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.

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.

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.

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.

Because It Is Almost Friday and I Have Not Done This In A While

I present "Bookends"...

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?

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.

R.I.P

Senator Edward Kennedy.

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.

The blogger formerly known as PittGirl, Ginny Montanez has returned!

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?”

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.

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.

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.

Handmade Cutting Board Blues*

J and I manged to escape our house over the weekend and spend a day in State College, at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. It has not been easy to escape, as of late. J has been working long hours and too many weekends, a situation that is causing both of us frustration and some anxiety, as attempts to plan some sort of last hurrah as a childless couple getaway-ish type weekend have been thwarted by his work responsibilities.

After an early lunch at the Deli, we spent a happy afternoon wandering the streets of State College and portions of Penn State University's campus, peering into booths filled with prints, painting, pottery, jewelry and woodwork.

Midway through our tour of the tents we stopped to admire the blockcut prints made by an artist named Thomas Bucci. As we were studying the prints, the thunder we had been hearing for the past twenty minutes became louder, the wind kicked up and it began to rain. Thomas invited us to shelter inside his tent during the storm, assuring us that it would be strong, but very brief.

As we stood inside his zipped up tent, he explained how he created the prints. He pulled out his Blackberry and showed us some of the sketches he created on his phone, done with a piece of software and a stylus.

I was amazed. I loved the mingling of art and technology. As the rain stopped, J and I purchased two prints to add to our collection, most likely to decorate the walls of the alien's room.

We saw the artisan who made the jewelry box J purchased at the Three Rivers Festival as a birthday gift for me two years ago. J was thrilled to find him, as we owed him money. When we originally purchased the box, we asked if he could change out one of the sections. Since it could not be done at the festival, we put a 50% down payment and he agreed to make the change and call us before sending the box so we could pay him the rest.

Except that he never called. He packed the box up and shipped to us, without asking for the rest of the money. By the time we received the box we had lost his business card and had no way of contacting him to pay up.

It took a while for J to convince him that we still owed him money and J was only able to pay him back half of what we actually owed. But it was something.

I also experienced something like homesickness while talking to a weaver from Greensboro, N.C, my home during graduate school. She was sunny and bouncy and fun and caught me up on some of my favorite places in the city. I walked away with a matching mohair hat, scarf and shaw, which I plan to use while cuddling the alien next winter. She walked away delighted at the thought that the shawl would be used to keep warm a new life.

* Title inspired by the antics of a customer at one booth who wanted to make sure that she was shipped a cutting board without any knots in it. She did not like any of the boards he had available because they were "knotty".

Things I'm Thinking of Rather Than Working

Because I'm writing this on a sunny Friday afternoon when I should be working...

It is my general philosophy to not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, but I suspect Robert Hanlon never had to deal with health insurance company.

Conversations with all involved parties have allowed me to piece together the factors that precipitated Coventry's determination that the Midwife Center is an out-of-network provider. A brief time line:

1. The Midwife Center faxes a standard letter to Coventry notifying the insurance company that the center will be providing my prenatal and birth care. The letter contains my name, group number and insurance number. The letter does not contain the Midwife Center's provider number, as the center is not billing Coventry for any services at this time.
2. Coventry sends me a letter stating that the Midwife Center is an out-of-network provider.
3. I call the Midwife Center and inform them of the letter. They call Coventry, verify that they are in-network and tell me that I need to call the insurance company and try to determine where the mistake happened.
4. I call Coventry and speak with a very nice CSR. She explains to me that the Midwife Center has two provider numbers, probably due to a change in the name of the center sometime in the past. One number is out-of-network and essentially defunct. The second is in-network. It appears that an employee assigned the fax to the out-of-network number. In order to change it, I need to get the Midwife Center to refax the information to Coventry, with the correct provider number. Once they receive the corrected information, they will send me confirmation.
5. I call the center back and explain the situation. The woman who handles the billing is completely bewildered as the center has never put the provider number on this type of notification. She also does not seem to understand why it is necessary to refax the information with the provider number included. She says the situation will resolve itself when the Midwife Center bills Coventry at the end of the pregnancy. She seems to have missed the simple fact that this company has pre-emptively refused to pay in-network for a service and will stick to that decision until told otherwise.
6. After hanging up, I remind myself that I paid a considerable sum of money for my older, but still highly functional CDMA/GSM hybrid phone, and breaking the phone by throwing it across the conference room is a bad idea.
7. I decide, instead, to spend my Sunday composing and filing an appeal with Coventry, using the information that the very nice CSR gave to me. Copies of this appeal will be sent to Coventry, the Midwife Center, the PA Department of Insurance and the PA Attorney General. Coventry will also be receiving a copy of the formal complaints I will be filing with the PA Department of Insurance and the PA Attorney General.

