The Book of Ruth Chapter 5: Updates, Ruthfull Homecomings, and Silver Linings

The day before Ruth turned 8 gestational months old, Thomas and I walked the same block we always do. The block where two weeks earlier, I’d confessed to him that I didn’t feel like a mom. The same block that became a comfort to me during stressful Covid days, before Ruth.

This time, we walked our block as a family. All four of us. Brisket, me, Thomas, and Babe Ruth. Brisket was awesome, not pulling, and he was continually checking in with me and Ruth who was strapped into a baby carrier. I kept bending forward every couple of minutes to nuzzle my ear closer to her mouth so I could confirm that she was still breathing. Thomas, though annoyed at my dramatics, said nothing. Her lungs are still growing. She’s still developing. Doing out here in our family’s small world what she should be doing inside my body. At the nurses’ suggestion, we’ve bubble girl’d her. Her immune system is quite fragile, so despite having so many cool people to meet, she won’t be heId by anyone other than us for quite some time.

As our family of four slowly walked the same block we walk every day, I turned to Thomas, “this is such a special time. I’m so happy.”

Now, I know this sounds super fucking twee, and don’t get me wrong; it is. I warned you shit was going to get boring, I’m nothing if not not a liar. But for someone who has dabbled in and out of depression for probably my entire life, I have so few of these moments where I let myself fully go to the edge of genuinely good feelings. This admission of happiness feels like a huge risk. I can probably count on my hands how many times I’ve not been too scared to go there. But, doing this mundane activity of walking our familiar block filled me with a sense of contentment. I wanted to share it with you. As Brene Brown says, we need to feel hard emotions fully so we can feel joy fully. Even if we’re scared of when the other shoe is going to drop.

Everyone has been so kind, checking in, and asking us how Ruth and I are doing. Shockingly, my answer is ‘GREAT!’. No one is more surprised by this than me. Because I was expecting to be a disaster. And I am a disaster in many ways, but I’m not a depressed-anxious-ball-of- nerves disaster, and for me, that’s a win.

These boring days that we longed for when she was in the NICU, pass like groundhog’s day. We feed her 8 times a day and try not to mess up the flow those angel NICU nurses got her into. They programmed her so well. For the most part, she lets us sleep. She’s much more consistent at a few weeks old than I am in my mid thirties. She has so much to teach me.

One hard thing that I’ve had to navigate is trying to control everything. I’ve been told this is very normal new mom vibes. CAREFUL, GABBIE YOU DUM DUM! You’re walking down the STAIRS! If you trip you will kill her! SHIT! You thought about tripping which means you’re more likely to trip now! GODDAMN it why are you thinking about tripping when you should be watching where you’re GOING!!!! Rinse and repeat that with every sharp corner and object in our house. Everything is a hazard. My mind is as much a minefield as our death-trap home. How do you keep a tiny baby safe when neither her home nor her mother are baby-proofed?!

When we go on our walks, I’m cautious when our adorable neighbours cross our paths. When I was pregnant, it was like they were on that journey with us, in a small way. On my morning walks we’d bump into Mike and Gus, Amanda and Stormi, G and Chris and Kira. They’d dote on Brisky and ask me how I was feeling. They always took in whatever insane answer I threw at them. Then I went away for a month as I healed from my C-section.

Brisket’s schedule changed and he and Thomas didn’t see the same neighbours every day. Our ritual shifted. I missed them. Now that I’m back up and walking, they’re shocked to see me with an itty bitty baby. “She’s early!”, they coo. They want to see her. They want to hug me and I them. But I keep my distance. Motherhood has already started changing me. I’ve always been rigidly polite. A control tactic I exert with the hopes that it will render me blameless during social interactions. ‘I’ve said and done everything right, I AM BEYOND REPROACH, right? But now, protecting Ruth is priority number one. People can dislike me, that’s okay. I’m sure plenty already do, despite my best efforts. Apparently I’m a lot….? She’s freeing me from some of my compulsive behaviour. I’m still polite but not at the sake of her well being. Boundaries are being put into place. If I don’t say ‘thank you’ or ‘take care’ or ‘so nice to see you', ten times, no one is going to explode or save me from being on anyone’s shit lists. This is a healthier way of existing. You can’t control people’s experience of you.

Isn’t this post a snooze-fest? As you can read, the big-time drama is slipping from our lives and the mundane, every-day neuroses are taking over. From the outside, everything is much calmer. How it should be.

I do want to apologize to you, if you’ve been following Ruth’s story. I’m sorry for freaking you out. Whenever we see someone who’s read the blog, they seem a bit traumatized. The chaos of Ruth’s birth story has thrown some of you for a loop and are genuinely shocked to see T and I doing so well.

But we’re so okay because there was a lot of cool shit that happened as a result of Ruth’s early eviction. I think we need to talk about silver linings. Calling them silver linings annoys Thomas to no end because he’s incredibly obsessed with semantics. Silver linings imply a storm, something negative, but there was very little negativity in our experience, as he lived it. I like referring to them as silver linings because…that’s what they are to me.

