I had my last prenatal OB appointment on November 9, the same day my sister learned that her home, and subsequently all of her belongings, burned to the ground. They lost everything. It put a stain on the day, because I felt utterly helpless. I probably would have felt extra helpless anyway, but being a few hundred miles away and pretty much any moment away from going into labor, there really wasn't anything I felt I could do. There weren't even words, because really, how do you console someone in that situation?
In any case, the doctor asked if we would like to induce, and while my first instinct was to say no, we said yes anyway. I vacillated all day on whether that was the right decision, knowing we could call them and change our minds at any time. It didn't matter anyway, because my water broke on Saturday night, three hours before I was scheduled to be induced.
If you've ever watched television, you have seen the dramatized iteration of this event as a giant gush flooding onto the floor, the expectant mother's face a shocked O of surprise, and a mad rush to scramble to the hospital. It didn't work like that for me, and from what I hear, it's the least common way the amniotic sac breaks. There is already so much shit happening to your body during pregnancy (and sorry to get gross, but a lot of it involves fluids), that I wasn't sure. So Adam and I went for a walk. And consistently, for the entire five or ten minutes, I felt like I was wetting my pants. So when we got home, I called the OB on call, and she advised me to go to the hospital.
I didn't feel any pain at first. Nothing bad anyway. But when the contractions started, for real, I gave in to the epidural right away. It was sweet relief, and I could even sleep, but then labor stalled. So they gave me Pitocin. But nothing progressed, and the baby seemed not to be doing well, so after 15 hours of labor, the doctor deemed a c-section the way to go.
It played out exactly the way it does in every "natural mama" blog post I've read, and I've read a lot. They all warn you not to take the epidural, because one intervention leads to another, and there you are with a c section. And believe me, I was terrified. I don't know if I more terrified of vaginal birth or a c section, but when it came down to it, I was absolutely petrified as they wheeled me into the operating room. It was surreal. The anesthesiologist sat by me and chatted, and when Adam came in dressed in his scrubs and mask, he stood by me, and the doctor and nurses got to work, and in... oh, thirty minutes or so, there was my baby.
"Do you want to see your baby?" the doctor asked Adam. And Adam peeked over, the blue surgical curtain, where the baby was still half in my abdomen. The doctor waved his little corpse hand, white and dry and tiny for the camera, while you can see the weird plastic ring they use to keep my abdomen open. And in the picture (I'm sort of glad Apple came up with that motion action on their newer phones), you can see the doctor pull him out, umbilical cord still thick and yellow. Adam cut the cord. They wiped him off. They plopped him on my chest and there was my baby.
He's amazing. I've never felt so overwhelmed with love. I could stare at him all day and just bask in his facial expressions, his movements, everything he does.
And yet, there are so many things I didn't know. Was I not listening, or did no one tell me? Motherhood is fucking hard. Maria told me taking care of an infant would be boring, and I can see that. But breastfeeding is the worst. I hate it. I am told this does not make me a bad mother. Don't get me wrong--I want to breastfeed. I've been planning on it. I had zero doubt in my mind for the entirety of my pregnancy that I would breastfeed, and we'd go long and hard until at least a year, but here we are, not even to week two, and I'm ready to throw in the towel.
First off, getting a baby to latch properly is hard. He's learning. I'm learning. There's nothing easy about it. And it's only harder if he's super hungry and fussy. I panicked in the hospital when I pulled him off one day to find a giant bloody spot, where I developed a very large scab shortly thereafter. I couldn't feed from that side for a few days, and was given special ointment to promote healing, which was great. But I always forget to wash it off, and then the baby won't feed because it tastes bad (don't blame him, of course), then I feel badly for making him wait, for forgetting to clean up, for... I don't know. Everything.
I feel guilty about everything. It's true. I feel bad that I'm sitting here typing this instead of holding him. Granted, my mother and Adam's mother are both here clamoring to hold that baby as often as possible. They are here to help, and I suppose my needing a little time to record, reflect, get this out of my insides and onto a page is therapeutic, and therefore it is helping. But I feel like such a shitbag. I feel like everyone else is better at taking care of my baby than I am. I know my husband is. Adam is, thus far, a far better parent than I am. Everyone else seems to know how to soothe, and burp, and change diapers, and do all these things that I thought I'd be able to do easily, because I am his mother, goddamnit. I grew him inside my body for months on end. He knows my voice, my smell. He knows me. But I feel like I don't know him. I just feel like an emotional train wreck most of the time. A big, fat, double-chinned emotional train wreck, because while my belly is shrinking (slooooooowly), I still feel enormous.
