L is lovely.
I hate breastfeeding. Really, really hate it. I don't produce enough to keep L satisfied. I don't produce enough to pump. And L tends to fall asleep, so every second that he is feeding I am actively struggling to keep him awake.
His doctor says I need to start pumping now to get him used to bottles. The LC says I need to wait, since he is having issues with feeding. Last night I had a breakdown at midnight. J took L from me, told me to go to sleep, went downstairs and fixed a bottle of formula, which he fed to L. Two hours later I was up and feeding him again.
My mom says to follow my instinct (that he is not getting enough from me) and supplement.
I hate this. I'm going crazy inside my house. I can't go out, because I can't feed him him without exposing myself. I'm home alone for part of the day until next week, when J goes back to work full time.
Part of me wants to give up now. But I think about the financial waste – the pump, the breast shields, the storage bags, the cost of formula and I cringe to think about how much money we would be throwing away.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
Summary: J and I are now proud (and sleep deprived) parents. Our child, L, was born on Saturday afternoon, at 3:58pm.
The Bad: Labor. The whole thing. From the membranes breaking on Friday at 11:30 in the morning while I was at work, to the drive to the birth center, to the back-and-forth from birth center, to hospital, to birth center and finally back to the hospital over the course of 28 hours.
Highlights included witnessing the driver of an 18 wheeler do a u-turn in the middle of Stanwix street, denting the guardrail and nearly taking out a convention center support beam and several cars, vehicles driving the wrong way up Penn Avenue and two trips to the hospital, the first to assess why my blood pressure had become so unstable and to do an ultrasound, the second as a formal transfer, as my contractions never developed any rhythm due to L flipping to a posterior position (aka “back labor”) and I was dilating too slowly to remain safely at the center.
The Good: The hospital staff, from the anesthesiologist who applied the epidural and took the time to explain not only what he was doing, but how and why, the midwife and hospital nursing staff who worked together to prevent a knife-happy OB/GYN from forcing me to have a cesarean section and J, who hid his fear and anxiety until after L was born.
Surgeons were consulted on L's positioning. Nurses not assigned to the labor stopped by to offer suggestions and moral support. The neo-natal unit was called down to take L at birth to ensure that he was healthy. I can confidently say that I would not have made it without their support and care.
The Ugly: J's parents showing up while I was in labor and in no shape to see anyone, in total and complete disregard of my previously and repeatedly expressed wishes that they stay home until otherwise instructed. J's parents do not handle hospitals well. They came into the room to make themselves feel better and I found myself wasting time and energy trying to reassure his mother that I was OK. I finally quietly and politely asked them to leave the room.
My parents also showed up in defiance of my previously expressed wishes. I took their arrival slightly better, if only because both of my parents are nurses and they know how to behave in such situations. They stayed only five minutes and I did not have to ask them to leave.
That it took two people, a surgeon and the midwife over thirty minutes to stitch me back up.
That J's sister showed up with her husband and children (against the express wishes of the hospital that children under the age of 12 remain at home) in the maternity ward at 8:00pm (visiting hours end at 8:30pm), after being told by J's parents that both of us were exhausted and NOT to visit us on Saturday. Her explanation? That they were “too busy” to come visit on Sunday, Saturday was more convenient for them. J refused to allow them into the room and the family went home angry because they were not permitted to see me or hold L, and complained to J's parents about how unwelcome they felt.
For the record, this is the same sister who was offended when I stopped her from touching my stomach.
The Bad: Labor. The whole thing. From the membranes breaking on Friday at 11:30 in the morning while I was at work, to the drive to the birth center, to the back-and-forth from birth center, to hospital, to birth center and finally back to the hospital over the course of 28 hours.
Highlights included witnessing the driver of an 18 wheeler do a u-turn in the middle of Stanwix street, denting the guardrail and nearly taking out a convention center support beam and several cars, vehicles driving the wrong way up Penn Avenue and two trips to the hospital, the first to assess why my blood pressure had become so unstable and to do an ultrasound, the second as a formal transfer, as my contractions never developed any rhythm due to L flipping to a posterior position (aka “back labor”) and I was dilating too slowly to remain safely at the center.
The Good: The hospital staff, from the anesthesiologist who applied the epidural and took the time to explain not only what he was doing, but how and why, the midwife and hospital nursing staff who worked together to prevent a knife-happy OB/GYN from forcing me to have a cesarean section and J, who hid his fear and anxiety until after L was born.
Surgeons were consulted on L's positioning. Nurses not assigned to the labor stopped by to offer suggestions and moral support. The neo-natal unit was called down to take L at birth to ensure that he was healthy. I can confidently say that I would not have made it without their support and care.
The Ugly: J's parents showing up while I was in labor and in no shape to see anyone, in total and complete disregard of my previously and repeatedly expressed wishes that they stay home until otherwise instructed. J's parents do not handle hospitals well. They came into the room to make themselves feel better and I found myself wasting time and energy trying to reassure his mother that I was OK. I finally quietly and politely asked them to leave the room.
My parents also showed up in defiance of my previously expressed wishes. I took their arrival slightly better, if only because both of my parents are nurses and they know how to behave in such situations. They stayed only five minutes and I did not have to ask them to leave.
That it took two people, a surgeon and the midwife over thirty minutes to stitch me back up.
That J's sister showed up with her husband and children (against the express wishes of the hospital that children under the age of 12 remain at home) in the maternity ward at 8:00pm (visiting hours end at 8:30pm), after being told by J's parents that both of us were exhausted and NOT to visit us on Saturday. Her explanation? That they were “too busy” to come visit on Sunday, Saturday was more convenient for them. J refused to allow them into the room and the family went home angry because they were not permitted to see me or hold L, and complained to J's parents about how unwelcome they felt.
For the record, this is the same sister who was offended when I stopped her from touching my stomach.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Filed Under...
...things you should not say to a woman entering week 37 of pregnancy:
“Oh, you are too high! You are not going to drop for weeks. Its gonna be a while yet before you have that baby”.
Then giggle and start talking about how you did 10 jumping jacks on a hot summer day to make your water break, which it did the next morning, and how horrified you were because 10 jumping jacks may have ruptured the placenta.
Continue in this vein for several more minutes, bragging about how early all your children were and offering unsolicited advice while ignoring the frosty silence and stiff smile of the luckless pregnant woman forced to listen to such twaddle.
Compound that with having to listen to conversation about "how wonderful" it would be to have an infant at Wigilia this year, as if my sore, sleep deprived, learning-how-to-breastfeed ass will want to do nothing more than feed the infant, pack myself into a car, drive an hour and subject myself to 30+ people in a small room.
“Oh, you are too high! You are not going to drop for weeks. Its gonna be a while yet before you have that baby”.
Then giggle and start talking about how you did 10 jumping jacks on a hot summer day to make your water break, which it did the next morning, and how horrified you were because 10 jumping jacks may have ruptured the placenta.
Continue in this vein for several more minutes, bragging about how early all your children were and offering unsolicited advice while ignoring the frosty silence and stiff smile of the luckless pregnant woman forced to listen to such twaddle.
Compound that with having to listen to conversation about "how wonderful" it would be to have an infant at Wigilia this year, as if my sore, sleep deprived, learning-how-to-breastfeed ass will want to do nothing more than feed the infant, pack myself into a car, drive an hour and subject myself to 30+ people in a small room.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Programming Note
To hapless spouses of first time pregnant women everywhere:
It does not behoove you to complain about giving up four Saturdays over a forty week period to attend some childbirthing and don't kill the baby classes. Especially when pregnant spouse has actively encouraged you to go out with mutual friends, continue playing the sports that you love, pushed you to get exercise and spend time with your parents and siblings and essentially done everything within her limited power to make sure that you continue to maintain some sense of normality during a highly abnormal period of time. You sacrificed four Saturdays. Your spouse, on the other hand, has sacrified her physical being and emotional sanity. She wins. Stop being a jerk.
It does not behoove you to complain about giving up four Saturdays over a forty week period to attend some childbirthing and don't kill the baby classes. Especially when pregnant spouse has actively encouraged you to go out with mutual friends, continue playing the sports that you love, pushed you to get exercise and spend time with your parents and siblings and essentially done everything within her limited power to make sure that you continue to maintain some sense of normality during a highly abnormal period of time. You sacrificed four Saturdays. Your spouse, on the other hand, has sacrified her physical being and emotional sanity. She wins. Stop being a jerk.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Too Many Days
Less than four weeks. I'm uncomfortable, cranky and offering myself up as a willing guinea pig for any person willing to cast any sort of voodoo spell that will shorten the end of the alien's gestation.
I'm not willing to put up with too anything from anyone. After almost 36 weeks of restraint, my mother decided to pull out the clichés during a post-Thanksgiving dinner conversation and was promptly smacked down. In the defensive, injured air put on by any individual who knows better, but goes ahead and does it anyway, she protested that she had exercised restraint over the past 35 plus weeks. I pointed out to her that if she had been successfully able to hold her tongue for over 35 weeks, four more should have been easy.
Last week, for the first time in my life, I yelled at a healthcare provider. Concerned that I might be leaking amniotic fluid, I called the midwives, who squeezed me in for an appointment for an internal exam and to take a specimen. The nurse who examined me neglected to mention that because of the potential risk of infection, she would be unable to use any lubrication or that I might be “extra sensitive” until after I started yelling at her while on the table.
She was apologetic about the incident. Which soothed my feelings, but not my poor parts, which ached for the rest of the week. The leakage turned out to be a false alarm,
I feel subtle changes. I'm getting sweaty. The migraines, which never went away completely, have increased to their pre-pregnancy level of intensity and duration. Tylenol is completely ineffective as is the only other cure available to me right now – a solid night of sleep. And the nausea of the first 20 weeks has returned, in a slightly more manageable form.
The first of now weekly checkups came with a list of instructions. When to call the midwives – if I have another full blown migraine(1) or my water breaks. What to do if I start early labor near bedtime – call the midwife and take a Benadryl(2) to get some sleep.
My crankiness has increased since I started this post, three days ago. I feel incredibly isolated, angry and lonely right now and acting in ways that are highly counterproductive, such as isolating myself even further so I don't act out against the undeserving, including J. Who feels the tension and anger anyway and has responded by inviting a bunch of our friends over to our home on Saturday to watch the Penguins/Blackhawks game. It is the correct thing to do – I'm too uncomfortable to go out for extended periods of time at this point and I need to socialize with other people.
Too many days left.
(1) It is interesting to observe what healthcare professionals will freak out about. I've had several migraines over the course of this pregnancy, just of a lower level of pain and shorter duration, mild enough that it never occurred to me to mention them. Especially since not every woman experiences a cessation in migraine activity during pregnancy. I mentioned the headache because I was curious if it acted as a precursor to labor, a sign that my hormone levels were returning to a non-pregnant state. From the midwife's point of view, it was an indicator of something more serious.
(2) I had no idea how many off label uses there were for Benadryl until I got sick in the past month.
I'm not willing to put up with too anything from anyone. After almost 36 weeks of restraint, my mother decided to pull out the clichés during a post-Thanksgiving dinner conversation and was promptly smacked down. In the defensive, injured air put on by any individual who knows better, but goes ahead and does it anyway, she protested that she had exercised restraint over the past 35 plus weeks. I pointed out to her that if she had been successfully able to hold her tongue for over 35 weeks, four more should have been easy.
Last week, for the first time in my life, I yelled at a healthcare provider. Concerned that I might be leaking amniotic fluid, I called the midwives, who squeezed me in for an appointment for an internal exam and to take a specimen. The nurse who examined me neglected to mention that because of the potential risk of infection, she would be unable to use any lubrication or that I might be “extra sensitive” until after I started yelling at her while on the table.
She was apologetic about the incident. Which soothed my feelings, but not my poor parts, which ached for the rest of the week. The leakage turned out to be a false alarm,
I feel subtle changes. I'm getting sweaty. The migraines, which never went away completely, have increased to their pre-pregnancy level of intensity and duration. Tylenol is completely ineffective as is the only other cure available to me right now – a solid night of sleep. And the nausea of the first 20 weeks has returned, in a slightly more manageable form.
The first of now weekly checkups came with a list of instructions. When to call the midwives – if I have another full blown migraine(1) or my water breaks. What to do if I start early labor near bedtime – call the midwife and take a Benadryl(2) to get some sleep.
My crankiness has increased since I started this post, three days ago. I feel incredibly isolated, angry and lonely right now and acting in ways that are highly counterproductive, such as isolating myself even further so I don't act out against the undeserving, including J. Who feels the tension and anger anyway and has responded by inviting a bunch of our friends over to our home on Saturday to watch the Penguins/Blackhawks game. It is the correct thing to do – I'm too uncomfortable to go out for extended periods of time at this point and I need to socialize with other people.
Too many days left.
(1) It is interesting to observe what healthcare professionals will freak out about. I've had several migraines over the course of this pregnancy, just of a lower level of pain and shorter duration, mild enough that it never occurred to me to mention them. Especially since not every woman experiences a cessation in migraine activity during pregnancy. I mentioned the headache because I was curious if it acted as a precursor to labor, a sign that my hormone levels were returning to a non-pregnant state. From the midwife's point of view, it was an indicator of something more serious.
(2) I had no idea how many off label uses there were for Benadryl until I got sick in the past month.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Five Weeks
The older I become the more that I am convinced of the studies that suggest that some illness is an immune system stress response. Throw up on a bus, wake up two days later with a head cold and no access to any of the OTC medications I regularly use to ease the symptoms at night.
Take diphenhydramine (benadryl) instead the midwives suggest, as the primary side effect (drowsiness) should be enough to knock me out so I can sleep. And if that does not work, call the center and they will write a prescription for a sleep aid. I can't take an OTC decongestant, but I can take an Ambian?
The diphenhydramine works. I take a half dose and nearly lose the pill, so tiny and clear that it falls from the blister pack and blends in with the wood of the dresser. While I wait for it to take effect J wipes down the walls and moves the furniture around, trying to make the room more comfortable. In half an hour I am fighting to stay awake and my dreams go from color to black and white and are disappointedly mundane.
I elect to skip a second dose in favor of elevating my head with a wedge pillow and running the vaporizer from the moment I get home to when I wake up in the morning. The felines like the new arrangement, little grey Lucy is especially fond of the wedge as it leaves her enough room to sleep above my head, paws occasionally kneading at my head. The other two have started sleeping at my feet, one on each side and hanging out on the bed and chair during the day. Lucy elects to split her daytime sleeping hours between the car seat and the crib.
Between three cats, a husband and my enlarged size, there is little room to turn over at night.
The head cold lingers, all week. Lingers through the decontamination of the scarf and bag, through dragging myself up and out of bed every morning, head and belly aching. I drop things. Thermometer, keys, clothes. A mint M&M rolls underneath the bookcase. I shrug my shoulders and leave it there.
A (male) friend tries to improve my spirits over my enlarging size by sending me stories and photographs of supermodels currently in the stages of late pregnancy and early postpartum period (1). I find Gisele Bundchen beautiful but the photographs of her irritating (2) and Heidi Klum awe-inspiring, with her 45 pound pregnancy weight gain and the fact that she looks, four weeks after birth, like a woman who recently had a baby, even after dropped 25 pounds.
It lingers through the weekend, while I try put together a white chili to freeze for later. I can not locate the can opener. I have to call J, away for the weekend helping my brother and sister-in-law move, and ask him where it is. It broke, he says. Some plastic part fell off of it. He threw it into the recycling bin. I fish it out. It works just fine.
It lingers through today, as I drag myself out of bed to face another day, quietly reminding myself that I am slowly inching towards the end of this journey. While my head is marginally clearer, I feel slightly nauseated from eating too much yesterday and realize that I will have to go back to the hobbit-esque eating habits of eight months ago.
(1)Yes, my friend has a weird sense of humor. His point is that even supermodels achieve orca-like proportions while pregnant, so fretting about my size is really stupid in light of the fact that I'm actually on target for “acceptable” gain based on my height, starting weight and BMI.
(2) Not because she is six inches taller, 30+ pounds lighter and seven years younger than myself, thus able to carry the excess weight in an attractive manner, but because she is married to Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback. I'm more of a Steelers fan than I thought. Most Steelers fans can not stand anything to do with the New England Patriots, primarily because the insistence of most national sports media on referring to them as “America's Team” when there exists an enormous, world-wide Steelers diaspora that puts the Patriots fans to shame and routinely goes unacknowledged.
Take diphenhydramine (benadryl) instead the midwives suggest, as the primary side effect (drowsiness) should be enough to knock me out so I can sleep. And if that does not work, call the center and they will write a prescription for a sleep aid. I can't take an OTC decongestant, but I can take an Ambian?
The diphenhydramine works. I take a half dose and nearly lose the pill, so tiny and clear that it falls from the blister pack and blends in with the wood of the dresser. While I wait for it to take effect J wipes down the walls and moves the furniture around, trying to make the room more comfortable. In half an hour I am fighting to stay awake and my dreams go from color to black and white and are disappointedly mundane.
I elect to skip a second dose in favor of elevating my head with a wedge pillow and running the vaporizer from the moment I get home to when I wake up in the morning. The felines like the new arrangement, little grey Lucy is especially fond of the wedge as it leaves her enough room to sleep above my head, paws occasionally kneading at my head. The other two have started sleeping at my feet, one on each side and hanging out on the bed and chair during the day. Lucy elects to split her daytime sleeping hours between the car seat and the crib.
Between three cats, a husband and my enlarged size, there is little room to turn over at night.
The head cold lingers, all week. Lingers through the decontamination of the scarf and bag, through dragging myself up and out of bed every morning, head and belly aching. I drop things. Thermometer, keys, clothes. A mint M&M rolls underneath the bookcase. I shrug my shoulders and leave it there.
