Second birthday.

Happy birthday, my little Mila love.

Two years out from her death and birth, I'd like to say something beautiful, but real life is not a novel so not everything can be profound. The first year after her stillbirth took shape in a poetic way, beginning in an abyss of grief and ending with our Patagonian backpacking trip to commemorate Mila's first birthday, where Isla's little light first sparked. But life keeps on going. There is a second anniversary, and a third, and a fourth, on and on and on, and not every one can be a grand capstone. So I find myself wondering how to grieve her, celebrate her, and remember her on all the anniversaries to come, as December 23rd becomes (and how is this even possible?) gradually more mundane.

Although the place where I was two years ago is harder to access now, I still remember. That little empty place in my heart is still there, covered over with layers of scar tissue, the original edges of the wound obscured. I remember how big that emptiness once yawned, how loud the silence was, how blindingly bright the world and how jagged and unbearable its edges. What it was like to look at the motionless ultrasound image. What the ceiling looked like as I lay on the table, feeling dead myself. What it was like to watch Mila emerge without a sound. What she smelled like, and what it was like to kiss her little face as it grew cold. What it was like to see D cry, which I had not seen before and have not seen since. What it was like to visit the funeral home the day after Christmas, three days postpartum, and sit in that echoless room discussing urns while my milk came in with no one to drink it. Horror. The darkest horror I'd never imagined. I can't believe I survived it.

So I am grateful for the mundanity. It means we've come to some kind of peace. I know the pain and anger will never be gone, but it's become easier to bear. I live in a world now where on the same day that I buy Mila's yahrzeit candle, I can continue on to browse the bookshop; enjoy my lunch; play with the dog; and celebrate, with real happiness, Isla's gorgeous, miraculous first laugh.

Recently Isla and I went on a playdate with what D likes to call the Increasingly Less Sad Moms Club (formerly just the straight-up Sad Moms Club). We are four moms who all lost our first children within three months of each other, either in utero at term or shortly after birth; and who all had healthy second babies this year. M observed that we must look like a normal playgroup from the outside; who would suspect the dark place we all share? But in a sense, we are a normal playgroup too. In addition to sharing the experience of losing a child, we are also now all moms who have made it through the subsequent pregnancy and are learning the ropes for the first time, enjoying the first milestones, struggling with the challenges that most first-time moms have. We have both of those experiences now. I'll never be the same person that I was before, but that's okay. Children are supposed to change you, and both Mila and Isla continue to make their marks indelibly on me (and not just figuratively). For that I am grateful.

So how to remember Mila on her second birthday? Well, D and I lit her candle, and we will have some family time with Isla and Schmorgy. And I would like to repost the story of Mila's Life, to celebrate the short time that she was with us. And, there's no getting around it, we will miss her so, so much, and wonder what she would have been like, and wish we could have both our girls with us. And tomorrow morning when we get up and the candle has burned out, we will look at it and feel sad and still a little empty. And then we'll continue on with our day, because both Isla and Schmorgy will demand breakfast and play. And I guess it's fine that not every one of Mila's birthdays will have some kind of grand poetry, because in the course of writing this blog post, I've realized I remember her every day, just by being alive.

Anyway. Since I don't have something profound to say today, I'd like to borrow some thoughts from Aaron Freeman, which are very much in line with how I have come to think about Mila and the way in which she is now a part of the everything that there is. Here they are, emphasis mine.

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got. 

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever. 

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. 

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.

December.

I'm having so much fun watching Isla grow, but it's December now so I inevitably think of Mila. I dress Isla in "her" pjs, swaddle her in "her" blankies, ask her if she likes looking in "her" play mirror, but it's hard to use many of her things -- brand new though they are -- without remembering with some pain that they used to belong to someone else. There are some really cute pennant banner-print pjs that I particularly treasure because I used to imagine Mila in them, and I love to see them on Isla, but in some ways it might be easier on me as Isla continues to grow out of Mila's old things.

Mila will have been two years old on the 23rd. Babies born around the time she died are having their second birthday parties, and I see their pictures -- all cheeks, long curly hair, baby teeth, and cake frosting. Big girls and boys.

Mila will always be a baby now, but it strikes me that the idea of who she would have been will keep growing every year until one day I will be thinking to myself, She would be 12... She would be 17... She would be 25... on and on, a grown woman that I won't get to know. The thought makes me ache.

I have some other scattered thoughts, but they'll have to wait because I can hear Isla waking up from her nap.

Photobomb!

Photobomb!

If Mila had lived, I don't think either of these two would be a part of our family right now. Something terrible happened and our family is now somehow simultaneously lesser and fuller than it might otherwise have been. The thought makes me sad, confused, scared, and grateful all at once.

Waves.

I really thought, up until three weeks ago, that the grief had been permanently softened. I hadn't cried about it in a long time. But now that Isla's here and we're truly in the next chapter of our lives, it comes back in ways I didn't expect. Is this what people mean when they say grief is like a series of waves?

I dismantled my Nuggsy's diaper cake today, the one our friends made for her shower, so Isla can use the diapers and we can pop the champagne hidden inside at some point that feels right. It had been sitting on the dresser untouched for almost two years. Taking it apart feels like acknowledging, again, that she's really gone.

Two years ago, and today.

Their roads diverged.

It's a strange new world; the lights are bright and, like Isla, I'm still adjusting my eyes.

It was so surreal to leave the hospital in the opposite direction, outgoing, with the Nut in my arms. I'd gotten so accustomed to being incoming, arriving at triage full of fear, the hospital a place of anxiety, mystery, and ultimately reassurance, but never of joy. A nurse wheeled me out, retracing the same path we had taken in three days earlier, but everything looked different and unrecognizable to me. We emerged into the bright sunlight and drove home through SF streets that looked distantly familiar. I felt like I had been gone on a long, long trip.

