After a lengthy silence, behold Sasha Luke Mesaglio Martinez

Either my mother was lying to me all those years about how she raised us (strictly) or she has a separate set of rules for grandchildren (give them anything they want, whenever they want). My memory is atrocious, but my older sister Anne’s is excellent and she and I both remember being raised strictly. I don’t include my little sister Sarah in that sentence because she was not raised strictly. As for my mother, apparently there is an unwritten rule that what goes for one’s children and what goes for one’s grandchildren are two vastly different things. She dotes on Sasha. We all do. We are all besotted with this little-but-growing-fast scrap of humanity. Possibly, however, my mother is the most besotted of us all.
We call her the burp whisperer because she is by far the best at burping the baby without making him spit up. And she knows it. I eyed with trepidation her departure from Barcelona, because it meant, among other things, that Demian and I would have to burp this baby all my ourselves, while trying to help him avoid spitting up. This was and still is a tall order because this baby loves to spit up.
So, despite the lengthy blogging pause, I am happy to report that we are all in love with baby Sasha.

Looking backwards

Getting here was not easy. As readers know from previous blog entries, this pregnancy was trying. All my pregnancies are trying, which is putting it lightly. Because of Sasha’s heart problem, he was delivered early. He arrived on November 10^th, 2008, delivered by caesarean section at week 34.5. He weighed just under 2.2 kg, or 4.78 pounds, when he was born.
I can remember the feeling when he was delivered. To our utter surprise and delight, he cried, something we were prepared not to expect because premature babies, especially ones delivered by C-section, often don’t make a sound when they are born. But he did cry and it sounded like a lusty cry to us.
They quickly showed him to us and then took him away to be cared for. My first reaction was to be perplexed. I have to admit that I was not immediately overwhelmed with love. I don’t know if that makes me a weird mother, but that is how it was. I remember feeling confused about what to feel. Every other time I had been on an operating table - twice in the last two years and the first time in the very same operating room, except under excruciatingly different circumstances - it had been sad or scary. The first time was on October 4^th, 2006, to deliver our firstborn, Sydney, who died in utero six days before she was due to be delivered. The second time was seven weeks after that, to have the right lobe of my liver excised because it contained a four pound tumour.
As a result of these surgeries, my mind associated operating rooms with Bad Things. Sasha’s arrival was clearly not a Bad Thing, so my brain at first did not know how to process it. It had ample time to, though. Despite the relative luxury of this hospital, there was no bed immediately available for me, so I ended up spending about two extra hours in the operating room with Demian, recovering. As I lay there, perplexity gradually gave way to wonder and then to aching sadness for what we had lost when Sydney died. I was expecting this and have always thought that it was inevitable. I always knew that I would never be able to process a part of my grief until we had another baby and indeed, this is how it was. It is still this way, in a sense: every step that Sasha takes (metaphorically speaking, I mean. He is a prodigy, obviously, but at eleven weeks, isn’t walking. Yet.)…Every step that Sasha takes confirms the enormity of what we lost when Sydney died. I wish with everything inside me that Sasha were being born into a family with an older sister, but he is not. The stark irrevocability of this became clear upon Sasha’s birth.

Looking forwards

Yet, we are okay. In fact, we are doing better than I had thought we would. Being with Sasha and seeing him gain weight and begin to recognize us and smile and coo is its own medicine. We have dubbed it Sashatherapy. Sashatherapy works really well when Sasha is on form. It has some adverse side effects when he is not on form, however, such as when he wakes up for the third time in a night and doesn’t want to feed. This is less like therapy and more akin to medieval torture, I have discovered.
When my family spent a week this Christmas with us in an old Catalan farmhouse (called a masia), my father wondered aloud how anyone could hurt a baby. They really are designed to pull on one’s heartstrings, as my mother would say. They cry, yes, but they also cuddle and make adorable sounds like “wuffle, wuffle” into your neck. Everything about them cries out to be cared for, because they are so obviously dependent on those around them.
Sasha now weighs 4.2 kg or 9.3 pounds. Every time I think that this is a perfectly normal weight at which a baby could be delivered, I can hardly fathom it. Having something that size inside just seems wrong. As many of you have heard me say on previous occasions, I think there are some major design flaws in this whole process. I think we should just come with zippers. It would make things so much easier.
I think from here on out my blog entries will have to be shorter. It has taken most of Sasha’s young life to complete this one, so I will adjust my sights a little lower and try to write short little entries from here on out.
Love to you all.