I’ve got a copy of the new Hank Vegas CD and you don’t! I gloat because it’s good, and because a couple of the songs evoke our old hangout, The Hummingbird, down to the last splinter. Every social group has a clubhouse, a gathering spot or watering hole where they meet and ours was the Hummingbird Stage and Taproom, where we saw endless bands, drank endless Jim-Beam-and-Diet-Cokes and talked endless shit into the late hours of endless nights. In some ways I miss it, in some ways I don’t.
Margaret Atwood’s protagonist in The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred, talks about rooms she’s inhabited with her married lover, whom she later weds. She says that she was “careless” about those rooms, that she “wasted” them. In the same way, I wasted those rooms at the ‘Bird (as we affectionately called it). Now that I haven’t been in there in a month, I can tell that I did. Once I knew every board, plank, ashtray and poster by heart but was always waiting for something else to happen. I’d sometimes got so bored that I’d fold the cocktail napkins into origami swans or get drunk and cover them with bad poetry. I felt a couple of days ago, listening to the new Hank Vegas, that I’d break my heart with nostalgia for it and fill my lungs with wanting for cigarette smoke and the smell of whiskey.
Today, I don’t care again. I’ll probably go back and forth like this for the rest of my life. A remembrance of things past vying for affection with the almost primordial, visceral thrum of love, joy, longing and terror I feel whenever I hold my new baby boy. Still, sometimes I want to stride down Cherry Street with the wind in my hair and a pack of friends at my back, walk into the place like I own it, order a whiskey, light a cigarette and jabber until the wee hours when Jeff, the bartender, kicks us out and makes us take our caffeine and booze addled heads home to sleep off the damage.
I bring up The Handmaid’s Tale because I was looking for the line in the book about wasted rooms the other day and realized that I couldn’t find my copy anywhere. When I met Dan, we each had a copy. I checked in the American section of our bookshelves (Yes, I’m a lit professor, I have an “American” section of my books). I pawed through the dusty for-fun paperbacks upstairs and rattled through the overflow shelf behind the DVD’s, but didn’t find it anywhere. I like to think I loaned it to someone. It’s an odd thing to lose. When I bought my copy, it was for a Women’s Lit class back in ’89. Of course if you had a Women’s Lit class anytime during the late 80’s or early 90’s you read The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood’s dystopic novel features a biblically based society recently gone childless with rampant victimization of both men and women in the name of all that is righteous and holy. At the time I read it, I was living in Texas during the height of Bush Sr.’s “Family Values” campaign, hearing Republican gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams declare that “rape is like rain, so long as you know it’s coming, you may as well lay back and enjoy it.” Now I’m not a fearful person, but Atwood’s book seemed not that far off what the Bushs might have planned for us liberal feminists if they could just catch us with our Roe v. Wade down. It was shortly after that I realized that I was still struggling against the second-wave feminists (my mom’s generations of “no-I-will-not-make-the-coffee-and-where’s the-other-35%-of-my-paycheck, ERA-NOW, divorce-rate-at-51%, grumpy, no-sense-of-humor, drop-that-Playboy-magazine!” school of feminists). At first I agreed that women had gotten the very short end of the stick and yet was tired of hearing the same goddamn thing all the time. Not to mention, I was young and randy and liked a little erotica now and then. Had a bit of black lingerie and some not-so-savory fantasies myself. I almost joined the “I’m not a feminist, but” crusade against feminism. I then realized that I was still a feminist but merely a very different kind of feminist. Some referred to us as Third Wave or Riot Girrrls. I rather liked the latter, and I’m sure we looked like it with our khaki or camoflage pants, tank tops and combat boots. We probably looked like we were at war, and in a way I guess we were. Warriors drink what and where they want and so did we. We also shot a mean game of pool and smoked endless cigarettes, wooed and dumped boyfriends, bitched about our mom’s not understanding our generation and tried to get through school and find decent jobs. Hundreds of Rosie the Riveters met the Tank Girls for a smoke and a snort of whisky on a regular basis before getting down to the serious business of getting life together.