I was asked so many times if I would breastfeed. Assured that breastfeeding burns so many calories that the weight would just melt off. But now I don't know if I can breastfeed. Because, as I mentioned, it fucking hurts. After eleven days, it hasn't gotten any easier. In the hospital, they brought me a breast pump, but we still had to start supplementing with formula. Well, maybe I should say my breastmilk is supplementing his formula, because in all honesty, I don't make enough milk to feed... I don't know. Something very small. A mouse. I don't produce enough to feed a mouse. And pumping hurts, too.
So, I feel inadequate. I don't want to formula feed my baby, but every moment I pump or nurse, I feel like that is the path we are headed down. In addition to all the hormones still flying throughout my body, the edema that never seems to go away, and the lack of sleep, I just feel worse all the time.
I mean, I knew new parents don't sleep much. But I didn't know it would be like this. AND we have Team Grandma here to help. How the fuck do people do this on their own? I don't know. I envisioned motherhood as lots of walks with a stroller, sunshine and happy baby and slimming me, and maybe running again one day. So far, I just have a giant incision across my lower belly, which droops and hangs with its decorative stretch marks.
I hear it gets better. It has to get better. There is no possible way I could conjure more love for that baby. I live, right now, for the minutes I hold him in my arms. (Of course, some moments are better than others. When he is screaming and inconsolable, well, those moments are painful as fuck.) I just want to be able to sleep--and fall back asleep after getting up in the middle of the night to take care of him. Everyone says "sleep when baby sleeps," but HOW? I have so much on my mind, so much to do. So many bills, things to read about how to swaddle and get baby to sleep, and how much poop is normal, and how long lochia lasts, and every other question to google. And my mind just races and I want to clean and organize and do whatever I can to make things... easier. And I just can't sleep when baby sleeps.
But onward we go. I'll keep working at it, even if it means working toward being okay with a formula baby. Even if it means I don't sleep until April (fuuuuuuuck.) But what I do know, is that nipple pain is real and it's no joke.
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Monday, November 5, 2018
Clowns, geniuses, and operculum. Oh my!
If there is anything that can be said about this whole sit-and-wait-for-labor process, it is that it definitely takes my mind off of what would otherwise be plaguing my brain and sending me into periodic spirals of panic, which are the midterm elections. In my "normal" life (put into quotations because I have a feeling what was once my normal is long over), I religiously listened to NPR (and a fair number of podcasts) daily and read at least some news. Since moving to the Peninsula, my commute has halved (or more), and since I currently have no commute, other than moving myself from bed to the coffee maker in the morning, I don't listen to the news so much. It's probably a good thing. Instead of reading stories that make me feel hopeless over the political circus (although, no, let's be real. Shit is far beyond a circus at this point, given all of the clowns that are far more terrifying than Pennywise the Dancing Clown--Brett the drunken-screaming-judging-molesting clown, Trump the lying-racist-misogynist-everythingist-molesting clown, and need I go on? Probably not), I instead read articles and blogs and various materials that answer whatever my current questions may be about pregnancy, labor, babies, etc. And while I oftentimes find very useful information (and recipes, of course) on these various forums, I also find some truly, truly mystifying commentary that causes me to question... oh, I don't know. America's public school system. The general intelligence levels of the American public. Why I am afraid of fucking up one child when there are clearly so many utterly stupid people bringing multiple people into the world.
