Birth Story - Take 2

For the last two months I've been taking this amazing writing class from Stefanie of Baby on Bored. Every week a bunch of funny, talented cool chics gathered - got instruction, wrote for a chunk of time and then read our work aloud. It was so damn fun, I'm truly bummed it's over. I'll be putting up some of the fruit of that labor in coming days, but speaking of labor - I want to share a new draft of the birth story that I put up here a few weeks ago.


So to be clear - LCD regs, you've read a version of this story back here. I'm re-posting it because I've spent hours and hours and HOURS rewriting and editing it, and then in a bold move performed it at the staged reading the other night that was the culmination of the class. I swore to myself I wouldn't cry in the telling, and then I did.


Ah well.


This one is 1000 words less than last time, if you're up for it, see what you think....

----------------

“Stop it! Stop yelling at me! Please stop. I just can’t have that right now. It’s not
helpful.”

A hush falls over the room, but I keep up the stinkeye. I’m guessing it’s not very
often that the flushed, sweaty, very fat lady squatting in the middle of the bed yells
at the help.

She says,
“I don’t think I was yelling”.

I say, “You were definitely yelling”.

It won’t be long now before another crushing combo platter of pressure, pain and
pinch will arrive along with the need to bear down. We need to get through this
little discussion fast.

“I wasn’t yelling” she repeats a little under her breath and turns on her heel. I have
time to think, did she just turn on her heel? She’s gone and here I go again.

I’m wild, I’m swinging my head. The wave is back and I’ve got a job to do. Fuck her
and her yelling ways. Fuck that noise and fury. Now I’m the one making it.

I squint my eyes into slits and push my legs up on the bar. Holding up the blue
sheet in an effort to give me some dignity is both useless and pointless, but god
bless that sweet nurse for trying. I bear down and think. Damn. I’m pushing so
hard. I really hope poop isn’t coming out. That’s pretty gross. I don’t think poop is
on my birth plan.

Ah, the birth plan. According to it, right now I’m home in warm water giving birth in
one of those tubs you see in Youtube videos. I’m the picture of serenity and grace,
my husband swabbing at my head with a warm washcloth. No wait, is he in the tub
with me? Is he wearing anything? What did we ever decide about that? Of course I
won’t be wearing anything in the birthing tub but is it weird if he doesn’t wear
anything? Maybe a speedo?

A contraction only lasts between :30 and :90 seconds but it might as well be the
staging of War and Peace. It finally ends and I slowly catch my breath. I gather the
sheet around my puffy legs and stare out the giant plate glass window. The sun
came up some time ago, what the hell time is it? More to the point, what day?
We’re going on hour 54 of labor, for me time and space have given up and are
making out in the corner.

My midwife comes into view, the one I hired for my fantasy homebirth. Her white
turban blends with the blownout bright morning light behind her. She is concerned.

“Jane, you’re going to need to play by their rules here. You’ve been pushing for
three hours now. If you want to avoid...”

She trails off here.

The knife. The knife is the end of her sentence. I don’t have the heart to glare at
her. Her face is too kind. My heart is too tired.

“I suggest that you really try to be accommodating. Let them guide you, perhaps
some extra coaching will help.”

“I don’t want yelling” I weakly assert.

The key yeller marches back in the room, followed closely behind by the physician.
“You’re not pushing effectively,” says the mean midwife. Mean midwife, it’s an
oxymoron, I know. I was driven forty-five minutes across town in screaming labor
to this particular hospital so I could stay under midwife care, and the result is that I
get the mean one. I glare at her squatty form.

The physician takes over.

“Now, I’m going to help you focus your efforts by keeping my hand here during the
contractions.” By ‘here’, she means on his little head which is coming down
sideways. And when I say ‘on his head’, you’ve likely gotten to the right image. Up
the Vajay. I’d squirm but really, why bother? At this point I’ve lost track of how
many people have had their hand there. Too bad I didn’t charge for admission.

In our birthing class, we watched all of these videos of waterbirths. The woman
would be all ohh and ahhh and then at some point a face muscle would twitch like
maybe she’s having a small orgasm and then a baby would pop in between her
legs. A tiny upside down face would suddenly appear there, squinting in the watery
world.