My week was rounded out, on Thursday, by my first official "pregancy scold" lecture from a co-worker who felt that I should not have indulged in a sushi dinner earlier in the week. She felt it was "too risky" as "you never know, with all the physical changes to your body, what might make you sick".* While I have experienced a significant aversions to some foods, such as the smell of peanut better and well done (overcooked) meat, I have not become suddenly and mysteriously allergic to raw fish.

The sushi was magnificent.

* The dinner consisted of spider rolls (cooked, soft-shell crab), sweet shrimp sushi (also cooked) and crazy tuna rolls (raw, ahi tuna mixed with wasabi served on warm, lightly fried rice rolls). The combined amount of seafood in the meal maybe reached 8oz total, most of the food was cooked and wasabi is used with sushi because of its anti-microbial qualities.

Insurance Battle Number 1

I received a letter from Coventry Health Assurance today.

Coventry Health Assurance has decided, in spite of my diligent checking three months ago*, that the Midwife Center is an out-of-network provider and that I will be responsible for a $2,000.00 out-of-network deductible plus any overages above what Coventry Health Assurance feels like paying as reasonable cost to the Midwife Center.**

Oh, and I have a right to appeal, but it will not be considered an urgent appeal, so Coventry Health Assurance could, in theory, tie up the appeal past the point where I would be able and permitted to switch to an in-network OB.

The next person who tells me that nationalized health care will send the United States down the road to rationed care is getting punched in the nose.

* A phone call to the Midwife Center to confirm they were in-network and several hours digging through a provider search interface designed to create the maximum amount of aggravation with a minimum number of results. The search options are Find a Doctor, Find a Hospital, Find an Ancillary Service Provider, Find an Urgent Care Center or Find an Allied Health Professional. You can not search by clinic or practice name. You can not search by individual name if the provider is anything other than an MD, unless you try Ancillary Service Provider or Allied Health Professional and your guess about which category a CNM falls into is as good as mine. You can search by specialty, but the only names that come up are, once again, MD's.

** My interpretation.

Don't Panic - Episode I

One of the more pleasant aspects of visiting the midwives is that I am handed my chart as I walk through the door for an appointment. Rather then endure the borderline humiliation of being weighed by a nurse, I go into the bathroom, weigh myself on the old fashioned scale and note it in the chart.

Task done, I took a few moments while waiting for the midwife to read through my chart, including the results from a very unpleasant procedure I had several years ago and the more recent reports from the ultrasound done earlier this month.

Noted in the ultrasound report - Placenta: previa (complete).

Oh. No.

I digress to openly admit that I read way to much sometimes. Once I accepted that this pregnancy was real I became acquainted with the Mayo Clinic's website and have become obsessive at learning about all the things that could possibly go wrong during a pregnancy. But in all my worries about birth defects, gestational diabetes (because I hate the idea of having to stick myself with needles multiple times a day) and pre-eclempsea (because I hate the idea of forced bed rest and possible stroke), that I might have the condition known as placenta previa never occurred to me.

In this, I have potentially hit, at once, all of things I fear with frightening pathology - forced bed rest, repeated ultrasounds, steroids, needles, knives, surgery and death.

Dana the midwife* calls me back to the office and we sit down to chat. She asks me if I have any questions. I ask her about the "previa (complete)" notation on the ultrasound report.

Dana explains to me that this condition is very common into the second trimester of pregnancy and that the placenta usually moves upwards as the uterus expands. If I had not had the ultrasound, I would not have known. They will check again at the 18-20 week ultrasound and take necessary action if the placenta has not moved by then.

This should have been enough to calm me down, at least until I have the next ultrasound. In the short term, defined as the sixteen hours between the end of my appointment and this morning, it was.

Then I had to look up the complications. I knew that previa meant c-section. It did not register in my first round of reading that it might also mean enforced hospital bed rest, steroids to speed up fetal lung development, premature delivery, excessive bleeding, hysterectomy and possibly death. Finding out the resolve rate for partial previa is 95%, complete previa 90%, did not help much, because there is that 10% to worry about. And 10% is a lot when you are not quite ready to shuffle off the mortal coil.

J is calm in contrast of my controlled panic. Calm, but irate, the way men become when they will not allow themselves to panic. He wanted to know why the doctor, who told us "everything was normal", failed to mention the previa.

I'm not as curious. He's a doctor. He sees a previa, note that I am just finishing the first trimester, assumes that it will resolve and moves on. Does not want to deal with giving an already stressed out woman potentially bad news about a life-threatening condition that usually resolves itself.