I marvel at Isla's perfect face and find it unbelievable that something so sweet was inside me just days ago. I think of my pregnancy with her, until now the only part of motherhood that I knew, and it now feels unreal. The daily walks with Schmorgy to the park, the countless doctor's appointments, the weekly and then daily antenatal testing, the panicked trips to triage, the twice-daily kick counts, the big belly that I protected but was too afraid to think much about even as it grew and grew and became a casual topic of conversation for the outside world. That whole time, I was walking around with this little girl growing inside me. Now she is out and shared with the rest of the world, no longer just mine. I felt her hiccup on the inside, and now all can see her hiccup on the outside. People buy her soothing baby toys that play simulated heartbeat sounds and I think, that's my heartbeat they're trying to replicate for her. The practice breaths I watched her draw via ultrasound on the inside, her diaphragm moving up and down, I now hear as sweet, tiny heaves as she lies on my chest. The regular, liquidy thuds of her heartbeat that I listened to on countless fetal monitors now happen outside of my body, beyond my hearing.

I wish I could have enjoyed that time more, the time when she belonged wholly to me.

The first night in the hospital after she was born, I held her to my chest as she slept, her head nestled just under the right side of my chin. The room was dark and quiet, and D was asleep on the couch. I realized I was holding Isla much the same way I'd held Mila on her first and only night, and I cried.

Mila and Isla don't look entirely alike, but they share many features. Their hair, eyelashes, and little lips. Even their birth weights were the same. For the first couple of days, Isla's every gesture and grimace reminded me anew and in vivid detail what was lost for Mila. I'm so happy for what we have, but it still hurts to think of what my first sweet girl was denied. It's not fair.

On my left forearm there is a scab from my IV from Isla's delivery and, just inches from that, a faint white dot, the scar from my IV from Mila's.

In our living room, the remainder of Mila's one-year yahrzeit candle sits on the same shelf as a photo of Isla at one day old. They're both flanked by plush llamas from our Chile/Argentina trip for Mila's first birthday, during which Isla was most likely conceived.

It's still confusing to me, how things were so much alike and yet so different. Their roads diverged.

Isla's birth story.

Isla's birth story is straightforward, and blessedly without surprises -- just as I wanted it.

As if we were heading to SFO, on the morning of September 7th D and I packed methodically, cleaned out the fridge, and called an Uber. We assured the driver that it was not an emergency. He was a cheerful guy and cracked the "labor on Labor Day" joke, and when he apologized for the cliche, I told him I still thought it was funny. It was a quiet morning with minimal traffic, the city sleeping in after their Labor Day beers and BBQs the day before. We rode, unimpeded, along the route we'd driven ourselves countless times in various states of mind -- anticipation, anxiety, panic -- since February of this year. It was a surreal ride.

We checked in at 10AM, leisurely. Our nurse got us settled into a large, clean room and went over a bunch of paperwork with us. Then it was just waiting. I skimmed a book and texted pictures of the L&D suite to M to pass the time. The doctors started me on misoprostol and told me they'd give me up to four doses, four hours apart. The first dose came at 1PM. I waited expectantly, remembering how quickly things had started moving with Mila, but the few contractions I felt were sparse and fizzled out. At 5:30PM I took the second dose. I stared at the clock; I'd thought I'd be in labor by that time, but I felt only the gentlest, most tentative of tightenings. By the time I took my third dose at 10PM, I was losing patience and worrying about what would happen if the induction didn't take.

I needn't have worried. At 10:30PM I finally felt something. An upset stomach, I thought at first, but the pains were too regular and rhythmic. Eventually the contractions were unmistakable on the monitor screen. I was 3cm dilated, and the doctors left me to progress on my own.

Things really started to hurt. I hunched over the bed to relieve the growing pressure on my back. The sound of the fetal heartbeat monitor through the gathering haze was distant but reassuring. I inquired about pain relief but everyone seemed to think it was too soon for an epidural, and the nurse offered me a couple of doses of pain relief via IV. They took the edge off for a little while, but remembering how quickly things went with Mila, I insisted it was time to pull out the big guns. And not a minute too soon -- I found out later that the anesthesiologist was called into a c-section right after she saw me, and even as she prepped me, the pain began to snowball in a way that felt familiar.

Once the epidural was in, I slept for a couple of hours, until it began to wear off on my left side. Not long after that, I felt what seemed like a head bearing down. I remembered the sensation from Mila's birth. I called the nurse and things started happening quickly after that. Pushing took about twenty minutes, and as Isla advanced, the docs started setting up the table for the baby, spreading plastic under me, and calling in the attending doctor. He arrived a few pushes from the end, in time to say Congrats, you did it! and rush out to his next birth just as Isla's head was emerging.

The doctors maneuvered her body through, and Isla emerged, as grey and slimy as Mila had been. But unlike Mila, as she tumbled out onto the plastic sheet, she squalled -- and then, just like that, we were in wholly new territory. I cried and cried as they plopped her on my chest and turned their attention to the afterbirth, but as far as I could see, D was all smiles.

Isla.

D and I are so happy to welcome Isla Frances, also known to us as the Nut. She was born on Tuesday, September 8, 2015 at 6:06AM at UCSF Mission Bay, weighing in at 6 pounds 14 ounces and measuring 20 inches long.

She has D's eyebrows, long eyelashes, and nose; and my hair color, eyes, hands, and weird big toe. Her full lips, one of her most noteworthy features, are still of indeterminate origin.

She is a daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin, and precious little sister to a beloved big sister. But most of all, she is her own sweet self.

Welcome, Isla. We love you.

Labor Day.

