I’m not sure I agree with M. Poirot on this one.
I am, alas, a man of leisure. . . . I have made the economies in my time and I have now the means to enjoy a life of idleness. . . . I assure you, it is not as gay as it sounds. . . . How true is the saying that man was forced to invent work in order to escape the strain of having to think.
from Death on the Nile
It was a dark and stormy night…
Well, it was dark (near midnight), and according to the weathermen the snow was supposed to start falling at any moment. We were expecting more than a foot of snow. We had just finished our midnight snack and were about to head to bed. Then I had the strangest sensation. I turned to my husband and said, “Oh, crap.” I don’t know how he knew, but he said, “Your water?”
Yes, my water had broken, something I hadn’t anticipated because it only happens in about 10% of pregnancies. The baby wasn’t due for another two weeks. I wasn’t even having contractions. But we weren’t surprised, because we had been telling everyone that we thought the baby would be born the day of the storm. Our reasoning was simple: we are difficult people, therefore we expect our daughter to be difficult, and how could she cause more inconvenience than by arriving well before her due date and in the middle of a huge storm?
We called the doctor’s office and they said there was no reason for us to rush to the hospital, so we didn’t. We even tried to sleep for a little while, but the knowledge that snow was piling up outside made relaxation nearly impossible. We soon got up, packed up the car, dropped off Marshall at my sister-in-law’s house, then headed to the hospital. The snow was thick on the ground by then. Our progress was excruciatingly slow. There was some sliding and some almost-getting-stuck, but three-and-a-half hours after we left our house, we finally arrived at the hospital.
They admitted me quickly and wheeled me into the delivery room. My contractions took a while to get going, but once they did, OUCH! I could have had an epidural, but the idea of something stuck into my spine bothered me more than the idea of pain. The pain was worse than I remembered from Marshall’s birth, though, and as embarrassing as it is to say, I cried like a baby. I even told my husband that I wanted to go home.
After laboring for a seeming eternity, they finally told me I could push. So I pushed and I pushed, then suddenly someone yelled, “Cord!” Everyone in the delivery room sprang into action. They pulled me up and told me to push as hard as I could and not to stop. I couldn’t see what was happening, but my husband told me later that the doctor actually reached inside me to pull the baby out.
The moment Livia was born, all of my pain went away. It was as if someone had flipped a switch in my body. It was such a beautiful feeling, but I didn’t have a chance to enjoy it, because the wet, squirming baby that they dropped on my belly was purple.
I asked the nurses over and over again, “What happened? Is she OK? Why is she purple? Is something wrong?” They said that nothing had happened and nothing was wrong, but I didn’t believe them. Were they trying to cover something up? Were they trying to spare me some awful truth until I had a chance to recuperate?
They took the baby away so they could clean her up and run their tests, and when they gave her back she was still purple. To me, it seemed as though the worst might have happened. The nurses’ insistence that everything was OK made me worry even more. What if the baby were brain damaged?
It wasn’t until the next day when our pediatrician visited that we finally got an explanation. She said that sometimes the cord comes out with the baby. If the cord gets pinched, the baby may not get enough oxygen, and that can cause brain damage if it goes on for very long. During the delivery, if the doctors and nurses spot the cord, they’re supposed to expedite the delivery, which they did. But whenever there is a “rapid descent,” the baby is subjected to more pressure. Bruising can occur. That’s why our Livia was purple. She was one big bruise!
The pediatrician said that she had reviewed Livia’s chart, that her Apgar scores had been excellent, and there was no reason to be concerned. Still, it took me days to shake the worry. I wish the delivery-room nurses had just told us what had happened, but I suppose in their minds there was nothing to tell. They had done what they were supposed to do. Disaster had been averted. All was well.
A month later, Livia still has some bruising in her eyes. Otherwise her color is normal. She eats, she poops, she cries, just as a baby should. When she’s awake, she takes an interest in her surroundings. She looks at me. Sometimes she even smiles. I smile back.
All is well.
I have been thinking lately how much I miss taking baths. I suppose I could wax poetic about the bath, but I’d rather give you Poirot’s silly definition. Here it is.