The bills from the first ultrasound and blood tests are starting to roll in. Almost $600.00 towards my $1000.00 deductible already reached. The insurance breakdown came first, followed by a bill from National Chain Lab who has not sent the results of my blood work two weeks ago to the midwives. They sit on the dining room table waiting for me to match up the statements, to ensure that I am not being overcharged for any service. The next ultrasound should eat up the rest of the deductible. Then the fun of explaining to multiple parties that I have fulfilled my deductible and that they need to take it up with the insurance company begins.

*There are five midwives in this practice. Patients are rotated through all five over the course of a pregnancy and receive labor and delivery care from whomever is on call at the time labor begins, whether at the center or in the hospital. Even if I go to the hospital, the midwife will be there for support.

My Pregnancy Letter

Dear Friends, Family and Complete Strangers who will Feel Compelled to Accost me on the Street in the Next Nine Months,

1. Yes, I am pregnant.
2. No, it was not planned. But it does not follow that it is unwanted.
3. No, I was not thrilled when I found out. As a point of fact, I was rather pissed off. But it does not follow that I unhappy about it now.
4. No, I am not getting rid of the cats. End of discussion.
5. Yes, we are discussing names. No, we are not going to tell you what they are.
6. No I don't know what the gender of the alien is and I'm not interested in finding out.
7. And while we are on the subject, I don't care if the alien is a boy or a girl. Really. I. DON'T. CARE.
8. As a matter of fact, I do think it is funny to refer to the fetus as an alien. It certainly feels like one mentally and emotionally. Thanks for your concern.
9. No, we are not planning on trying for “another on”. We didn't try for this one. Which is not done yet, so why the rush?
10. No, I don't think I am being selfish by not giving the alien a sibling. I value my sanity far more than I value breeding a second alien to keep the first one company.
11. Since you insist on pressing the issue, I'm getting my tubes tied. TMI? TDB!
12. No, you may not touch me.
13. Do I know you? Have we been introduced? No? Then take your hands off me, n.o.w.
14. Yes, I intend to go back to work.
15. Yes, the alien will be in day care since I am going back to work.
16. Yes, I intend to bottle feed the alien at some point. Possibly with formula. Yes, I am aware that I am a horrible excuse for a mother and that the alien may turned out stupid, like me. With a Master's degree and a good job. If only all of us were so lucky.
17. Yes, I am using a nurse midwife instead of an obstetrician. Yes, I do think they are qualified to take care of me. Did you know that my father, mother, younger brother, his wife, her mother, one of my aunts and her daughter (my cousin) are all nurses? Now you do.
18. Yes, the alien will be vaccinated. Yes, I've heard about the autism study. Did you know that the results of that study have never been replicated and researchers have proven that some of data was manipulated? Manipulated as in falsified?
19. I'm sorry that my (currently non-existent) birth plan does not meet with your expectations. Perhaps you would like to discuss your concerns with my midwife?
20. No, I'm not giving up my study for the nursery. Have you seen how small the study is? Most walk-in closets are larger.
21. What about guests? Couch, air mattress or hotel.
22. No, I am not repainting the spare bedroom for the alien.
23. Yes, I agree that I'm a horrible person for not wanting to put a theme to the alien's room.

I'm sure this list will get longer...

Thirteen Weeks and Thirty Six Years

The ultrasound and blood tests are complete. The hospital ignored my request for the quad screen and did the standard first trimester screening and took enough blood to fill seven vials. Naturally the tech had trouble finding the vein and spent several moments after sticking me moving the needle around, while it was in my arm. I closed my eyes, breathed very deeply and slowly and tried not to count the number of vials she will filling.*

I've decided, after a flush of irritation, not to push for the quad screen unless the midwives feel it is warranted. The ultrasound showed a healthy little alien with a fondness for moving it's hands and rolling over and over. The risk of Down's went from 1/150 to 1/1053 with the results of the blood tests. After weeks of saying to J, over and over, that whatever the outcome we will be OK, I have to start believing my own words.

Whatever the outcome, it will be OK. I said this to myself one morning, after dreaming about a labor that had gone wrong and that J and I were fighting over whose responsibility it was to raise the alien.

I'm amazed, maternity leave worries aside, at how supportive my employer and co-workers have been. One regularly asks me how I am feeling and passes on pieces of advice from his wife, a neonatal nurse. Others are planning on rotating out of their parking spots next winter, so I can ditch the bus and drive to work in late pregnancy without having to worry about finding a place to park. My supervisor tells me not to worry too much about work that I am missing for prenatal appointments – he knows I'll make it up.