That Riot Girrrl’s still in me still ready to wage war, kick ass, but maybe with a better understanding of collateral damage, how hard heroes are on the neighborhood, and the diminishing returns of one too many dim-overs and hangovers. Yeah, I miss the ‘Bird and all the shows sometimes, but I suspect they’ll be there when I get back.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Dr. Leaky
(TMI warning – graphic discussion of breast feeding)
Years ago a friend of mine, Madame L, had a baby and decided to breast feed the baby. Having recently learned that this was a healthier option for those who could tolerate the extra year of alcohol, tobacco and caffeine prohibition, we were all very supportive of her choice and understood that she’d made it for the right reason.
She breastfed that boy til he was five.
None of us could have anticipated this. We tried to understand and yet terrible, judgmental and horribly unenlightened terms came to mind. I remember having a conversation with her about how yes, it was healthier for a baby, but I couldn’t see myself doing it. I can barely manage the writing and teaching schedule I currently have, let alone add a half hour every 2-3 hours to sit and nurse a kid. Not to mention, I’m a college professor. I can’t have my breasts leaking in the middle of a class of 18-year-old boys. After years of frustration at how much and often women’s bodies want to leak and what a pain in the ass it is to constantly monitor and manage, I certainly didn’t need to add yet another leakage point. Baby or no. There were certainly ways to be a great mother without worrying about all that constantly.
It’s funny how time and circumstances change things.
Yes, I’m breastfeeding Connor. The time needed to care for him as an infant meant that I had to cut a deal with my chair for some flexible teaching options. What I got, with my mid-semester delivery date, was a frontloaded 5-course semester, a first session class that ended online when my students e-mailed their final paper and two online courses as my last requirement for the Spring semester. The possibility being there, I’ve taken the opportunity to do it.
The second day at the hospital, my pediatrician said that my son was suckling in an effort to “call down the milk.” It’s a poetic way of saying that Connor’s demand was initiating my supply. I had visions of his little mouth using the breast like a grammaphone: “Miiiilk! Milllllkkk!!” I’ve never really loved the stuff and now I’m drowning in it. Briefly, it’s like living in a river of milk. The goddamn stuff is everywhere. Milk in the baby, milk on the baby, milk on the burp cloth, milk on the bra, milk literally falling out of me sometimes and, yes, spraying out at others. I was typing with one hand once and heard Connor fussing, only to look down and see his head decorated with tiny white droplets. It’s times like that I feel like a bad mother – but then I remember all the times he’s dropped the nipple in mid-sleep, to get a jet in the eye or ear. Poor baby.
So it comes to this. A fleshy, saucy, bourbon-swilling, wisecracking, chain-smoking, post-modernist PhD in motherhood, I’m not really much more than a sleepier variety of cow.
The boy is oblivious as he tugs on the breast, one hand by his ear and another on his favorite friend, the left breast, his mouth bent pointy like those children’s drawings of birds as he drinks. I wonder what he’s thinking about, if he’ll remember this, and what he’ll call down next.
Years ago a friend of mine, Madame L, had a baby and decided to breast feed the baby. Having recently learned that this was a healthier option for those who could tolerate the extra year of alcohol, tobacco and caffeine prohibition, we were all very supportive of her choice and understood that she’d made it for the right reason.
She breastfed that boy til he was five.
None of us could have anticipated this. We tried to understand and yet terrible, judgmental and horribly unenlightened terms came to mind. I remember having a conversation with her about how yes, it was healthier for a baby, but I couldn’t see myself doing it. I can barely manage the writing and teaching schedule I currently have, let alone add a half hour every 2-3 hours to sit and nurse a kid. Not to mention, I’m a college professor. I can’t have my breasts leaking in the middle of a class of 18-year-old boys. After years of frustration at how much and often women’s bodies want to leak and what a pain in the ass it is to constantly monitor and manage, I certainly didn’t need to add yet another leakage point. Baby or no. There were certainly ways to be a great mother without worrying about all that constantly.
It’s funny how time and circumstances change things.
Yes, I’m breastfeeding Connor. The time needed to care for him as an infant meant that I had to cut a deal with my chair for some flexible teaching options. What I got, with my mid-semester delivery date, was a frontloaded 5-course semester, a first session class that ended online when my students e-mailed their final paper and two online courses as my last requirement for the Spring semester. The possibility being there, I’ve taken the opportunity to do it.