I watched with avid interest. That’s going to be me! I thought. That’s so totally
going to be me! When the birthing coach discussed the epidural I waddled off in
search of more snacks. When she talked about a fetal monitor that attaches to the
baby’s head I scoffed. And pitocin?. Oh no, that won’t be me. Totally. Not me.

Stranded on the hospital bed, the shiny floors are a sparkling sea miles below me. I
am on a barge with sheets and I use the pushing bar to row. I hang up my
birthplan like a sail, its navigation powers are useless against the tide of medical
madness. Pitocin – check. Epidoural – check. And the fetal monitor attached to his
tiny head? Check. Right now surrender looks like me in bad lighting and a gaping
hospital gown.

So I push. And I push. And. PUSH. The physician's hand is there. Her curly head
shakes back and forth as I bear down. They yell, I don’t care anymore. It’s a wash
of sound and wonder, light and shaking muscle.

I am raw and exposed, there is not a single shard of dignity left. My self capital S is
no longer part of the equation, my body is just a powerful machine that’s in heavy
use. The constant pain has become irrelevant. And though that epidural has long
since worn off, I’m still attached to the end of it like a dog on a leash.

So I’m pushing out a person. This important fact has faded into the blur of the long
anxious minutes. What I know for sure is that I will never be the same. I will never
walk the same. I will never have the same fears. I will never wonder if I am strong.

Now my friend runs around the room weeping and brandishing my camera. She
yell’s He’s coming! He’s coming! I can see his little head!

And now he’s crowning. Jesus, ouch.

And then nothing.

We’re between contractions - I guess we’ll be hanging out here. This is what they
call the ring of fire.

In this extended, stretched moment I take a look around. It’s an unreasonably
bright room filled with people I don’t know. There is not a candle in sight. Sure my
friend has the ipod going and Yo Yo Ma is cranking out the Bach, but that’s the end
of the sweetness. The population doubles when a team of dudes shuffle in with
their eyes averted. Apparently there was meconium in the water, (which is an
indicator of fetal distress) so these guys have first dibs on him. All scrubbled up,
they await his arrival across the shiny floor.

I'd heard of the 'ring of fire' - I believed it would be accurate name. And I won't go
on here but suffice it to say it is a fine, fine name and the fire is 1000 angry wasps.

In the next contraction he comes out in a gush. I don't know much about it because
I can't see anything. I have pushed so hard that my eyes are rendered useless –
they are only registering fuzzy forms in white. I’m now looking through the lens of
an impressionist painting, perhaps this is for the best.

He is quickly ripped away and flown across the sea into their waiting hands. I am
left there - stranded in the tangled sheets and blood. I have just turned my guts,
heart and other parts inside out in an effort to bring this guy onto the planet - and
now he belongs to them: medical science.

A team of gloved hands rapidly scrub him as plastic tubes descend deep into his
throat and very being. My dear husband stands by and watches helplessly. Our tiny
infant is being manhandled like a car in a car wash without the water.

3 minutes slowly pass.

He isn’t breathing and neither are we. The air feels heavy, like the moments before
a thunderstorm. Alone on my island I watch the storm approach and I wonder. I am
curious. I am quiet. For me it’s white light and blur and the pound of my heartbeat
in my head.

Finally we hear a raspy cry. A cheer goes up in the crowd.

My midwife insists that he flies back to my chest. I guess this is a little tip of the
hat to my original dreamy birth plan. The trouble is that it's an old idea and I'm not
sure how to get back to her, or back to that warm water. My hands are heavy
flippers as I try unsuccessfully to comfort this little being who is bound and perched
on my chest. His little mouth yawns open and closed with a weak cry. I join him.

56 hours. I did that dance with the force of nature designed to bring human life to
the world for 56 hours.

I know in my heart of hearts that nature knows best, that a tub of water or a pile of
hay is a perfectly fine place to land a baby. But that wasn’t the way it went for us.
Nature took us to a hospital.

And was it okay? It was. Because he was okay.

And my body won’t bear a scar from a knife. Of course there are endless other
scars and gifts that come from moving through the hardest thing I’ve ever endured
cheered by strangers, the sparkling sea, my husband and Yo Yo Ma.


Pictured below - Boy in the NICU with Dad on day one of life.

She's Having a Baby

Yep, I've known I was going to use this movie title for this post for a long, long time.