I read about pregnancy, childbirth and child raising almost obsessively these days. Not about the mechanics, which I understand pretty well. I read about society's expectations of how pregnant women should behave. Irritating articles equating an occasional glass of wine during pregnancy and nursing with alcohol (and child) abuse. A compelling yet horrifying livejournal entry about an unassisted home birth, forwarded to me by a co-worker who was a friend of the writer. Compelling as the writer described the process of late labor vividly and beautifully. Horrifying as she hired an uncertified midwife who:

• Did next to nothing to assist in the birth
• Never checked to see if the writer was properly dilated for delivery
• Told the writer to reach into herself and check if the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck
• Mistook the sound of blood flowing through veins as a heartbeat on the doppler and told the writer she was going to deliver a twin

I found it very, very difficult to hold my judgement of the writer's choices. I've already has some backlash from a SIL over my decision to use certified nurse midwives instead of an OB. She had a considerable amount of trouble wrapping her head around the idea that doctors are not the only medical individuals qualified to deliver babies. And the fact that I intend to deliver in a birthing center confused her considerably.

But not knowing to check how far a laboring woman is dilating? An inability to tell the difference between a vein and a heartbeat? Really?

I turned thirty-six on Sunday. As far as birthdays go, it was not the most ideal day. J was sick and spent it sleeping. I spent it catching up on laundry, watching 80's movies on television and alternately feeling sorry for myself and telling myself to suck it up and be a grownup. J was sick, but friends left messages in my inbox and I received phone calls from both siblings, my parents and one friend living in Switzerland. The last was a special, completely unexpected and lovely treat.

*Seven and I have a lovely, streaky bruise on the inside of my right elbow to prove it.

Welcome Back...

To Pittsburgh


Lord Stanley returns to the Steel City.

Ten Weeks

Notes from June 4 Prenatal Exam

1. I am permitted (and encouraged) to read my chart on every visit. This was really surprising and gratifying.
2. I spent 50 of the 60 minutes of the exam in my own clothes, just talking to the midwife, KM.
3. I am permitted to do the following activities: ride my bike, swim, work out the ellipse and treadmill and work out with free weights and the weight machines.
4. When I told KM about my history or depression, she wrote out a list of names of counselors near my place of work and requested that I develop a relationship with a therapist to aid me with my pregnancy and postpartum depression issues. She does not expect me to go every week or even every other week, but wants me to have the appropriate interventions in place in case I become severely depressed at any point.
5. She found my friend B's suggestion that I take a prenatal yoga class as a tool for controlling the depression and anxiety “absolutely brilliant” and is almost requiring me to take the class.
6. I can't say that I had a flood of motherly emotion upon hearing the heartbeat via the Doppler. It just confirmed the “walking science experiment” feeling I have been experiencing the past few weeks.
7. My GP is the medical director of the center. As such, she will be routinely reviewing my chart. Talk about continuity of care.
8. I have ideal nipples for nursing. I'm acutely aware of how much information I am giving away with that statement, but I found this to be the most hilarious part of the visit.
9. I can ditch the foul prenatal vitamins and take one Flinstone's chewable a day instead. I can even ditch the chewable, but that would entail watching my diet more closely then I care to think about.
10. I have to be very careful about the fish I eat.
11. I felt 10 pounds lighter walking out of the office. The fact that I have been cleared for regular activity after being told I could not do any other exercise other than walk (by the nurse practitioner at my GP's office) has been a contributing factor to the depression and anxiety I am feeling. More so, I felt like they were caring for me as a person and not just as a vessel.

Genetic counseling, ultrasound and blood work (ugh) scheduled for June 15th. Which leads me into part 2 of this post.

I've been thinking a lot of the murder of Dr. George Tiller in the past ten days. I can't help thinking about it. The further I advance in this pregnancy, the more strenuously pro-choice I find myself coming. Primary because the decisions I am making are no longer in the abstract. I am no longer thinking about abortion as a theory, but as a necessary truth I may be forced to explore.

I find myself thinking in relentlessly, ruthlessly pragmatic tones, separating my emotions from what I might be seeing on the ultrasound and in test results in a couple of weeks. I find myself deeply examining my conscience, trying to parse out a complicated formula that will allow me to base decisions on what is instead of what might be.

On June 15th I will have a blood test called a Quad Screen and an nuchal fold ultrasound. The results of these tests will be used, along with my age and genetic history, to calculate the risk that the alien inside me is carrying markers for Trisomy 18 Syndrome, also known as Edward's Syndrome. Trisomy 18 causes severe developmental complications and 50% of the babies diagnosed carried to term are stillborn. Less than 10% survive past the first year.

These tests will not be able to tell me how specifically the alien will be affected, only the risk.

These tests are done between the 11th and 13th week of pregnancy. If the risk returns as high, I will be forced to make a painful decision.

[A] Wait until between the 15th and 18th week to have an amniocentesis to confirm whether the risk is real and learn the specific genetic abnormalities the alien may be manifesting. Test results take three weeks, which would put me in the 18th to 21st week range, right on the cusp of legality (24 weeks) for terminating a pregnancy. There is only 1 clinic in Pittsburgh who will terminate so late in the second trimester. Late termination is NOT the pleasant experience anti-choice paint it out to be. It takes multiple visits to a clinic and it painful. There are no clinics (to my knowledge) in Pennsylvania that will perform a third trimester termination, I would have to prove medical necessity and travel out of state to have the procedure done.