The second day at the hospital, my pediatrician said that my son was suckling in an effort to “call down the milk.” It’s a poetic way of saying that Connor’s demand was initiating my supply. I had visions of his little mouth using the breast like a grammaphone: “Miiiilk! Milllllkkk!!” I’ve never really loved the stuff and now I’m drowning in it. Briefly, it’s like living in a river of milk. The goddamn stuff is everywhere. Milk in the baby, milk on the baby, milk on the burp cloth, milk on the bra, milk literally falling out of me sometimes and, yes, spraying out at others. I was typing with one hand once and heard Connor fussing, only to look down and see his head decorated with tiny white droplets. It’s times like that I feel like a bad mother – but then I remember all the times he’s dropped the nipple in mid-sleep, to get a jet in the eye or ear. Poor baby.
So it comes to this. A fleshy, saucy, bourbon-swilling, wisecracking, chain-smoking, post-modernist PhD in motherhood, I’m not really much more than a sleepier variety of cow.
The boy is oblivious as he tugs on the breast, one hand by his ear and another on his favorite friend, the left breast, his mouth bent pointy like those children’s drawings of birds as he drinks. I wonder what he’s thinking about, if he’ll remember this, and what he’ll call down next.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Red Flags at Night
So my son is now nearing three weeks old. He blinks his big eyes, he gurgles, he coos, he snuffles and squeaks. He sounds like a puppy registering his alternate satisfaction with and confusion about the world. Another sound he makes – generally at 3am – is that he screams. There are a whole range of cries, many of which Dan can peg at 30 paces: the poo cry, the hunger cry, the I’m-alone-and-don’t-like-it peevish, staccato bursts of complaint. But occasionally, the boy gets a bit of something twisted and sets on to screaming, during which time we neither sleep nor stop asking ourselves what we can do to alleviate that horrible sound. We are concerned that something might be wrong, yes, but mostly we want it to stop. We don’t always need to know why. We just know that our darling, sweet creature is so unhappy as to shriek himself hoarse and to want him to stop.
This is rare, though. I’m going to tempt fate, break faith with Dan, blow all my Karma and admit that my baby is fairly mellow, and that I sometimes sleep for three to four hours at a stretch without interruption. I sleep better now than I did when I was pregnant. I sleep the sleep of the desperate sometimes, but I also get hours of sleep at a go. A friend of mine whose son did not sleep when they were raising him as a baby said she was glad babies were sleeping through the night now, but was skeptical and wished she’d known then what people seem to know now because, as she said “We didn’t deserve that.” “That” being the fitful, hollow-eyed awaking every hour or two sleep of new parents that sometimes makes you feel like you are paying for your connubial bliss and the love of your new child with the very marrow of your fatigue-ground bones.
Even as a Graduate student, teaching five classes and taking four while writing articles and a dissertation, I slept more than “that.” “That” is a rare space reserved for parents and combat veterans. In fact the last time I was awakened regularly in the night was back in Basic Training. We were often awakened for some task or duty or another, then asked to sit in some spot of light in the dark while the rest of the sleepers breathed around us. The lucky found something to do: write letters, memorize articles of the UCMJ, count cracks in the linoleum that we hand-polished every Saturday. The unlucky fell asleep, to awaken to the screaming of an unhappy drill sergeant. Generally, you could be washed out and have to repeat training for falling asleep at your post. And deservedly, too. Although we were Air Force, you knew at times we’d be guarding things and it would be important to stay awake.
Later at Wilford Hall Medical Center, where I served the majority of my time with the USAF, I was put on night shift and spent the hours between 7pm and 7am. When most other good people are on their couches and in their beds sleeping, I was manning the inpatient pharmacy, making iv’s, counting pills and pushing endless carts up through the wards. We did a brisk business and had few technicians, so the night crew became very tight, but I’ll never forget that feeling of the alarm on my watch going off at 4am – end of my lunch hour nap – and trying to drag myself back up after being fed, reading a smattering of the Norton Anthology pick of the day, then drifting contentedly off to sleep, only to find that I had three hours left of shift, an hour’s commute then three hours of class before I’d sleep next. Yes, many miles to go before I sleep. So be it.
You know the Russians used to torture people this way.
Yet when that 2am, 3 am, 4am cry comes, you want to be ready. If you have stayed up too late watching a movie, so be it. If you have partied til 1am, so be it. If you’ve been on the porch and the shrill voice has come over the baby monitor, so be it. The child that so readily demands your attention actually probably needs something important from you, or has a fart he can’t deal with. Sometimes, they just need the reassurance that they’re not alone in the dark, to face the tigers and hyenas alone. So you get up and shuffle over, pretty sure that you’re the scariest thing in this here dark room, but finding strangely that to your child, the bed-fuddled appearance is comforting and with enough feeding, patting, shushing and sometimes plain old time, the child goes back to sleep.