It's time for the birth story kids, it's time. Our lil hero turns one in an hour, we'll celebrate him on this day for the rest of his life, our lives. This life. (draft started 11pm on April 5th)


----

This time last year I was in the hospital wondering what the eff I was doing there. I had just gotten an epidural put in by a very hot, sassy, gum-snapping Armenian chick whose work was overseen by a giant man with an awkward walk. I was terrified. There I was perched on the edge of a hard bed with a breeze on my butt and what felt like duct tape up and down my back and the tiny long needle about to go in.

Snappy gum: Don't move. It's really important that you don't move.

Me: Contraction. WAIT! Please wait. I can't Not move during a...... aaahheeeighhggghggheihhh. F*ck. HOld on. Ouch. okay. hold on. okay. go ahead.

Snappy: Ok, this will sting a bit.

Me: Seriously? Nothing can phase me now.

enter needle

Snappy: Ok! Great, so now you will soon feel relief. Push this button (hands me a contraption on the end of a cord with a red button) if you need more relief, it will dispense more medicine.

Me: Neat.

So the army of amazing women who had followed me, the belly, and cute hubs across town to the fancy-ass UCLA medical center now disperse in search of sleep. My midwife says, sleep. Take advantage of this epidural to finally get some rest. Sounds like a pretty good plan since I have not slept since 3 am Saturday morning when the 'rushes' started - and this is now 11pm Sunday night. The boy isn't going to come on April 5th after all. Or April 4th either (our first guess seeing how labor started that day) I guess we'll meet him tomorrow.

'Rushes' by the way, is the lovely term that midwifes and other lovely hippy-dippy sweet people who want to make you think that you can give birth in a lovely home-like candle lit setting or in a calm part of some damn sea or a water tub with dolphins n' such and gracefully and gently move through the feeling of the 'rush' of sensation and by calling it a 'rush' it is somehow not the FAWKING TIDAL WAVE of PAIN and utter ridiculous PAIN and searing hot PAIN and bone-crushing body-wracking FAWKING PAIN and I guess it's not a bad plan to call it something other than the FTWOP (fawking tidal waves of pain) but I think they were pretty darn misleading but thankfully I am not angry. Really.

As they are leaving, I am a mix of compassionate for their needs along with a hollow feeling of being completely deserted. I watch their backs march away into the inky night which is visible through the giant window of our strangely beautiful hospital room that has nice dim lighting. The view is sweet of Westwood's spots of lights and perhaps campus beyond. Sleep they said. As my awareness fuzzes out into the lights visible over my giant belly and the form of a sweet sleeping husband on the bench, I feel grateful for their beauty and their kindness and belief in my ability to have a natural home birth but also just a little bit grateful for the gum snapping Armenian gal and her freaky needle.

And I fall into delicious sleep. I  close my eyes and ask the images of the previous 40 hours of my existence to disappear into a drugged oblivion. The walking and walking and the waves of pain and constant throwing up and the sitting on the toilet waiting for the world to end and standing and no, actually, walking and the waves coming consistently and then intermittently and none of it added up the the labor I was supposed to have. The walking sure. The singing even on Saturday night as my doula, BF and I did laps around our block. The beautiful moon behind the black palm trees in the gentle April night. My sweet doula and her constant presence. The warm smell of hubs neck as I leaned into him, his gentle ways and slight anxiety obvious through the haze.

What wasn't invited was the lack of rhythm. The fact that the swimmer was turned and his shoulder was stuck in some weird way. That the labor was termed 'prodromal' which is a mystery but I think says something about my head that isn't great. The IV drip due to my inability to keep anything down, even water. The thought-out labortime snacks I had prepared sat somewhere nearby, I think someone quietly nibbled on them at some point. I can't remember. The time at home was behind a wall of water and glass and pain.

-----

A few hours later I am awoken by the midwife on duty, she needs to 'check me' to see how well the pitocin is working. Fine. That's fine, check it out. She frowns and pulls her gloved hand out of the exit zone.

Nice midwife:  Oh well, okay. So. You're only dilated to 5cm. We were hoping for more. We need to up the Pitocin.

Me: Neat.

Nice midwife: Try to go back to sleep.

I nod.

This room is very large, I feel like I'm on a boat in a sea of shiny floors. They said it was the nicest room in the wing, sure seems like it. Let's ignore for a minute the beeping of the heartmonitor on the baby that I was never going to get, even if they said I'd need it. Let's ignore the machine hooked into my body providing a flow of narcotics surging into my body and the little one, the thing I was never, ever going to do. Let's focus on the fact that I don't feel the GD rushes. Oh. Wait a minute.