Happy Labor Day! And appropriately enough, happy induction day to me. D and I will be heading off to the hospital for a 10AM appointment. I'm scared and anxious but cautiously excited, and I keep checking on the Nut to make sure she's still there. It's a surreal feeling, having something as momentous and normally unpredictable as a birth scheduled like this. Amidst all the packing, fridge cleanout, dogsitter planning, and well wishes, it almost feels like we're preparing to get on a flight. We're even going to take an Uber to the "airport."

Everybody gird your loins. You too, Schmorgy.

Where is u going? Wut is a baby? Is like hooman puppie?

Minor observations.

Obviously, this pregnancy is different from my first one in a lot of important ways, but in some minor ways too.

Skin.  My skin is fine but not particularly glowy and perfect.  At thirty-five and a half weeks last time, it was so great that I'd regularly leave the house ecstatically without a lick of makeup.  This time, not so much; but happily, I've again made it this far without stretch marks.

Swelling.  I have only minor swelling, and as a result no carpal tunnel, in my hands at this point.  My rings still slide on and off without unusual effort.  Towards the end of my first pregnancy, I had trouble making a fist and I'd stopped wearing my rings.

Aches.  I have a lot more achiness this time, leading to full-on pregnancy waddle.  I don't remember if I waddled last time, but if I did, I certainly wasn't conscious of it.

So weird how different even the little things can be.  Reminder to self: this is a different pregnancy.

On the calendar.

I'm officially on the calendar at UCSF L&D for an induction on Monday, September 7th, 10AM. I will be exactly 37 weeks along.

Omfgomfgomfgomfgomfgomfg!!!1!!!!

It was as simple as Dr. R making a one-minute phone call at my appointment last week, as D and I traded bug-eyed astonished glances at each other behind her turned back.

As if spurred on by this development, the next day I started having contractions that were mild but uncomfortable and so frequent that I went in to be seen. As I lay there hooked up to the monitor, I wondered ruefully if I'd be admitted, caught unawares in the hospital for a chaotic delivery for the second time, after all these months of quiet, clenched-fist waiting and planning. I wound up being watched in L&D for eight hours before the contractions started to subside and the doctors sent me home with instructions to avoid exerting myself and to stay hydrated.

My number one hope is to come out of this healthy and with a healthy baby, and my second desperate hope is for all this to just -- go -- according to plan, this time. I would dearly love to just be able to pack and prepare at my leisure, drop off my dog with his sitter as discussed, show up calmly at the hospital at the appointed time with a bag carefully packed with all my toiletries and comforts, and be monitored by medical staff from minute one of my fast, smooth, and relatively pain-free labor. No surprises. Please.

Empathy at work.

There's been a lot of buzz on the NYT piece on the difficult workplace culture at Amazon's corporate offices.  I have a lot of thoughts on it, but just wanted to write about the one anecdote in the piece that really surprised me -- the one about a woman who came back to work after her child was stillborn.

It wasn't her experience that surprised me; it was the fact that her story was there at all.  If you hardly ever hear about stillbirth, period, forget hearing about the experience of going back to work after a stillbirth.  In a 6,000 word article, there were only four sentences about it, but that was enough to rattle me.  It hit way too close to home.  (I wrote about my experience here and here.)

A former human resources executive said she was required to put a woman who had recently returned after undergoing serious surgery, and another who had just had a stillborn child, on performance improvement plans, accounts that were corroborated by a co-worker still at Amazon. “What kind of company do we want to be?” the executive recalled asking her bosses. 

The mother of the stillborn child soon left Amazon. “I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life,” the woman recalled via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored “to make sure my focus stayed on my job.”

I don't spend much time thinking about how alienated and unsupported and ultimately fucked over I felt after I went back to work, but when I do, I still get so angry about it.  There was just a total lack of empathy from my leadership.  I could feel that they just felt super awkward about it and hoped that I would just get back to behaving and performing normally as soon as possible, even under circumstances that were difficult (not just personally but professionally).  And when I still wasn't totally normal, less than three months after returning, the response wasn't, hey, you understandably must be having a hard time coping with your grief; it was more like, hey, you aren't performing up to your usual standard, what's wrong with you?

How are you supposed to come back from something like that?  You can't, and you don't even want to -- between your actual loss and the lack of support from your workplace, it doesn't even seem worth the fight.  It takes a long time to recover from losing someone you love, and yet I was expected to take less than a quarter.  When I look back on that time, I can't believe I was able to do even what little I did.  That time felt so, so meager.

Getting close.

Here I am, 34 weeks in, and despite all my superstitious feelings I can't help but nest. It's biological! I am possessed -- some ancient lizard brain switch flipped, and now all I can see are the little things around the house that need to be addressed. Not even all baby-related things, either. Burnt-out lightbulbs. A wobbly chair. Inefficient use of storage space. On my way to do one task, I'll get distracted by another, and an hour later the closet is super-clean and I've forgotten what my original task was.

We're now probably three or four weeks away from an induction date. I'm hopeful but I still don't totally believe. I've allowed myself to buy some things for the Nut and my post-partum self, telling myself that regardless of what happens, my body's going to have to go through the process of recovering after delivering a baby, and what's a few more unused onesies in a drawer already full of them for the last almost two years? What a morbid defense mechanism; I wish I could enjoy this more.

The Nut is doing well so far. I can feel a butt, spine, arms and legs, hands and feet stretching out in there. She is putting on fat quickly and weighs, I believe, about five pounds at this point. I feel much more pregnant than I did even five weeks ago -- t-shirts don't fit quite as well as they used to, my joints don't feel totally stable, and things ache in weird ways. My body doesn't feel like my own, and it's hard for me to discern its limits. D and I are ready for this part to be finished. We'd like to welcome her home and get on with our lives as a threesome, plus dog.

I lie.

I knew from the outset that I would get people asking me if this is my first child.  I had a plan.  I decided if I thought I'd see the person on a regular basis, and they asked directly, I would tell the truth.  And if they were just a random stranger I'd never see again, I'd save myself the grief and just lie.