So at three weeks, we have some rough hours, but not too much of “that” and in the morning, I’m usually pretty happy to see little smiley there in the crib, screeching or not.
This is rare, though. I’m going to tempt fate, break faith with Dan, blow all my Karma and admit that my baby is fairly mellow, and that I sometimes sleep for three to four hours at a stretch without interruption. I sleep better now than I did when I was pregnant. I sleep the sleep of the desperate sometimes, but I also get hours of sleep at a go. A friend of mine whose son did not sleep when they were raising him as a baby said she was glad babies were sleeping through the night now, but was skeptical and wished she’d known then what people seem to know now because, as she said “We didn’t deserve that.” “That” being the fitful, hollow-eyed awaking every hour or two sleep of new parents that sometimes makes you feel like you are paying for your connubial bliss and the love of your new child with the very marrow of your fatigue-ground bones.
Even as a Graduate student, teaching five classes and taking four while writing articles and a dissertation, I slept more than “that.” “That” is a rare space reserved for parents and combat veterans. In fact the last time I was awakened regularly in the night was back in Basic Training. We were often awakened for some task or duty or another, then asked to sit in some spot of light in the dark while the rest of the sleepers breathed around us. The lucky found something to do: write letters, memorize articles of the UCMJ, count cracks in the linoleum that we hand-polished every Saturday. The unlucky fell asleep, to awaken to the screaming of an unhappy drill sergeant. Generally, you could be washed out and have to repeat training for falling asleep at your post. And deservedly, too. Although we were Air Force, you knew at times we’d be guarding things and it would be important to stay awake.
Later at Wilford Hall Medical Center, where I served the majority of my time with the USAF, I was put on night shift and spent the hours between 7pm and 7am. When most other good people are on their couches and in their beds sleeping, I was manning the inpatient pharmacy, making iv’s, counting pills and pushing endless carts up through the wards. We did a brisk business and had few technicians, so the night crew became very tight, but I’ll never forget that feeling of the alarm on my watch going off at 4am – end of my lunch hour nap – and trying to drag myself back up after being fed, reading a smattering of the Norton Anthology pick of the day, then drifting contentedly off to sleep, only to find that I had three hours left of shift, an hour’s commute then three hours of class before I’d sleep next. Yes, many miles to go before I sleep. So be it.
You know the Russians used to torture people this way.
Yet when that 2am, 3 am, 4am cry comes, you want to be ready. If you have stayed up too late watching a movie, so be it. If you have partied til 1am, so be it. If you’ve been on the porch and the shrill voice has come over the baby monitor, so be it. The child that so readily demands your attention actually probably needs something important from you, or has a fart he can’t deal with. Sometimes, they just need the reassurance that they’re not alone in the dark, to face the tigers and hyenas alone. So you get up and shuffle over, pretty sure that you’re the scariest thing in this here dark room, but finding strangely that to your child, the bed-fuddled appearance is comforting and with enough feeding, patting, shushing and sometimes plain old time, the child goes back to sleep.
So at three weeks, we have some rough hours, but not too much of “that” and in the morning, I’m usually pretty happy to see little smiley there in the crib, screeching or not.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
We have Arrived!!
Okay, so this is totally cool.
Connor Young Zook arrived at 1pm February 28th, 2007. He was 9 lbs and .06 oz, 20 and ½ inches. He was a week late, he was a moose and it took a surgical team of seven to wrassle him out of my athletically tightened abdomen. I didn’t want the C-section, and nearly cried as I struggled to put on the traditional backless gown of the feckless hospital patient. I nearly cried when my team of experts poked an oxygen tube up my nose and bent me double to do the epidural. I nearly lost my calm, patient, well-trained and zen-breathing composure when I realized that not only couldn’t I wiggle my toes, I couldn’t feel my toes and was at that moment unable to fathom in any abstract way a conception of toes that might belong to me. There was also the muscle-memory thing that had me feeling all along that I had my legs and feet cocked upwards like a pornographic frog the whole time. Then there was the tugging. With no feeling from the chest down, the only sensation of being gutted like a Final Fantasy bad guy was a weird tugging and some bouncing. I got a little too warm and a little nauseous and wondered how I’d throw up in my compromised position (barfing pornographic frog).
