When I stepped off the train in Scotland — one of very few travelling adventures to date — the first thing I did was go to the lowland equivalent of what we'd call a neighbourhood dive and order the traditional breakfast of legend: piping hot black tea, blood pudding, baked beans, fried tomatoes, fried eggs and a steaming bowl of steel-cut (as if there is any other sort in Scotland) oats with cream, brown sugar and pats of butter melting on top.

I've never tasted porridge like that. It melted, it stuck to ribs, glistening, silky and substantial, a desert island meal. I dream of it. I try to replicate it. If I were food I'd marry it and have its gelatinous love-children.

But what, you may ask, do steelcut oats have to do with boobs?

EVERYTHING, says I.

+++++++

Say what you want about being an open mama, an accepting mama, universally supportive and non-judgmental. I'd say I'm all that, but I'd be lying.

I'm supposed to be too enlightened for prejudices like these.

Saying the following, as is required to be socially genteel:  Everyone has to do what feels best for them and their baby.

All the while thinking: Hmph. Bottlefeeders. Perhaps their nipples are insured like J. Lo's badonkadonk for six million dollars. Perhaps they're frigid at the true purpose of their own flesh and all the modesty blankets in Texas wouldn't be enough to contain their totally juvenile squeamishness. 'I tried but it was too hard…' Riiight. If it's not working, you're not doing it properly. Or you'd rather purchase your kid's first food at Wal-Mart.

(Ouch. I know. Breathe deeply, please, and bear with me.)

It came from passionate enjoyment, this secret righteousness. Breastfeeding was easy. So tactile, instinctual, fulfilling, on-the-fly. Why would anyone choose formula when they could do this?

Breastfeeding made me feel so proud, so self-sufficient.

And now for the humble pie.

+++++++

The boys were born and it was two months of NICU pumping, coaxing emotionally soured milk under duress, drip by institutional drip. It was effing hard work that was likely to never pay off, the nurses told me — preemies were notoriously poor breastfeeders, and many would never get the hang of it.

Since milk was the only healing and solace I could offer, I swore to prove everyone wrong.

I did, for a while. Now here's the trouble.

By reckoning of his adjusted age — which puts him at just over 4 months old — Ben has been right in the middle, the 50^th percentile for both height and weight. Then a couple of weeks ago, the pediatrician charted him as falling to the 25th percentile for weight, noting concern.

Give him formula! the world shrieked, or so it felt. You're not making enough milk, and he's STARVING!

After all we've been through, that pissed me off. I needed support, not stress bombs. Seven months of pumping and domperidone and Guinness and water-chugging and tugging and yanking and barracuda-cuddles, and for what? To give up? At seven measly months? Not me. Not after all that.

Supplementing, I fear, is a one-way ticket to breastfeeding's end.

Baby drinks less milk, you make less milk, you feed more formula (repeat until dry).

And I am not a bottlefeeder. Not this soon, anyway. For the sake of vanity, pride, emotions, trauma, identity and my card-carrying membership in the Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is Not Obscene! group and the Homegrown Dairy Auxiliary and the International Association of Modesty Blanket Burners.

It's not about you or your pride, says the world. It's about what he needs, and he's STARVING.

So offensive, after so much work and commitment to try and do the right thing, to be told you're starving your kid. Eff you, world. Take a pill, world. It's just a dip. He'll come back.

But the charts… the charts. The damn charts. Yesterday at the NICU followup clinic we were told he's slipped further, to between the 10^th and the 3^rd percentile, which is not good. 90-97% of all four-month-old babies are bigger than him.

He's still happy and big-brained and bright-eyed.

But teensy, and teensier still.

So… f*ck.

F*ck.

I am kneecapped.

+++++++

Grrrrrwwwaaaargh!

He's frustrated that it's not a continuous flow, that there is a delay when the spoon returns to the cup. When he finds it in his mouth again he slurps greedily, and repeats until we reach the end of the cup. Then he yangs.

Does he want more? Or is he full and uncomfortable? What do I do?

He plows through the second cup.

I hope I'm doing the right thing. I hope my milk supply doesn't suffer. I hope it's not too early for solids. I hope it doesn't turn his gut into a pretzel. I wish I knew something for sure, anything.

Once again I am a mama simultaneously with instincts and without a clue.

After a short boobie love-in he finally sleeps, bellyful of organic rice cereal cut with formula, the baby version of buttery scotch porridge with devon cream on top.

Maybe not the best thing to have for breakfast, but damn. He sure digs it.

At least it's a shade above blood pudding.

Pride shmide.

I must fess up. We’re broke, but spoiled.