A (male) friend tries to improve my spirits over my enlarging size by sending me stories and photographs of supermodels currently in the stages of late pregnancy and early postpartum period (1). I find Gisele Bundchen beautiful but the photographs of her irritating (2) and Heidi Klum awe-inspiring, with her 45 pound pregnancy weight gain and the fact that she looks, four weeks after birth, like a woman who recently had a baby, even after dropped 25 pounds.
It lingers through the weekend, while I try put together a white chili to freeze for later. I can not locate the can opener. I have to call J, away for the weekend helping my brother and sister-in-law move, and ask him where it is. It broke, he says. Some plastic part fell off of it. He threw it into the recycling bin. I fish it out. It works just fine.
It lingers through today, as I drag myself out of bed to face another day, quietly reminding myself that I am slowly inching towards the end of this journey. While my head is marginally clearer, I feel slightly nauseated from eating too much yesterday and realize that I will have to go back to the hobbit-esque eating habits of eight months ago.
(1)Yes, my friend has a weird sense of humor. His point is that even supermodels achieve orca-like proportions while pregnant, so fretting about my size is really stupid in light of the fact that I'm actually on target for “acceptable” gain based on my height, starting weight and BMI.
(2) Not because she is six inches taller, 30+ pounds lighter and seven years younger than myself, thus able to carry the excess weight in an attractive manner, but because she is married to Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback. I'm more of a Steelers fan than I thought. Most Steelers fans can not stand anything to do with the New England Patriots, primarily because the insistence of most national sports media on referring to them as “America's Team” when there exists an enormous, world-wide Steelers diaspora that puts the Patriots fans to shame and routinely goes unacknowledged.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Bent
Nothing speaks “humiliation” like throwing up up on one's shirt, coat, bag and pants while on a moving bus. Nothing adds insult to such injury like having to use the brand new scarf, a shower gift sent all the way from a friend in Germany, to clean oneself up.
And nothing makes a person question the general humanity of the population like listening to the witnesses of my unfortunate display of stomach histrionics make fun of me, without a single soul taking two seconds to ask if I was OK.
It is not as if I feel like I'm entitled to any sympathy. I just can't help but wonder what is wrong with the world that half a busload of grown adults (not teenagers, not college students) can watch a woman throw up all over herself, then do her damnedest to clean herself and her surroundings up while crying so hard she can not breathe and not only not feel the slightest bit of pity but find it entertaining to audibly and clearly make fun of her.
Suffice to say, I checked in with my boss and went home for the day. I'm not proud that I completely lost my composure acted the classic stereotype of a woman in late pregnancy. But I could not face dealing with the world yesterday after what happened on the bus.
People really, really suck sometimes.
And nothing makes a person question the general humanity of the population like listening to the witnesses of my unfortunate display of stomach histrionics make fun of me, without a single soul taking two seconds to ask if I was OK.
It is not as if I feel like I'm entitled to any sympathy. I just can't help but wonder what is wrong with the world that half a busload of grown adults (not teenagers, not college students) can watch a woman throw up all over herself, then do her damnedest to clean herself and her surroundings up while crying so hard she can not breathe and not only not feel the slightest bit of pity but find it entertaining to audibly and clearly make fun of her.
Suffice to say, I checked in with my boss and went home for the day. I'm not proud that I completely lost my composure acted the classic stereotype of a woman in late pregnancy. But I could not face dealing with the world yesterday after what happened on the bus.
People really, really suck sometimes.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Salvo II in the Parenting Wars – the Breastfeeding Edition
I was in a foul mood this morning and lying quietly in bed listening to the Lucy cat purring softly did very little to alleviate it. Cat therapy can only go so far in combating the general wankery of the population.
Yesterday was my first of two breastfeeding classes. I suspected that I was in for a long three hours when I pulled up behind the instructor's (lactation activist/consultant) caravan and saw the “Babies are Born to be Breastfed!” bumper sticker, which provoked me to say “Oh god, no!” out loud, to myself.
It got a little bit worse, as I was one of only two women out of the five who did not have her partner with her. Three of the women knew each other from previous classes, and after an initial exchange of hellos proceeded to freeze me out of their conversation while throwing pitying glances my way because J did not attend the class with me.(1) The sensation that I had regressed to high school was strong and unpleasant.
The instructor definitely tilted toward the crunchy-granola side of the breastfeeding conundrum. Her general perspective was that all difficulties with breastfeeding could be solved by a correct latch and a close observation of your child's cue, with a few potshots at medicated labor thrown in just to “encourage” the class to stay on the straight and narrow path of the unmedicated.
I prefer realism to relentless optimism. Telling me to “chill”, that I will have an awful start breastfeeding if I end up having a medicate labor, that lanolin will not be necessary because my body will produce enough natural nipple protection and if all else fails, La Leche League is an excellent source of information is NOT reassuring.
Neither is listening to the partner of one woman, when prompted to introduce himself and suggest a breastfeeding myth, launched into a several minute rant against a recent essay, discussing the ways in which certain segments of the population are using breastfeeding as a way of bludgeoning and guilting working women into conforming to a specific ideal and guilting them into leaving the public sphere. Aside from the fact that he missed the point of the essay, his partner admitted later on in the afternoon that she would not be working after their child is born.
I was happy when the class ended half an hour early.
(1)J and I split duties Saturday – I went to the class and he went to a birthday party.
Yesterday was my first of two breastfeeding classes. I suspected that I was in for a long three hours when I pulled up behind the instructor's (lactation activist/consultant) caravan and saw the “Babies are Born to be Breastfed!” bumper sticker, which provoked me to say “Oh god, no!” out loud, to myself.
It got a little bit worse, as I was one of only two women out of the five who did not have her partner with her. Three of the women knew each other from previous classes, and after an initial exchange of hellos proceeded to freeze me out of their conversation while throwing pitying glances my way because J did not attend the class with me.(1) The sensation that I had regressed to high school was strong and unpleasant.
The instructor definitely tilted toward the crunchy-granola side of the breastfeeding conundrum. Her general perspective was that all difficulties with breastfeeding could be solved by a correct latch and a close observation of your child's cue, with a few potshots at medicated labor thrown in just to “encourage” the class to stay on the straight and narrow path of the unmedicated.
I prefer realism to relentless optimism. Telling me to “chill”, that I will have an awful start breastfeeding if I end up having a medicate labor, that lanolin will not be necessary because my body will produce enough natural nipple protection and if all else fails, La Leche League is an excellent source of information is NOT reassuring.
Neither is listening to the partner of one woman, when prompted to introduce himself and suggest a breastfeeding myth, launched into a several minute rant against a recent essay, discussing the ways in which certain segments of the population are using breastfeeding as a way of bludgeoning and guilting working women into conforming to a specific ideal and guilting them into leaving the public sphere. Aside from the fact that he missed the point of the essay, his partner admitted later on in the afternoon that she would not be working after their child is born.
I was happy when the class ended half an hour early.
(1)J and I split duties Saturday – I went to the class and he went to a birthday party.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Postmortem of a Baby Shower
First, a digression in the form of this recent verbal exchange:
J: Did you put the bananas in the freezer?
Me: Uh, No.
J: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, I'm sure. I took a banana last night, that is the last time I touched them.
J: Because I don't remember putting them in the freezer.
Me: You took one this morning. It had to be you, you are the last person to touch them.
J: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
J: I was really out of it this morning.
Saturday could have been worse. Much worse. I could have been forced to play “Guess How Fat the Pregnant Guest-of-Honor Is”. Instead I had to listen to 10,000 variations on how our life will change and 10,001 variations on how I'll change my mind about being pregnant once the first one is born.
I had to physically block J's sister from touching my stomach. She was offended, possibly because since I am family, she shouldn't have to ask permission. It is interesting that the biggest offenders in the pat-the-pregnant-belly game have been members of J's family. I have not had this problem with my family members, total strangers or even J (who checks first, because sometimes the muscles are so sore that I could cry).
As I am of the persuasion who believes that pregnant women and infant children are not public property, even to family members, I was indifferent to her outrage. And I will continue to practice that indifference after the alien comes and the full on assault of complaints about hand washing and limited traveling begin.
Other than that incident, the shower went smoothly. I managed to maintain a straight face through lunch, while listening to a friend of J's family talk about how hard she had prayed for her daughter to have a child (uh, maybe her daughter did not want to be pregnant?) and how she can't understand why anyone could be an atheist after experiencing the miracle of conception, pregnancy and childbirth. My friend B, who was able to come and sat next to me during the meal, got a great deal of enjoyment out of watching me maintain that straight face and was able to bear witness to the the craziness of J's family.
And my friend B received, as a prize for baby bingo, a “Keep the Christ in Christmas” magnet, which I found hilarious, as B is an agnostic who appreciates the irony in spreading an anti-consumerist message by selling something.
Listening to my MIL attempt to organize baby bingo into special games was also entertaining and led me to make the crack "You can't tell this is a room of Catholics" to my sister-in-law.
The gifts were lovely and not too Christmas themed. The atrocity of the day belongs to a soft pink Winnie-the-Pooh layette set, given by an individual who must really, really want an alien of the female persuasion.
Sunday was spent sorting and storing all the paraphernalia, writing 38 thank you notes and washing, folding and putting away clothes. J spend the morning hanging pictures and the afternoon with his family, who asked him when we were planning on having another child.
Oy. The first (and only) one has not even arrived and they are already salivating over the possibility of a second. I can not help but think that they intentionally waited for a time when I was not present to ask this question, as my response would have been extremely snarky.
J: Did you put the bananas in the freezer?
Me: Uh, No.
J: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, I'm sure. I took a banana last night, that is the last time I touched them.
J: Because I don't remember putting them in the freezer.
Me: You took one this morning. It had to be you, you are the last person to touch them.
J: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
J: I was really out of it this morning.
Saturday could have been worse. Much worse. I could have been forced to play “Guess How Fat the Pregnant Guest-of-Honor Is”. Instead I had to listen to 10,000 variations on how our life will change and 10,001 variations on how I'll change my mind about being pregnant once the first one is born.
I had to physically block J's sister from touching my stomach. She was offended, possibly because since I am family, she shouldn't have to ask permission. It is interesting that the biggest offenders in the pat-the-pregnant-belly game have been members of J's family. I have not had this problem with my family members, total strangers or even J (who checks first, because sometimes the muscles are so sore that I could cry).
As I am of the persuasion who believes that pregnant women and infant children are not public property, even to family members, I was indifferent to her outrage. And I will continue to practice that indifference after the alien comes and the full on assault of complaints about hand washing and limited traveling begin.
Other than that incident, the shower went smoothly. I managed to maintain a straight face through lunch, while listening to a friend of J's family talk about how hard she had prayed for her daughter to have a child (uh, maybe her daughter did not want to be pregnant?) and how she can't understand why anyone could be an atheist after experiencing the miracle of conception, pregnancy and childbirth. My friend B, who was able to come and sat next to me during the meal, got a great deal of enjoyment out of watching me maintain that straight face and was able to bear witness to the the craziness of J's family.
And my friend B received, as a prize for baby bingo, a “Keep the Christ in Christmas” magnet, which I found hilarious, as B is an agnostic who appreciates the irony in spreading an anti-consumerist message by selling something.
Listening to my MIL attempt to organize baby bingo into special games was also entertaining and led me to make the crack "You can't tell this is a room of Catholics" to my sister-in-law.
The gifts were lovely and not too Christmas themed. The atrocity of the day belongs to a soft pink Winnie-the-Pooh layette set, given by an individual who must really, really want an alien of the female persuasion.
Sunday was spent sorting and storing all the paraphernalia, writing 38 thank you notes and washing, folding and putting away clothes. J spend the morning hanging pictures and the afternoon with his family, who asked him when we were planning on having another child.
Oy. The first (and only) one has not even arrived and they are already salivating over the possibility of a second. I can not help but think that they intentionally waited for a time when I was not present to ask this question, as my response would have been extremely snarky.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Uncomfortable
My back hurts. More precisely, a muscle underneath my right shoulder blade has a large, stubborn knot that refuses to release and aches, the pain following of the line of my rib cage to the front of my body. I spent a chunk of my rapidly dwindling funds (when you get paid once a month, funds tend to dwindle near the end) for a massage. Although the massage was wonderful and allowed for the first pain free night of sleep I have had in approximately four months, the knot stubbornly remains, an unwelcome distraction from work, sleep and plain, old fashioned sitting around. J has tried to work it out over the past week, going so far as to pick up a mini massager from Brookstone. The massager is wonderful, even working out the knots leaves me close to tears, but I'm looking at the pain as an opportunity to practice my breathing and visualization techniques. I'm tempted to bring it into work and hand it to one of my coworkers when the pain gets bad.
The most irritating element of this particular knot is the fact that is not caused just by my current gestating state. It is stress, caused by my FIL's recent channeling the behavior and mentality of a five year old encased in a 60+ year old body.
I would like to say that I'm not seething over the incident any longer, but that would be a lie. I'm not interested in turning the other cheek, pretending that it never happened or just letting it go. I've never wanted to kick anyone's ass so badly in my life, which is saying something as I repress the desire to kick the behind-quarters of individuals known and unknown on routine basis. The temptation to go completely nuclear on not only J's father, but his entire family, is overwhelming.
My first test in maintaining some sort of reasonable attitude is coming on Saturday, the day of the baby shower. I'm dreading this, as I will be roundly outnumbered by J's family/friends and the contingent belonging to my mother. Out of the people I know personally, friend A lives overseas and was never going to be able to attend, B is attending a work related convention, C was forced to bow out earlier this week to play trophy wife (1) on a last minute work-disguised-as-social-function for her husband's boss and friend D has to supervise the tear-down and clean up of a school-related function and wants to take her child trick or treating in the afternoon. Upon learning about the last cancellation I had a mini-meltdown and have spent most of today trying to control my tears.
Rationally speaking, I know that this is an incredibly stupid thing to cry over, that the majority of the my friends are unable to attend my baby shower. I have no illusions that my decision to have a kid automatically puts me at the center of everyone else's universe. Most of my friends are friends because we share similar personality traits – such as a deep and abiding aversion to baby showers. That friend C would rather attend a baby shower then play trophy wife indicates the true awfulness of her upcoming afternoon. And to add a level of absurdity to my tears, friend D and I have a very cordial, but not close relationship, which would not exist if I her husband and I had not known each other from a very young age.
As the alien's due date grows closer, the conversations between J and myself on how to handle visitors after the alien's birth grow more contentious. No matter how many times and ways I attempt to communicate to J that I am not going to be up to handling twelve+ emotionally demanding and manipulative people descending on our small house at the same time, he does not understand and does not seem interested in trying. Repeated attempts to discuss the issue, links to metafilter threads and articles on the topic of handling visitors after bringing a new baby home, detailed explanations of the biological processes that occur in a woman's body after delivery and suggestions that he talk to coworkers and acquaintances who have recently had children all seem to have fallen on deaf ears. As far as J is concerned, his family's method of descending like a plague of locusts upon the hospital room of mother and child an hour after birth is perfectly acceptable. (2)
J feels he needs the help and support during the first few weeks, and wants that help and support to come in the form of his parents and family. I want and need to know that the needs of myself and our child overrule the whims of his family (and my own), even if it means that some family members end up with hurt feelings.
They already disapprove of some of my decisions. They don't understand why we are not coming to celebrate Christmas. They don't understand why I'm seeing midwives instead of an OB. They don't understand why I want to use a birthing center instead of a hospital. They don't understand why I would want the minimum number of interventions during labor. They don't like that I have said they should stay home while I'm in labor and that we will tell them when it is OK to visit. They don't like that they will have to drive 40 miles to visit us.
They will not like that they will not be permitted to visit without an explicit invitation. They will not like that they will be permitted only to stay a finite amount of time and will be expected (and asked) to leave if they exceed the time set. They will not like that they will not be permitted to hold the alien until hands are washed. And they will hate fact that I do not intend to go anywhere but the doctor's office until at least six weeks after the alien's arrival.
I. Don't. Care. that they will be uncomfortable.
(1) Playing trophy wife (or husband) is shorthand for any function in which the “trophy” is required to dress up and behave in a pleasant, vacuous manner to impress the boss and/or coworkers of the spouse.
(2) J's originally proposed solution to handling visitors was to suggest that I recuperate at his parents home for a couple of weeks, because their home is larger and it would be “more convenient for visitors”.
The most irritating element of this particular knot is the fact that is not caused just by my current gestating state. It is stress, caused by my FIL's recent channeling the behavior and mentality of a five year old encased in a 60+ year old body.
I would like to say that I'm not seething over the incident any longer, but that would be a lie. I'm not interested in turning the other cheek, pretending that it never happened or just letting it go. I've never wanted to kick anyone's ass so badly in my life, which is saying something as I repress the desire to kick the behind-quarters of individuals known and unknown on routine basis. The temptation to go completely nuclear on not only J's father, but his entire family, is overwhelming.
My first test in maintaining some sort of reasonable attitude is coming on Saturday, the day of the baby shower. I'm dreading this, as I will be roundly outnumbered by J's family/friends and the contingent belonging to my mother. Out of the people I know personally, friend A lives overseas and was never going to be able to attend, B is attending a work related convention, C was forced to bow out earlier this week to play trophy wife (1) on a last minute work-disguised-as-social-function for her husband's boss and friend D has to supervise the tear-down and clean up of a school-related function and wants to take her child trick or treating in the afternoon. Upon learning about the last cancellation I had a mini-meltdown and have spent most of today trying to control my tears.
Rationally speaking, I know that this is an incredibly stupid thing to cry over, that the majority of the my friends are unable to attend my baby shower. I have no illusions that my decision to have a kid automatically puts me at the center of everyone else's universe. Most of my friends are friends because we share similar personality traits – such as a deep and abiding aversion to baby showers. That friend C would rather attend a baby shower then play trophy wife indicates the true awfulness of her upcoming afternoon. And to add a level of absurdity to my tears, friend D and I have a very cordial, but not close relationship, which would not exist if I her husband and I had not known each other from a very young age.