Dan came in swathed to the eyeballs in surgical stuff and asked “Come here often?” I think I muttered something lame like “not if I can help it.” He held my hand and we made googoo eyes at each other until he looked over the partition and asked “Hey, is that the placenta?” Oh, I do love my husband. My son was freed, born, so to speak, while the staff made comments about the Doc having to wrestle him out, that he was giving her a hard time, and asking whether Dan had brought a tricycle to the hospital. Funny people, these medical types. But then there was that moment when Connor, now washed and wrapped, was brought to me for inspection.
And this is the nearly inarticulable. I’m not sure what I expected – probably some cross between Mowgli, Damien and the kind of lank-haired, suntanned, knee-less denimed ragamuffins I ran with as a kid. The infant I was shown, however, was perfect, with a smattering of auburn hair and slate-blue baby eyes as endless as a wish. I touched him – I couldn’t hold him yet because I wasn’t done being stitched up, but I petted him a little. Connor, I thought, this is Connor, though it seemed an imposition, applying a name to the creature with those eyes. They finished the stitching while all I could do was look for the infant. I was wheeled into Recovery and he was brought to me. Only then did I focus on what was going on in the room.
I spent the night stoned on Fentanyl and petting him. He doesn’t look like an angel or a Botticelli cupid or an elfin prince or any of that crap: he looks like a baby. But he’s MY baby. Some overly sentimental types call this adoration like being in love. I’d say that’s more metonymy than metaphor. Being in love is the closest approximation because it, too, is the common, everyday experience that is magnificent enough to be held responsible for 97% of the song lyrics and 98% of the world’s literature because everyone who has been in love, eventually gets to have their OWN being-in-love that drives their understanding of that emotion. Having a baby is a common thing, but when it happens to you, it slams your reality through your heart at the blink of a slate-blue eye. It’s stunning and disarming. It almost makes you understand all the freaky things parents do in the name of their kids and the kind of neurotic terror you’ve been chasing out of your head the whole pregnancy that seems to get only worse as kids grow up, put on roller skates or bike helmets. Most kids don’t thrive without it. It is what makes moms so uncool and what I think is so very cool.
So yeah, Connor’s here. Hungry, loud and adored, he’s here.
Connor Young Zook arrived at 1pm February 28th, 2007. He was 9 lbs and .06 oz, 20 and ½ inches. He was a week late, he was a moose and it took a surgical team of seven to wrassle him out of my athletically tightened abdomen. I didn’t want the C-section, and nearly cried as I struggled to put on the traditional backless gown of the feckless hospital patient. I nearly cried when my team of experts poked an oxygen tube up my nose and bent me double to do the epidural. I nearly lost my calm, patient, well-trained and zen-breathing composure when I realized that not only couldn’t I wiggle my toes, I couldn’t feel my toes and was at that moment unable to fathom in any abstract way a conception of toes that might belong to me. There was also the muscle-memory thing that had me feeling all along that I had my legs and feet cocked upwards like a pornographic frog the whole time. Then there was the tugging. With no feeling from the chest down, the only sensation of being gutted like a Final Fantasy bad guy was a weird tugging and some bouncing. I got a little too warm and a little nauseous and wondered how I’d throw up in my compromised position (barfing pornographic frog).
Dan came in swathed to the eyeballs in surgical stuff and asked “Come here often?” I think I muttered something lame like “not if I can help it.” He held my hand and we made googoo eyes at each other until he looked over the partition and asked “Hey, is that the placenta?” Oh, I do love my husband. My son was freed, born, so to speak, while the staff made comments about the Doc having to wrestle him out, that he was giving her a hard time, and asking whether Dan had brought a tricycle to the hospital. Funny people, these medical types. But then there was that moment when Connor, now washed and wrapped, was brought to me for inspection.
And this is the nearly inarticulable. I’m not sure what I expected – probably some cross between Mowgli, Damien and the kind of lank-haired, suntanned, knee-less denimed ragamuffins I ran with as a kid. The infant I was shown, however, was perfect, with a smattering of auburn hair and slate-blue baby eyes as endless as a wish. I touched him – I couldn’t hold him yet because I wasn’t done being stitched up, but I petted him a little. Connor, I thought, this is Connor, though it seemed an imposition, applying a name to the creature with those eyes. They finished the stitching while all I could do was look for the infant. I was wheeled into Recovery and he was brought to me. Only then did I focus on what was going on in the room.
