The other side.

Today was my due date. July 13. A date that never meant all that much because I knew they would be on the outside by now. They have been earth side for two weeks and 4 days now, each day its own microcosm of a lifetime. There was the end of the pregnancy, all the monitoring, the blood pressure scares, the sheer enormity of my belly and the challenge of moving around. Then there was the induction, the labor, the birth. And then, the other side. 

I have two babies. They are beautiful and small and sweet and strange. They do not nurse well and have floppy heads and dark blue grey eyes. I struggle to make milk for them. Ada is slender and fair and long with scrawny limbs that scare me sometimes with their skin on bone quality. Jude has a darker complexion, rounder in the face and belly and meatier all around. Jude is currently asleep in a hospital crib with an IV in his arm. Today we are in the microcosm of my baby is sick, but he is ok. He has a UTI, and because he is till so new they have to make sure the infection has not travelled to any other organs. We originally brought him to the doc for a fever. I woke at 4:00 am the night before last to feel heat emanating off his little body. Before that moment I was lost in a sea of failure around breast feeding, and now I sit on this vinyl purple rocking chair and know that I can only do my best to keep all of my children safe and cared for. There are so many decisions to be made each day, each moment, I can't possibly always make the right one. It is a horrible truth that I can't expect to get it right all the time. That I will inevitably fuck up. All I can do is try and try, and keep my heart open to the love, and accept the rest of it too: the feelings of inadequacy, the anxiety, the sheet need of two infants and a four year old. 

I fret. Should I go home now from the hospital so I am there when Caden gets back from his time with friends? Or is it more important to feed Jude once more and possibly be here when the doc comes to talk to us about the kidney and bladder ultrasound?

I go. 

Home now. The drive offered sunshine, Andrew Bird, and time to cry. I nursed Ada, greeted Caden and heard about his day, and then handed both children off so I can pump. This is the majority of my reality: nurse, soothe, pump. Nurse, soothe, pump. Maybe insert eat ice cream. It felt terrible to leave my baby in the hospital. Home is a relief.