As the alien's due date grows closer, the conversations between J and myself on how to handle visitors after the alien's birth grow more contentious. No matter how many times and ways I attempt to communicate to J that I am not going to be up to handling twelve+ emotionally demanding and manipulative people descending on our small house at the same time, he does not understand and does not seem interested in trying. Repeated attempts to discuss the issue, links to metafilter threads and articles on the topic of handling visitors after bringing a new baby home, detailed explanations of the biological processes that occur in a woman's body after delivery and suggestions that he talk to coworkers and acquaintances who have recently had children all seem to have fallen on deaf ears. As far as J is concerned, his family's method of descending like a plague of locusts upon the hospital room of mother and child an hour after birth is perfectly acceptable. (2)
J feels he needs the help and support during the first few weeks, and wants that help and support to come in the form of his parents and family. I want and need to know that the needs of myself and our child overrule the whims of his family (and my own), even if it means that some family members end up with hurt feelings.
They already disapprove of some of my decisions. They don't understand why we are not coming to celebrate Christmas. They don't understand why I'm seeing midwives instead of an OB. They don't understand why I want to use a birthing center instead of a hospital. They don't understand why I would want the minimum number of interventions during labor. They don't like that I have said they should stay home while I'm in labor and that we will tell them when it is OK to visit. They don't like that they will have to drive 40 miles to visit us.
They will not like that they will not be permitted to visit without an explicit invitation. They will not like that they will be permitted only to stay a finite amount of time and will be expected (and asked) to leave if they exceed the time set. They will not like that they will not be permitted to hold the alien until hands are washed. And they will hate fact that I do not intend to go anywhere but the doctor's office until at least six weeks after the alien's arrival.
I. Don't. Care. that they will be uncomfortable.
(1) Playing trophy wife (or husband) is shorthand for any function in which the “trophy” is required to dress up and behave in a pleasant, vacuous manner to impress the boss and/or coworkers of the spouse.
(2) J's originally proposed solution to handling visitors was to suggest that I recuperate at his parents home for a couple of weeks, because their home is larger and it would be “more convenient for visitors”.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Roughness
Last night was rough, as a combination of back pain and restrained fury kept me from sleeping properly. I suspect the two elements that combined to keep me awake for most of the night and command that I rise a the obscene hour of 6:00 am on a Sunday morning are linked. Without the fury, I suspect the pain would be less unpleasant.
My in-laws came for brunch yesterday. My MIL bought some baby clothes from the St. Vincent DePaul thrift store and we spent a few minutes admiring the different items and showing off the crib before taking them to The Original Pancake House to eat. The restaurant was an easy decision, based on our one prior visit to the establishment (in spite of the waitress accidentally dropping my strawberry belgium waffle at my feet, shattering the plate and leaving a dot of whipped cream my sandals) and the sight of vehicles overflowing the lot every time we drove past.
The visit seemed to go smoothly. There was the inevitable fight over the check, but we are used to that. There was equally inevitable lecture over tithing to “the church”, something neither J nor myself are willing to do, as we believe that there non profit organizations out there with far better uses for our money.
Both of J's parents are involved in their diocese's current capital campaign. The amount of money my in-laws are donating over the next five years to the campaign is staggering (it would easily cover one year's worth of tuition, room and board at any state university) and is less than officials wanted J's parents to give. After dropping that small detail into the conversation, J's father told us a story of a recent phone conversation with a parishioner, which took place while the parishioner was going through a fast-food drive through. He voiced disapproval that the woman could afford a fast food meal but was not willing to give more than $50.00 a year to the campaign. The ridges in my tongue grew deeper.
There was a second argument back at the house because my FIL wanted to break into a space that “sounded” hollow in the basement foundation, over my objections. Too tired to continue listen to my FIL browbeat me over the fact that I had little desire to clean up a potential train wreck I finally agreed to allow J to cut into the section a little bit, just to establish whether it was hollow or not. It was not.
During the course visit, my MIL asked us what big items we needed for the alien. I explained that my mother was purchasing the stroller (a jogger style stroller, selected after some careful research which included stopping random strangers I saw pushing the candidate in the street and asking them what they liked about it) but that we still needed a car seat, bottles, clothing, a diaper bag and all sorts of miscellaneous things. They offered to purchase the car seat. A gracious and generous offer. I showed her the registry list so she could get an idea at the type of car seat we wanted.
The trouble began after my in-laws had left, as I was crashing on the couch, idly watching college football and trying to complete a novel and J was working on a side project with a friend. Our house phone rang.
The caller was my MIL, they were at Target looking at a jogger travel system and my FIL was debating whether to purchase the system, in spite of my previous, explicit explanation that my mother was purchasing the stroller. I calmly explained that the brand they were looking at was not the same stroller my mother was purchasing and thanked her for the call. Then I hung up the phone and announced to J “if they go ahead and do this, I will kill your father”.
To understand why this would cause back pain and a sleepless night, you must understand that my FIL has a very bad habit of undercutting other people's plans, charging full speed ahead and creating massive chaos without any consideration for anyone else's feelings. As example 1, I offer up the incident recounted four paragraphs up.
As example 2, I offer up an incident from several years ago, when my FIL went behind my back while I was out of the country and offered to purchase a new ragtop for J's convertible as a birthday gift, after I told his parents that I was saving up my money to surprise J with the top as a Christmas gift. J, unaware of the surprise I had been planning, accepted the gift. To say that I was infuriated would be an understatement. To me, the ragtop was not just a practical gift. As J and I had spent many happy hours in that car on various road trips, the presentation of the new top had a sentimental significance for me and I was proud of the fact that I could earn enough money to give him a gift I could not afford when we first started dating. While I never voiced to my FIL the affect this actions had on me, I could not hide my hurt feelings from J. And the gift was poisoned from that day until the day that J traded in the car.
However, those actions only affected me. This recent development gives my FIL an opportunity to act like super grandfather at the expense of my mother. I'm especially concerned that if they purchase this system, they will present it at the shower, which my mother is attending, leaving me to deal with the fallout of my mother's hurt feelings once the festivities are over.
My in-laws came for brunch yesterday. My MIL bought some baby clothes from the St. Vincent DePaul thrift store and we spent a few minutes admiring the different items and showing off the crib before taking them to The Original Pancake House to eat. The restaurant was an easy decision, based on our one prior visit to the establishment (in spite of the waitress accidentally dropping my strawberry belgium waffle at my feet, shattering the plate and leaving a dot of whipped cream my sandals) and the sight of vehicles overflowing the lot every time we drove past.
The visit seemed to go smoothly. There was the inevitable fight over the check, but we are used to that. There was equally inevitable lecture over tithing to “the church”, something neither J nor myself are willing to do, as we believe that there non profit organizations out there with far better uses for our money.
Both of J's parents are involved in their diocese's current capital campaign. The amount of money my in-laws are donating over the next five years to the campaign is staggering (it would easily cover one year's worth of tuition, room and board at any state university) and is less than officials wanted J's parents to give. After dropping that small detail into the conversation, J's father told us a story of a recent phone conversation with a parishioner, which took place while the parishioner was going through a fast-food drive through. He voiced disapproval that the woman could afford a fast food meal but was not willing to give more than $50.00 a year to the campaign. The ridges in my tongue grew deeper.
There was a second argument back at the house because my FIL wanted to break into a space that “sounded” hollow in the basement foundation, over my objections. Too tired to continue listen to my FIL browbeat me over the fact that I had little desire to clean up a potential train wreck I finally agreed to allow J to cut into the section a little bit, just to establish whether it was hollow or not. It was not.
During the course visit, my MIL asked us what big items we needed for the alien. I explained that my mother was purchasing the stroller (a jogger style stroller, selected after some careful research which included stopping random strangers I saw pushing the candidate in the street and asking them what they liked about it) but that we still needed a car seat, bottles, clothing, a diaper bag and all sorts of miscellaneous things. They offered to purchase the car seat. A gracious and generous offer. I showed her the registry list so she could get an idea at the type of car seat we wanted.
The trouble began after my in-laws had left, as I was crashing on the couch, idly watching college football and trying to complete a novel and J was working on a side project with a friend. Our house phone rang.
The caller was my MIL, they were at Target looking at a jogger travel system and my FIL was debating whether to purchase the system, in spite of my previous, explicit explanation that my mother was purchasing the stroller. I calmly explained that the brand they were looking at was not the same stroller my mother was purchasing and thanked her for the call. Then I hung up the phone and announced to J “if they go ahead and do this, I will kill your father”.
To understand why this would cause back pain and a sleepless night, you must understand that my FIL has a very bad habit of undercutting other people's plans, charging full speed ahead and creating massive chaos without any consideration for anyone else's feelings. As example 1, I offer up the incident recounted four paragraphs up.
As example 2, I offer up an incident from several years ago, when my FIL went behind my back while I was out of the country and offered to purchase a new ragtop for J's convertible as a birthday gift, after I told his parents that I was saving up my money to surprise J with the top as a Christmas gift. J, unaware of the surprise I had been planning, accepted the gift. To say that I was infuriated would be an understatement. To me, the ragtop was not just a practical gift. As J and I had spent many happy hours in that car on various road trips, the presentation of the new top had a sentimental significance for me and I was proud of the fact that I could earn enough money to give him a gift I could not afford when we first started dating. While I never voiced to my FIL the affect this actions had on me, I could not hide my hurt feelings from J. And the gift was poisoned from that day until the day that J traded in the car.
However, those actions only affected me. This recent development gives my FIL an opportunity to act like super grandfather at the expense of my mother. I'm especially concerned that if they purchase this system, they will present it at the shower, which my mother is attending, leaving me to deal with the fallout of my mother's hurt feelings once the festivities are over.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Minor Annoyances
Minor Annoyance 1: That I find more amusing then anything else – the more obviously and visibly pregnant I become, the less that people on the bus are willing to make eye contact with me. And the more ashamed they look when they see me coming.
My amusement was compounded this morning by the middle aged man who insisted on completely blocking the aisle precisely halfway between the front and the back of the bus, thus keeping passengers from reaching one of the several seats available at the back and the woman at the front of the bus who needed not only a support bar but three straps to keep her steady. I studied her, as I stood there in all my unbalanced “glory” wondering why she felt all three straps were necessary.
My musings were interrupted by the recent vacancy of a seat near the front, which J, noting that the extreme heat of the bus was making me progressively paler, blocked out so I could sit down. This maneuver was followed by one of the women, already sitting down, glaring at both of us. I imagine we must have been quite the distraction, the 7.5 month pregnant woman and her husband colluding to get her a seat so she does not pass out on the bus.
Minor Annoyance 2 & 3: Recent articles and comments in the New York Times
The New York Times has been running a series of articles entitled 21st Century Babies, on the increased use and suggested abuse of fertility treatments in the United States. The first article, The Gift of Life, and Its Price discusses the special risks involved in having twins.
Other writers, such as Julie at a little pregnant, have delved into the inaccuracies of the articles and the ignorance of some of the commentators. My irritation was how the article was framed.
I am a fraternal twin, naturally conceived. My brother and I were born a week before our actual due date. My mother did not know she was carrying twins until after my brother was born, when she continued labor. To say that all parties in the room were surprised would be an understatement. Aside from a lower birth weight (I was 4lbs, 4oz and had to stay in the hospital an extra week, since my brother was over 5lbs he was released with our mother) both of us were perfectly healthy.
According to the framing of the New York Times article, I should be down on my knees thanking the gods above that we were among the only 40% of twins born full term (seriously, a week short of full term as a twin is, for all intents and purposes, full term), healthy and without most of the
Statements such as “while most twins go home without serious complications, government statistics show that 60 percent of them are born prematurely. That increases their chances of death in the first few days of life, as well as other problems...” make me want to bang my head against something, because the subsequent problems described in the article are all issues that occur in pregnancy of singles as well.(1) The New York Times does not give any comparison analysis of how much higher the rates are between single and multiple pregnancies and, frankly, manages to make me feel like a freak of a nature.
Later this week I made the mistake of wading into the comments on an article about a woman who had a five year relationship with a priest, conceived a son who is now terminally ill and has spent over twenty years trying to get the father to own up to it financially. Except that the father is a Franciscan priest and has essentially hidden behind his order and weaseled out of any personal responsibility towards the child he conceived. Oh, and there is this little incident midway through the article when the woman learns that this same priest has been carrying on a sexual relationship with a young woman, that started when the woman was in high school. His punishment? He was sent to a treatment center for sex offenders and put in charge of teaching seminarians how to be celibate.
Naturally, a goodly number of comments put all the blame squarely on the woman, because of her mental health issues and three divorces, which point to her being unstable and irresponsible. Obviously she is a “loose” woman with questionable morals who is trying to persecute the priest, the order and the Catholic church. Unfortunately, I did not stop reading before hitting the inevitable “Catholic bashing” comments that always drives me insane.
So I say to self, “Self, you really must stop reading the article comments” and self agrees. Self will probably not follow this suggestion.
(1) Mr Cloth diaper and his wife, for example. A week after deflecting his attempts to assert his moral superiority, his wife went into labor and delivered their single daughter 8 weeks early. Mother, father and child are all fine.
My amusement was compounded this morning by the middle aged man who insisted on completely blocking the aisle precisely halfway between the front and the back of the bus, thus keeping passengers from reaching one of the several seats available at the back and the woman at the front of the bus who needed not only a support bar but three straps to keep her steady. I studied her, as I stood there in all my unbalanced “glory” wondering why she felt all three straps were necessary.
My musings were interrupted by the recent vacancy of a seat near the front, which J, noting that the extreme heat of the bus was making me progressively paler, blocked out so I could sit down. This maneuver was followed by one of the women, already sitting down, glaring at both of us. I imagine we must have been quite the distraction, the 7.5 month pregnant woman and her husband colluding to get her a seat so she does not pass out on the bus.
Minor Annoyance 2 & 3: Recent articles and comments in the New York Times
The New York Times has been running a series of articles entitled 21st Century Babies, on the increased use and suggested abuse of fertility treatments in the United States. The first article, The Gift of Life, and Its Price discusses the special risks involved in having twins.
Other writers, such as Julie at a little pregnant, have delved into the inaccuracies of the articles and the ignorance of some of the commentators. My irritation was how the article was framed.
I am a fraternal twin, naturally conceived. My brother and I were born a week before our actual due date. My mother did not know she was carrying twins until after my brother was born, when she continued labor. To say that all parties in the room were surprised would be an understatement. Aside from a lower birth weight (I was 4lbs, 4oz and had to stay in the hospital an extra week, since my brother was over 5lbs he was released with our mother) both of us were perfectly healthy.
According to the framing of the New York Times article, I should be down on my knees thanking the gods above that we were among the only 40% of twins born full term (seriously, a week short of full term as a twin is, for all intents and purposes, full term), healthy and without most of the
Statements such as “while most twins go home without serious complications, government statistics show that 60 percent of them are born prematurely. That increases their chances of death in the first few days of life, as well as other problems...” make me want to bang my head against something, because the subsequent problems described in the article are all issues that occur in pregnancy of singles as well.(1) The New York Times does not give any comparison analysis of how much higher the rates are between single and multiple pregnancies and, frankly, manages to make me feel like a freak of a nature.
Later this week I made the mistake of wading into the comments on an article about a woman who had a five year relationship with a priest, conceived a son who is now terminally ill and has spent over twenty years trying to get the father to own up to it financially. Except that the father is a Franciscan priest and has essentially hidden behind his order and weaseled out of any personal responsibility towards the child he conceived. Oh, and there is this little incident midway through the article when the woman learns that this same priest has been carrying on a sexual relationship with a young woman, that started when the woman was in high school. His punishment? He was sent to a treatment center for sex offenders and put in charge of teaching seminarians how to be celibate.
Naturally, a goodly number of comments put all the blame squarely on the woman, because of her mental health issues and three divorces, which point to her being unstable and irresponsible. Obviously she is a “loose” woman with questionable morals who is trying to persecute the priest, the order and the Catholic church. Unfortunately, I did not stop reading before hitting the inevitable “Catholic bashing” comments that always drives me insane.
So I say to self, “Self, you really must stop reading the article comments” and self agrees. Self will probably not follow this suggestion.
(1) Mr Cloth diaper and his wife, for example. A week after deflecting his attempts to assert his moral superiority, his wife went into labor and delivered their single daughter 8 weeks early. Mother, father and child are all fine.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Under Pressure
This past weekend my friend K admitted to two of us that she was feeling pressure to get pregnant. She is in a difficult position, with me 10 weeks 6 days (but who is counting?) from my due date, a second mutual friend about to embark on the long road of fertility treatments and M, who quietly announced to K and myself (after putting her foot firmly in her mouth over some comments about my food choices) that she was 5 weeks along and on her second attempt to have a baby. (1)
M and I were blunt in telling her that just because every woman she seemed to know right now was gestating, there was nothing wrong with her not wanting to have children, either right now or ever. I pointed out to K that my pregnancy was more an accident then anything else, that I had considered terminating, that the depression was bad enough to keep me from getting out of bed some mornings and would be a major factor . M reminded K about the horrors surrounding the end of her first pregnancy.
We both stressed that this was not something a woman did because her friends were doing it. This was something a woman did because she felt it was the correct decision for her. We were both brutally honest in discussing our feelings.
I hope it helps her.
(1) I ordered a salad with gorgonzola cheese and an iced tea. In an attempt to be funny, she asked me if I knew about the prohibition against pregnant women eating unpasteurized cheese and drinking caffeine. My response was not good natured and J, listening in on the exchange, politely told her where he thought the medical establishment could stick their food rules. M pulled me aside later and explained that she had been trying to be funny, recounting the ordeal of her first pregnancy, which ended in an abortion at 16 weeks when she learned the fetus tested with a 1/5 chance of Trisomy 21.