Since I don't qualify for maternity benefits (one of few freelancing downsides) Justin is on paternal leave, off work until sometime next spring to wrap us all in full-time, glorious daddyness. Another gift from Liam: even though we’ll be broke — beyond broke, just having inflated our mortgage with the ORANGE! renovation — we're both struck with a sudden conviction that (cliché #1) life is short; (cliché #2) life gave us lemons; and (cliché #3) all we need is love.

We tackle this infanthood + toddlerhood, both a trial and some kind of sweet, magical dream, holding hands. Bleary and gnawing at financial fingernails but together, elbow-deep in diapers and fishsticks and bike-pedalling, fart-promoting leg exercises (that would be for the baby, for the uninitiated).

So yes, I’m living in la la land when I speak of the second child being as easy as a chia pet. This has not escaped me.

We divide and conquer in this exquisitely Canadian, government-sponsored arrangement. Cheques with a ‘Q’, small but significant, are delivered every two weeks by a contingent of mounties who come bearing survival packs of maple syrup and poutine and La Maudite beer.

It's not much, but it keeps the power company and the credit card barons at bay while we play with trains and get peed on, often simultanously.

Yesterday, two months after we sprung from the NICU, I spent my first unassisted day with two children. Wait. Stop. Nowhere close. The first evening, better put. The first latter section of evening. After my parents picked Evan up from playschool and gave him supper, me racing against traffic to get Ben home from routine bloodwork and prescription pickup.

(I feel like the world’s most overindulged flake to admit all this, knowing so many of you out there care for multiple offspring on your own from the getgo — especially you federally abandoned, just-delivered, 6-week-crunched American comrades).

So there I was, left to get Evan to bed while also looking after Ben.

AT THE SAME TIME.

The stuff of everyday for you, perhaps, but near-Olympic for me.

Ben scrabbled for my bosom in the mei-tai wrap, scootching down while I squished myself up like when you pull up to the gas station and turn off the ignition too far from the pump. All the while fishing for runaway blind brown trout, bent over the bathtub while Evan wailed at the indignity of… well, being a toddler. And then, shortly thereafter, Ben wailing at the indignity of enduring neglect-o-matic #1 while I ran through 'If You Give a Moose a Muffin' for Evan like an over-caffeinated auctioneer.

But I did it. Delayed competence but competence nonetheless, even if it’s half-effectiveness with one and half-effectiveness with the other.

Evan down for the count, I nurse Ben into oblivion and put him in contraption #2 to cook garlic in a scoop of butter, then add super-stinky stilton, vermouth, devon cream and parmesan. It simmers for gnocchi while last night’s salmon heats up in the oven, and then I chop tomatoes and basil. And that’s supper, fishsticks be dammed. I am not a good cook but I am improvisational, and I bankrupt us on groceries, and I happen to, by complete accident, know what Japanese panko crumbs are and where to buy them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but like so many things, you may as well try.

The effort of it makes me human again, sitting here reflecting with you, on my second glass of cheap red wine and my fifteenth chocolate animal cracker, as Ben snores next to me in contraption #3.

Crunchy, silky, passable competence.

Mama: PLEEEEEASE can I have some fishstick? PLEEEEEASE pretty pretty pretty pretty PLEEEEASE?

(boy giggles, places hands over previously shunned bowl)

Boy: NO!

Mama: I’m gonna git me some fishyfish, mama’s hungry hungry huuuuungry! (roars terrible roar, gnashes terrible teeth, rolls terrible eyes, shows terrible claws)

Boy: NONONO!

Mama: YESYESYES!

Boy: NO! (shoves whole fishstick into mouth)

Mama: Whaaa! (tricksy mama cackles triumphantly inside head)

Boy: Ha! (tricksy son cackles triumphantly out loud)

++++++++++

He is The Borg. Countermeasures only work for a few effective shots: then he assimilates my strategy and once again demands popsicles over peas.

He is bossame, bossayou. Mama NO! No snack mama. I busy. Mama go over dere. I no poop. (toxic green cloud promptly fills room)

In comparison to this boy, babyrearing is about as taxing as keeping care of a chia pet. Suddenly we’re struck with just exactly how twitched up we were when we had Evan, and how marvellously straightforward infants are.

Feed. Burp. Cuddle. Sleep. (repeat)

For his new baby brother it’s that squashy sort of enthusiasm, the kind that has him playing horseshoes with his potty training toilet seat and Ben’s stationary head.

He stops strangers in the street to say I ABIG BRUDDER. My widdle brudder is ABEN. He is ABABY. He no talk. They say Oh! Indeed and Well my goodness as they should, and we go on our way, the two of us walking well above the ground.