[B] Terminate early into the second trimester, without waiting to have the amnio done, taking the risk that I am terminating a healthy pregnancy. Still not a pleasant experience, but can be done in most clinics in a single visit. I'm also taking the risk of being disowned/ostracized by some family and friends for this decision.

[C] Do nothing and hope for the best. Risk the possibility of having no control over the medical decisions if the alien is born with defects that are incompatible with life.

The murder of George Tiller, the harassment of doctors, employees and patients at the clinics, all of these things have the cumulative affect of restricting women even further, and, ironically, putting women in the position of choosing [B] in situations where the fetus could be healthy as a way of avoiding making decision [A] further in pregnancy.

I think about these things. I think about how angry I get when I listen to someone who paints themselves as “pro-life” belittle women who have abortions because of mental health issues as women who just don't want to take care of a baby, as if the increased hormonal levels, the sickness, the bewildering sense that you are less than the fetus you are carrying, the fear of loss of job and support systems are a temporary state. Because that is ME they are talking about. That is ME who is trying so hard to get up every morning and get through the day.

Changing Parts I, II & III

Changing - Part II

29 April 2009

I'm pregnant. By the time I am able to put this post up, I will have been pregnant for around 12 weeks. At the time I am writing this, at 7:04 PM on Wednesday, April 29, 2009, I've known definitely for less than 24 hours and have been “in the family way” for 2-3 weeks.

I can't say that I was happy, initially, to discover that I am incubating. Shocked. Disappointed. Pissed. I don't want to be pregnant. I want to eat raw oysters at the Outer Banks in May. I don't want to be pregnant. I want to go to Germany in the fall, to see my friends. I prayed for a change, but this is not the change I wanted.

For a moment, a flash of a moment, I wondered about an abortion. Bury the pregnancy tests in the trash with the cat litter, secretly get an abortion, never breathe a word. But the thought of carrying out this kind of subterfuge felt wrong, wrong at the core.

I called J instead, before I lost my courage. J laughed. I felt a tiny bit better, listening to him laugh, him sound happy. I asked him to pick up a second test, to make sure I had not screwed up the first. The second test was positive too.

We talked. I told J the truth. I told him that I was upset. That I was pissed. That I felt like I was going to have to start all over again, drawing boundaries. That I dreaded the battles with grandparents over faith, holidays, all the struggles, all over again.

From scratch.

J asked if I wanted an abortion.

No. Not an option.

I didn't sleep last night. Maybe an hour, hour and a half. I lay dazed, thinking, thinking, thinking. Moved from the bed upstairs to the couch down, opened the window, felt the cooler air on my skin. Sleep did not come. Felt sick, sicker then the slight sense of nausea I had felt in the past couple of weeks.

I finally got up, showered, dressed. 5:30 AM. My friend A was online, hours ahead, almost halfway through his day.

“I have news” I messaged.

“Your pregnant? Yay! He replied.

He was happy for me. “wow, you'll be a great mom”.

I felt a little bit better. Slowly, as the day wore on, as tired as I was, as sick as I felt, I felt better.

Changing – Part II

30 April 2009

Today:
1.The nurse practitioner at my GP confirmed the pregnancy.
2.I was obliquely told that a glass of wine every few weeks would be ignored.
3.Riding my bike was reluctantly approved, as long as I stayed on the trails. No mountain biking.
4.Walking was highly recommended and encouraged.
5.I had my first bout of real nausea, which left me close to feeling like I was going to pass out. Thankfully, I was in the bathroom when it happened. The bathroom has a cushy black armchair that I was able to sit in for a few minutes to collect myself.
6.J purchased ginger ale, ginger tea, tylenol and crackers.
7.I had to switch asthma inhalers. The new medication costs $41.53 for a 25 day supply. I don't even want to consider how much it would cost without insurance.
8.I can no longer take Imitrex for migraines. If they get bad enough, I can call the doctor and have them prescribe tylenol with codeine.

Changing – Part III

15 May 2009

Today I had repeat of the panic that has been plaguing me off and on since I initially stared at the digital readout of a positive pregnancy test.

There is a very real, very distinct possibility that I could lose my job because of this pregancy. The company I work is not bound by the FMLA because they employ less that 50 people. Any maternity leave that I am granted is at the discretion of the company.

In short, if they wanted to get rid of me, and I can name one person off the top of my head who would do it in a minute, all they would have to do is authorize less leave then medically necessary (the minimum suggested by most doctors is six weeks) and I'm out the door, because I will be physically incapable of working. And it will be framed in such a manner that collecting unemployment will be incredibly difficult.