M and I were blunt in telling her that just because every woman she seemed to know right now was gestating, there was nothing wrong with her not wanting to have children, either right now or ever. I pointed out to K that my pregnancy was more an accident then anything else, that I had considered terminating, that the depression was bad enough to keep me from getting out of bed some mornings and would be a major factor . M reminded K about the horrors surrounding the end of her first pregnancy.
We both stressed that this was not something a woman did because her friends were doing it. This was something a woman did because she felt it was the correct decision for her. We were both brutally honest in discussing our feelings.
I hope it helps her.
(1) I ordered a salad with gorgonzola cheese and an iced tea. In an attempt to be funny, she asked me if I knew about the prohibition against pregnant women eating unpasteurized cheese and drinking caffeine. My response was not good natured and J, listening in on the exchange, politely told her where he thought the medical establishment could stick their food rules. M pulled me aside later and explained that she had been trying to be funny, recounting the ordeal of her first pregnancy, which ended in an abortion at 16 weeks when she learned the fetus tested with a 1/5 chance of Trisomy 21.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Because You're Weak
There is no way for me to adequately convey my irritation at my upcoming baby shower. On a purely rational level it is illogical and hypocritical of me to complain because a group of people want to get together and give me gifts. I should quit whining. I agree.
But as J succinctly put it, when I whined “why did I agree to this?”
“Because you're weak”.
On an emotional level, the fact that I agreed to participate in this charade in the purely mercenary hope of getting one or two necessary items leaves me wishing that someone had smacked me upside the head hard before I agreed to participate in such a venture, if only to rid me of the high delusion that I would receive anything useful out of this party. I'm getting a great deal of passive-aggressive pleasure out of the fact that we decided not to gender the alien before birth, as it will marginally decrease the atrociously gendered clothing and crib sets that may be coming my way. (1)
My first objection to this ritual, aside from the fact that I hate showers of all stripes on general principle, is that my input on the type of party I would like to have ended when I submitted my guest list to my MIL. I would have been happy, nay thrilled, to have gathered in a back room at Dino's, where the guests could munch on semi-stale popcorn, order garlic wings and cheese fries, and had themselves a beer and a good chat in between the opening of gifts and watching college football on the enormous, flat screen televisions. I could have eaten cheese fries and snuck sips of beer.
Instead it is being held at the same venue as my bridal shower and will be a semi-formal, catered lunch with soup or salad, a quiche of some sorts accompanied with coffee, iced tea or water, capped with a yellow cake with vanilla icing sporting storks, baby booties and Congratulations!, all in alternating blue and pink icing because J and I have the nerve to refuse to find out the alien's gender or theme the nursery.
I also have trouble understanding what is so entertaining about watching someone else open a pile of gifts in such a public fashion, as both the gift giver and the recipient. I enjoy giving gifts to other people, but I could care less if they open it in front of me or not. (2) I don't fake enthusiasm for bad gifts very well, my sense of humor is such that it takes a mammoth amount of self control to put off making fun of truly heinous items until the giver is two states over and to the left from where I am standing.
Then there is the growing panic that I am going to be forced to participate in shower games, specifically a popular and truly atrocious one called Let-Us-Humiliate-the-Guest-of-Honor-by-Guessing-How-Fat-She-Is-! which requires party guests to cut a piece of string into what they think is the circumference of the MTB waist. The strings are wrapped around the MTB and the winner is the individual with the most accurate string length.
Why the panic? Because the hosting duties have transferred from my normally sane (other than her heavy hand with the guilt trips) MIL to a sister-in-law, one of J's older (in their 40's) female cousins, my mother, J's sister and her two daughters, aged five and seven.
A five year old and a seven year old are co-hosting my baby shower. I know these little girls well. They are lovely, bright, outspoken (which I quietly encourage as much as possible) mostly well behaved children who would nonetheless thoroughly enjoy measuring their aunt's expanding waistline and would not understand, egged on by the older cousins who find such games amusing, why their aunt would be bothered by such entertainment. The shower is scheduled to last three hours. A lot can happen in a three hour period.
Over fifty women have been invited to my shower. Out of those fifty, thirty-five of the invitees are either friends or family of J's mother. My mother and I have a combined list of around twenty and I can think of at least three off hand from my list who will be unable to attend for one reason or another. I am completely outnumbered in the moral support department on this one. If I refuse to participate, then I shall be labeled as unreasonable and can hear, clearly, the voice of my mother instructing me to stop making a scene.
I am weak.
(1) I'm still reeling from the pink crib set that a neighbor dropped off at our house. There is pink and then there is pink. This is pink.
(2) I openly admit that I'm still a bit bitter that I was forced to open our wedding gifts in front of a mob instead of in the quiet of our home, just J and myself, with some soft music and a glass of wine as a way of winding down from a weekend of non-stop activity.
But as J succinctly put it, when I whined “why did I agree to this?”
“Because you're weak”.
On an emotional level, the fact that I agreed to participate in this charade in the purely mercenary hope of getting one or two necessary items leaves me wishing that someone had smacked me upside the head hard before I agreed to participate in such a venture, if only to rid me of the high delusion that I would receive anything useful out of this party. I'm getting a great deal of passive-aggressive pleasure out of the fact that we decided not to gender the alien before birth, as it will marginally decrease the atrociously gendered clothing and crib sets that may be coming my way. (1)
My first objection to this ritual, aside from the fact that I hate showers of all stripes on general principle, is that my input on the type of party I would like to have ended when I submitted my guest list to my MIL. I would have been happy, nay thrilled, to have gathered in a back room at Dino's, where the guests could munch on semi-stale popcorn, order garlic wings and cheese fries, and had themselves a beer and a good chat in between the opening of gifts and watching college football on the enormous, flat screen televisions. I could have eaten cheese fries and snuck sips of beer.
Instead it is being held at the same venue as my bridal shower and will be a semi-formal, catered lunch with soup or salad, a quiche of some sorts accompanied with coffee, iced tea or water, capped with a yellow cake with vanilla icing sporting storks, baby booties and Congratulations!, all in alternating blue and pink icing because J and I have the nerve to refuse to find out the alien's gender or theme the nursery.
I also have trouble understanding what is so entertaining about watching someone else open a pile of gifts in such a public fashion, as both the gift giver and the recipient. I enjoy giving gifts to other people, but I could care less if they open it in front of me or not. (2) I don't fake enthusiasm for bad gifts very well, my sense of humor is such that it takes a mammoth amount of self control to put off making fun of truly heinous items until the giver is two states over and to the left from where I am standing.
Then there is the growing panic that I am going to be forced to participate in shower games, specifically a popular and truly atrocious one called Let-Us-Humiliate-the-Guest-of-Honor-by-Guessing-How-Fat-She-Is-! which requires party guests to cut a piece of string into what they think is the circumference of the MTB waist. The strings are wrapped around the MTB and the winner is the individual with the most accurate string length.
Why the panic? Because the hosting duties have transferred from my normally sane (other than her heavy hand with the guilt trips) MIL to a sister-in-law, one of J's older (in their 40's) female cousins, my mother, J's sister and her two daughters, aged five and seven.
A five year old and a seven year old are co-hosting my baby shower. I know these little girls well. They are lovely, bright, outspoken (which I quietly encourage as much as possible) mostly well behaved children who would nonetheless thoroughly enjoy measuring their aunt's expanding waistline and would not understand, egged on by the older cousins who find such games amusing, why their aunt would be bothered by such entertainment. The shower is scheduled to last three hours. A lot can happen in a three hour period.
Over fifty women have been invited to my shower. Out of those fifty, thirty-five of the invitees are either friends or family of J's mother. My mother and I have a combined list of around twenty and I can think of at least three off hand from my list who will be unable to attend for one reason or another. I am completely outnumbered in the moral support department on this one. If I refuse to participate, then I shall be labeled as unreasonable and can hear, clearly, the voice of my mother instructing me to stop making a scene.
I am weak.
(1) I'm still reeling from the pink crib set that a neighbor dropped off at our house. There is pink and then there is pink. This is pink.
(2) I openly admit that I'm still a bit bitter that I was forced to open our wedding gifts in front of a mob instead of in the quiet of our home, just J and myself, with some soft music and a glass of wine as a way of winding down from a weekend of non-stop activity.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Ugh II
I rolled (almost literally, I'm getting rather round) out of bed at 5:40 AM Monday morning in order to reach a downtown lab for round 6001 of miscellaneous indignities that a pregnant woman is forced to suffer in the name of gestating a healthy alien.
Today was the much dreaded one hour glucose tolerance screen and third trimester CBC blood screen. As I'm pretty certain that I shall fail the one hour screen, because the gods hate me and want to see me suffer through repeated needle stabs over a three hour period, I put off the appointment for a week and a half before trundling off to the bus in the pre-dawn of a chilly fall day.
But first I had to eat something, as fasting before drinking 50 grams of sugar solution is generally considered a bad idea. At 100 grams (the amount I'll have to drink in a few weeks when I'll get stabbed repeatedly with needles over a three hour period) it is required. J was also up early and bought me breakfast – a travel mug of tea and a glazed cinnamon yeast pretzel doughnut. Apparently J did not get the memo in the form of me repeating, verbatim, multiple times, the midwife's breakfast instructions, which were “Eat protein and healthy carbs. Don't eat a doughnut”.
“I can't eat that”. J stared at me, looking slightly offended at the rejection of his customary morning tea and glazed offering.
“I'm trying to make you feel better. What's wrong with it?”
“The midwife specifically said no doughnuts. Go ahead and eat it”.
“Are you sure? Why not eat it later”.
“Fine, put it in a bag, I'll have after the appointment”.
“What do you want then? And at least try the tea, I didn't put that much sugar in it”.
“Toast with butter. Do we have protein bread?”(1)
“Its the Omega 3 bread”.
“That is fine”.
As J stalked back downstairs to make me toast, I took a couple of sips of tea and left the mug sitting on my dresser, as I could not tell how sweet it was. And left it there, where it is still sitting unless one of the cats knocked it over during a stroll across my dresser.
The waiting room of the downtown lab was empty when I stepped through the door a few minutes before 7:00 AM. One customer in the office behind the locked door, registering for blood work. Not another person to be seen or heard except for the phlebotomist.
The customer left suddenly. What I collected from the conversation was that she had a condition that was counter indicative of having her blood drawn and the phlebotomist had advised her to wait until the condition was resolved.
I was called in, registered, given 50 grams of a bland orange sucrose solution to drink in five minutes , instructed to avoid throwing it up and made to sit in the still empty waiting room for an hour. I passed the time listening to a podcast of “Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me” and watching white collar employees come and go
At the appointed time the phlebotomist called me back, took my blood in possibly the most painless fashion I have experienced in the past seven months and sent me on my way with the admonishment to eat something that did not contain much sugar, since the solution made me feel slightly woozy – a repeat the time my freshman year of college when I combined too many Oreo cookies with too much caffeine during finals week.
I was tired for the rest of the day, a result of the subsequent sugar crash, and ended up eating far too much sugar and carbs anyway, in a purely reactionary response to the fear that I will have to endure the three hour tolerance test, fail that and eat nothing but protein and leafy greens for ten weeks.
(1) During the height of my nausea, when I could not stand the smell of any meat or peanut butter and wanted crackers, tea and toast J started buying protein enriched bread in order to get something other than carbs and fat into me. My aversion to meat went away, I still can't bring myself to even smell peanut butter, which is another one of nature's jokes since peanut butter is a nutritional staple for many pregnant women. And we continued buying protein enriched breads because they were multigrain and tasted fairly decent, if a bit heavy.
Today was the much dreaded one hour glucose tolerance screen and third trimester CBC blood screen. As I'm pretty certain that I shall fail the one hour screen, because the gods hate me and want to see me suffer through repeated needle stabs over a three hour period, I put off the appointment for a week and a half before trundling off to the bus in the pre-dawn of a chilly fall day.
But first I had to eat something, as fasting before drinking 50 grams of sugar solution is generally considered a bad idea. At 100 grams (the amount I'll have to drink in a few weeks when I'll get stabbed repeatedly with needles over a three hour period) it is required. J was also up early and bought me breakfast – a travel mug of tea and a glazed cinnamon yeast pretzel doughnut. Apparently J did not get the memo in the form of me repeating, verbatim, multiple times, the midwife's breakfast instructions, which were “Eat protein and healthy carbs. Don't eat a doughnut”.
“I can't eat that”. J stared at me, looking slightly offended at the rejection of his customary morning tea and glazed offering.
“I'm trying to make you feel better. What's wrong with it?”
“The midwife specifically said no doughnuts. Go ahead and eat it”.
“Are you sure? Why not eat it later”.
“Fine, put it in a bag, I'll have after the appointment”.
“What do you want then? And at least try the tea, I didn't put that much sugar in it”.
“Toast with butter. Do we have protein bread?”(1)
“Its the Omega 3 bread”.
“That is fine”.
As J stalked back downstairs to make me toast, I took a couple of sips of tea and left the mug sitting on my dresser, as I could not tell how sweet it was. And left it there, where it is still sitting unless one of the cats knocked it over during a stroll across my dresser.
The waiting room of the downtown lab was empty when I stepped through the door a few minutes before 7:00 AM. One customer in the office behind the locked door, registering for blood work. Not another person to be seen or heard except for the phlebotomist.
The customer left suddenly. What I collected from the conversation was that she had a condition that was counter indicative of having her blood drawn and the phlebotomist had advised her to wait until the condition was resolved.
I was called in, registered, given 50 grams of a bland orange sucrose solution to drink in five minutes , instructed to avoid throwing it up and made to sit in the still empty waiting room for an hour. I passed the time listening to a podcast of “Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me” and watching white collar employees come and go
At the appointed time the phlebotomist called me back, took my blood in possibly the most painless fashion I have experienced in the past seven months and sent me on my way with the admonishment to eat something that did not contain much sugar, since the solution made me feel slightly woozy – a repeat the time my freshman year of college when I combined too many Oreo cookies with too much caffeine during finals week.
I was tired for the rest of the day, a result of the subsequent sugar crash, and ended up eating far too much sugar and carbs anyway, in a purely reactionary response to the fear that I will have to endure the three hour tolerance test, fail that and eat nothing but protein and leafy greens for ten weeks.
(1) During the height of my nausea, when I could not stand the smell of any meat or peanut butter and wanted crackers, tea and toast J started buying protein enriched bread in order to get something other than carbs and fat into me. My aversion to meat went away, I still can't bring myself to even smell peanut butter, which is another one of nature's jokes since peanut butter is a nutritional staple for many pregnant women. And we continued buying protein enriched breads because they were multigrain and tasted fairly decent, if a bit heavy.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Pain
I'm in pain. Not just the ongoing emotional pain that I have endured for the past 28 weeks and is gradually increasing. Mainly because my physical discomfort is getting worse.
Many years ago I developed this weird little twitch in one of the muscles over the ribcage on my left side. It was not painful, just an annoyance that would routinely catch me off guard as I went about my day. As the twitch developed during the same time frame as my asthma, my doctor ordered an echo cardiogram along with several standard diagnostic tests for asthma, to rule out any issues with my heart.*
No heart issues. Just a twitch from the electrical impulses in the muscles going haywire. He offered to write a script for muscle relaxants and a painkiller, which I turned down because the twitching was neither often enough to warrant a muscle relaxant nor painful enough to warrant prescription drugs.
The twitch has evolved, must likely because of the expansion in the rib cage, into a constant, burning spasm that has driven my already depressed self into even more despair. Forgoing the bra is not an option (and didn't work). Wireless does not work. And sleeping in any other position other than on my back (which I'm not supposed to do) makes the pain worse, especially when I roll over and am awakened from a dead sleep by the searing burning sensation.
Other things that have not helped in recent weeks – the constant gloom and doom of my mother, who can not help herself from uttering at least once during every conversation that I might end up having a cesarean section. As if I exist on planet la-la land, where pregnancy complications never happen and every birth is done vaginally, without painkillers and produces powerful orgasms that instantaneously wipe out the memory of the pain of labor.
The edema is not encouraging either. I was prepared for foot and ankle swelling. I went out and purchased two pairs of shoes, a pair of Sanita clogs in blue faux snakeskin and a pair of Wolky Stage wedges in red patent leather, because I knew I would need room in my shoes for my feet. The shoes were embarrassingly and almost prohibitively expensive, a sum of money that I should be saving instead of dropping on shoes.
But the shoes work. They work so well that I don't notice when my feet are swelling until after I have removed the shoes and seen my toes nearly disappear into each other. The first time this happened was Friday night. My shrieks of horror provoked first concern, then annoyance in J, who offered the following solution to my problem: “don't look at them”.
There has been some hilarity. Men especially seem to like the clogs and I've collected quite a few compliments on their style in the week I have been wearing them. The highlight of this past week was the clerk at a local used media store, with whom I shared the following exchange:
Clerk: Nice shoes. Great color.
Me: Thanks. I'm not going to be able to see my feet in another month, so I decided to go with something a little bit obnoxious.
Clerk: (long pause) Won't be able to see your feet?
Me: I'm pregnant.
Clerk: (with relief) Oh. I thought you were going to have them amputated or something. Is that real snakeskin?
It is a better story in the telling then in print...
*This is probably an example of the type of testing overkill the right claims is driving up insurance costs. The doctor who ordered the tests was a personal friend of my both parents, had worked with both of them for years and was an excellent and instinctive diagnostician who knew in the office that I probably had asthma. Nonetheless he was not going to be on the hook to explain to my parents why he missed a potentially fatal heart defect.
Many years ago I developed this weird little twitch in one of the muscles over the ribcage on my left side. It was not painful, just an annoyance that would routinely catch me off guard as I went about my day. As the twitch developed during the same time frame as my asthma, my doctor ordered an echo cardiogram along with several standard diagnostic tests for asthma, to rule out any issues with my heart.*
No heart issues. Just a twitch from the electrical impulses in the muscles going haywire. He offered to write a script for muscle relaxants and a painkiller, which I turned down because the twitching was neither often enough to warrant a muscle relaxant nor painful enough to warrant prescription drugs.