++++++++++

As soon as it came up on screen I started to cry. Ben’s head, the faint outline of his skull and then, inside, more or less a dark-grey void. Looks good said the technician, thankfully engrossed in her work and not in me.

The last cranial ultrasound I saw was Liam’s. It was white, mostly. The remnants of an explosion, deciphering damage like trying to pick out the perimeter of a particular cloud on an overcast day. No wonder they were shocked that he was able to orchestrate a sneeze I think to myself, and loss washes over me like a pounding, the visual before and after of what should have been two identical boys.

I close my eyes and rub my lips back and forth across the fuzz on Ben’s head, grateful but thinking love, love, bittersweet forever.

Whenever the doorbell rang in the first few weeks of Evan’s life, I’d open the door four inches wide, just enough for my fist, and then — as unexpected visitors chirped, “We were just driving by…” — KA-POW!

In my dreams.

I wanted privacy. I did not want to be on stage. I wanted the freedom to be as dishevelled as I felt. And not just vain-dishevelled (“Pardon me, but I haven’t showered yet today!”) but diagnostically, hobblingly dishevelled (“Pardon me, but it’s time for me to soak my crotch again. Would you mind helping me get settled on my epsom salt butt-bath?”)

This is what becomes ordinary after giving birth. If you come to the door expecting to immerse yourself in a BabyGap ad, expect instead to be schwucked in the eye with spraying breastmilk. Expect to get regurgitated upon. Expect that smell (from me, not the baby).

I am not dressed. Literally. I am hanging out. Literally. Besides, this much should be obvious — I’D RATHER BE SLEEPING. In fact, I’d rather be doing bloody anything else other than hosting visitors and enduring chit-chat.

Sounds miserable, doesn’t it? It wasn’t. We were just intensely inwardly-focused. We listened to Miles Davis, and rocked, and stared at him in wonder as he slept, and explored his soft, floppy body. We fed him, and fed each other. The rest of the world went ‘pouf!’ and we couldn’t have cared less.

From the moment visitors stepped over the threshold, any sense of calm was vacuumed out of the air, replaced with friction. It didn’t matter how much they’d smile and congratulate — they were gawking, an unwanted audience despite the best of intentions.

How’re they holding up? A bit awkward, didn’t you think? Don’t quite seem to have the hang of it yet. They seemed really, like, tired. She was limping around… them’s the breaks with a labour-fresh patootie. Gawd. And did you see her boob? It looked like a botched implant. Or a live grenade. Yowza. The kid was.. uhh.. pretty cute though.

My parents: check. Justin’s parents: check. Relatives of all shapes, sizes and sorts: check — as long as they’re willing to roll up their sleeves and help me get settled on my epsom salt butt-bath. Anonymous casseroles: check.

Anyone else? Do Not Pass Go. DO NOT park yourself on the couch and make me offer you a drink. Do not just sit there and watch me with the baby with that simpering grin on your face.

I’m already anxious about the first few months, dreading the inevitable magnetism of twins. During boot camp, I want peace, and quiet, and solitude — and everything on my own terms.

I don’t need people to be in awe at the sight of us: Wow, look at them, so unaffected by the new baby. Haven’t let it change them at all! They were out at the pub a week afterwards, did you see them? They just hop in the car and go! They just bring the baby with them everywhere. Good for them.

I know what people thought after we had Evan: They really need to loosen up. They need to just keep doing the things they did before. They said they couldn’t come out for dinner, did you hear that? They said it was ‘naptime’. Hmph.

Truth is, we were like that for a good many months. But it worked for us. We were too consumed with keeping care of ourselves to miss the company of the civilized world.

We knew it wouldn’t be like that forever. And in the meantime, being uptight gave us freedom. Within the safe haven of our ecosystem we learned how to be parents in peace. And to us, peace was more important than getting a stamp of approval from the In-Order-To-Be-A-Cool-Hip-Parent-Your-Life-Should-Continue-Uninterrupted camp. The moments when we tried free-spiritedness on for size were disruptive and exhausting — and almost never worth the effort involved.

But that’s just us. We’re natural hermits, peas in a pod.

Fast-forward to three months from now: I fear a steady stream of ooglers lined up to witness the spectacle at our expense. I’m totally serious about the sign on the door. And I’m totally expecting that the random visitors will think it applies to everyone else except them.

Another twin-mama advised post visiting hours, and make no exceptions. I couldn’t agree more. We’ll have a twin-oogling open house, and I’ll have plenty of time to apply industrial-strength undereye concealer and tuck in my exploding nipples. Otherwise, the phone will be unplugged. The windows will be blacked out. The door will be booby-trapped, dumping unexpected knockers with vats of steaming baby shit.