But now that I'm big enough that anyone can plainly see I'm pregnant, I'm finding that it's always the random strangers who ask.  They're the ones who don't know any better and are just looking to make innocuous small talk.  Sometimes it feels like it happens every day.

So I lie, I lie, I lie.

I don't like it, and I wish people wouldn't ask, but I don't know how else to manage it.  I don't have the strength now to be pregnant and educate the general populace about babyloss, but every time I slap on a smile and tell the pretty lie, I can't help but feel badly that I've just passed the dilemma on to some other unsuspecting bereaved mom.

29 weeks.

My belly has been getting big for a while now, but in the last week or so the Nut herself has started to feel big.  Really big -- all elbows and knees and limbs pressing outward just a little too hard for comfort.  I can feel her all curled up in there, pressing against the muscle walls of her little bubble; shifting positions, extending a leg, and occasionally giving a little jump.  It feels real and unreal.

The last nine weeks have gone by exceedingly slowly, but here I am -- I'm 29 weeks today, and into the third trimester.  Although I know there are no guarantees, that means that if things go according to plan, I'm no more than 10 weeks away from delivering her.  It seems like no time at all and an endless stretch of days.

I've been stuck in emotional standby for too long.  It's a survival mechanism to get through the weeks and weeks of this pregnancy, but it's put me in a bit of a daze.  I'm having trouble figuring out how to prepare, both logistically (is it too early to start making plans for family to come to SF, to buy the newborn-sized clothes I didn't buy for Mila, to find a pediatrician?) and emotionally.  I can't fathom what it might be like to go to the hospital and suddenly have a real live baby to take home; I'm just trudging through these days with blinders on and a vague sense that when that day finally (and hopefully, hopefully) comes, I won't know what hit me.

Wondering.

Can the Nut hear the doggy snores just outside of her bubble?

Someone different.

I'm at 22 weeks -- a full five months pregnant -- as of this past Monday. Things are starting to feel less abstract now that I'm showing and that we know that the Nut's a girl. It also helps that her kicks and punches are getting stronger, sometimes vigorous enough that I can see my belly jump a little.

I remember Mila's movements at this time. She'd swish around after I'd eaten and press against the seatbelt while I drove. D had just felt her move for the first time. The Nut is at least as vigorous in her movements, maybe even a little more decisive in her punches, but her patterns are different. I feel her the most when she kicks into the bed as I drift into or out of sleep in the mornings and evenings. There really is someone in there! And it's someone different.

It's been over two years since Mila was conceived, and sometimes I really feel that time. People have gotten pregnant, had first babies, had first and second babies, in that time. I have this book, Trying Again, that I bought almost a year and a half ago in (apparently overzealous) anticipation of a second pregnancy. I haven't even touched it since I got pregnant with the Nut. There was such a long pause between Mila's birth and the Nut's conception that a lot of the issues that the book addresses just don't feel relevant to me anymore. I've already had the chance to come to some sort of acceptance about Mila. I don't confuse the two babies, or half-wish that the Nut will be a "replacement" for her. I don't keep myself awake at night feeling terrified, for the most part.

If anything, I sometimes feel that I have to retread old ground to get myself back to the mental place where I was at the end of 2013, ready to transition from life with just me and D (and the pup) to life as a mom with a brand-new baby. That's been a surprise to me, but I guess it is of a piece with everything else. This is a different baby, a different pregnancy. She will have a different name and parents who have a different perspective. I will prepare a different nursery for her, and a different space in my head and heart for her. That space will be close to Mila's, but it'll be the Nut's own.

Little sister.

It's a little sister for Mila and Schmorgy. She's got all her bits, so far as can be determined via ultrasound at this point, and a normal cord insertion. D and I are happy and cautiously relieved. I'll let Schmorgy be the one to be unreservedly, no-holds-barred excited and optimistic. :)

Somebody asked me how it felt to have the anatomy scan done for the Nut (as we're calling her until she has a proper name). It was confusing -- scary and happy and sad all at once.

Scary because every pregnancy ultrasound I'll have for the rest of my life will be terrifying in the moments while the tech applies the gel and moves the wand, before the picture comes into focus and I can see movement and a heartbeat.

Happy because she proved to be alive and well -- unmistakably human with developed little hands, big feet like Mila's and D's, four pumping chambers in her heart, a spine with every vertebra clear on the screen, shapely quads and hamstrings wrapped around two strong femur bones, an umbilical cord and placenta that are wonderfully unremarkable. Because she moved vigorously, kicking and squirming and doing flips like her big sister did. And because she is a she, who will give me another shot at doing all the sweet little girl things that I didn't get to do with Mila.

Sad because still, still, Mila doesn't ever get to do those sweet little girl things, or play with the toys we bought her, or sleep in the crib that D put together for her. It feels like she was shortchanged. Some cell on some random, careless whim divided or implanted in some funky way that led some other cells down some narrow path, further and further, until they all turned into a velamentous cord insertion. Which everybody said would work out fine, until it didn't. And just as randomly, just as obliviously, the Nut's earliest cells went down some other path and gave her a normal one. The membrane separating the two paths feels so thin. Why, why, why? There is no reason why. Sometimes the universe is random. Atoms and molecules and cells move about in the dark.

Here is my strongest, dearest, sincerest wish that they all come together in just the right way for the Nut.

Schmorgy.

Towards the end of my pregnancy with Mila, D frequently (fake-) joked that we should get a dog to watch over us and keep us company at home while I was on maternity leave. I said that was a crazy idea and there was no way I was going to train a new dog and care for a new baby at the same time.

After we lost her, though, it felt so quiet and empty at home that I really, really wished that we'd gotten a dog -- a little creature to inject some life and lightness into the house. The idea hovered in the back of my mind all year until, sometime late last fall, the scales tipped and weight of All The Boring Practical Reasons Not To Get A Dog (who would watch and train him? how would we convince our landlord? what if we didn't have enough space? what would we do with him when we were traveling?) was surpassed by the weight of All The Reasons To Get A Dog (joy).