The twitch has evolved, must likely because of the expansion in the rib cage, into a constant, burning spasm that has driven my already depressed self into even more despair. Forgoing the bra is not an option (and didn't work). Wireless does not work. And sleeping in any other position other than on my back (which I'm not supposed to do) makes the pain worse, especially when I roll over and am awakened from a dead sleep by the searing burning sensation.
Other things that have not helped in recent weeks – the constant gloom and doom of my mother, who can not help herself from uttering at least once during every conversation that I might end up having a cesarean section. As if I exist on planet la-la land, where pregnancy complications never happen and every birth is done vaginally, without painkillers and produces powerful orgasms that instantaneously wipe out the memory of the pain of labor.
The edema is not encouraging either. I was prepared for foot and ankle swelling. I went out and purchased two pairs of shoes, a pair of Sanita clogs in blue faux snakeskin and a pair of Wolky Stage wedges in red patent leather, because I knew I would need room in my shoes for my feet. The shoes were embarrassingly and almost prohibitively expensive, a sum of money that I should be saving instead of dropping on shoes.
But the shoes work. They work so well that I don't notice when my feet are swelling until after I have removed the shoes and seen my toes nearly disappear into each other. The first time this happened was Friday night. My shrieks of horror provoked first concern, then annoyance in J, who offered the following solution to my problem: “don't look at them”.
There has been some hilarity. Men especially seem to like the clogs and I've collected quite a few compliments on their style in the week I have been wearing them. The highlight of this past week was the clerk at a local used media store, with whom I shared the following exchange:
Clerk: Nice shoes. Great color.
Me: Thanks. I'm not going to be able to see my feet in another month, so I decided to go with something a little bit obnoxious.
Clerk: (long pause) Won't be able to see your feet?
Me: I'm pregnant.
Clerk: (with relief) Oh. I thought you were going to have them amputated or something. Is that real snakeskin?
It is a better story in the telling then in print...
*This is probably an example of the type of testing overkill the right claims is driving up insurance costs. The doctor who ordered the tests was a personal friend of my both parents, had worked with both of them for years and was an excellent and instinctive diagnostician who knew in the office that I probably had asthma. Nonetheless he was not going to be on the hook to explain to my parents why he missed a potentially fatal heart defect.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Raise the Banner
J and I went to the Penguins season opener, one of only six games we will be attending this year. The Penguins like to add some ceremony to their season opener, which means video of the greatest plays from the previous season, smoke machines and formal introductions of the owners, executives, coaching staff and players.
This year the ceremonies took a little bit longer than usual, with an extended video narrated by Dennis Miller, the display of a really shiny trophy at center ice and the raising of some sort of banner. And fireworks.
I wanted to write a long post, rhapsodizing about what it means to be the fan of a championship sports team, especially a hockey team. About how accessible the Stanley Cup is to fans and how much effort teams put into making the fans feel like part of the fun.
But I decided to skip all that. Instead, I shall say - it was electric.
This year the ceremonies took a little bit longer than usual, with an extended video narrated by Dennis Miller, the display of a really shiny trophy at center ice and the raising of some sort of banner. And fireworks.
I wanted to write a long post, rhapsodizing about what it means to be the fan of a championship sports team, especially a hockey team. About how accessible the Stanley Cup is to fans and how much effort teams put into making the fans feel like part of the fun.
But I decided to skip all that. Instead, I shall say - it was electric.
Friday, September 18, 2009
The Opening Salvo in the Parenting Wars
I have thought for some time that with the amount of miscellaneous work necessary to prepare for the upcoming arrival of a child, first time parents-to-be would be too busy to start oneupmanship contests with other gestating couples.
I was most unfortunately incorrect in this perception. With fourteen weeks still to go, I have already had to extricate myself from a conversation that was less about the care and feeding of aliens and more about establishing some kind of moral authority over the question of which is superior – cloth or disposable diapers?
Or rather, I stated that we intended to use disposable diapers and was treated to a lecture by the non-childbearing member of the couple on how the decision was wrong, wrong, wrong. Evidential proofs were tossed (“Babies with cloth diapers don't get diaper rash! It is less expensive in the long term! Hire a diaper service if you don't have the time to wash them! My mom used them on me when I was a child!)
Silently I cursed the gods for ruining a perfectly good evening out, imbibing garlic parmesan wings, eyeing mixed drinks lustfully and feeling overall like a normal, non pregnant, female being for a couple of hours to the service to making him feel smug and pretentious over using cloth diapers (1). I tried, twice, to explain in very simple clear terms that we had neither the money to pay a diaper service nor the time to clean them ourselves (2). He continued lecturing.
So I changed the topic by asking him if his wife was planning breastfeeding, playing the odds that any couple that committed to using cloth diapers was probably also going to be breastfeeding instead of using formula. The gambit paid off, we found a topic of common agreement and the conversation turned to other things as agreeing about breastfeeding is not as interesting as probing for other proto- parenting decisions to criticize.
(1) I suspect if they find out that their budget can not stretch to paying a diaper service they will revert to disposables after a few weeks of trying to clean them.
(2) Massive digression that probably needs a separate entry. In our house this would translate to me cleaning them, as the laundry has evolved into my primary duty. Most of the time I am actually OK with this, as J handles all the outdoor yard work, including mowing our little patches of lawn, caring for the five rose bushes we have lining the driveway and up the steps to our house and tending to the flowerbeds. This actually consumes as much time weekly as doing the laundry, so it is a fair division of labor. And prevents me from killing the plants, as my power to keep living things alive does not extend to things green and leafy.
To be fair, I should say “did” the laundry as J has stepped up laundry duty in the past months as a natural consequence of me first being too overwhelmed with all-day morning sickness and fatigue to keep up with it, then becoming too unbalanced on my feet to properly navigate the narrow basement steps with a full basket in my hands.
However, as good as J is at remember to start the laundry, he is not very good at remembering to finish it, leading me to ask him at least twice every weekend and once during the week to bring the clean clothes upstairs for me to fold. As there is an unspoken expectation that I will be taking over laundry again once the alien has arrived, my desire to spend additional time soaking and cleaning nappies on top of the addition of onesies, pajamas, layettes, burp clothes, crib sheets, blankets, and towels to our regular weekly loads, is nil. In our conversations about disposable versus cloth I got the sense that J would prefer to use cloth, but since I will end up as the party responsible for cleaning the things, I elected to veto for the sake of my sanity.
I was most unfortunately incorrect in this perception. With fourteen weeks still to go, I have already had to extricate myself from a conversation that was less about the care and feeding of aliens and more about establishing some kind of moral authority over the question of which is superior – cloth or disposable diapers?
Or rather, I stated that we intended to use disposable diapers and was treated to a lecture by the non-childbearing member of the couple on how the decision was wrong, wrong, wrong. Evidential proofs were tossed (“Babies with cloth diapers don't get diaper rash! It is less expensive in the long term! Hire a diaper service if you don't have the time to wash them! My mom used them on me when I was a child!)
Silently I cursed the gods for ruining a perfectly good evening out, imbibing garlic parmesan wings, eyeing mixed drinks lustfully and feeling overall like a normal, non pregnant, female being for a couple of hours to the service to making him feel smug and pretentious over using cloth diapers (1). I tried, twice, to explain in very simple clear terms that we had neither the money to pay a diaper service nor the time to clean them ourselves (2). He continued lecturing.
So I changed the topic by asking him if his wife was planning breastfeeding, playing the odds that any couple that committed to using cloth diapers was probably also going to be breastfeeding instead of using formula. The gambit paid off, we found a topic of common agreement and the conversation turned to other things as agreeing about breastfeeding is not as interesting as probing for other proto- parenting decisions to criticize.
(1) I suspect if they find out that their budget can not stretch to paying a diaper service they will revert to disposables after a few weeks of trying to clean them.
(2) Massive digression that probably needs a separate entry. In our house this would translate to me cleaning them, as the laundry has evolved into my primary duty. Most of the time I am actually OK with this, as J handles all the outdoor yard work, including mowing our little patches of lawn, caring for the five rose bushes we have lining the driveway and up the steps to our house and tending to the flowerbeds. This actually consumes as much time weekly as doing the laundry, so it is a fair division of labor. And prevents me from killing the plants, as my power to keep living things alive does not extend to things green and leafy.
To be fair, I should say “did” the laundry as J has stepped up laundry duty in the past months as a natural consequence of me first being too overwhelmed with all-day morning sickness and fatigue to keep up with it, then becoming too unbalanced on my feet to properly navigate the narrow basement steps with a full basket in my hands.
However, as good as J is at remember to start the laundry, he is not very good at remembering to finish it, leading me to ask him at least twice every weekend and once during the week to bring the clean clothes upstairs for me to fold. As there is an unspoken expectation that I will be taking over laundry again once the alien has arrived, my desire to spend additional time soaking and cleaning nappies on top of the addition of onesies, pajamas, layettes, burp clothes, crib sheets, blankets, and towels to our regular weekly loads, is nil. In our conversations about disposable versus cloth I got the sense that J would prefer to use cloth, but since I will end up as the party responsible for cleaning the things, I elected to veto for the sake of my sanity.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Patience Worn Thin
It has been awhile since I witnessed my father-in-law behaving atrociously. I have gotten better at choosing when to interact with J's family and at filtering out the worse of his irritating behavior. He has gotten better at behaving himself, especially in our home, a direct result of J insisting that he conduct himself in a more civilized manner.
Unfortunately, with the upcoming arrival of a new grandchild, the pressure to include myself in more family activities has begun anew and has been gradually ratcheting up over the past few months. As agreeing to allow my mother-in-law host a baby shower on my behalf puts me back on the obligation hook, I reluctantly and not very willingly agreed to accompany J to a family lunch on Sunday.
I chose to ignore the voice in the back of my brain that woke me on Sunday morning, suggesting that lunch at the in-laws was not the best of ideas on this particular day. As I could not find a legitimate reason to back up my sense that it was not going to be a good day, I elected to fulfill my promise to make J happy.
To lunch we went, arriving approximately 45 minutes from the noon hour (planned) and waiting an extra 20 minutes (unplanned) past noon for his siblings to arrive, thus underscoring one of the ongoing irritants of J's family – with the exception of one sibling (who is not J), none of them are capable of arriving for 90% of functions on time.
I filtered it out. I filtered out J's sister using me as an object lesson in fetal development, with her insistence that I describe how “big the baby in my belly (1) was right now” to her three children. Setting aside that my knowledge of an alien at 25 weeks falls under “large enough to be uncomfortable”, my sister-in-law was not content with an estimate of length and weight – she wanted a detailed descriptions of the alien's features. I filtered out the discussion over the relative merits of the different high school football teams and leagues in the area. I filtered out the church talk, the complaints about the federal government giving aid to overseas, faith-based missionary organizations.
I filtered out up to the point of hearing J's father saying “Well we all know why South Africa is receiving aid, with the kind of president we have in the White House”.
I could not filter that out. I called my father-in-law out on the statement. I reminded him that the federal government had been giving aid to faith based charities for at least eight years. I stated that his comment was racist and he should retract it.
He said his comment was not racist and refused to retract. J's brother, who has spouted forth some of the finest poor-oppressed-upper-middle-class-white-man absurdities I have ever heard come out of the mouth of anyone upper middle class white man, vocally expressed that he did not think it was racist either.
Less you believe that I am jumping to conclusions and believe that perhaps my father-in-law was merely implying that South Africa was receiving aid because a Democrat was occupying the White House, I have sat at this man's table at various meals for 14+ years listening such coded statements. This is the man, who upon meeting me for the first time and learning about my ambition to attend graduate school, felt it necessary to illustrate how enlightened he had become by telling me about the events that precipitated his agreement to send his daughter to college. In the late 1980's. (2)
I left the table. I tried to walk out the front door, but it was locked and I could not get it unlocked. After what felt like several minutes of me trying to unlock the damn door, I went out through the garage instead. Once in the backyard, I sat down at a table and cried.
Meanwhile, inside, J was defending my blowup by informing his family that I had spent the last 14+ years politely holding my tongue as his family enthusiastically demonized the people and beliefs that held dear and that whether I had misinterpreted his father's words or not I had reached my limit of tolerance.
Then he came outside, brushed aside my apology for making a scene and ruining lunch and told me that it was braver to stand up for what I believed in then sitting silently and that I had no reason to apologize.
I also apologized to J's father for making a scene and silently endured the humiliation of having another sister-in-law pat my sore abdomen.
(1) The use of anything other than code words for organs used in bodily waste evacuation and reproduction is verboten in front of children in J's extended family, no matter the age of the child. Thus his 23 year old cousin and almost 18 year old nephew hear the same terminology as his 5 year old niece. I know that everyone does it, especially with young children but listening to grown adults use inaccurate biology with children makes me cringe and want to grind my teeth. I blame this on my parents, both nurses, who used biological and medical terms in an indifferent, matter-of-fact manner at the dinner table. The sneaky, snarky, subversive side of me is looking forward to the expressions of horror on the faces of my in-laws when the alien begins using real terms, as I fully intend to pass on the correct terminology, fragile sensibilities of cousins, nieces, nephews, grandparents, in-laws and the parents of the alien's classmates be damned.
(2) And less you wonder why I would marry into such a family, J is definitely the anomaly.
Unfortunately, with the upcoming arrival of a new grandchild, the pressure to include myself in more family activities has begun anew and has been gradually ratcheting up over the past few months. As agreeing to allow my mother-in-law host a baby shower on my behalf puts me back on the obligation hook, I reluctantly and not very willingly agreed to accompany J to a family lunch on Sunday.
I chose to ignore the voice in the back of my brain that woke me on Sunday morning, suggesting that lunch at the in-laws was not the best of ideas on this particular day. As I could not find a legitimate reason to back up my sense that it was not going to be a good day, I elected to fulfill my promise to make J happy.
To lunch we went, arriving approximately 45 minutes from the noon hour (planned) and waiting an extra 20 minutes (unplanned) past noon for his siblings to arrive, thus underscoring one of the ongoing irritants of J's family – with the exception of one sibling (who is not J), none of them are capable of arriving for 90% of functions on time.
I filtered it out. I filtered out J's sister using me as an object lesson in fetal development, with her insistence that I describe how “big the baby in my belly (1) was right now” to her three children. Setting aside that my knowledge of an alien at 25 weeks falls under “large enough to be uncomfortable”, my sister-in-law was not content with an estimate of length and weight – she wanted a detailed descriptions of the alien's features. I filtered out the discussion over the relative merits of the different high school football teams and leagues in the area. I filtered out the church talk, the complaints about the federal government giving aid to overseas, faith-based missionary organizations.
I filtered out up to the point of hearing J's father saying “Well we all know why South Africa is receiving aid, with the kind of president we have in the White House”.
I could not filter that out. I called my father-in-law out on the statement. I reminded him that the federal government had been giving aid to faith based charities for at least eight years. I stated that his comment was racist and he should retract it.
He said his comment was not racist and refused to retract. J's brother, who has spouted forth some of the finest poor-oppressed-upper-middle-class-white-man absurdities I have ever heard come out of the mouth of anyone upper middle class white man, vocally expressed that he did not think it was racist either.
Less you believe that I am jumping to conclusions and believe that perhaps my father-in-law was merely implying that South Africa was receiving aid because a Democrat was occupying the White House, I have sat at this man's table at various meals for 14+ years listening such coded statements. This is the man, who upon meeting me for the first time and learning about my ambition to attend graduate school, felt it necessary to illustrate how enlightened he had become by telling me about the events that precipitated his agreement to send his daughter to college. In the late 1980's. (2)
I left the table. I tried to walk out the front door, but it was locked and I could not get it unlocked. After what felt like several minutes of me trying to unlock the damn door, I went out through the garage instead. Once in the backyard, I sat down at a table and cried.
Meanwhile, inside, J was defending my blowup by informing his family that I had spent the last 14+ years politely holding my tongue as his family enthusiastically demonized the people and beliefs that held dear and that whether I had misinterpreted his father's words or not I had reached my limit of tolerance.
Then he came outside, brushed aside my apology for making a scene and ruining lunch and told me that it was braver to stand up for what I believed in then sitting silently and that I had no reason to apologize.
I also apologized to J's father for making a scene and silently endured the humiliation of having another sister-in-law pat my sore abdomen.
(1) The use of anything other than code words for organs used in bodily waste evacuation and reproduction is verboten in front of children in J's extended family, no matter the age of the child. Thus his 23 year old cousin and almost 18 year old nephew hear the same terminology as his 5 year old niece. I know that everyone does it, especially with young children but listening to grown adults use inaccurate biology with children makes me cringe and want to grind my teeth. I blame this on my parents, both nurses, who used biological and medical terms in an indifferent, matter-of-fact manner at the dinner table. The sneaky, snarky, subversive side of me is looking forward to the expressions of horror on the faces of my in-laws when the alien begins using real terms, as I fully intend to pass on the correct terminology, fragile sensibilities of cousins, nieces, nephews, grandparents, in-laws and the parents of the alien's classmates be damned.
(2) And less you wonder why I would marry into such a family, J is definitely the anomaly.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
The Wrath of the Crossing Guard
One of the less savory aspects of living and working in Pittsburgh is the adversarial relationship drivers have with any one other than another person in a four wheeled, gas powered, moving machine. Pedestrians and cyclists are considered fair game to be run down at any moment.
This has lead to more than a few incidents of drivers obscenely gesturing, yelling (“fat ass” remains a personal favorite) and nudging me as I legally cross the byways of Pittsburgh city streets.