I came home feeling ill, from the fatigue, from the nausea, and from the renewed realization that I could end up unemployed. I lay down on the couch and told J that I might only get six weeks of leave.

Silence. J absorbing the news. Shocked, as he thought I was overreacting two weeks ago when I sat on the couch and cried because I might lose my job.

J asked me if there was anything he could do for me. My first remark was “I can't say anything that you will not find highly offensive”.

J encouraged me to express the least offensive of my thoughts. After telling him that he needed to prepare to take six weeks off, to care for the alien while I went back to work, I concluded with this comment:

“This is a perfect example of why women have abortions”.

Irony Part II

Attending one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the country on funds earned by starring in gay porn.

Having walked the grounds of Grove City College and the town, it is a creepy, creepy place and I'm not surprised the he was suspended.

Irony

Is writing an entry expressing gratitude for something, only to have it come a mere week later and bite you in the ass.

Disgusting

I've been reading, with avid interest, the articles discussing the upcoming arguments in Stafford vs April Redding to the Supreme Court.

Reading the articles surrounding the case have actually made me incredibly grateful that I am not trying to raise a child, especially a female child, in today's society. Savana Redding (now 19) was 13 years old when school officials decided to strip search her, based on a classmate's tip that she had a contraband drug on her person.

Read again. School officials strip searched a 13 year old girl. Without first calling her mother. Without having anyone advocate for her.

She voluntarily consented? She is thirteen years old, with school officials breathing down her neck, with no idea that officials were going to request that she shake out her bra and jiggle her underwear. The imbalance of power makes consent impossible in this case. The imbalance of power alone makes consent difficult to accept.

The drug in question was a prescription strength dosage (400mg) of Ibuprofen.

If Slate's summary of the proceedings is an indication, it is going to get a hell of a lot more difficult for parents to send their children to school. The two page summary was infuriating to say the least and left me with the distinct impression that the majority of the Supreme Court justices regressed to the age of 13 year old boys, sniggering in the locker room.

In other words, they don't think strip searching a thirteen year old is a big deal, if it keeps the drugs away.

Photo Class - Part II

Today was the second of the four class series I am taking at the Pittsburgh Glass Center. Today was all about practicing. Practicing how to sandblast the plates. Practicing how to transfer the image from the transparency to the resist. Practice transferring the resist to the glass plate. Practicing painting, with powders and beautiful, fast-drying paints. Practice sandblasting the resist off of the glass, leaving paint or a ghost image behind, to rub with paint or powder.

The sandblaster is an intimidating piece of equipment, a large box with a plexiglass window in which the user turns on the compressed air. places the glass plate into the unit, latches the door, flips two switches, places her hands into the attached rubber gloves, picks up a device that looks like a gun and presses down on a pedal to shoot air onto the plate.

Even though the unit is enclosed, dust goes everywhere. Which means wearing an itchy face to avoid inhaling the dust and lead-based paint particles. And because the unit is enclosed, the dust has etched into the window of the unit, leaving only a small section of clear window in which to work. This section is (naturally) in the most inconvenient location of the unit.

We are also required to wear masks while handling the paints and powders, as the majority of them are lead based. The lead makes the color rich, but adds an element of danger to the creation process. The masks can be removed if no one is working with powders and while washing out the resist.

Bad idea, I discovered shortly after leaving the center. Not only were my clothes saturated with dust and powder but I had also inhaled enough to make the rest of this afternoon rather uncomfortable. I suspect the mask will have to remain on through the entire class next week.

Photo Class I

In a search for further enlightenment, I am taking a four week class on Sunday mornings at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, learning how to transfer photographic images into glass.

It is intimidating, walking into a room with a group of strangers, no matter how small the group is. All the students are women and our ages range from twelve to to forty something. I am the only member of the class that has no experience working with glass. I am also the only member of the class with minimal photography experience.

The instructor gave us an overview of the techniques she would be teaching and gave a very brief lesson in converting images for use. She also talked about the different things we could create once the images were transferred to the glass – plates, jewelery, wind chimes...

It was good to get out of the house and do something challenging for a few hours.

Into the Fire - Part II

I've never dealt with a personality like the individual I am dealing with now. I've never had the professional experience of sitting helplessly as my words are twisted and used as weapons against me. The last time I had a conversation with someone in which they asked me to explain myself, I explained myself, only to be informed that my explanation was “not an excuse and [unacceptable]” I was seven years old.

I don't understand this kind of management style. I don't understand what goes through the mind of an individual who indulges in this type of management style. It is not productive. It is not effective. It invalidates the legitimacy of any true criticism of my performance, as it is wrapped up on a series of implied statements, personal attacks and contradictory instructions about what I should be doing to improve the situation.