It took us a while to find the right dog and there was some heartbreak and PTSD along the way as we watched the first dog that we fell in love with get adopted by another family; but in February D found another one that he felt good about. He had been rescued by AHAN, an organization in SF that rescues and fosters stray dogs in Taiwan, and finds adoptive families for them in the US. There are lots of homeless dogs and puppies in Taipei, but they have a difficult time getting adopted at home and are often either euthanized at animal shelters or left to fend for themselves on the street.

His rescue name was Borg. The thing that sealed the deal for D, and then for me, was a video of him at his foster home in Taipei, stoically allowing two enthusiastic little girls to poke him, prod him, and pretend to eat his ears. A few weeks after we submitted our application for him, he arrived at SFO on March 3rd, scared and confused. Here he is meeting D for the first time in the international arrivals lobby.

We renamed him Schmorgy, short for Smorgasbord. He is about a year old, maybe a bit older, so D observed that it must have been not long after we lost Mila that the universe squirted out a little floppy-eared, golden-brown, bouncy puppy Schmorg. He was shy and hesitant for a little while when we first brought him home, but quickly settled in and let his true sweet, affectionate, silly self emerge.

First smile.

People-watching on Fillmore.

             

At Crissy Field Beach.

Giving D some encouragement.

His favorite things include:

• Holding hands.
• Playing chase with other dogs at the park.
• Digging holes and putting his face in them.
• Splashing in mud puddles and putting his face in them (sigh).
• Showing other dogs where the mud puddles are (double sigh).
• The beach.
• Chewing -- on rawhide, balls, squeaky toys, sticks, mulch...
• Cuddling on the couch with D.
• Sunbathing on the deck.
• Rummaging in his backyard dens (one in the way back, one under the flower bush, and one under the rosemary bush. When he's been in that one, he comes back into the house with his head smelling like rosemary).
• Baked pork buns.

I really feel a lot less anxiety about this pregnancy than I thought I would, at least so far, and while some of that is probably because of my own process, I give a lot of credit to the Schmorg. We're a lot less grumpy since he joined the family. He brings so much fun and innocence into our lives just by doing the simplest things -- smiling, sleeping, playing, and just wanting to be a part of whatever we are doing. He shadows us everywhere. To the kitchen, the bedroom, the backyard, the bathroom; wherever we go there is a little clatter of puppy fingernails against the floor, and when I turn around there is always a pair of upturned round brown eyes and a triangular black snout in a serious little brown face, hovering two feet off the floor looking up at me.

Don't.

Are you my doctor? No?

Then don't tell me what I should or shouldn't eat.

Don't tell me that I shouldn't sit where I want to sit.

Don't tell me that I should prioritize a healthy pregnancy over activity x.

Don't tell me to avoid air travel.

Don't tell me how I should train my dog.

Don't tell me that I shouldn't lift that.

Don't tell me what I will or won't be able to handle after the delivery.

Just don't.

When I lost Mila, I wasn't skiing or lifting heavy objects or eating cold cuts or flying on a plane. I was sitting quietly on the couch in my own home watching TV. I followed all the rules. None of those things would have changed the outcome of my pregnancy with Mila. Don't put the onus of that on me.

Change.

The switch flipped.  I'm pregnant again -- 16 weeks and 2 days today, which gives me a due date in September.

We'd just come back from Argentina when we found out.  I was late, but I'd been late before.  I went about my life for four days in a mild state of denial, not wanting to test and see that single line again.  After ten months I'd started to become resigned and begun to think, why would this time be any different?  Then suddenly, inexplicably, it was.

I'm really happy about it, of course.  I remember lying with my eyes closed shortly after we found out, marveling about it.  I think about Mila now as being part of the fabric of the universe, and in the same way I thought about this new baby as another wisp of that infinity that has taken up temporary residence in me; slowly growing, adding matter, and waking up into a tiny embodied part of the everything that there is.

But it also took me a while to digest this.  I'd gone a full year being not-pregnant.  I had, after a time, returned to feeling like my body was my own -- strong, predictable, mine to do what I wanted with.  Pregnancy this time, without the novelty or blind optimism of last time, just feels like watching my body slowly going haywire.  I feel frustrated when it's physically harder for me to do things that I did easily four months ago, and when my clothes don't fit right, and when all I want is carbs.  My body doesn't feel like the same one that walked the W, although I still have a pair of fucked-up pinky toenails to prove it.

So it is taking a little mental rearrangement.  I'd really like for September to arrive and to be finished with the pregnancy, but I'm not as scared or anxious as I thought I would be, at least not yet.  It helps that D and I adopted a rescue dog last month, who is the best pup we could ask for.  All we do is give him a home and something to eat; and in return he gives us endless smiles and butt wiggles and fun and lightness.  It's the best therapy I can imagine.

He sleeps in a little dog bed in our bedroom.  At night I listen to D breathing in his sleep to my right, the pup breathing in his sleep to my left, and sometimes I feel what might be the slightest little bounce from baby Peanut; and I feel comforted amidst my pack.  It's finally growing again.

This is how it is.

I was talking with C recently, about dark times in our lives and what we can learn from them.  She wondered aloud, would she wish away those experiences, knowing now how much she's learned and grown from them?  She concluded, no.  They made her who she is now.

For me, that question is more complicated than I think she meant it to be.  I would never, never wish away Mila.  I would always choose to give up whatever wisdom I've earned -- I would willingly be less zen, less empathetic, less aware, less grateful -- in favor of keeping her.  At the same time, I can't wish away any kids we have in the future, either -- I want all of my kids, even though they are probably mutually exclusive.  It's enough to tie a person into existential knots.