The intersection of Forbes and Murray is an especially bad location to be a pedestrian at any time of the day. Because of the high volume of both vehicular and foot traffic and the close proximity of half the schools in Pittsburgh, the city has deemed it necessary to put in a four way stop to allow pedestrians a sporting chance at getting across the street without getting maimed.
Not that this discourages the most aggressive of Pittsburgh's drivers, fond as they are of running the red light to make an illegal right turn, thus accomplishing the task of mowing down walkers from two directions instead of one.
Enter the crossing guard, posted at the intersection in the mornings and mid-afternoons during the school year to add an extra visual element of safety to perilous street crossings. They can't stop a speeding SUV with a single bound or write tickets. But they can and will stop drivers breaking traffic laws and yell at them. Loudly. For extended periods of time.
As I mentioned above, the intersection of Forbes and Murray is not the safest in the city, in spite of the four way stop. Earlier this summer a truck missed hitting me by inches when it ran the red light on Murray to turn right onto Forbes while I was crossing Forbes. He never slowed down and never saw me. The only reason he did not hit me was that I saw him first. The only satisfaction I could get from the incident was knowing how much of a world of trouble he would have been in once he learned he hit a pregnant woman.
So it was a wonderful sight to witness the man in the black SUV get caught attempting the same maneuver on Thursday morning. Never did the sound of a whistle sound so sweet to my ears.
Not only did the crossing guard stop the driver, she approached his SUV and yelled at him. Sternly, loudly and unreasonably. She made such a scene that the driver began to back the SUV up to get away from her. And made his second mistake of the morning.
He did not look behind him before he started backing up. Because he did not look behind him, he did not see me crossing behind his SUV* and nearly hit me. Which provoked the crossing guard into yelling at him some more, accompanied chorus of citizens, including a city employee collecting change out of the meters. A mass of humanity descended upon this man in a SUV at 7:55 on a Thursday morning.
*Yes, I know, I should have walked in front of the SUV. Past experience has taught me that is safer to go behind the vehicle instead of in front of it, since drivers have been known to “nudge” pedestrians along with their vehicles.
This has lead to more than a few incidents of drivers obscenely gesturing, yelling (“fat ass” remains a personal favorite) and nudging me as I legally cross the byways of Pittsburgh city streets.
The intersection of Forbes and Murray is an especially bad location to be a pedestrian at any time of the day. Because of the high volume of both vehicular and foot traffic and the close proximity of half the schools in Pittsburgh, the city has deemed it necessary to put in a four way stop to allow pedestrians a sporting chance at getting across the street without getting maimed.
Not that this discourages the most aggressive of Pittsburgh's drivers, fond as they are of running the red light to make an illegal right turn, thus accomplishing the task of mowing down walkers from two directions instead of one.
Enter the crossing guard, posted at the intersection in the mornings and mid-afternoons during the school year to add an extra visual element of safety to perilous street crossings. They can't stop a speeding SUV with a single bound or write tickets. But they can and will stop drivers breaking traffic laws and yell at them. Loudly. For extended periods of time.
As I mentioned above, the intersection of Forbes and Murray is not the safest in the city, in spite of the four way stop. Earlier this summer a truck missed hitting me by inches when it ran the red light on Murray to turn right onto Forbes while I was crossing Forbes. He never slowed down and never saw me. The only reason he did not hit me was that I saw him first. The only satisfaction I could get from the incident was knowing how much of a world of trouble he would have been in once he learned he hit a pregnant woman.
So it was a wonderful sight to witness the man in the black SUV get caught attempting the same maneuver on Thursday morning. Never did the sound of a whistle sound so sweet to my ears.
Not only did the crossing guard stop the driver, she approached his SUV and yelled at him. Sternly, loudly and unreasonably. She made such a scene that the driver began to back the SUV up to get away from her. And made his second mistake of the morning.
He did not look behind him before he started backing up. Because he did not look behind him, he did not see me crossing behind his SUV* and nearly hit me. Which provoked the crossing guard into yelling at him some more, accompanied chorus of citizens, including a city employee collecting change out of the meters. A mass of humanity descended upon this man in a SUV at 7:55 on a Thursday morning.
*Yes, I know, I should have walked in front of the SUV. Past experience has taught me that is safer to go behind the vehicle instead of in front of it, since drivers have been known to “nudge” pedestrians along with their vehicles.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
They Don't Make Them Like They Used To...
In my current state of abstention, going out for dinner with friends, while fun, does not have quite the same adult sense of elan as it did when it was permissible (and non-guilt inducing) to order a glass of wine with my overcooked steak.
In an attempt to bring back a little bit of the sense that I am an adult and not just a giant, gestating, foul tempered vessel, I've taken several dining occasions as permission to order that goofy mainstay of childhood, the Shirley Temple.
The Shirley Temple of my childhood looked like a vodka and cranberry topped with a maraschino cherry, served in the double highball glass that the bartender used for my mother's Old Fashioned. The combination of grenadine and seltzer water made it cold, sweet and not very fizzy. There was only one place in my little town where I drank these concoctions as a child, the Flaming Hearth. I never had to actually order one – we were such frequent eaters at this establishment that the hostess would automatically bring one to the table, along with a Roy Rogers for my brother, my mother's Old Fashioned and my father's favorite beer. Then she would put in an order of my favorite dish, lasagna, and take my younger brother in her arms for a tour of the kitchen.
The modern Shirley Temple comes in a 16oz plastic soda glass packed with ice, Sprite/7Up, far too much grenadine and a herd of maraschino cherries. Some bartenders, in a moment of creativity, add a quarter of lime to the glass to counteract the sickly sweet combination of soda and grenadine. It still has the same color as a vodka and cranberry, but the sense of nostalgia is completely missing from the drink. I felt more like a grown-up drinking it when I was a kid.
It is like candy cigarettes. Candy cigarettes were everywhere when I was a kid. They were a common Halloween treat. Since I was always more of a chocolate girl, I usually “smoked” (but never inhaled) one or two, and traded the rest away for mini Hersey bars and Reese's peanut butter cups.
Then one day they were gone from the candy aisle, a victim of concerned organizations who believed that eating a candy cigarette would lead kids down the path of smoking. Thus goes the Shirley Temple of my childhood, the kiddie cocktail stripped of all its adult feel for fear of over-glamorizing drinking.
In an attempt to bring back a little bit of the sense that I am an adult and not just a giant, gestating, foul tempered vessel, I've taken several dining occasions as permission to order that goofy mainstay of childhood, the Shirley Temple.
The Shirley Temple of my childhood looked like a vodka and cranberry topped with a maraschino cherry, served in the double highball glass that the bartender used for my mother's Old Fashioned. The combination of grenadine and seltzer water made it cold, sweet and not very fizzy. There was only one place in my little town where I drank these concoctions as a child, the Flaming Hearth. I never had to actually order one – we were such frequent eaters at this establishment that the hostess would automatically bring one to the table, along with a Roy Rogers for my brother, my mother's Old Fashioned and my father's favorite beer. Then she would put in an order of my favorite dish, lasagna, and take my younger brother in her arms for a tour of the kitchen.
The modern Shirley Temple comes in a 16oz plastic soda glass packed with ice, Sprite/7Up, far too much grenadine and a herd of maraschino cherries. Some bartenders, in a moment of creativity, add a quarter of lime to the glass to counteract the sickly sweet combination of soda and grenadine. It still has the same color as a vodka and cranberry, but the sense of nostalgia is completely missing from the drink. I felt more like a grown-up drinking it when I was a kid.
It is like candy cigarettes. Candy cigarettes were everywhere when I was a kid. They were a common Halloween treat. Since I was always more of a chocolate girl, I usually “smoked” (but never inhaled) one or two, and traded the rest away for mini Hersey bars and Reese's peanut butter cups.
Then one day they were gone from the candy aisle, a victim of concerned organizations who believed that eating a candy cigarette would lead kids down the path of smoking. Thus goes the Shirley Temple of my childhood, the kiddie cocktail stripped of all its adult feel for fear of over-glamorizing drinking.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Priorities
J and I have begun the process of amassing the furniture we will need in the coming months, since my womb is going to be considered tight quarters in late December and having easily accessible and destroyable electronic equipment lying around the living room is a bad idea. To aid in that goal, I have been reading Craigslist ads seeking various used household items and attempting to pillage every second hand store in the area, hoping to score some decent, safe pieces of nursery and other home furnishings.
Looking for furniture on Craigslist makes me mean. As I scroll and click through the posted ads, I can not help but make fun of the spelling errors and mentally harangue sellers asking full price for used goods, based on the theory that the goods in question were barely used. One of the more fascinating threads is the number of people selling convertible cribs, using the ability to convert the crib to a bed as a selling point, then stating that they have only had the crib a year or two. If you don't intend to convert the crib to full use, why are you using that as a selling point?
It was in this frame of mind that J and set out to find a crib this past Saturday. Previous scouting visits to price new cribs had left us both with severe sticker shock, as some places would only sell the full suite (crib, dresser, changing table, etc) and others were charging as much money for a crib as we paid for our entire bedroom suite, sans mattress.
Because of the sticker shock, J and I have decided to set aside the repeated exhortations that we only purchase a new crib and that anything less means we want to kill our alien, reasoning that somewhere in the city there exists a respectable, decently priced, safe, used crib.
Not so far. Our first stop, which we mistakenly assumed was a warehouse of used children's furniture, turned out to be a thrift store raising money for children's charities, no crib was to be found. This did not stop a volunteer from spending an excessive amount of time trying to convince us to purchase one of two incredibly ugly, completely unnecessary changing tables. Polite attempts to shake this individual were meet with an increasingly hard sell, akin to an encounter we experienced with a used car salesman last summer.
A jaunt across the street to a second, charity-related, thrift store produced two cribs. The first was leftover from a daycare center, as it came with plexiglass panels and a mirrored back, better to observe an alien without causing a disturbance. J recognized it immediately, as it was the same type of crib used in the center the alien will be attending when I return to work. The second one appeared to be missing several pieces. J was perfectly comfortable with buying the plexiglass model and calling it day. I, on the other hand, reasoned that if the crib was in poor enough shape to be banished from a daycare center it probably had no place in our home.
Our third stop was at a used furniture warehouse down the street from home. Although there were no cribs available, the furniture was beautiful and J found an entertainment center to home all of the aforementioned electronic equipment in a manner that is not kid accessible. Four days later and he is still pondering purchasing the unit.
Our final stop on Saturday was at the Shadyside Arts festival, to look at the work of an artist and children's book illustrator named Kana Handel.
Kana Handel creates beautiful, fanciful paintings of teapots and mermaids, children and anthropomorphic animals such as cats and rabbits. She works with a mix of media including watercolor, ink washes and sumi on Washi. After seeing her work at the Three Rivers Arts festival in early June, I spent the rest of the summer mulling over her work. And I decided that one of her paintings was an ideal addition to the nursery walls.
I ended up purchasing two paintings. Terrible of me, I know. I hear the chorus singing about my skewed priorities. I hear them chanting about how I'm putting the alien at risk of very bad things happening, because I spent money on art instead of a new crib. I hear them scolding my response that my brother and myself slept in dresser drawers as infants (my parents were not expecting twins) and many babies sleep in vibrating bouncy chairs, moses baskets, in the parents bed and in co-sleepers – anywhere they will actually sleep.
I purchased the paintings anyway. When the alien is ready to return to the mothership in twenty something years, the paintings will go as well. If the alien decides that they are not alien-worthy, then I'll hang them in our bedroom instead.
J and continued the hunt while hanging out on Sunday morning. As I wandered through the furniture and appliance section of Craigslist I stumbled across an item on our ongoing wish list – a year old chest freezer of just the right small size for an obscenely low amount of money. As our visits to large box stores have increasingly included a stop in the large appliance section to ogle the chest freezers and compare prices, before moving on to the over-the-stove convection microwaves (to replace our current model, which is dying key-by-key) and flat screen televisions. (1)
Sensing an opportunity, I pointed the add out to J, wrote down the phone number and suggested he call to see if it was still available.
It was. The problem of how to get the freezer from the seller's house miles away to our home was quickly resolved with a phone call to J's parents, who happened to reside in the same town as the seller. Off J roared in his beloved Porsche (2) to borrow the caravan and pick up the freezer.
Hours later, two vehicles return. J's father in the caravan and J and his mother (who apparently spent most of the drive pressing down hard on the imaginary passenger brake and telling J not to waste that money he just saved, because his parents purchased the freezer for us as an early Christmas gift, on a speeding ticket) in the Porsche.
The freezer was not completely free. It came complete with a lecture about cleaning it thoroughly to get the cat smell off of it (which neither J nor myself could detect) and commentary on the small ding on the top (its used, dings are expected). J's father finished with a guilt trip about not coming to Sunday dinner, J's mother with the application of pressure to be allowed to hold the freshly newborn alien via a story of how wonderful it was to hold one of the other grandchildren at only an hour old.
I gently explained, for the umpteenth time, that I would only be in a hospital if something goes wrong in the next 17 weeks. If I remain healthy, I will be at the birthing center and no one would be informed of the birth until I was released and back home, as the last thing I want while trying to bring the alien in the world sans drugs was my in-laws anywhere near me.
(1) J and I have a philosophy about electronics and home features we dislike. We do nothing and hope that the object in question will eventually die. This philosophy would work well if it did not take us years to replace dead items, as we also have a rule that home purchases must have the agreement of both parties to be legitimate. Because of this, the hideous dining room light/ceiling fan which died the summer after we moved into our house is still attached to the ceiling, we have yet to order the other sconces to match the one we like in the living room and it was almost eight years into our marriage before we got around to purchasing a bedroom suite.
Regretfully, our current television refuses to die and has somehow managed to survive through several electrical storms unscathed. We thought the last storm, which occurred right over our house would finally put us out of our techno-lust misery, but no such luck. The set works perfectly, shows no indication of giving up anytime in the near future and will continue to work even after public mention just to spite me.
(2) In one of life's finer ironies, J purchased his much longed for two seater convertible (a 1998 Boxter in exquisite, almost-new condition) in late December. Less than four months later I was pregnant. Did you know that Porsche can install a special switch to disable the passenger side airbags and sells custom fitted infant and toddler car seats? As the first thing J offered to do after he stopped laughing over my pregnancy announcement was to offer to sell the car, one of the responses I'm considering giving when people ask what they can get for the baby is “Money towards the disable switch and infant/toddler seats for the Porsche”. Because J is that spectacularly awesome and deserves, at all possible, to keep his dream car. And for those who have commented on how nice it is for me to “let J keep his car” – how insulting can you get?
Looking for furniture on Craigslist makes me mean. As I scroll and click through the posted ads, I can not help but make fun of the spelling errors and mentally harangue sellers asking full price for used goods, based on the theory that the goods in question were barely used. One of the more fascinating threads is the number of people selling convertible cribs, using the ability to convert the crib to a bed as a selling point, then stating that they have only had the crib a year or two. If you don't intend to convert the crib to full use, why are you using that as a selling point?
It was in this frame of mind that J and set out to find a crib this past Saturday. Previous scouting visits to price new cribs had left us both with severe sticker shock, as some places would only sell the full suite (crib, dresser, changing table, etc) and others were charging as much money for a crib as we paid for our entire bedroom suite, sans mattress.
Because of the sticker shock, J and I have decided to set aside the repeated exhortations that we only purchase a new crib and that anything less means we want to kill our alien, reasoning that somewhere in the city there exists a respectable, decently priced, safe, used crib.
Not so far. Our first stop, which we mistakenly assumed was a warehouse of used children's furniture, turned out to be a thrift store raising money for children's charities, no crib was to be found. This did not stop a volunteer from spending an excessive amount of time trying to convince us to purchase one of two incredibly ugly, completely unnecessary changing tables. Polite attempts to shake this individual were meet with an increasingly hard sell, akin to an encounter we experienced with a used car salesman last summer.
A jaunt across the street to a second, charity-related, thrift store produced two cribs. The first was leftover from a daycare center, as it came with plexiglass panels and a mirrored back, better to observe an alien without causing a disturbance. J recognized it immediately, as it was the same type of crib used in the center the alien will be attending when I return to work. The second one appeared to be missing several pieces. J was perfectly comfortable with buying the plexiglass model and calling it day. I, on the other hand, reasoned that if the crib was in poor enough shape to be banished from a daycare center it probably had no place in our home.
Our third stop was at a used furniture warehouse down the street from home. Although there were no cribs available, the furniture was beautiful and J found an entertainment center to home all of the aforementioned electronic equipment in a manner that is not kid accessible. Four days later and he is still pondering purchasing the unit.
Our final stop on Saturday was at the Shadyside Arts festival, to look at the work of an artist and children's book illustrator named Kana Handel.
Kana Handel creates beautiful, fanciful paintings of teapots and mermaids, children and anthropomorphic animals such as cats and rabbits. She works with a mix of media including watercolor, ink washes and sumi on Washi. After seeing her work at the Three Rivers Arts festival in early June, I spent the rest of the summer mulling over her work. And I decided that one of her paintings was an ideal addition to the nursery walls.
I ended up purchasing two paintings. Terrible of me, I know. I hear the chorus singing about my skewed priorities. I hear them chanting about how I'm putting the alien at risk of very bad things happening, because I spent money on art instead of a new crib. I hear them scolding my response that my brother and myself slept in dresser drawers as infants (my parents were not expecting twins) and many babies sleep in vibrating bouncy chairs, moses baskets, in the parents bed and in co-sleepers – anywhere they will actually sleep.
I purchased the paintings anyway. When the alien is ready to return to the mothership in twenty something years, the paintings will go as well. If the alien decides that they are not alien-worthy, then I'll hang them in our bedroom instead.