Me: Ouch

crickets

There is no-one here. Cute hubs is asleep on the bench. I don't have the heart to wake him. I'll just push this little button on the end of the thing here, because this 'sensation' is starting to heat up - oh boy.

Me: OUCH. Shit. Um.

The FTOP's are back. That's not the bargain I struck here. I gave up the last remaining shards of my 'birth plan' and dignity to end the reign of pain that had gone on for 40 hours at home and in the car. I am now fully in their world and their world is supposed to be pain-free.

Me: DAMMMMMMIIITTTTTTTT.

Cute hubs: Zzzzzz. (poor guy he hadn't slept for 1/2 of Friday and most of Saturday night either)

Time to call the nurse. She arrives eventually and promptly calls snappy gum who eventually (after many more FTOP's). She rolls in there rolling her eyes at me.

Snappy: You have sensation?

Me: Yes, plenty.

Snappy: Did you push the button?

Me: Several times.

Snappy: (SIGH) Let me see.
(pause while fiddling with machine)
Okay, I reset it. It should work now in about 20 minutes.

Me: 20 minutes!? Are you serious?

Snappy: (Eyeroll)

----

So this goes on. There is no more sleep. But at 5 am it's time to check again, (I wish I'd charged for admission for access, by the end I probably could have paid the hospital bill) and the good news is that we're fully dilated kids. Game on. Let's push.

My army of women slowly arrive as the hubs awakes. Dawn streaks out over UCLA as the pin lights disappear and I wonder about the college kids going to their classes and how they don't know that something miraculous is happening right behind them, right up there on the fourth floor.

At 7 am I have 'labored down' enough and I start to push. Due to the epidural which is now turned off but is still attached, and fetal heart monitor, I cannot push like a normal person, I have to squat awkwardly in the bed or do some kind of upside bar madness. It's not comfortable. It's not reasonable. But I'm okay, it seems okay. Strangely people keep coming in and saying that I look really glamourous. Which is ridiculous. The nurses say "You're the most glamourous pusher I've ever seen".

I bet.

So an hour passes. Then another one. And still I'm getting pretty good feedback about my efforts. It's certainly not easy and by now I think it's about time to get this lil party over with but oops looks like I'm losing one of the key players.

Nice Midwife: Well, I'm afraid my shift is up - I'm going to turn your case over to our next midwife on duty.

And now you know why I"ve been calling her 'Nice midwife'. Cause here comes the other one. 

This new woman enters and before shaking my hand or as much as a hello she checks me and the progress of the boy through the ol canal and now another frown and the stark, nasty disapproval makes my heart drop into my swollen feet.

Mean Midwife: (scowling) Ok, let me see you push. I don't think you're being effective here.

So I proceed to do my glamourous pushing which involves a head toss and some real strain, I mean really - but based on the look on her face, it's not enough.

MM: You're pushing with your face and your legs, you need to push right here. (She illustrates with by thrusting her hand into the spot of which she speaks. Apparently she's touching his head.)

Me: Scream.

Next comes a confrontation. MM and her folks decide to coach in a non-midwife manner during a contraction by yelling "PUUUUSH" and "RIGHT HERE!" and "OTHER THINGS" and I am just. not. okay. with that. Sure it's a very Hollywood labor moment but I just can't abide by this scene at all. So after I finish panting I yell.

Me: I can't have you yelling at me!

MM: I didn't think I was yelling.

Me: You were.

MM: Scowl.

And by 'pushing back' (ha ha) I create a tense moment that involves a conference outside the room with my real midwife (the one I originally hired for a homebirth) the MM, and the physician on duty.

The RM (real midwife if you're not tracking with my initializing) reappears and strongly encourages me to play ball (as it were) seeing as how it's now Monday morning and my water broke on Saturday and if I don't want to end up under the knife, well. I need to shut the eff up. Not her words exactly, but I get it.

----

So I push. And I push. And. PUSH. And I get more productive with the pushes, it's less glamour - more progress. The MM does not come back after the above conference (there is a God) but the physician is just as adamant about touching his head ALL THE TIME while I push so it is a deeply uncomfortable (and intimate) experience.