I think, though, that this is a useless mental exercise.  What does it matter what I would choose?  I don't get to choose and I don't get to go back.  All of these things have happened.  They made me who I am now.  That's all there is.

Acceptance.

Acceptance is the name of the game these days.  Acceptance of things including:

• The limits of my control over life events
• The randomness of the universe
• The fact that not everyone has the strength or know-how to deal with shit, much as I might wish they did (this only makes me admire those that do have the requisite emotional badassery even more)
• My inability to change or sway other people, even if for their own good

Although I have not written about all of them (mostly because many of the other stories are not mine to tell), this past year has been trying in more ways than one.  Losing Mila was the defining tragedy, probably of our lives, but we were also dealt illness in the family, the premature deaths of young friends, difficulty getting pregnant again for no discernible reason, and a light sprinkling of job upheaval and familial dysfunction.

Acceptance for me doesn't mean that I don't ever get sad, mad, worried, or frustrated about these things.  It just means that I can now stop and recognize that this is just the way it is, there are some things I can't change or control, the universe is big and we are small, and I have a limited number of fucks to give in my little life (please see: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck) so I better spend them wisely, on the things I can change.  That's often enough now to make any momentary sadness/anger/worry/frustration diminish.  It brings me back to what actually matters, to this moment, and to what I am able to do with it.

I think this makes me wiser than I used to be.

Atacama and Patagonia, part 4: Our trip in lists.

Lago Nordenskjöld.

Things that taste even better on the trail than in real life.

• Beer.
• Coke (ice cold Coca-Cola normal - straight-up real-ass sugar, not diet, not Zero, none of that funny business).
• Oreos.
• Chicken soup with rice.
• Ritz crackers with turkey.
• Queso-flavored Kryzpos (Chilean Pringles).
• Cheesy Bugles.

Things that looked like they would taste good on the trail, but unconfirmed.

• Pasta with hot ketchup.  (Probably disgusting in real life, but looked seriously ah-mah-zing when huddled in the chilly evening at Campamento Torres after four days of heavy trekking in the woods.)

Food items we wished we had.

• Salt.
• Tabasco.
• A teeny, tiny bottle of Sriracha.

Books I read during and in preparation for this trip.

• Lonely Planet: Chile & Easter Island
• Lonely Planet: Trekking in the Patagonian Andes
• Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
• Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
• Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
• Tiny Beautiful Things, by Cheryl Strayed (just the chapter "The Obliterated Place," also published online at The Rumpus here)
• Serial (not a book, but served the same function)

Instances of logistical fuckery and loosey-gooseyness in Argentina (a.k.a., reasons why I probably don't have the constitution to live in Argentina).

• In El Chaltén, "The bus is coming any minute now" means "The bus is broken down and will be an hour late."
• People will accept American dollars, but at the rate of anything from 8.5 pesos to 12 pesos - you just have to ask and hope.
• The shuttle bus from the plane to the airport terminal will drop you off 40 feet short of the actual entrance, for no apparent reason.
• If your boarding pass says you are on flight 4431, but the monitor says it is flight 4430, don't worry.  Close enough.
• If the monitor says your stuff is coming at baggage carousel 6, it's actually at baggage carousel 5.
• Airport sandwiches are nearly good - only one day expired!
• "The computer won't print your connecting boarding pass for some reason; you can just print it when you get to Santiago" means "I accidentally cancelled your reservation, don't feel like fixing it, and by the time you find out in Chile, it won't be my problem anymore."

Our packs, protected by our fluffy Llama in the Sky.

Related posts:
First birthday.
At the end of the world.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 1: The Atacama Desert.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 2: Torres del Paine.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 3: Argentina.

Atacama and Patagonia, part 3: Argentina.

On the bus to El Chaltén.

Few things are better than your first shower after a backpacking trip.  We returned to Puerto Natales from Torres del Paine with a sack full of irredeemably dirty laundry and flies buzzing around our ripe heads, and headed straight for our shower at Hotel Indigo.

My favorite thing about Hotel Indigo: it does away with the tiny bar soaps and mini toiletries, and instead equips its rainfall showers with full-size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and liquid soap.  This setup could not have come at a better time.

The next day we boarded a six-and-a-half hour bus ride bound for El Calafate, Argentina.  The ride was long, stuffy, and smelly, and made even longer by two immigration stops at the Chile-Argentina border, so I entertained myself by watching pasture after pasture of sheep go by, seemingly without end, and preparing to do my part by eating some lamb.  My memory of that bus ride is endless sheep.

Rolling into El Calafate was a rude awakening.  I had pictured an idyllic little nothing town, but it almost felt like being in Berkeley.  There were pizza joints, rental car places, tour agencies, a North Face store, a Patagonia store, and an overpriced bookshop.  Places were packed and there was not a single Perito Moreno glacier tour or rental car to be had for the next day.  I missed the emptiness of Puerto Natales and dusty red compactness of San Pedro, but we made the best of our unplanned rest day with a cheap but excellent bottle of malbec, some kind of half-sweet dulce de leche spread on breakfast toast, and cordera patagonica served over coals at La Tablita, that tasted almost more like suckling pig or carnitas than lamb.

El Chaltén.

The following day we got on a double-decker bus to El Chaltén, snagging the top front row for premier views of the three-hour ride.  Unfortunately it was overcast and spitting rain on the drive in, so there wasn't much to see beyond the borders of the town.  El Chaltén was built in 1985 and calls itself the trekking capital of Argentina.  Sure enough, the town is tiny, only half-paved, and its main strip consists of services for hikers and climbers: gear shops, hostels, coin laundromats, and a sparsely-stocked supermercado containing primarily dry pasta.  We settled into the treehouse-like room on our hilltop hotel and hoped for good weather for our New Year's Eve hike to Cerro Torre.

The fat caracara.