So first off, I survived. Ruth survived. A++ all around for health and survival. Second of all, I was able to physically heal while Ruth received the best medical care a parent could ask for. She was not screaming in my face while I was in pain. I see this as a huge privilege. We’d of course much rather have had her with us but if we couldn’t, I was very motivated to heal as quickly as possible. We both had time to recover and get ready for each other. Okay, also, these fucking rockstar nurses programmed our baby!

She sleeps in a bassinet. She eats on a very strict schedule. She knows a rhythm to life that we had no part in orchestrating. Thomas and I are baby neophytes. We know nothing. The amazing nurses in the NICU taught us how to baby. They answered all of our questions and encouraged us. We cannot believe how helpful they were. They even emotionally coached us through setting boundaries to help keep Ruth safe once she came home. They told us what to say to family and friends about preemies and strategies to help introduce her to our people while keeping her safe. Just wild, these people’s support.

Other things they helped us with: how to put on a diaper on, bathe her, burp her, breastfeed her, bottle feed her, take her temperature, swaddle her. They coached us. One day we were visiting Ruth and there was a code red; fire, in our area of the hospital. I whispered to Thomas, ‘I’m glad we’re here if there’s a fire.’ And the nurse working our pod overheard us. Annoyed, she dressed me down. ‘I would NEVER let ANYTHING happen to my babies. ANYTHING. I would put them all in an incubator and roll them into the service elevator if it meant keeping them safe. I would do WHATEVER it took to keep them safe. So KNOW that there is nothing that could happen that would keep me from protecting my babies.’ I mean....I literally just meant I was happy that we would be there if we had to escort Ruth out of the hospital if there was a fire, but this nurse wasn’t having it. Which made me love her even more. The intensity, the offence she took at what I said; appreciated. See what I mean about these incredible people?

A couple more annoying silver linings; my body wasn’t broken by pregnancy. I didn’t start really showing until a couple of weeks before Ruth’s birth. I wasn’t really big, which annoyed me for a while because I kept worrying that something was wrong or that Ruth was underdeveloped (she wasn't, in fact she was a good size for her gestational age when she was born). Maybe having a couple lbs on me ( thanks Covid) before I got pregnant helped with that. I didn’t get stretch marks or have to bear the August heat wave while pregnant. My feet didn’t grow a size bigger. I didn’t really fully do the pregnant thing, and tbh, I don’t think I’m particularly strong enough to have endured it. I am not a good patient. I am not quiet or demure about these things. Just ask Thomas, he had to deal with me and shit didn’t even get that real pregnancy-wise. It’s like Ruth knew, ‘oh this bitch? She couldn’t HANDLE it. Best to just get that early check out, thanks byeeeee’.

But the biggest silver lining is this extra time with Ru. We get to watch her develop on the outside. Which has been incredible. The numbers guy at my work, Graham, said it best; her being premature just means you get to spend even more time with her. And that is the cutest, truest fucking sentiment. I love it so much.

I feel good. So good that this week I decided to reclaim my morning walks with Brisky. I really missed them and I think he did, too. Since he was a little puppy, I’ve programmed him to walk with me in the am, and as much as he LOVES Thomas and their morning fun, it wasn’t what he was used to. I’ve decided Brisket is happy we’re walking together again. And after being immobilized by pregnancy and watching the olympics while being unable to roll myself off the couch, Brisket and I ran. A little. We ran down the street and it was nice. I hate running, really and truly. But after feeling like my body wasn’t my own, it feels good to be able to try and run or stretch or...whatever. It’s been oddly freeing. Did I mention I hated being pregnant? So, I’m soaking up feeling like me again.

And before I make you barf at how positive I’m being (don’t worry, I don’t recognize myself either), another good thing was that my Birthday, which I normally hate, felt less intense. More chill. A non-event. It felt really fucking great to see a couple key people. Cuddle my baby. Cuddle my pupper. Chat with my Toronto family. And have Thomas cook me a dinner of all my favourites. Low key. Highly rewarding.

Covid-times have been a very hard period in our lives, collectively and we aren’t out of the woods. There’s so much we need to reconcile personally, socially, environmentally, politically, you name it. But for me, I’ve been able to not sit in the negativity as much or let it fester, which is my MO. I feel the weight of what's happening and have often found it incredibly difficult to disconnect from the pit of despair. I can’t read about that remaining orca at Marineland because I might not make it. Which is why I’m so thankful that I’ve been enjoying the last few weeks fully. I’m not slipping into the void. Not right now.

Sorry if the positivity is uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable with it most of the time. But I promised to be honest with you. And for once, I wanted to lean into it. The good. The bad. The other shoe that always, eventually drops. All of it. Who knows what tomorrow brings but today, we’re okay. We’re good. I’ll have lots to fret about but right now we’re living in the silver linings until the storm clouds roll in.