The following hour is something I'll never forget. I have never felt more vulnerable, raw and exposed. I have never been so strong and beautiful. I have never had to do something so incredibly fawking hard. And I've never had such a profound reason to partner with my body. I'm sure it will sound cliche but I dig into a part of myself that I had never met. It's somewhere under the gut, surrounded by soul right next to the heart and nowhere near the brain. It is primal and destructive. I am a cyclone, a whirling dervish a slow rumbling earthquake. I hear a roaring sound resounding in my head, I have no idea if the screams and grunts I hear are mine, as far as I can tell the room is silent as I watch the whole thing from inside and above.

And the time in-between the contractions is so weird. It's a ride on the FTOP's which are massive and huge and fantastic and then we file our nails and wait for the next one. Finally my girlfriend is running around the room weeping and brandishing my camera yelling 'he's coming! 'he's coming! I can see his head!'

Now he's crowning.
And everything stops.

But. He just sits there.

I'd heard of the 'ring of fire' - and I believed it was an accurate name. And I won't go on here but suffice it to say it is a fine name.

F*AWKING HELL-O KITTY WHAT THE EFF DID I DO DESERVE SUCH PAIN?

This is my inner monologue, outwardly I am strangely calm. I focus on my breath. It's 11am and I've been pushing for four hours and really? People? I am just done. So I take another breath.

In the next rush okay contraction he comes out. I don't know much about it because I can't see anything, my eyes have been pushed out of working order and it's all a fuzzy Renoir wash. So after only four and 1/2 hours of pushing, it's done. He's here.

----

What I have failed to mention thus far is that there was some evidence in the water that caused some alarm that the boy might be in distress so a team of dudes have been called. They arrive in a quiet shuffle all scrubbed and ready to meet him at the table across the shiny floor.

He is quickly ripped away from me and flown across the sea into their hands. I am there alone on the island, stranded in the tangled sheets and blood. I have just turned my guts, heart and other parts inside out in an effort to bring this guy onto the planet - and now he belongs to them. Medical science. A team of gloved hands and plastic tubes that descend deep into his throat and very being and my dear husband stands by and watches helplessly. I can't see any of it, but later he described watching this tiny infant being scrubbed and handled like a car in a car wash without the water.

3 minutes pass.

There is an oppressive weight in the air, like the humidity before a thunderstorm. Alone on my island I watch the storm approach and I wonder. I am curious. I am quiet. I don't know why but I don't feel anxious, just curious.

Will he stay?

Finally a raspy cry. I think a cheer went up in the room, I can't say.

The Real Midwifes of LA County insists that he come onto my chest. I guess this is a little tip of the hat  to my original dreamy birth plan of the candle-lit water birth and the sweet bonding and the alleged fact that the tiny guy will come crawling up to find the easy breastfeeding because of course there has been no drugs or anything to inhibit breastfeeding.

But this isn't the world I live in anymore, it's an old idea and I'm not sure how to get back there. His little mouth is yawning open with a weak little cry and I'm helpless like a beached, blind manatee. My hands are heavy like flippers as I try unsuccessfully to comfort this little being who is bound and perched on my chest.

But he's gotta go. The team of faceless carwash guys want him down in the NICU.

Hubs goes with them. And now there is nothing. I'm just there on the windy beach. I'm lost in a blown-out world of white and shapes, I still can't see.

----

56 hours. I did that dance with the force of nature designed to bring human life to the world for 56 hours.


Unfortunately I felt like I fell off the stage when I couldn't 'see' the birth at home anymore. When we took to the Prius caravan and covered the entire LA basin in search of a hospital with midwives, I'd turned in my shoes. And then the force of nature had to deal with the force of medical science. And in my humble opinion, they don't get along well. But the good news is the boy was born, and he was okay.

After they all roll down the hall to the NICU, my midwife (aka RM) - turns to me and says she is glad we are here, at the hospital. And as I look at her sweet make-up-free face under the turban and see the kindness and sincerity on her face, (what I could see of it), I say I am glad we are here too. But they better not give him antibiotics...

----

Happy Birthday BHB, I'm so glad you stayed.

In a wash of memories and relief and love,



PS - The NICU story for another time. Thanks for reading this. Hubs and I joke that telling our birthstory is almost 'real time'. Hopefully it wasn't 56 hours for you...

Jealous Big Brother

He's brown. He's furry. and He's pissed.