Disclaimer: I do not profess to be any sort of genius. I don't actually think I'm that smart. I believe there are a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of people in the world who are much, much smarter than I (and also do not abuse parenthetical statements/explanations, which seem to be my trademark). And although I won't be applying for a Mensa membership any time soon, I do know that I am not stupid. [Side note: Last week, I had lunch with another pregnant person who admitted she is worried that her baby won't be smart enough. Because she is very smart. And her husband is "probably a genius." I felt a little saddened by this worry. Of course I want my kid to be capable and intelligent, but I don't need him to be the smartest kid in the room. I'm not worried that my kid won't be smart; I'm worried my kid is going to have red hair, which is probably worse and way, way more shallow than worrying my kid won't be a genius. On women and little girls, it's fine, but boys? I don't know. You just can't have someone named Enzo with fiery ginger hair. Those people have names like "Harry" or "Ron" or "William." I did just google "redheaded men" and there are some good looking ones. However, I can't remember meeting IRL a redheaded male that wasn't plain fucking terrible. If you know one, please let me know they exist.] Oh, and before I move on, another (not-so-)quick word on "genius" and intelligence. As a public school teacher, I've encountered a lot of people in my career--some really smart, and some really dumb. But intelligence comes in many forms. I had a kid once randomly assigned to be my TA because he had been banned from AP English in his senior year of high school. He was instead taking English at Lydian Academy, an expensive off-campus site that caters to wealthy kids who can't hack regular school for whatever reason, but only because he and two friends had chosen to torture two teachers for a rather lengthy time by defiling their classrooms, even going so far as to lay brick in front of one teacher's door so that when she arrived in the morning, there was nothing but a brick wall next to her room number where there would normally be a door. In some ways, this is sort of funny and clever, but these kids were mean, and they did plenty of other shitty things to these people (nice people), as well as to vandalize campus in myriad ways, including throwing dirty mattresses into the swimming pool. Administration eventually went so far as to have campus aides and custodial staff stake the place out at night, ninja-style, to try to bring these fuckers down. What eventually did it, however, was that one of these idiots brought the very same bricks to English class that they had used to brick the door. I'm not sure why the kid brought the bricks--his dad was a contractor and he was using the bricks in some sort of demonstration. Maybe he was one of those martial arts brick-breaker people. It doesn't matter. In the end, they were busted, and two of them were expelled, and the third was allowed to remain in school for whatever reason, but could not take English on campus and also had his admission rescinded from Harvard as a result of his actions. This was a book-smart kid. (I can't speak for his companions--one of them I didn't know, and the other had straight D's for the entirety of the year he was enrolled in my AS English III course. After eight parent meetings in which his mother implored an explanation from me as to why her child was not earning decent grades, and every time the answer was, "He doesn't turn anything in," I couldn't really say for sure whether he couldn't hack the work or if he simply had no work ethic. He certainly didn't have a personality worth noting. How he was admitted to AP English in his senior year is beyond me. Also, he had orange, fiery, ginger hair. And his name was either Harry, Ron, or William.) Anyway, regarding the kid who was allowed to stay enrolled--getting into Harvard is no easy task, and this guy recently won $30K on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" for having a lot of random (although clearly not terribly useless knowledge). And yet... wasn't it pretty dumb, not to mention unkind, to do all of those things to campus and to his teachers? I guess my whole point here is that certain types of intelligence are more highly valued in our society than others, and being book smart doesn't necessarily denote empathy, kindness, or an ability to maintain positive interpersonal relationships. Which I may demonstrate myself in this next portion of today's post, because I am probably going to sound like the world's biggest asshole, or least a minor asshole, maybe, possibly. Let's get to it.
Yesterday, Adam asked me why the mucus plug doesn't have a nicer name. Like, why didn't they name it after the doctor who discovered it or something? My answer to that is that "mucus plug" is pretty much as self-explanatory a name as there could possibly be, and therefore helps one identify exactly what it is that has just expelled itself from one's nether bits. In actuality, the technical word for the cervical plug is "operculum," and the purpose of the operculum is to seal the uterus off from the dangers of the outside world and keep bacteria and other nasties away from a developing fetus. It forms around the twelfth week of pregnancy, and although it can come out at anytime, it will regenerate if necessary, or it won't, if your labor is ready to begin at some point in the near-ish future. (Apparently you can lose your plug weeks ahead of labor, which is sort of a bummer when you are waiting, waiting, waiting for something to fucking happen.) Anyway, I lost mine yesterday (although I think a more accurate description might be that I found mine yesterday, after getting out of the shower. It just, like, fell out and landed on top of the toilet seat. It was weird and gross but not entirely unsurprising or unwelcome, and I am truly sorry, dear reader, if this is TMI for some of you. Don't worry, I immediately disinfected the area), and so I felt compelled to google "mucus plug" just to make sure that's actually what it was (and, truly, I don't know why I felt like I needed to do that. There really isn't anything else it could have been).
