names.
2) You're over 40 and think any name that isn't typical is akin to naming your child Apple.
3) You're over 40 and have either read a Dashiell Hammett book or are familiar with the name via that reference.

We mostly kept the names a secret throughout the pregnancy, in part because our friend did that and was happy with not getting a lot of reactions, and in part because we had more "settled" on a boy's name (our first choice for a boy name ended up not being so good for a lot of reasons), and in part because we still hadn't 100% committed to a girl's name by the time the due date rolled around. This is not to say we're using "settled" negatively in this case, because we did genuinely like the name. It's just that no others came around to really debate in our heads.

Now, we really don't care at the end of the day if people don't like the name. My mother, famously, wouldn't even say the name until the last week or so (we think she might have thought we were calling Dashiell (Dash-uhll) an "asshole"), but others have noted somewhat interestingly that they feel the name will have to grow on them a bit. I'm more than fine with that, for the record - it's not a modern name. It's just an interesting reaction.

What's fun are the people who do get the reference, because it's exciting for them given how rare the name is. I've had more than my share of shared moments with librarians and such who know the name. What's more interesting, though, is that his nickname, Dash, has more or less taken over. I didn't expect to call him Dash much at all, but it just...fits. He's a goofy little derpface, so of course we're going to call him Dash. Or Dashypants. Or Dashydoodle. Or whatever else Ann comes up with.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 2

So some of you may have heard the story from us, but I figure I can get it down for good so I can stop, as Ann puts it, "sounding like a crazy person" whenever I tell the story.

Because this story was pretty scary, and I deserve to sound like a crazy person over it.

You'll recall my post on the day Dash was born where I had noted that it was "Ann's story to tell." I took that position because I was 95% spectator through the whole affair and figured she might not want to talk too much about it. Since then, we've been a little more open, a little more angry, and so on. I'll explain.

When I came back from Ann getting her epidural, it was like a whole new woman in front of me. When I left she was on a yoga ball in a severe amount of pain from her contractions, and when I came back she was actually really happy. She even ended up taking a short nap, which was nice given how long we'd been there at that point. About an hour or so after the epidural, they came to check Ann again, and decided we were ready for the next step. Considering how quickly things had been moving, I ran out to the lobby where Ann's mom and stepdad were and let them know where we were at. How exciting, after all - it was about 2:30 and we're going to have a baby soon!

So we get back, and we're getting going to push. The nurse, contrary to pretty much everything I had thought up to this stage, has me help Ann position her legs to make things easier (my eyes were locked on that back wall, let me tell you), and we got going.

And then 30 minutes pass. Basically no progress. Ann also said later that she felt pretty much done after 15 minutes. So the nurse comes over, pumps up the pitocin (which helps with contractions), and Ann keeps going.

And then an hour passes. Still limited progress. Ann is already exhausted at this point, the midwife has a look on her face, and the nurse comes over, pumps up the pitocin yet again. It's worth noting at this stage that the midwife can't really figure out when Ann's contractions are, which means Ann is missing prime pushing time. But hey, pitocin will help, right?

90 minutes pass. We're supposedly getting somewhere, but Ann literally cannot move anymore. They slap oxygen on her (full mask, none of that tube nonsense for my girl), and try to get her to push again, and she's...basically nonresponsive. Not so much that she's been knocked out, or lost consciousness, or anything like that. It's that she was literally worn out and couldn't do anything. Single scariest moment of my time with Ann, because this was pretty much every nightmare scenario I had envisioned in my head. But we rouse Ann after a short break, pump up the pitocin again, and go with it.

It took about 2 hours give or take, but we finally get Dash. At one point, Ann was given something similar to a pull-up bar to lean on to try and get gravity to help out a bit. It did more good than anything we had done to that point, and once Ann was able to get the baby out, things were better. Ann was shaking from the epidural and the basic shock of everything for a good 45 minutes afterward, so she didn't even get a chance to hold Dash.

At the point where the baby was born, though, I look down, and my shoe is soaked. There's a clear puddle at my feet, and I say something to the midwife and nurse. They say "oh, it's just the afterbirth," which made no sense because I was above Ann's waist the entire time. That's when I follow the line a bit and realize that one of Ann's IVs was out.

Yup, the pitocin leaked out of the detached IV and onto my foot. Who knows how long it had been loose, but it's probable that the pitocin increases Ann got over the course of the labor ended up on my right foot. My suspicions are further confirmed by the fact that Ann had a tremendously difficult time passing the placenta, which somehow easily worked itself out once the pitocin was hooked back up.

So, with all that said, I should say that everyone was genuinely healthy and no ill effects came of that situation other than me being scarred for life and being pretty sure I don't ever want to see this again. We made a joke with the midwife saying we weren't going to call a lawyer, and she didn't really find it funny, so it was probably ultimately more serious for them than it ended up being for us, but in terms of traumatic experiences, that one was up there. On what is supposed to be a joyous day introducing a new life into the world, you end up seeing your wife limp in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask on? Really?

So yeah. That's the story of Dash's birth.

A Dash of Dash a Day: June 1

I've neglected this blog for a lot of reasons, and I need to get out of that and start really documenting some stuff here. So for the month of June, I'm going to offer up a post about Dash every day to kind of catch up on the backlog of things I've been thinking about, or pictures I haven't put on Facebook (or have and haven't discussed), or just random musings. Then, hopefully, I can look at a more regular schedule.

Anyway, for today, one of Dash's weird habits:


So Dash was off the binky relatively quickly. They kind of scared us off regarding pacifiers at the hospital, citing "nipple confusion" (which, for the record, Dash has no problems with). It turns out that, at least for the first few weeks, it was an easy soother for him, he'd spit it out when he didn't need it anymore, and that was that. We got excited, bought a few of the Soothies he liked almost immediately, and within a week or so, he didn't care for them anymore. Go figure.

One habit that he did enjoy in the hospital, and still does, however, is the gnawing of the finger. I don't know, it's really strange and all but he really enjoys it. He'll grab my finger and immediately bring it to his mouth, and once he gets it in there, he goes to town. He does it for a while, then he's done, no problem. He's not crazy when he doesn't get to eat my hand, he's not upset when I take it away. It's just a weird habit.

I'm sure a lot of you who've been through this are thinking "well, yeah, of course." This is just one of those things that no one tells you, I guess, and that leaves me constantly amused. And my poor finger sometimes hurts by the time he's done, but Dash is worth it.

Life With a Kid Who Has an Old Name and a Mother Who Has Alzheimer's

Talking the baby tonight while making dinner:

Mom: "So what's the baby's name?"
Jeff: "It's Dashiell. Dashiell Clark."
Mom: "Dashiell? Really? Are you joking?"
Jeff: "No, that's his name!"
Mom: *laughing* "That's just crazy! What kind of name is that?"
Jeff: "It's a nice name! We'll call him Dash!"
Mom: (nearly in tears from laughing already) "At least you didn't call him Larry!"

I love my mom.