Poor Bongo. Our 'first born' has been usurped by a writhing, cooing, crying maniac who doesn't know HALF as many tricks as he does.

Bongo: I mean, does he roll over?
Us: Uh, Not yet. But he's close!
Bongo: Can he shake? Fetch? Sneeze on command? No, he cannot. Let me tell you what people, he's a whiner, he smells like trouble and I don't like him.
Us: Dude, it's going to get better, trust us. Can you please wait to see before you manifest another terrible malady?

Because our little baby dog is rather intense, a super genius of sorts. No, he's really special. A dog sitter we hired told us so.


And he's got our attention again for the 4th time since the boy's arrival with another vet-worthy puppy problem. It's called a Corneal Ulcer and he's got in his left eye now. Six weeks ago, it was his right eye. Now I'm about to go a little oovey-groovey on you - get ready, get used to it, but my belief system is that we create or manifest physical issues to help learn a lesson or show us what needs to be healed psychologically. And this is a little obvious here - but. He doesn't want to see this baby anymore!

I found this great explanation of what I'm saying here. Basically it's pretty simple. His new life is not NEARLY as much fun as the six years that he got with us where he was the biggest priority in our lives just below breathing and well above the occasional laundry load. I mean, that dog was the apple of our eye, the screensaver of our laptops, the opening picture of our iPhones. Truly the star of the show and I've got 14,000 photos to prove it. Daily hikes, 'spensive daycare - you name it...he was living the doggie dream.

Well I don't have to tell you what happened next but I'll do it anyway because there are a few surprise twists. Let's do it in bullet form because it more officious looking:

*Continuing to reveal the oovey side of myself I will tell you that we planned a home birth
* I will also share that we did not achieve a home birth
* After 40 hours of labor at home we moved to a hospital in a calm flurry but a shitstorm nonetheless and the poor brown dog who had just witnessed one of his favorite folks on the planet suffering and throwing up endlessly - was left behind. Sure our friend was on the phone to the boyfriend to get him over there to take care little Bongo but. You know. He was totally left behind.
*Ooops, back to the list. In the excitement of 16 more hours of labor (count 'em! 56!) and the unwelcome transfer of the new guy to the NICU, we didn't realize that our dog help wasn't actually staying at the house - the boyfriend was generously going to feed/water/walk/play but not staying at night.
*Gasp! This dog has never spent a night alone and now he's alone for two nights after these traumatic events. Once we got wind of what occurred we asked he be carted over to the 'spensive boarding spot which is where he spent his final night away.

What happens next still haunts me.

When we picked him up from the doggie spa with our new bundle of magic in the car, we couldn't wait to introduce them. But our sweet dog walked out of this favorite place of his with a limp tail. As if it was broken. Once we got home and got a closer look at him, it appeared he had some kind of back hip problem. Essentially his back-end looked frozen and his walk was a bit of a Frankenstein affair. Let's admire for a moment what his tail usually looks like:

So when I saw this dragging line of fur dangling from his butt I immediately suspected foul play. I made a call.

Me: Uh, um, hi. You've done something to my dog?
Nice Lady: How do you mean?
Me: Well, his tail is broken.
Nice Lady: Well, he was perfectly happy here.
Me: Harumph, did he get in a fight?
Nice Lady: No, not at all.
Me: (approaching hysteria) Well, why is he broken?
(cue newborn screams in background)
Nice Lady: You know we love Bongo here, please let us know if there's anything we can do..
Me: Um, okay (tears flowing, tiny voice). I'll call back if it isn't better tomorrow.

Because after a traumatic birth and two nights in the NICU what I really wanted to do is come home to find that my other family member that I love almost as much as the cute husband is suffering terribly and it's our fault. Looking at that drooping tail that was an exclamation mark of how heartbending, exhausting and overwhelming the last 6 days had been, I wanted to sink into any local handy abyss.

So it lifted after about four days, the tail I mean. And we thought, whew - he's back! But then a week later he developed the cornea ulcer in his right eye. Which took about five weeks to diagnose, until we finally went to the a doggie ophthalmologist. Sound expensive? It was. But thankfully the procedure was successful and he was back in business after wearing the cone of shame for two weeks.

And this afternoon, he started squinting at us again - this time with the other eye.

To which I say:

Seriously? Can we have a little break in the action please?

Poor brown dog.