J and continued the hunt while hanging out on Sunday morning. As I wandered through the furniture and appliance section of Craigslist I stumbled across an item on our ongoing wish list – a year old chest freezer of just the right small size for an obscenely low amount of money. As our visits to large box stores have increasingly included a stop in the large appliance section to ogle the chest freezers and compare prices, before moving on to the over-the-stove convection microwaves (to replace our current model, which is dying key-by-key) and flat screen televisions. (1)
Sensing an opportunity, I pointed the add out to J, wrote down the phone number and suggested he call to see if it was still available.
It was. The problem of how to get the freezer from the seller's house miles away to our home was quickly resolved with a phone call to J's parents, who happened to reside in the same town as the seller. Off J roared in his beloved Porsche (2) to borrow the caravan and pick up the freezer.
Hours later, two vehicles return. J's father in the caravan and J and his mother (who apparently spent most of the drive pressing down hard on the imaginary passenger brake and telling J not to waste that money he just saved, because his parents purchased the freezer for us as an early Christmas gift, on a speeding ticket) in the Porsche.
The freezer was not completely free. It came complete with a lecture about cleaning it thoroughly to get the cat smell off of it (which neither J nor myself could detect) and commentary on the small ding on the top (its used, dings are expected). J's father finished with a guilt trip about not coming to Sunday dinner, J's mother with the application of pressure to be allowed to hold the freshly newborn alien via a story of how wonderful it was to hold one of the other grandchildren at only an hour old.
I gently explained, for the umpteenth time, that I would only be in a hospital if something goes wrong in the next 17 weeks. If I remain healthy, I will be at the birthing center and no one would be informed of the birth until I was released and back home, as the last thing I want while trying to bring the alien in the world sans drugs was my in-laws anywhere near me.
(1) J and I have a philosophy about electronics and home features we dislike. We do nothing and hope that the object in question will eventually die. This philosophy would work well if it did not take us years to replace dead items, as we also have a rule that home purchases must have the agreement of both parties to be legitimate. Because of this, the hideous dining room light/ceiling fan which died the summer after we moved into our house is still attached to the ceiling, we have yet to order the other sconces to match the one we like in the living room and it was almost eight years into our marriage before we got around to purchasing a bedroom suite.
Regretfully, our current television refuses to die and has somehow managed to survive through several electrical storms unscathed. We thought the last storm, which occurred right over our house would finally put us out of our techno-lust misery, but no such luck. The set works perfectly, shows no indication of giving up anytime in the near future and will continue to work even after public mention just to spite me.
(2) In one of life's finer ironies, J purchased his much longed for two seater convertible (a 1998 Boxter in exquisite, almost-new condition) in late December. Less than four months later I was pregnant. Did you know that Porsche can install a special switch to disable the passenger side airbags and sells custom fitted infant and toddler car seats? As the first thing J offered to do after he stopped laughing over my pregnancy announcement was to offer to sell the car, one of the responses I'm considering giving when people ask what they can get for the baby is “Money towards the disable switch and infant/toddler seats for the Porsche”. Because J is that spectacularly awesome and deserves, at all possible, to keep his dream car. And for those who have commented on how nice it is for me to “let J keep his car” – how insulting can you get?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Thoughts on Edward Kennedy
When I was twelve, my parents packed my brothers and myself up and took us to Martha's Vineyard, to spend two weeks on the island.
We stayed, as we always stayed during our visits, in the funky, catawampus home of my aunt and uncle, standing on a hill above Oak Bluffs. Slapped together from the partial remains of two smaller homes, you had to step down to get into two of the bedrooms, step up to move from the small living room into the larger dining room and kitchen. You could see the ocean and watch the activities in Oak Bluffs from the front porch. If you were feeling especially mischievous, you could spy on guests utilizing the outdoor shower from one of the bedrooms.
One day my dad decided to take a walk from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown Wharf, six miles away. I went with him, sporting a pair of shoes unsuitable for a six mile hike.
We walked along Seaview Avenue and Beach Road, through the state park, a salt pond on our left and the ocean on our right. It was a bright, beautiful day full of the sounds of the moving ocean, the screaming of the gulls and the scent of salt and wild roses.
As we entered Edgartown my father started talking about Senator Edward Kennedy and the incident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969. He pointed out the island to me, told me where the pond was located, described how the car went into the pond on that night, how Kennedy swam to Edgartown. My father was very clear that he believed that Kennedy was responsible for Mary Jo Kopechne's death.
Imagine a man who had to bear witness to the mental illness and deterioration of a sister and the death of all three of his brothers, the first in war, the second and third publicly murdered, assassinated. Who barely survived a plane crash, who believed himself to be cursed like his brothers. On the night he drove that car into a pond he was drunk, he was driving, and he abandoned the scene of the accident.
My father left me with the impression of an Edward Kennedy who was an incredibly flawed human being in a lot of physical and emotional pain before the accident. Of a man who paid and repaid the consequences of every single bad decision he made on the night his car went over the bridge. He was an alcoholic, he was a womanizer, he destroyed his first marriage, he set a bad example for the younger men in his family.
I don't remember if we talked about forgiveness during that conversation. I like to think that I asked my father if Mary Jo Kopechene's family forgave him for causing her death, if my father forgave him for his mistakes. But my memory of 24 years ago is faulty, I'm not sure if my twelve year old self was that precocious. If my memory is correct, my father left me with the impression that it was not his role or my role to forgive Edward Kennedy for his myriad of sins. That was a job better left to the people he directly harmed and his god.
But out of that conversation was planted the idea that any individual could be terribly flawed, could make terrible mistakes and still find a way to redemption. This is the Edward Kennedy my father taught me to see, a man on a constant quest for redemption, who fought for the rights of those who did not have the privileges of his gender, his money, his stature or family name.
Rest In Peace Senator. My you be granted the redemption that you spent your lifetime seeking.
We stayed, as we always stayed during our visits, in the funky, catawampus home of my aunt and uncle, standing on a hill above Oak Bluffs. Slapped together from the partial remains of two smaller homes, you had to step down to get into two of the bedrooms, step up to move from the small living room into the larger dining room and kitchen. You could see the ocean and watch the activities in Oak Bluffs from the front porch. If you were feeling especially mischievous, you could spy on guests utilizing the outdoor shower from one of the bedrooms.
One day my dad decided to take a walk from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown Wharf, six miles away. I went with him, sporting a pair of shoes unsuitable for a six mile hike.
We walked along Seaview Avenue and Beach Road, through the state park, a salt pond on our left and the ocean on our right. It was a bright, beautiful day full of the sounds of the moving ocean, the screaming of the gulls and the scent of salt and wild roses.
As we entered Edgartown my father started talking about Senator Edward Kennedy and the incident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969. He pointed out the island to me, told me where the pond was located, described how the car went into the pond on that night, how Kennedy swam to Edgartown. My father was very clear that he believed that Kennedy was responsible for Mary Jo Kopechne's death.
Imagine a man who had to bear witness to the mental illness and deterioration of a sister and the death of all three of his brothers, the first in war, the second and third publicly murdered, assassinated. Who barely survived a plane crash, who believed himself to be cursed like his brothers. On the night he drove that car into a pond he was drunk, he was driving, and he abandoned the scene of the accident.
My father left me with the impression of an Edward Kennedy who was an incredibly flawed human being in a lot of physical and emotional pain before the accident. Of a man who paid and repaid the consequences of every single bad decision he made on the night his car went over the bridge. He was an alcoholic, he was a womanizer, he destroyed his first marriage, he set a bad example for the younger men in his family.
I don't remember if we talked about forgiveness during that conversation. I like to think that I asked my father if Mary Jo Kopechene's family forgave him for causing her death, if my father forgave him for his mistakes. But my memory of 24 years ago is faulty, I'm not sure if my twelve year old self was that precocious. If my memory is correct, my father left me with the impression that it was not his role or my role to forgive Edward Kennedy for his myriad of sins. That was a job better left to the people he directly harmed and his god.
But out of that conversation was planted the idea that any individual could be terribly flawed, could make terrible mistakes and still find a way to redemption. This is the Edward Kennedy my father taught me to see, a man on a constant quest for redemption, who fought for the rights of those who did not have the privileges of his gender, his money, his stature or family name.
Rest In Peace Senator. My you be granted the redemption that you spent your lifetime seeking.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Muddlng Through
I hate being pregnant.
There are the biological and physical changes. Weight gain. Tiredness.(1) The increase in my (already substantial) bra size coupled with a serious lack in supportive lingerie to offset the increases, topped off with the sickly sour, rotten cherry of far too many lectures on why pregnant-women-should-not-wear-underwire-because-it-is-bad-for-you.(2) The complete absence of anything resembling sexual desire.(3) The occasional episodes of public dry heaving in restaurants and on the bus. The constant aching.
There are the emotional changes, which can be summed up as me having the most spectacular episodes of depression I have ever experienced. Too many days spent having to call up every ounce of will power I posses to get out of bed, get on the bus, carry on with my day. Flashes of anger so intense that I don't recognize myself. Random fits of crying. My first ever episodes of hysterics, which lasted well over 15 minutes and was spent on the bed, J sitting next to me not saying anything, just stroking my hair, telling me to breathe and cracking highly inappropriate (but truly funny) jokes.
At the end of the hysterics, J confessed that washed the kitchen floor earlier in the week because he had smashed an orange in a fit of anger. He suggested that I try it and volunteered to wash the floor again.
I said no thanks, a smashed chair was enough for my lifetime.(4)
There are all the tests, the sodding tests that I have to go through. As of this date, two ultrasounds, a first trimester blood draw (nine vials), an urinalysis, a repeat blood draw because the lab screwed up and lost my blood type/antibody results(5) and the doppler at every checkup. Upcoming I have a third trimester blood draw, including the infamous 1 hour glucose tolerance test. Followed, most likely, by the even more infamous 3 hour, multiple draw, blood glucose test, since 15-23% of the women who take the 1 hour test fail it, since it is only a screening, not a diagnostic. Out of the 15-23% that take the 3 hour test, only 2-5% actually have gestational diabetes.
A digression – why am I taking a screening test which such a high false failure rate?
I hate the clichés. At a recent family gathering, I managed to score BINGO on my mental “pregnancy cliché BINGO card” in under three minutes just by listening ONE person, the mother of one of my in-laws.
All of this is intensified by the awful feeling that all those well intentioned offers to help are nothing more than hot air.
In spite of my repeated requests, J has yet to visit any of the daycares that I asked him to check out several months ago, leaving me the inevitable feeling that I will be forced to take yet more time off, in between doctor appointments and lab tests, to tour centers. The longer J puts it off, the more difficult it will be to find a decent placement. The current budget impasse in PA state legislature has lead to cuts in funding, causing over 100 centers statewide to close. Those that have managed to stay open have limited availability and it is very difficult to find an infant care placement. Which means that staying at home may go from an option to a necessity.
I resent the hell out of the fact that J has yet to do the one thing I specifically asked him to do. I resent having to ask him over and over again. I resent listening to him say that he'll take care of it, but then doing nothing. I resent being angry at him about it. I don't want to feel this way. I'm tired of hearing that if it is that important, I should do it myself. He is the father. He is equally responsible. Not “should be”. Not “could be”. IS.(6)
I still have no idea how much maternity leave I will have. The feelers I have put out to see which of our friends and family would be interested in helping us out after the alien is born have been met with a lukewarm reception. So lukewarm that I almost feel compelled to send out a mass email apologizing for the inconvenience I am causing by delivering the alien at Christmas, thus keeping people from their orgy of shopping, cooking, gift wrapping, gift unwrapping and eating.
But mostly, right now, I hate the fact that I will have to wait at least 17 weeks, 6 days for a shot of tequila.
(1)I have not seen the inside of a gym in months and probably will not see the inside of one for at least six more. Common sense would dictate that I cancel my gym membership. J insists that I maintain it, even if I'm too tired to go right now, and is helping me to figure out a way to get there 2-3 days a week once I'm cleared for exercise.
(2)There is absolutely no such thing as a wire-free supportive size [enter my ridiculously large size here] bra. It does not exist. Stop telling me that it does. ESPECIALLY if your breasts could be described as “lemon sized” on a good day, as almost every sales clerk I spoken with possesses. You have no idea what you are talking about.
(3)All those websites and books that claim that I would get happy hormones at some point? They lied.
(4)A long ago incident provoked by a run in with a misogynistic attorney while negotiating the sale of our first house.
(5)This turned out to be a surprise. For years I was under the impression that I was B+. As it turns out, I'm not. I'm A+.
(6)As I was writing this, J asked for time off to go tour the centers.
There are the biological and physical changes. Weight gain. Tiredness.(1) The increase in my (already substantial) bra size coupled with a serious lack in supportive lingerie to offset the increases, topped off with the sickly sour, rotten cherry of far too many lectures on why pregnant-women-should-not-wear-underwire-because-it-is-bad-for-you.(2) The complete absence of anything resembling sexual desire.(3) The occasional episodes of public dry heaving in restaurants and on the bus. The constant aching.
There are the emotional changes, which can be summed up as me having the most spectacular episodes of depression I have ever experienced. Too many days spent having to call up every ounce of will power I posses to get out of bed, get on the bus, carry on with my day. Flashes of anger so intense that I don't recognize myself. Random fits of crying. My first ever episodes of hysterics, which lasted well over 15 minutes and was spent on the bed, J sitting next to me not saying anything, just stroking my hair, telling me to breathe and cracking highly inappropriate (but truly funny) jokes.
At the end of the hysterics, J confessed that washed the kitchen floor earlier in the week because he had smashed an orange in a fit of anger. He suggested that I try it and volunteered to wash the floor again.
I said no thanks, a smashed chair was enough for my lifetime.(4)
There are all the tests, the sodding tests that I have to go through. As of this date, two ultrasounds, a first trimester blood draw (nine vials), an urinalysis, a repeat blood draw because the lab screwed up and lost my blood type/antibody results(5) and the doppler at every checkup. Upcoming I have a third trimester blood draw, including the infamous 1 hour glucose tolerance test. Followed, most likely, by the even more infamous 3 hour, multiple draw, blood glucose test, since 15-23% of the women who take the 1 hour test fail it, since it is only a screening, not a diagnostic. Out of the 15-23% that take the 3 hour test, only 2-5% actually have gestational diabetes.
A digression – why am I taking a screening test which such a high false failure rate?
I hate the clichés. At a recent family gathering, I managed to score BINGO on my mental “pregnancy cliché BINGO card” in under three minutes just by listening ONE person, the mother of one of my in-laws.
All of this is intensified by the awful feeling that all those well intentioned offers to help are nothing more than hot air.
In spite of my repeated requests, J has yet to visit any of the daycares that I asked him to check out several months ago, leaving me the inevitable feeling that I will be forced to take yet more time off, in between doctor appointments and lab tests, to tour centers. The longer J puts it off, the more difficult it will be to find a decent placement. The current budget impasse in PA state legislature has lead to cuts in funding, causing over 100 centers statewide to close. Those that have managed to stay open have limited availability and it is very difficult to find an infant care placement. Which means that staying at home may go from an option to a necessity.
I resent the hell out of the fact that J has yet to do the one thing I specifically asked him to do. I resent having to ask him over and over again. I resent listening to him say that he'll take care of it, but then doing nothing. I resent being angry at him about it. I don't want to feel this way. I'm tired of hearing that if it is that important, I should do it myself. He is the father. He is equally responsible. Not “should be”. Not “could be”. IS.(6)
I still have no idea how much maternity leave I will have. The feelers I have put out to see which of our friends and family would be interested in helping us out after the alien is born have been met with a lukewarm reception. So lukewarm that I almost feel compelled to send out a mass email apologizing for the inconvenience I am causing by delivering the alien at Christmas, thus keeping people from their orgy of shopping, cooking, gift wrapping, gift unwrapping and eating.
But mostly, right now, I hate the fact that I will have to wait at least 17 weeks, 6 days for a shot of tequila.
(1)I have not seen the inside of a gym in months and probably will not see the inside of one for at least six more. Common sense would dictate that I cancel my gym membership. J insists that I maintain it, even if I'm too tired to go right now, and is helping me to figure out a way to get there 2-3 days a week once I'm cleared for exercise.
(2)There is absolutely no such thing as a wire-free supportive size [enter my ridiculously large size here] bra. It does not exist. Stop telling me that it does. ESPECIALLY if your breasts could be described as “lemon sized” on a good day, as almost every sales clerk I spoken with possesses. You have no idea what you are talking about.
(3)All those websites and books that claim that I would get happy hormones at some point? They lied.
(4)A long ago incident provoked by a run in with a misogynistic attorney while negotiating the sale of our first house.
(5)This turned out to be a surprise. For years I was under the impression that I was B+. As it turns out, I'm not. I'm A+.
(6)As I was writing this, J asked for time off to go tour the centers.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Bad Manners
If I had any sense at all, I would have realized that my encounter with the elderly lady on the corner of Forbes and Murray on Friday afternoon was a predictor of the sudden and wild change in weather from the temperate (albeit slightly rainy) summer that has made sleeping under a down comforter a comfortable necessity to the sudden and unexpected 80+ degree temperatures the city will swelter under for most of the upcoming week.
On Friday afternoon I sat on a seat in shelter, quietly waiting for a bus to take me back downtown. The stop was completely empty when I arrived, the passel of teenagers missing from the church steps, both the shelters devoid of humanity. I took a book (J. Martaan Troost's Lost on Planet China) out of my bag and commenced quietly reading.
The bus stop began to fill up with people. A woman sat down next to me. As we were sitting there, I quietly reading my book, she looking around, an older woman walked up to the shelter.
What transpired next was one of those moments in which I, humbly reading my book and minding my own business, suddenly become the target of an absolute stranger's ire because I lack the ability to read minds.
The woman beside me (WBM) offered the older woman (OW) her seat. OW refused offer of seat with expected comment about “age before beauty” and WBM needing the seat more than she does. OW then segued into an indirect harangue of indeterminate length (I really should time these things) about my rudeness in not offering her my seat first, before WBM.