I could hear rain pounding against our windows even before I opened my eyes the next morning.  Not a good sign for the last day of 2014.  We went to breakfast, hoping the rain would clear out.  It did, a bit, but as we walked the two hours to Laguna Torre, hoping for at least partial views of Cerro Torrre, it only got colder and rainier.  We arrived at the end of the trail to see a gray lake and a glacier in the distance obscured by shroud of mist.  A few other hikers sat around the lake, their rain shells zipped up to the chin, munching rather miserably on their snacks.  An unafraid white-throated caracara (a type of falcon), fat on hiker cracker crumbs, touched down among us.

Thwarted, we returned to town.  After a shower and a nap, we woke to a surprise: blinding sun which lit up, for the first time since we'd arrived in El Chaltén, the Fitz Roy range for which the town is named.  We went to the local cervezeria for empanadas and locro, a thick stew of hominy, beef, and bacon - and, fortified, then climbed up to the mirador just above the town.  Overlooking El Chaltén and Fitz Roy beyond it, we popped a bottle of cheap bubbly, toasted the end of 2014, and waited for the sun to set below the mountains before climbing back down.  We spent the hour before midnight in our bed, drowsily watching a South Park marathon in our darkened room.  I must have fallen asleep, because the sound of shouts and cheers outside woke me.  We exchanged New Year's wishes and a kiss, and fell back asleep.

View from Mirador Los Condores.

New Year's Day dawned even clearer and calmer than the evening before, with barely a wisp in the sky or a breath of wind.  Climbers who had been waiting for weeks to scale the face of Fitz Roy sprang into action, and the locals told us that a day like that came at most three or four times a month.  D and I set off towards Laguna de los Tres, the glacial lake at the foot of Fitz Roy, in what would be our longest trek day of this trip - seven and a half miles up, through forest, hugging hillsides, and straight up the last scramble; and seven and a half miles back down to town.  We got our first unobstructed view of Fitz Roy about an hour in.  It was huge, immediate, and didn't even look real.  The spires of the range thrust out of the ground arrogantly, without context, visible and unmistakable for miles around.

On the way to Laguna de los Tres.

After a hard (for me) scramble up to Laguna de los Tres, we stood at the edge of the lake and looked straight up at Fitz Roy's face.  No matter how close or far we stood from it, its hugeness seemed unchanged.  In both photos and in reality, it looked like a green screen.  The sun was intense up there, without shade or cloud cover to temper it, beating down insistently into my skin and eyes.  I thought happily about what I'd already accomplished in 2015, and smiled.

Feliz año.

Fitz Roy.

Related posts:
First birthday.
At the end of the world.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 1: The Atacama Desert.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 2: Torres del Paine.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 4: Our trip in lists.

Atacama and Patagonia, part 2: Torres del Paine.

View from the Glacier Grey mirador.

The W route in Torres del Paine.
(view at full size)

The day before Mila's first birthday, we got on a van and a plane and a bus to get to Puerto Natales.  Puerto Natales is the gateway to Torres del Paine at the southern tip of Chile, where we planned a kind of spirit walk along the W route from west to east, stopping and making camp for four nights along the way.  Like San Pedro de Atacama, Puerto Natales is a small town, but instead of hot dry red dust and sunshine, it was all misty windblown emptiness along a bay dotted with black-necked swans.  We stayed in a little b&b on an isolated point a couple miles outside of town, and lit Mila's yahrzeit candle around 11PM that night, shortly after the sun went down.

D and Gustavo, the stern-faced proprietor of our b&b, spent the next day applying pressure to our airline trying to get our packs back after they had been separated from us in transit.  Gustavo warned us that the last guest who had lost his bags had waited for five days before they were returned.  I sat in the living room looking out the panoramic windows, anxiously hoping that our luggage snafu wouldn't cause the cancellation of the centerpiece of our trip, listening to the wind, watching the horses gallop around the field next door, and writing this post.  Mila's candle kept a comforting vigil all day, a stoic little presence in our room unruffled by the screaming winds outside or luggage logistics.

Puerto Bories in Puerto Natales.

As dinner approached, a van pulled up to the b&b with our packs - a birthday miracle!  D and I did a happy luggage dance, proclaimed it a narrowly averted disaster, and had celebratory dinner and drinks.  As it got dark, we packed and got ready for our last night in a real bed and the official close of one year.  I waited for Mila's candle to burn out at the twenty-four hour mark, but by the time I climbed into bed that night, it was still burning.  I answered well wishes from friends and shut down my phone, and it was still burning.  I closed my eyes but I hardly slept that night.  At 2AM, 3AM, 4AM, I cracked open an eye and saw the warm glow from Mila's candle continuing to cast a flickering circle of candlelight on the ceiling.  It was still burning when we woke up early the next morning, going on thirty-two hours.

Bridge to Campamento Italiano.

We left the b&b and a few hours' bus ride and catamaran ride later, we disembarked at our starting point at Refugio Paine Grande, at the bottom of the first stroke of the W.  It was a clear afternoon but tremendously windy.  The wind howled in my ears, blowing away all other sounds and the warmth of the sun, and pushing me from side to side along the trail.

The first couple of days on the trail felt hard.  My pack was heavy.  My new boots still pinched.  The winds pushed me off course.  The trail was rocky and uneven.  I was footsore.  I was too cold and then too hot.  I wasn't yet familiar with all my gear.  Although our first two days were our shortest, it felt like it took forever to get to our first two camps.

Lago Grey.