I spent the night stoned on Fentanyl and petting him. He doesn’t look like an angel or a Botticelli cupid or an elfin prince or any of that crap: he looks like a baby. But he’s MY baby. Some overly sentimental types call this adoration like being in love. I’d say that’s more metonymy than metaphor. Being in love is the closest approximation because it, too, is the common, everyday experience that is magnificent enough to be held responsible for 97% of the song lyrics and 98% of the world’s literature because everyone who has been in love, eventually gets to have their OWN being-in-love that drives their understanding of that emotion. Having a baby is a common thing, but when it happens to you, it slams your reality through your heart at the blink of a slate-blue eye. It’s stunning and disarming. It almost makes you understand all the freaky things parents do in the name of their kids and the kind of neurotic terror you’ve been chasing out of your head the whole pregnancy that seems to get only worse as kids grow up, put on roller skates or bike helmets. Most kids don’t thrive without it. It is what makes moms so uncool and what I think is so very cool.
So yeah, Connor’s here. Hungry, loud and adored, he’s here.
Monday, March 5, 2007
And the Waiting is the Hardest Part
written February 28, 2007
At one am the day of Connor’s birth, I am restless and thoughtful. Dan has admonished me to get some sleep and while I think that’s an admirable goal (and one I may pursue in an hour or so), what I’m really hoping is that I’ll go into labor here and now and need to run to the hospital. Guess what hasn’t happened? This was the date that Dan, my doctor and I agreed upon to go rescue Connor from my cagey insides if he didn’t show up, given his size and my bone structure. It was this or a three-day ordeal of prostaglandin and pitocin to coax him out and y’all know my ideas about Pit drips. My good friend, Madame M, is frustrated with my lack of patience and my use of a surgical option over an induction. My reasoning is this: If it’s at all likely that I’ll go through a 24-hour wait for the prostaglandin to work, begin the pit drip, lay in a bed for up to 24 hours waiting for the drip to take affect while immobilized by the epidural that is its partner medication, only to find that the baby is too big for my os (not, not ass, os – the space between the bones of the pelvis) and we need a C-section anyway, I’m going to be terribly frustrated. If we dial in a C, I’ll never know whether or not I’ll give birth like Zena the Warrior princess – naturally, after casually cruising in from the heat of battle – but perhaps that’s not the point, really. Needless to say I’m still somewhat pensive about the choice and hoping that nature will intervene. I was told that a jigger of balsamic vinegar would work and have yet to try it, but still am thinking that I’m stuck with my choices.
Two things are a great relief: one, that come hell or high water, I’ll have Connor well and squiggling in my hands by 2pm today, and two, I’ve finished all of my grading up til this point and have the whole Spring Break, plus a couple of days and a weekend, to play with my baby boy guilt free. It may be the last time in a couple of months. I’ve read that working mothers feel constant guilt either to their work or their progeny. I find that I do that already, but it’s to my own research and TV schedule, not my people. It’s a shame, too, perhaps that’s what Dan’s been complaining about all these years. I always kinda thought that guilt is a useless emotion. If one is unhappy about the choices one makes, one can make different choices. If one has no choice, then there is no real reason to feel guilty, right? Dan and I have enough choices to feel guilty about a number of things. Finally having a family at our age isn’t one I’m inclined to consider a luxury or incongruent with a career. Of course, no one would ask a man to give up his career because he began a family – in fact, men tend to work harder and make more money, especially if the child is a boy, to offset the needs of the growing household and many find it more fulfilling to work for a growing family than for a growing bar tab.
Oh, yeah, and I should probably spend some time railing against a women’s medical community that makes us feel guilty whatever our choices, but I don’t really feel up to it. Yeah, I have a friend, Madame K, who delivered her baby in her basement after a long hot soak in a hot tub with a bottle of peppermint Schnappes, but she’s unique. Yes, many of my friends had long and painful inductions that ended in C sections, many others had fine and painless labors, and some got just crucified by the baby gods for no apparent reason, or through carelessness of the hospital staff. My favorite of these recently is the delightful Madame B, who went in for assessment, was given a shot of pit to move things along and then not offered an epidural for five hours later while her body ground itself to hamburger and bruised her daughter’s face badly. Not cool. Not a situation I’m inclined to trust.