Anytime you preface or reinforce a statement by stating “I'm not saying you are [adjective of choice]”, you are, in fact, saying it. In the past 24 hours, over two meetings I have been called lazy, disorganized and told that I am not taking my responsibilities seriously. And I have a third meeting with this individual next Wednesday to discuss “next steps”. All indicators are that this meeting will be very much like the last two, in which suggestions on how I could improve the situation will be used to berate me about not implementing them to begin with.

This individual is not my immediate supervisor, but is in a position of serious authority. I have been informed that there is absolutely nothing I can do but to wait for their attention span to divert elsewhere, probably in two or three weeks, possibly several months, sometimes never. That no matter what I do or say, it will not be the right answer.

If this individual gives me instructions then decides on a different course of action, thus causing me to submit bad information, it is my fault for not reading their mind. If I send them something for review and do not send a reminder, I am the one who has dropped the ball. If I don't met unexpressed expectations, it is because I did not ask the right questions. This individual will never apologize, will never concede that anyone else's ideas are valid and will never take responsibility for their actions. Ever.

I've also been told, short of committing a sacrifice of small animals in the middle of the workspace floor, this individual can not fire me without going through both my immediate supervisor and his supervisor for approval. That there are multiple parties willing to step up and defend me if this individual decides that he wants to get rid of me. Additionally, since this specific duty I appear to be failing to perform falls outside my core responsibilities, the consequences would be minor* and there would be more than ample opportunity to work on other projects within the company.

The stress of this is making me ill. I am not sleeping. I am having trouble eating. The pit of nausea in my stomach is larger and I go to work each day praying that I can get to the end of it without triggering a migraine. I can not concentrate on my work, at a time when I need to be able to fully concentrate.

* Loss of stock options and bonuses that will not be paid out this year anyway.

Into the Fire

I've been listening to a lot of David Grey concert recordings these past few weeks, thanks to the Live Music Archive*. The more I listen, the more I come to appreciate the mixture of dark and light in his music and lyrics. Especially the dark. David Grey's lyrics can be very, very dark. The One I Love? The man in the song dying of a gunshot wound.

I find a certain comfort in listening to someone sing about drugs, death and destruction in such a lyrical manner, as it fits my overall stressed mood, as I struggle to get testing completed on projects slated for release the first week of May.

The stress is taking its toll on my physically. I'm waking up every day feeling slightly nauseated** and eating seems to intensify the feeling for short periods of time. The last time I felt like this was near the end of my first year of college. My doctor put me on a short course of medicine and the semester ended.

But I can't get in to see my doctor until the end of May (that American healthcare system, the greatest in the world, don't you know), so I'm dealing by thrice weekly visits to the gym, increased workouts on the elliptical machine and as many pull ups and dips as my shoulders can tolerate. I may feel sick, but by the end of May the media will be shaming me over my biceps and triceps.

This is compounded by the fact that I must occasionally work with an individual who is difficult. Who has authority over me. Who does not communicate expectations and chastises me when I fail (naturally) to fulfill those unspoken, unknown, (occasionally) unreasonable expectations.

A bully. And I don't react well to bullies. My emotions overcome my intellect when I have to deal with any person with a bullying personality. I don't handle them well at all.

I came home Friday afternoon demoralized. Upset. Agitated. And bemused that a sixty second phone conversation could upset me so badly. J looked at me and gently suggested that I might want to consider looking for a different job, Acknowledging that as much as I really enjoy what I do (and I do), and like my coworkers, none of that is worth it to get so completely wound over a single individual.

But I don't feel as if I can look this time. I feel as if I need to face this is a challenge, learn how to deal with this individual's type of personality.

I'm at a loss as to where to begin.

*I also found a recording of Blues Traveler performing a cover of Superstition with Lenny Kravitz and Rusted Root at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in 1996. Only significant in that I was at that concert and that song remains clear in my memory thirteen years later.
**Most definitely NOT knocked up, in the family way or pregnant.
***Intentional, necessary misuse of grammar.

The Post

I was going to title this entry "Going Postal" but I could not find it in myself to sink that low.

Normally, I don't mind going to the post office. The consumer demographic is interesting to observe*, the stamps are pretty to look at and I've never had an employer give me a hard time about coming back late from an errand when that errand is the post office.** I've never gotten bad directions from a mail carrier and the counter employees are cheerful and easygoing.

Except at the Squirrel Hill branch of the Pittsburgh post office. Conducting business there is an experience in aggravation akin to trying to navigate through Milan Malpensa airport.*** No amount of people watching can eliminate the bad taste of conducting business in this branch.

There exists a set of undefined, completely arbitrary and random rules as to how a customer is supposed to function while inside the confines of this particular office. The only order I have been able to determine is that if you are a middle aged, monied male you could get away with murdering all the patrons, piling their bodies into a pile and setting the corpses on fire and the staff would not blink an eye.

