what am i supposed to do with that?

my ob left me a message late friday afternoon to let me know that the quad screen results were already back, and the results were all normal. normal??? yes, normal. normal! NORMAL! also, the risk indicators showed my risk for any abnormalities was very low for my age, or that i had the risk of a much younger mother.

i was beaming, jumping up and down in my chair, but was thwarted in my efforts to share my news. at 4:30 on a friday afternoon, i was the only person still left in the office. justin had already heard from the ob, since the ob tried our home phone first, and that phone is forwarded to justin's cell, plus he was driving and couldn't talk. i called my mother in despair, sure that at 4:30 she'd be in her car on her way to dinner with her pal. hey, she's 63; if she's not having dinner at 5:00, her whole schedule falls apart. but she was still in her office, getting ready to go, and i was able to tell her the good news.

but then what?

i don't know what to do with good news. after i digest it, there's no next step. for the last nearly two years, every time i received a test result, it necessitated the development of a plan of action. but good news is just good news; no action needed except to keep breathing, taking the vitamin, and sleeping on my left side - all things i've been doing for two years (and the breathing thing, even longer...).

don't get me wrong - it's not that i'm not THRILLED. that z is doing so wonderfully, so normally, is my wildest dream come true! i most certainly do not want z to be imperiled in any fashion so that my life can be more interesting. but there is a definite gap now, where my mobilization plans (research, the list of questions for the ob, the behavior modification, the consideration of how we would deal with a child with [insert problem here]) used to be.

is this how a mother feels when a child begins to prefer reading on her own to having her mom read to her? or when she tells her mom, "don't bother," and gets her own snack? unimaginably proud of her child's accomplishments and independence but a little lost without the ownership of those tasks?

maybe this feeling is a lesson now to prepare me for the future: i need to not let my own life dissipate while loving and caring for z. i need to stick with school, keep working toward my new career, keep reading books i love and not just storybooks to z, so that when z no longer needs me, i still have a life.

ironic, then, that my current reading list consists of: parenting books. but i do want to be prepared for z, and this is the first time i've felt like i'm actually going to need to consider how i will deal with my child at, say, age 5. before i got pregnant the first time, i had already read "what to expect..." from cover to cover, so when i did get pregnant, i got the "what to expect..." book on the first year. i had finished most of it when the problems with hans started, but then i set it aside and never picked it up again. on some level, i knew i wasn't going to need it.

so i'm reading "the city parent handbook" and "on the go with baby" in an effort to back up our intent to raise z in an urban setting and to take z everywhere and to generally help him or her become a citizen of the world with actual know-how. we checked these books out from the library yesterday, but as we get into them, i'm thinking they're both books we want to own, so we can refer back to them as needed.

another book i'm working on is "thinking parent, thinking child." i know it's a little early to worry about behavioral conflicts with z; i don't expect that if z doesn't latch on right away, i can ask him or her to consider how she will feel if she doesn't get to eat. but the overarching lesson i've taken from my parents, who i know did the best they could, is that if a parent doesn't put some thought in advance into how they will parent, they will as their parents did, which is to say, mostly without thought, immediately, adhering to the same authoritarian patterns their parents followed. that approach invariably leads to spanking, among other things - to which both of us are adamantly opposed. so i want to think about how to think first before i respond to problems with z, and i figure i have more time now than i'll have later to read up.

i also suspect that if justin and i were to parent alone, given the identical situation we would inherently parent differently. i hope that by reading books now and discussing them, we can bring to light where we differ and figure out a compromise so that we can be consistent with z and not in constant conflict with each other.

this fantasy falls right behind the ones in which z is an angel on 14-hour flights, is not affected by varying bedtimes, is an adventurous eater and is always happy to self-entertain.

*****

this just in: strummer has a brother! deadbabymama gave birth to an as-yet-unnamed boy yesterday afternoon, and everyone is great! i can't wait to see him and to HOLD HIM! do you think it would be too soon for us to show up in toronto this weekend on dbm's doorstep?