A bath! The receptacle of porcelain, one turns the taps and fills it, one gets in, one gets out and ghoosh—ghoosh—ghoosh, the water goes down the waste pipe!
from Evil Under the Sun
There really should be more variation in the colors and designs of baby girl clothes. Those pink, cutesy outfits don’t just push girls toward princesshood, which is bad enough, but they also have the potential to break up my marriage. Like I don’t already have enough trouble communicating with my husband sometimes, just imagine a scenario in which I need to change Livia’s outfit and my husband is standing next to the dresser…
I’d say, “Could you grab the pink thing for me?”
He’d look in the drawer and say, “Which one? They’re all pink.”
So I’d say, “The one that’s got the white on it.”
With a hint of irritation in his voice, he’d say, “Which one? Half of them have white.”
Slightly exasperated, I’d attempt to clarify. “The one with the flowers!”
Totally bewildered now, he’d have rummaged through the entire drawer and tossed everything around, and to Hell with folding. “Um, a lot of these have flowers.”
“The one with the polka dots!” I’d shout.
“Honey, they’ve ALL got polka dots!”
At which point I’d have no choice but to stomp over and push him aside, saying, “Fine! I’ll get it myself!”
And it would all just go downhill from there.
Meanwhile, Marshall has only one off-white elephant shirt, only one black Hot Wheels shirt, only one brown-and-grey “Rock Star” shirt, and so forth.
Everyone told me that boys were easier. Maybe they were right.
My husband says, “You only have one speed: slow!” and “Your problem is that you don’t know how to hustle.”
He’s right. I don’t hustle. But he’s wrong, because though my process is slow, it is also steady. Slow and Steady dehoarded my office, packed up countless boxes and bags of Good Will donations, and organized my remaining possessions. Slow and Steady conquered Laundry Mountain, clearing away piles from the bedroom and the mud room. Slow and Steady has done a lot for this family. It may not be Fast and Flashy, but it works for me.
Every once in a while, silly though it is, you have to google your own name to see what comes up. I just did, and as always, the list of results gives me mixed emotions.
It’s a shame we are not better at seeing these shadows of which Poirot speaks.
There are things that are not yet, but which cast their shadow before.
from The Mystery of the Blue Train
It’s been over two weeks since I went on maternity leave, and I’m actually starting to miss work a little bit. At least I have Poirot to help me pass the time. Here’s what he has to say about his field of expertise (murder):
It is a little like your puzzle, Madame. One assembles the pieces. It is like a mosaic—many colours and patterns—and every strange-shaped little piece must be fitted into its own place.
from Evil Under the Sun
My blog completely fell apart last year. I had so many things to say about my amazing son and the baby girl who was about to join our family that I felt overwhelmed by the task. I also had a lot to do: work to finish up before maternity leave and a guest bedroom to prepare for my parents. So December passed with nothing more than the Weekly Poirot. In January, even that ceased, and on the 12th, everything else in my universe came to a screeching halt, because the baby, my beautiful Livia, arrived on the winds of a snowy winter storm.
I wish I could say that I’ll catch up on old posts and blog consistently from now on, but the fact is, I don’t have time for much of anything. Taking care of Livia is a 24-hour job. I haven’t gotten more than 5 hours of sleep per night since she was born, and sleep deprivation is really starting to take its toll on me. I need to sleep whenever I can. I would be asleep right now were I not also eating my breakfast as I type this. Food, like sleep, is a necessity.
When I stopped posting last year, I also lost track of which books I had read, so my 2010 Book Love list is probably incomplete. Backtracking will be difficult, maybe even impossible, but I’ll try. I’m not going to worry too much about posting “reviews,” but I would at least like to know how many books I ultimately read. It’s a point of pride for me, silly as it may be.
And I loved doing my Weekly Poirot, so it saddens me that I missed so many weeks. If I can scrape up some time, I’ll do some new ones and backdate them so there will still be one for each week.
That’s all for now. Wish me sleep.
In the Christie universe, some characters doubt Poirot’s abilities, often to their detriment. Here’s what one character had to say about him.
That old mountebank? He won’t find out anything. He’s all talk and moustaches.
from Death on the Nile
P.S. I just love the word “mountebank.” Don’t you?
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