Or, in a less extreme example, bypass the line altogether, dump enormous package and bag of mail on the counter and demand a specific employee. Be sure to count off where your place in line would have been, if you were actually the type to participate in such a bourgeois custom. Manage to conveniently ignore the last woman in the line while counting, she must be invisible. Proceed to leave the lot in a pile on the counter in order to spend several moments banging on the heavy, wooden, "employee's only" door while yelling. Return to counter and hover over the postal employees, asserting

Be not young or female and step up to the empty station without first being called. You will be screamed at, then sent back to the line, where you watch while the screaming employee throws the packages from a prior customer into the waiting bin and storms off for a smoke.

Just as your turn comes, a third, yawning, employee will wander out, announce that she is tired but can't seem to nap and that she needs cash. Instead of going outside to the ATM across the street, she hands her debit card to her coworker, who swipes and hands her some bills.

I hate the place.

* Today there was an elderly man and a middle-aged woman holding the forms and various other paraphernalia necessary to obtain a passport. The elderly man was applying for his first passport. I wondered where he would be traveling. A son in the military? A cruise? A late-in-life desire to see the world? Or a casio junket to the Falls?
** I suspect that is a more a function of being successful at choosing more relaxed employers. My current boss, for example, happens to be a fan of packages and packing material, so he has a tendency to overlook long absences in the middle of the day when the employee in question has business to conduct at the neighborhood post office.
*** Minimal signage and what is posted is in direct contradiction with reality. Truly awful customs agents.

Nothing

1. Defines stupefying like learning that the priest that taught me in high school, gave me a job when I returned from graduate school burned out and unemployed, and officiated at my wedding ceremony, has run off with the church secretary.

Learning that he may have been the catalyst for the secretary's divorce, finalized a mere six weeks before the two ran off together, is equally stupefying.

2. Defines momentarily terrifying like watching a tire, still attached to the rim, fall from the expressway above, bounce all over the road, somehow miss multiple vehicles (including mine, which I paid off last month) nearly run over a pedestrian on the sidewalk and roll down the street.

3. Nothing defines annoying as much as listening to the woman two seats away alternately tsk, sigh and comment (loud enough to be distracting, quiet enough that I could not eavesdrop) her way through the movie J and I were trying to watch this afternoon, at the Regent Square Theater. Running into her in the bathroom afterwards was also annoying, as I was still in the mood to give her a hard time.

I Have the Answers

I was going to write a detailed entry about the number of strangers who walked up to me today and asked me seemingly random questions, but I can only remember two incidents. I know there were more. It feels as if there were more. But I can only remember two and only one really stands out.

Stranger One asked possibly the most random question I will ever get from any individual. Which is saying something, because I have fielded some really weird questions over the years.

We were standing near the front of the bus, waiting for it to stop, when she turned to me and asked “Is tomorrow Thursday or Friday?

Sadly, I had to pause and really think about what she was asking me. For a moment I found myself pondered the question about what day it was today and what day it would be tomorrow. And for a moment, I was not certain how to answer her question.

When I responded that tomorrow was a Thursday, she remarked that it was strange, because it felt like today was a Thursday. I found myself agreeing with her premise. A week in which one must pause to determine what day it is, is a long week indeed.

The Unwell Elevator

The elevator at work is "not well". This is not my phrasing, this is how my boss decided to describe the series of events that lead to the malfunction of the elevator - while I was inside it.

Every morning I go through the front door, check the alarm system* and walk down the hall to take the elevator to the upper floor.

Every morning this winter I have stepped on the elevator, noticed how c.o.l.d it is inside, press the button for the second floor and wait for the machine to rise and the doors to open

This morning I followed the routine, except the machine most definitely did not rise and open. Instead it started up towards the second floor, dropped with a teeth-jarring shudder, paused for too long and began heading down. To the basement.

Slightly perturbed by this turn of events, I pulled out my cellular phone and called the only coworker I was certain would be in the building at that time**. He was rather amused when I explained to him that I was calling from the elevator and that I appeared to be stuck. As we were discussing my options, the doors open and I stepped out into the basement.

My coworker was kind enough to tell me which door I needed to go through to get out of the basement and was waiting for me at the office back door.

When informed that the elevator has decided to stop working in rather dramatic fashion, my boss printed up a sign and taped it to the front door. Part of the sign reads:

"The elevator is not well. We think it has a cold".

Which was accurate in its way. The hydraulic fluid froze.

*I have set off the alarm three times since I started this job, much to my embarrassment and the amusement of my boss. Now I review the code in my head before I enter the building, just in case.
**I work with night owls. It was almost 8:45 and only one coworker was there. Most of them show up between 9 and 9:15 and leave around 6:00 in the evening.