That’s what this blog is for, after all. Not real-live steaming baby shit — but pictures of it, supplied plentifully to be enjoyed at a distance, at your convenience and ours. You’ll get a closer view from here without getting sprayed or punched in the face. Spread the word.

What’s your take on boot camp etiquette? Any other new-baby scrooges out there, or am I just a first-class ‘If-You-Put-A-Lump-Of-Coal-Up-Her-Ass- In-Two-Weeks-You’d-Have-A-Diamond’ grump?

I don’t think I’ve ever been more apprehensive about anything in my life.

Breastfeeding is a bizarre concept. Fun Bags, Titties, Dirty Pillows. Until you have a baby, they’re just as they are – lovely, funny, perfectly female – a body part in line with all the rest. Once you get pregnant, they become something entirely new: a Food Source. Milk with which to feed your young. They're sacred. It's a bosom's highest calling.

Thank goodness Evan knew what to do.

He has a vigorous and grateful appetite, just like his dad. Even in the hospital, he gulped and gorged with abandon – what a sight. For the first six weeks I had terrible kinks in my neck from staring down at him in amazement as he ate.

It took some getting used to. Pulls and grabs and toe-curling ouches and swelling and spraying and public displaying. But it didn’t take long for all inhibitions to disappear in the interest of getting the job done no matter where and when. And there are so many rewards. Milk moustaches and spit-ups that go SPLAT! on the floor and triplings of weight. All from me and my booby food.

My milk is Tutti-Fruiti. Which just so happens to be Evan’s favourite flavour. What a coincidence.

Amazing what a little sunshine can do.

Evan and I have baby bjorned and jog-strolled all over the beaches of the south shore, saying hello to all the hatching spiders and full-of-beans chipmunks and singsongy chickadees along the way. Makes one feel a little less housewifeish. A little less house-arrested like Martha Stewart, minus the cedar henhouse and pastry staff.

One year ago, I found out I was pregnant.

Today, Evan is four months old and becoming a boy before our eyes. He loves to stand up, and bears just about all his own weight. Our newest game is to stand on the bathroom counter in front of the mirror as he jumps from a squat to a ‘Look at Meee!’ rock star stance, squealing at himself with delight.

When he’s nursing, he pops off every now and then to look up at me, wide, milk-drippy grin on his face, like he’s flirting. It turns me into butter and he knows it.

Although that’s nothing to when he laughs, which he’s just started doing. Real laughing, deliberately connected chuckles. It’s heaven. And on his belly, he’ll inchworm forward in an almost-crawl, leaving behind him what Justin calls a ‘little slug trail’ of teething drool. We’re so proud we’re just about bursting.

On low-energy days though, I wish I could just turn his switch to OFF. Just for an hour or two.

To decompress, to be selfish, to be luxuriously lazy. But then I remember that as he grows up the baby will disappear, never to be seen again. And I’ll miss four-month-old Evan as desperately as I now miss newborn Evan.

So I drench him in kisses, smother him with cuddles, blow raspberries on his belly, rub my nose into the long, silky hair at the back of his neck. All the liberties I'm entitled to as his mom.

Because before long he'll groan and say, "Uggh gross, quit it, Ma!" when I lick my finger and rub a smudge off his cheek. As he should. Until then, I'm going to try to remember to get my fill, no matter how long the day.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re doing anything right. At 4 AM the other night, after four unsuccessful hours of trying to get Evan to stay asleep in the crib, I gave up. I deliberately fed him into a stupor and plunked him where he’s happiest – milk dripping from his chin, snugged into his carseat.

The baby whisperers heckled in my head.

Ooooh! That’s the worst thing she could do! She picked him up when he cried, did you see that! He didn’t need to eat, but she fed him anyway! And he’s in his carseat – horrors! He’ll never sleep on his own! He’ll be getting her up a dozen times a night until he’s fifteen!

Sometimes the pull of five or six hours of sleep is just too strong, no matter what the books say. So I cheat, and work dubious magic. What’s the verdict? “Dangerous territory” or “whatever works”? The jury is still out.

Nevertheless, four out of every five baby whisperers agree: six months old is the turning point.

Last chance to tighten up your routine and give up your shortcuts. Until then, they say, you do whatever it takes to make a crying baby happy (or sleepy). Because before six months, everything is ‘I Need’. After six months, you get more ‘I Wants’. A simple but critical distinction that changes the game and brings on development of The Pout, The Screech and The Tantrum. Hence the need to begin nurturing the ‘self-soothing’, ‘low-maintenance-sleeping’ child. Whatever that means.