That first day we hiked up to Refugio Grey to get to the true "start" of the west-to-east W route.  I limped in, feeling a little desperate as I saw the roof of the refugio finally appear among the trees.  I hauled myself up the steps onto the deck and set down my pack with relief as D went into the office to secure a campsite.  I was stuffing a Clif bar into my mouth when D returned and told me he had discovered the refugio was hosting a "buffet sorpresa de Navidad" for Christmas Eve.  I'd forgotten it was Christmas Eve.  There were a few spots left for the feast, which he snatched up.  When you're in the woods and someone asks you if you'd like chicken, beef, or lamb, you accept.  All three.  We pitched our tent, got changed, and crowded into the packed lodge dining room with our fellow campers, where the staff had laid out a huge spread of salads, roasted meats, rice, and boxed wine.  It started out civilized enough, but soon ravenous hikers were going up for thirds and fourths and dessert, elbowing, self-serving, and pulling progressively larger chunks out of what one of the servers told D was supposed to be purely decorative bread.

The second day we backtracked back down to Refugio Paine Grande and continued along the bottom of the W to Campamento Italiano.  I was still feeling slow and sore, and when we arrived at camp and saw signs that the next leg of our hike into Valle Francés - the middle stroke of the W - was closed due to inclement weather, I secretly thought it might not be so bad if we didn't have to go.

View from the first mirador in Valle Francés.

Bound for Campamento Torres.

D, however, wouldn't hear of not completing the full W.  The morning of the third day he pestered the guardaparque for updates.  Shortly after 8AM the trail into Valle Francés reopened, though the guardaparque warned us that there might be snow, rain, and not much of a view.  We hiked into Valle Francés with a Dutch couple, Maartje and Gert, who had pitched their tent next to ours at Campamento Italiano.  It was blustery and snowing in the valley that morning, and parts of the trail were steep boulder scrambles.  But despite the poor visibility and chill, once we arrived at the midpoint of the W something clicked.  As we climbed back down and moved on towards Refugio Los Cuernos, the weather started to clear and pulled back to reveal high mountaintops, deeply aquamarine glacial lakes, stony beaches, and rolling meadows covered end to end with round yellow shrubs.  My pack started to feel lighter as I got used to carrying the load, and I liked the feeling of carrying everything I needed on my back.  My footing felt more secure.  I loved walking the dirt paths through the woods and drinking straight from the glacial streams.  Our tent gradually started to feel more roomy as we figured out the best configuration of our stuff.  We saw wildlife - eagles, mice, and a bare-assed couple near Refugio Los Cuernos who looked to be about to start shooting a trailside porn with a selfie stick.

On the shore of Lago Nordenskjöld.

Heading from Refugio Los Cuernos to Campamento Torres.

At the end of each day there was camp, a hot meal that D would cook up on our camp stove, and faces that started to become familiar --  Chileans, Israelis, Germans, the Cocky American Bitch with her henpecked husband (who we saw at every campground where we stopped, but never, ever saw on the trail), and Maartje and Gert, who we kept running into all through TDP, and later, in Argentina.  And at the end of the evening, there was my sleeping bag in the warm tent with D.

D, my búho espíritu, at the base of Las Torres.

The fourth day was our longest day, hiking roughly twelve miles mostly uphill from Refugio Los Cuernos to Campamento Torres, where we planned to sleep and get up early the next morning to hike the last ascent to the mirador at the base of Las Torres.  Campamento Torres was a cool and shady campground with a small clear brook running through it.  We arrived there mid-afternoon, ahead of the wave of other campers, and pitched our tent in a private spot next to the brook, where we stashed a few beers D had sherpa'ed up from Refugio Chileno.  We changed into our night clothes and dozed off for a few hours.

Around 6PM, D rustled out of the tent to look around.  I was dreaming of hot chili and Oreos for dinner, with my brain solidly in end-of-the-day mode, when he returned, poked his head into the tent, and exclaimed that it was clear enough to see Las Torres and that we should go - now.

I scrambled to get my hiking clothes back on and get my head back into gear.  D stood waiting for me in the sun-dappled woods at the campground entrance, and as I approached, he looked, to me at least, like some kind of forest spirit guide.  I told him so, and he said, "Yeah, some people thought I was the campground greeter or something."

The beginning of trail to the base of Las Torres wound through the woods, scattered with the occasional rocks and roots.  We crossed small bridges over shallow, bubbling streams.  We passed maybe a hundred people who were climbing their way back down.  The trail wound around and up, and after about 20 minutes we rose above the trees and the trail changed from dirt to small rocks.  As we ascended, the rocks grew larger.  The last part of the ascent was a scramble over a large rock field, scattered with stones ranging in size from as small as a fist to some as large and flat as a dining table.  We picked our way over the boulders, turned a corner, and there they were.

Mist floated around the top of Las Torres, but we could see all three of the towers as well as the glacier whose snowmelt cut crevices into the rock and fed into a crystal blue lake in a basin at the foot of the towers.  We'd come after the rush, and the place was nearly deserted.

We found a big flat rock to sit on, pulled on our gloves and jackets against the cool breeze, cracked open a beer, and just looked.  I thought about what it meant to have made it to Las Torres after roughly fifty miles on foot, following the trail through uphill and downhill, through switchbacks and backtracking, through forest and meadow and rock field, and to feel like I could still keep going.  I thought about what it meant to have gone through a whole year without Mila, and to be still alive and strong and able to laugh.  I felt 2014 gradually stitching itself closed and wondered what would come in 2015.  We stank, we were hungry, and we were happy.

After a time, the sun broke through the mist.  It shone brightly through two of Las Torres and lit up the lake below.  The beam hit the middle of the lake, dispersed across the water, intensified for a bright minute, and then faded away again behind the mist.  I don't know if that was Mila, but in any case I like to think there's a little bit of her in everything beautiful: every soft breeze, every tree in the woods, every wildflower, every rolling hill, every mountain range, every stone, every stream, every calm blue lake, every mighty ocean, every great glacier, every starry sky, every sunrise, every sunset.

Related posts:
First birthday.
At the end of the world.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 1: The Atacama Desert.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 3: Argentina.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 4: Our trip in lists.