Nah, there are some things they do well – they love to do surgery so let them do it. In this day and age of cosmetic surgery, it’s a bit of a cakewalk and I’m not so sure that my reticence is reason enough not to take the less painful shortcut.
I’m going to try to sleep and prep for that baby to arrive. I can almost see his little face and hear him. I always envision him crying, right before being nursed, in a little yellow sleeper. Maybe he’s crying because he’s in a little yellow sleeper. I’ve made some black onesies for him with sayings on them like “bad seed” and “No Sleep Til Brooklyn.” One of my favorites is “Rebel Yell.” I can’t wait to hear Connor’s.
At one am the day of Connor’s birth, I am restless and thoughtful. Dan has admonished me to get some sleep and while I think that’s an admirable goal (and one I may pursue in an hour or so), what I’m really hoping is that I’ll go into labor here and now and need to run to the hospital. Guess what hasn’t happened? This was the date that Dan, my doctor and I agreed upon to go rescue Connor from my cagey insides if he didn’t show up, given his size and my bone structure. It was this or a three-day ordeal of prostaglandin and pitocin to coax him out and y’all know my ideas about Pit drips. My good friend, Madame M, is frustrated with my lack of patience and my use of a surgical option over an induction. My reasoning is this: If it’s at all likely that I’ll go through a 24-hour wait for the prostaglandin to work, begin the pit drip, lay in a bed for up to 24 hours waiting for the drip to take affect while immobilized by the epidural that is its partner medication, only to find that the baby is too big for my os (not, not ass, os – the space between the bones of the pelvis) and we need a C-section anyway, I’m going to be terribly frustrated. If we dial in a C, I’ll never know whether or not I’ll give birth like Zena the Warrior princess – naturally, after casually cruising in from the heat of battle – but perhaps that’s not the point, really. Needless to say I’m still somewhat pensive about the choice and hoping that nature will intervene. I was told that a jigger of balsamic vinegar would work and have yet to try it, but still am thinking that I’m stuck with my choices.
Two things are a great relief: one, that come hell or high water, I’ll have Connor well and squiggling in my hands by 2pm today, and two, I’ve finished all of my grading up til this point and have the whole Spring Break, plus a couple of days and a weekend, to play with my baby boy guilt free. It may be the last time in a couple of months. I’ve read that working mothers feel constant guilt either to their work or their progeny. I find that I do that already, but it’s to my own research and TV schedule, not my people. It’s a shame, too, perhaps that’s what Dan’s been complaining about all these years. I always kinda thought that guilt is a useless emotion. If one is unhappy about the choices one makes, one can make different choices. If one has no choice, then there is no real reason to feel guilty, right? Dan and I have enough choices to feel guilty about a number of things. Finally having a family at our age isn’t one I’m inclined to consider a luxury or incongruent with a career. Of course, no one would ask a man to give up his career because he began a family – in fact, men tend to work harder and make more money, especially if the child is a boy, to offset the needs of the growing household and many find it more fulfilling to work for a growing family than for a growing bar tab.
Oh, yeah, and I should probably spend some time railing against a women’s medical community that makes us feel guilty whatever our choices, but I don’t really feel up to it. Yeah, I have a friend, Madame K, who delivered her baby in her basement after a long hot soak in a hot tub with a bottle of peppermint Schnappes, but she’s unique. Yes, many of my friends had long and painful inductions that ended in C sections, many others had fine and painless labors, and some got just crucified by the baby gods for no apparent reason, or through carelessness of the hospital staff. My favorite of these recently is the delightful Madame B, who went in for assessment, was given a shot of pit to move things along and then not offered an epidural for five hours later while her body ground itself to hamburger and bruised her daughter’s face badly. Not cool. Not a situation I’m inclined to trust.
Nah, there are some things they do well – they love to do surgery so let them do it. In this day and age of cosmetic surgery, it’s a bit of a cakewalk and I’m not so sure that my reticence is reason enough not to take the less painful shortcut.
I’m going to try to sleep and prep for that baby to arrive. I can almost see his little face and hear him. I always envision him crying, right before being nursed, in a little yellow sleeper. Maybe he’s crying because he’s in a little yellow sleeper. I’ve made some black onesies for him with sayings on them like “bad seed” and “No Sleep Til Brooklyn.” One of my favorites is “Rebel Yell.” I can’t wait to hear Connor’s.
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