It’s like a diet – starting tomorrow, I’ll do it by the book. I’ll get my headstart so that six months doesn’t sneak up and bite us in the ass when we’re not looking. Tomorrow is another night, fresh with no mistakes in it. But it’s amazing how fast another month goes by when you’re find reasons every day to start being righteous tomorrow.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve made it through boot camp.

When you have a newborn, you’re exempt from comment and consequence. Your primary goal is survival. You do whatever you can to make your life easier, employing whatever jiggles, wriggles or witchdoctors you need to keep the cries at bay.

But once you’ve got yourself a full-fledged baby, you start being concerned with taking too many shortcuts. The word echoing most frequently in my brain? Habits. As in bad ones.

For instance, Evan has had a cold for the past couple of weeks. The frequency of snot-o-lanches has actually surpassed that of poop-o-lanches. He was waking up at night because he couldn’t breathe, and once awake, he was so congested he couldn’t nurse.

We’ve been putting him to sleep in his carseat to keep his head elevated, which has helped to say the least – it has a swaddling effect that keeps him asleep for wonderfully long periods of time. I’ve been getting 7 and 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep for many nights now, which is amazing (despite waking up on the brink of explosion).

We’re loving this nighttime carseat trick, but something tells me it’s false progress. What if it results in him not being able to fall asleep in his crib? Are we making a monster?

These days, every method we employ begs that question.

If we don’t check ourselves now, we could end up with a 6-month old that won’t eat, or won’t sleep, or somehow won’t be the Evan we know how to deal with. I fear a slippery slope ahead.

One tantrum plus one moment of parental weakness may equal a future in which he'll eat microwaved pizza pops for breakfast, watch 'Girls Gone Wild' on Grampy Doug's satellite TV, drive an all-terrain vehicle and grow a rattail. And work the tilt-a-whirl.

But as Justin put it, “Complete idiots bring up normal kids. We’re only half-idiots, so I’m sure he’ll turn out fine.”

Meanwhile, Evan has discovered his hands, and loves to grab anything within reach with enthusiasm and surprising ferocity. Our new family motto, therefore, is as follows (spoken while we carefully wrench a newly discovered body part from that rowdy little fist): Be kind to your jigger, and your jigger will be kind to you!

And what happened then...? Well, in Who-ville they say that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day!

This isn’t to say I am now or ever was a grinch. Not exactly.

Here’s what I think happens when you become a parent. If you’re lucky enough to find a true partner in life, you figure you know what love is. You think you know the boundaries of what you’re capable of feeling.

Then you have a baby, and you exist at what you think is your very highest level of fulfillment, all the time.

But today, as we took Evan to the doctor for his first shots, I felt something I have never felt before.

My unknowingly small heart grew three sizes - at least - when we heard his ‘pain cry’ for the first time. The shots are into the muscle of each leg, and they ache quite badly afterwards.

I’ve just now gotten up after four hours of marathon cuddling, the only surefire way to give the boy the best possible sleep he can get no matter how upset or uncomfortable he is. Snoring cheek-to-bosom, his happy place. I would have rocked for ten times that long if I thought it would make him feel better.

Evan's first pain, as ordinary as it was, made us both feel the gravity, the protectiveness of parenthood. A delayed reaction. Perhaps you don't feel it at first with a newborn because you're too overwhelmed with learning to reflect.

At the risk of sounding trite, I must say: the world looks different to me now, with this new-sized heart. Lighter and darker all at the same time.

Ten years ago today, Justin and I met. We’ve been together ever since. Valentine’s Day has always been a non-event, and even our wedding anniversary just marks the day we had a great party. This day is our milestone.

It was spent patting and rocking a gassy little boy, bless him. We took turns wolfing down supper. I’m covered in spit-up, and Justin’s been catching up on laundry. Later tonight, we’ll follow the routine that’s been best - Justin sleeping in the other bedroom to rest for mornings with Evan, while I take the nightshift.

Only people with kids will believe me when I say this: we’re having fun. We’re falling deeper and deeper in love with our son, and that means a lot of laughter. We’re thrilled with every new chirp and gurgle, amazed at all the clothes that are already too small. And we’ve got bottomless sympathy for him when he has a tough day.

As I write, the boy has finally stopped stirring and breathes heavily in his crib, exhausted. Time for me to steal a few moments with Justin, even if it is just the two of us listening to Evan snore. A happy anniversary is knowing we’ve done good, whether it involves a fancy dinner or not.

And the sounds of our son let us know for sure.