I tried, very hard, to keep my mouth shut, my head down, my face expressionless, my eyes focused on the text of my book as OW expressed how “[her] children were raised better than that” and how disrespectful “the youth” of today were towards their superiors. But something inside me snapped at hearing OW snidely say “Here comes someone who really needs a seat. I wonder if she'll have one offered to her”.
I looked up from my book. I wished I had been calm enough to look OW straight in the eye, but I could not. I know it would have been more effective, but it took a lot of will to get the words out.
“Ma'am, I'm 20 weeks pregnant, I'm tired and I'm not moving”.
There was a momentarily pause as OW digested this information, suddenly aware that perhaps I was not the teenager she assumed me to be. Then she snapped back “Be quiet, I wasn't talking to you”, moved closer to WBM and lowered her voice to a mummer. I put my eyes back on my book. When the bus pulled up I waited as OW cut to the front of the line, boarded the bus and sat in one of the seats near the front.
Then I got up, hauled my tired, pregnant self onto the bus, walked to the back and sat down.
J's response when I told him this story: “What are you doing to attract these people?”
On Friday afternoon I sat on a seat in shelter, quietly waiting for a bus to take me back downtown. The stop was completely empty when I arrived, the passel of teenagers missing from the church steps, both the shelters devoid of humanity. I took a book (J. Martaan Troost's Lost on Planet China) out of my bag and commenced quietly reading.
The bus stop began to fill up with people. A woman sat down next to me. As we were sitting there, I quietly reading my book, she looking around, an older woman walked up to the shelter.
What transpired next was one of those moments in which I, humbly reading my book and minding my own business, suddenly become the target of an absolute stranger's ire because I lack the ability to read minds.
The woman beside me (WBM) offered the older woman (OW) her seat. OW refused offer of seat with expected comment about “age before beauty” and WBM needing the seat more than she does. OW then segued into an indirect harangue of indeterminate length (I really should time these things) about my rudeness in not offering her my seat first, before WBM.
I tried, very hard, to keep my mouth shut, my head down, my face expressionless, my eyes focused on the text of my book as OW expressed how “[her] children were raised better than that” and how disrespectful “the youth” of today were towards their superiors. But something inside me snapped at hearing OW snidely say “Here comes someone who really needs a seat. I wonder if she'll have one offered to her”.
I looked up from my book. I wished I had been calm enough to look OW straight in the eye, but I could not. I know it would have been more effective, but it took a lot of will to get the words out.
“Ma'am, I'm 20 weeks pregnant, I'm tired and I'm not moving”.
There was a momentarily pause as OW digested this information, suddenly aware that perhaps I was not the teenager she assumed me to be. Then she snapped back “Be quiet, I wasn't talking to you”, moved closer to WBM and lowered her voice to a mummer. I put my eyes back on my book. When the bus pulled up I waited as OW cut to the front of the line, boarded the bus and sat in one of the seats near the front.
Then I got up, hauled my tired, pregnant self onto the bus, walked to the back and sat down.
J's response when I told him this story: “What are you doing to attract these people?”
Friday, July 31, 2009
Role Reversal
I fully expected to receive some push back on my declaration that this will be the one and only child J and I will be having. Surprisingly, there has been far less than I had anticipated, although that may very well change this weekend as we are attending a family picnic hosted by J's cousin, none of who are shy about expressing their opinion on how we should be conducting our life.
I did not expect J to receive as much push back as he seems to be getting right now, and it surprised me. J is irritated, he has had far too many conversations in the past several weeks with co-workers who absolutely refuse to accept that maybe the two of us have a pretty good grasp, after nine and a half years of marriage, of where our collective limitations end. To wit, they end with one child.
The pattern of the conversation is always the same. J mentions an alien is gestating, coworker responds with an exposition on the joys of parenthood. This is followed up by an interrogation on our current parental status, continued with statements on how eager the two of us will be to have another once the first is past the helpless alien stage. J responds that we intend to have one child. Coworker counters with the classic “you will change your mind”. J, unable to make himself walk away at this point, proceeds to explain all the logical reasons (time, money, resources, overpopulated planet, I don't want another child and hate being pregnant). Coworker dismisses explanations as the lunatic ravings of a nervous, first time father. The fact that I have no desire or intention to go through the experience again does not enter into the coworkers consciousness as a legitimate reason.. After all, once married, ownership of my reproductive organs passes onto my husband. I'm just the safe holding the goods. J gets to decide how the goods are used.
J shuts these conversations down by explaining that I have a history of depression, pregnancy has been far more difficult on me than he had anticipated and that he has no intention of putting me through such an experience again. Coworker shuts up.
Not wanting to be pregnant again? Not a reason. Not wanting your already crazy wife to become even crazier. Perfectly acceptable, after all there are children involved.
I did not expect J to receive as much push back as he seems to be getting right now, and it surprised me. J is irritated, he has had far too many conversations in the past several weeks with co-workers who absolutely refuse to accept that maybe the two of us have a pretty good grasp, after nine and a half years of marriage, of where our collective limitations end. To wit, they end with one child.
The pattern of the conversation is always the same. J mentions an alien is gestating, coworker responds with an exposition on the joys of parenthood. This is followed up by an interrogation on our current parental status, continued with statements on how eager the two of us will be to have another once the first is past the helpless alien stage. J responds that we intend to have one child. Coworker counters with the classic “you will change your mind”. J, unable to make himself walk away at this point, proceeds to explain all the logical reasons (time, money, resources, overpopulated planet, I don't want another child and hate being pregnant). Coworker dismisses explanations as the lunatic ravings of a nervous, first time father. The fact that I have no desire or intention to go through the experience again does not enter into the coworkers consciousness as a legitimate reason.. After all, once married, ownership of my reproductive organs passes onto my husband. I'm just the safe holding the goods. J gets to decide how the goods are used.
J shuts these conversations down by explaining that I have a history of depression, pregnancy has been far more difficult on me than he had anticipated and that he has no intention of putting me through such an experience again. Coworker shuts up.
Not wanting to be pregnant again? Not a reason. Not wanting your already crazy wife to become even crazier. Perfectly acceptable, after all there are children involved.
Monday, July 27, 2009
My parents were in the city over the weekend, to see Til Death Do Us Part: Late Nite Catechism 3. J and I met them at Six Penn Kitchen (home of a killer lobster macaroni and cheese dish that I have yet to try with the lobster) for brunch on Sunday morning.
Brunch began as the breezy and fun meal it is supposed to be late on a Sunday morning. Dad ordered an espresso and a green pepper stuffed with various meats, mom an iced tea and cheesecake stuffed french toast. J voted for coffee and an omelet stuffed with various meats while I opted for decaffeinated tea (served loose in a press pot), fresh orange juice, huevos rancheros and a side order of the macaroni and cheese*.
Remarks were made on my very gradual weight gain (I'm still in most of my regular clothing and only appear pregnant to those in the know), as gaining weight gradually is supposed to be less stressful on the body, lead to less weight gain overall, easier loss of weight post-pregnancy and, as told to me by my father-the-expert on such things, fewer and lighter stretch marks. Oohs and aahs were expressed over the twelve week ultrasound photos. An update on the Perkins restaurant that burned down several weeks ago was given.
This discomfort began once the details of the meal had been settled. J's mom wants to throw me a baby shower, an announcement that the majority of my female friends, knowing and sharing my deep aversion to showers bridal, baby and otherwise, greeted with much hilarity and the promise to present me with some highly inappropriate gifts to keep my spirits up during the execution of the event**.
As the alien I will be expelling is number six in a line of grandchildren on J's side and the first for my parents, it felt only appropriate and correct that my mom get first crack at torturing her daughter in the fashion of a baby shower. Except that, as carefully as I phrased the question, I could not find a way of explaining myself without sounding mercenary and made my mother very uncomfortable, as it had not occurred to her to think about hosting a baby shower.
As J and I have been trolling Craigslist in recent weeks for gently used infant clothing, a second hand crib made within the past three years, a second hand stroller and other baby related items, it was frustrating to come across as an individual who was begging for stuff. The only new items we intend to purchase are the breast pump, the infant car seat and the mattress for the crib. We are not assuming that anyone will providing us with anything.
After mom made it clear that she was more than willing to pass the shower honor on to J's mom, the conversation turned to our future plans.
J has a very bad habit of asking, in an audible undertone, if we should share information in front of the very people that I may want to withhold information from, at least in the short term. Over the years, I have gotten better at explicitly telling J to avoid certain topics of conversation, but once in a while an item will slip and he has never caught onto the concept
Such as the fact that I am seriously considering staying home.
My mom, who quit working when I was twelve to stay at home, did not approve. At all. And argued against it. My explanation, that out of the two choices, living with less money stressed me out less than the thought of the getting the alien bathed, fed and to/from daycare while holding down a full-time job, did little to appease her. J's explanation that I would be doing unpaid work for a friend part-time appeased her a little, but not much. All the contingencies J insists on putting into place to ensure that I get out of the house did little to appease her.
I shrugged her objections off, only to have them come back to haunt me at 4:30 in the morning. By the time J got up I was in tears and anxious.
And J was he gentle blunt self. “When have you honestly felt like you mom really supported you?” he asked me in the kitchen, after my bout of histrionics.
“Rarely” I replied.
“There's your answer. Do what makes you happy”.
*The ability to order an enormous amount of food without commentary is one of the few remaining prerogatives a pregnant woman has these days, after being denied lunch meat (including roast beef), sushi, rare steak, various cheeses, most seafood, chocolate, beer/wine and caffeinated beverages. And it is a prerogative that is slipping away as the media becomes increasingly enamored in shaming pregnant women for completely natural weight gain.
I also feel compelled to go on record and state that I did not finish all that food and took the rest home. The rest of the huevos made an excellent Sunday evening dinner and the macaroni and cheese is tonight's meal.
**A flask was mentioned. A full one. With wine. As for why I am opting to go through this particular torture, I may not be mercenary, but I'm also not a fool.
Brunch began as the breezy and fun meal it is supposed to be late on a Sunday morning. Dad ordered an espresso and a green pepper stuffed with various meats, mom an iced tea and cheesecake stuffed french toast. J voted for coffee and an omelet stuffed with various meats while I opted for decaffeinated tea (served loose in a press pot), fresh orange juice, huevos rancheros and a side order of the macaroni and cheese*.
Remarks were made on my very gradual weight gain (I'm still in most of my regular clothing and only appear pregnant to those in the know), as gaining weight gradually is supposed to be less stressful on the body, lead to less weight gain overall, easier loss of weight post-pregnancy and, as told to me by my father-the-expert on such things, fewer and lighter stretch marks. Oohs and aahs were expressed over the twelve week ultrasound photos. An update on the Perkins restaurant that burned down several weeks ago was given.
This discomfort began once the details of the meal had been settled. J's mom wants to throw me a baby shower, an announcement that the majority of my female friends, knowing and sharing my deep aversion to showers bridal, baby and otherwise, greeted with much hilarity and the promise to present me with some highly inappropriate gifts to keep my spirits up during the execution of the event**.
As the alien I will be expelling is number six in a line of grandchildren on J's side and the first for my parents, it felt only appropriate and correct that my mom get first crack at torturing her daughter in the fashion of a baby shower. Except that, as carefully as I phrased the question, I could not find a way of explaining myself without sounding mercenary and made my mother very uncomfortable, as it had not occurred to her to think about hosting a baby shower.
As J and I have been trolling Craigslist in recent weeks for gently used infant clothing, a second hand crib made within the past three years, a second hand stroller and other baby related items, it was frustrating to come across as an individual who was begging for stuff. The only new items we intend to purchase are the breast pump, the infant car seat and the mattress for the crib. We are not assuming that anyone will providing us with anything.
After mom made it clear that she was more than willing to pass the shower honor on to J's mom, the conversation turned to our future plans.
J has a very bad habit of asking, in an audible undertone, if we should share information in front of the very people that I may want to withhold information from, at least in the short term. Over the years, I have gotten better at explicitly telling J to avoid certain topics of conversation, but once in a while an item will slip and he has never caught onto the concept
Such as the fact that I am seriously considering staying home.
My mom, who quit working when I was twelve to stay at home, did not approve. At all. And argued against it. My explanation, that out of the two choices, living with less money stressed me out less than the thought of the getting the alien bathed, fed and to/from daycare while holding down a full-time job, did little to appease her. J's explanation that I would be doing unpaid work for a friend part-time appeased her a little, but not much. All the contingencies J insists on putting into place to ensure that I get out of the house did little to appease her.
I shrugged her objections off, only to have them come back to haunt me at 4:30 in the morning. By the time J got up I was in tears and anxious.
And J was he gentle blunt self. “When have you honestly felt like you mom really supported you?” he asked me in the kitchen, after my bout of histrionics.
“Rarely” I replied.
“There's your answer. Do what makes you happy”.
*The ability to order an enormous amount of food without commentary is one of the few remaining prerogatives a pregnant woman has these days, after being denied lunch meat (including roast beef), sushi, rare steak, various cheeses, most seafood, chocolate, beer/wine and caffeinated beverages. And it is a prerogative that is slipping away as the media becomes increasingly enamored in shaming pregnant women for completely natural weight gain.
I also feel compelled to go on record and state that I did not finish all that food and took the rest home. The rest of the huevos made an excellent Sunday evening dinner and the macaroni and cheese is tonight's meal.
**A flask was mentioned. A full one. With wine. As for why I am opting to go through this particular torture, I may not be mercenary, but I'm also not a fool.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Options
J has been searching for a job for several months. Because of the gradually tightening economy, his success has been non-existent. Messages from recruiters have dropped to zero and his calls to them go either unanswered or offer no progress.
He received an email last week informing him that a product manager position has opened up at a company J left five years ago. The email came from an ex-coworker (and good friend) still employed at the company. He proposed J's name to management and received an enthusiastic response to the idea.
The job is ideal for J. Highly technical, with opportunities to interact with clients on a regular basis and attend major developer conferences, for a decent salary, working with individuals that J knows well and still maintains a good relationship with these many years later.
It is also highly stressful, with travel ranging from two to seven days every month and an average burn-out rate of a year. At a company that made J so miserable that I nearly moved out of our home near the end of his tenure there, rather than put up with one more day of his bad attitude. When he finally found new employment I threatened to leave him if ever went back *.
The interview went well, but he is only the first person interviewed and we think the company is balking at J's salary requirements.
J and I have both tried to live by the general rule of not stopping the other from doing something we really want to do, as long as it does not violate the boundaries of our very bourgeois marriage values. Ninety percent of the time it works out well. J is free to buy the Porsche, I am free to fly off to Paris for a week by myself.
But the thought of the amount of travel he will have to do every month, no matter how minimal, leaves me stressed, as it is becoming painfully clear, in spite of our best intentions, that if I continue working I will be overwhelmingly responsible, at least for the first year, for the care of our child. Feeding, watching over, getting to and from day care and doctors appointments. Even if he does not take this job, I feel an incredible amount of the burden falling on my shoulders. And I'm a little bit angry that the dictates of biology and culture make it this way.
So, I quit. Or am quitting. Maybe. Possibly. When I sit quietly and weigh the two options in my mind, being home makes more sense. J had put out feelers among his network of developer friends and one is interested in hiring me to test on a part time basis. I could work on the sketches for the children's story I wrote seven years ago. I could spend some time writing. And J insists that I keep my gym membership and figure out a budget for hiring a sitter, to get me out of the house alone a 2-3 days a week.
Then my common sense weighs in and tells me that I'm crazy to quit in this economy and need to tough it out. That we can get by on one income, but I need to be employed in case J becomes unemployed. That it is worth giving up 1/3 of my paycheck to childcare and my temporary sanity to ensure that we stay afloat in the long term.
This sucks.
*Obviously an empty threat.
He received an email last week informing him that a product manager position has opened up at a company J left five years ago. The email came from an ex-coworker (and good friend) still employed at the company. He proposed J's name to management and received an enthusiastic response to the idea.
The job is ideal for J. Highly technical, with opportunities to interact with clients on a regular basis and attend major developer conferences, for a decent salary, working with individuals that J knows well and still maintains a good relationship with these many years later.
It is also highly stressful, with travel ranging from two to seven days every month and an average burn-out rate of a year. At a company that made J so miserable that I nearly moved out of our home near the end of his tenure there, rather than put up with one more day of his bad attitude. When he finally found new employment I threatened to leave him if ever went back *.
The interview went well, but he is only the first person interviewed and we think the company is balking at J's salary requirements.
J and I have both tried to live by the general rule of not stopping the other from doing something we really want to do, as long as it does not violate the boundaries of our very bourgeois marriage values. Ninety percent of the time it works out well. J is free to buy the Porsche, I am free to fly off to Paris for a week by myself.
But the thought of the amount of travel he will have to do every month, no matter how minimal, leaves me stressed, as it is becoming painfully clear, in spite of our best intentions, that if I continue working I will be overwhelmingly responsible, at least for the first year, for the care of our child. Feeding, watching over, getting to and from day care and doctors appointments. Even if he does not take this job, I feel an incredible amount of the burden falling on my shoulders. And I'm a little bit angry that the dictates of biology and culture make it this way.
So, I quit. Or am quitting. Maybe. Possibly. When I sit quietly and weigh the two options in my mind, being home makes more sense. J had put out feelers among his network of developer friends and one is interested in hiring me to test on a part time basis. I could work on the sketches for the children's story I wrote seven years ago. I could spend some time writing. And J insists that I keep my gym membership and figure out a budget for hiring a sitter, to get me out of the house alone a 2-3 days a week.
Then my common sense weighs in and tells me that I'm crazy to quit in this economy and need to tough it out. That we can get by on one income, but I need to be employed in case J becomes unemployed. That it is worth giving up 1/3 of my paycheck to childcare and my temporary sanity to ensure that we stay afloat in the long term.
This sucks.
*Obviously an empty threat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)