Well, as a result of googling, I found myself reading a blog, where women have actually sent pictures of their plugs (vomit) so the world can see examples. The author of said blog invited readers, in the comments section, to post their mucus plug stories, and although I might sometimes claim that nothing can surprise me anymore, that would be false. This is where SAHdz hervilla comes in (and to be clear, all typos are to be credited to SAHdz; all parenthetical asides are all my own) when she comments, "My mucus plug is coming out my nose left nostril ." (No, SAHdz, that's not your cervical mucus plug. That's just regular old snot.) She goes on to reveal that "I remember taking my medication for depression and that very first pill on top did something inside my belly and it felt like it turned my whole insides into the opposite direction this was weird but is there any way you can explain what might be going on with me ." (Well, there are several possibilities. My bet would be that your "doctor" practices "medicine" from a van with no windows outside your local crackhouse and your "antidepressants" are actually a fine-tuned mix of PCP and DMT.) "I been having sex with my husband who is now passed" (are you a necrophiliac?) "but I never got pregnant and I remember his mom telling me 'no more babies' (wait... I thought you never got pregnant?) which is wrong who is she to tell me that ." [She is/was (although it's hard to say, SAHdz, since it sounds like your husband might be dead despite the fact that you've been having sex with him) your mother-in-law and it sounds like she might be onto something there...] "She probably had this done to me." (She had what done? The mucus dripping out of your nose or the internal shape-shifting?) "I never used contraception (unfortunately) yet my husband had a affair n got that woman pregnant." (Jesus fucking Christ.) "Not to mention after my third child (again... I thought you said you never got pregnant?) I got pregnant but I lost it ." (Ummmm. This doesn't feel like a huge travesty to me. #sorrynotsorry) "I took a pregnancy test which came out positive . I think they gave me plan b at that time I was sniffing stuff for all u know I sniffed plan b lost the baby I must have been about five weeks." (Do you really think your mother-in-law slipped you some Plan B to sniff? And if she did, was that really the worst thing you could be sniffing? Are you sure it wasn't just dried, crushed up glue? And why are you snorting shit if you think you might be pregnant? Did you consider that maybe WHATEVER THE FUCK DRUG YOU ARE SNORTING CAUSED YOUR MISCARRIAGE?) "I had painful miscarriage nurse said for me to just lay down n rest when I went to the restroom it came out it was a pretty good size fetus in the toilet ." (Okay, here's the thing, SAHdz. At five weeks pregnant, you do not yet have a fetus. You have an embryo, and it's about the size of a sesame seed or possibly a blueberry, if you are actually seven weeks pregnant and counting from the date of conception as opposed to the LMP. If you drop your sesame seed or blueberry-sized embryo into the toilet, it is, sadly, going to look like a clot of blood. Not a fetus. Sorry.) "I went to the hospital a day or two later n they did pelvic ultrasound claiming I wasn't pregnant well of course I wasn't I had already had the miscarriage." (I'm not a doctor. So who am I to say? However, it takes more than two days for hCG levels to return to normal after a miscarriage. Is it possible your home pregnancy test gave you a false positive? I think your doctor knows better than First Response. Unless he really is just some dude in a van on the corner. Just sayin'.) "He didn't want kid ." (Your husband? The ultrasound technician? The doctor at the hospital? The anti-depressant dealing dude in the van?) "He left me that night in pain at home while he went out with his friend. Anyway the whole flipping of my insides didn't happen until I gave birth to baby number 5 it would have been 6 ." (Again: ummmmmm. What? I am so confused about the entire timeline of this story, which child/pregnancy it is that your mucus plug is escaping your left nostril, how long your dead husband has been cheating on you with his other baby mama, and why you're going to a regular hospital instead of a neuropsychiatric ward.) "But yeah can anyone explain what may be happening ." (Aside from the fact that no one ever explained to you that you don't need a space before a period, no. No one can explain what may be happening.) "This is uncalled for ." (I agree 100%.)
Two minutes after posting this, SAHdz adds a follow-up: "Lol my story sound weird and somewhat strange but it’s the honest truth. Please if u know anything or if ur a doctor can I give me a little bit of info that u think might be going on" (Truth is subjective and your personal truth clearly differs from my reality. I know a lot of things, SAHdz, but I have no fucking idea what's happening to you.)
Another interesting bit of material I came across in my pregnancy/baby reading came from the information packets given to us by our childbirth class instructor. Included was this handout.
Caption: "Your newborn baby will be a stranger at first. Give yourself time to get used to a new face around the house. Soon you will be able to anticipate your baby's needs by subtle differences in facial expression:"
It reminds me of Highlights for Children and People magazine, where they run the "Can you spot the difference?" feature every month. I suppose I never questioned the purpose of this feature, although now I wonder if it is either to A.) Make you feel stupid, or B.) Train you to read your kid's face to determine if they are hungry or simply shat themselves. Either way, I am hoping my baby comes with captions like the handout, because otherwise, I can't see any difference between the six pictures. Perhaps this means I'm destined for failure, or maybe it just means that I haven't given myself time to get used to the new face around the house. My consolation is that if SAHdz managed to squeeze 5 ("it would have been 6") out her mucus hole (or possibly left nostril), maybe there's hope for me. Of course, we don't actually know where SAHdz's 5 living children are, given her Plan B and mescaline anti-depressant sniffing life choices, so maybe I shouldn't use her as a basis for comparison in my potential for success as a parent.
What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts about mucus plugs, geniuses, or election day in the comments below! Hooray! (Egregious punctuation in the form of parentheses or exclamation points not required.)
Disclaimer: I do not profess to be any sort of genius. I don't actually think I'm that smart. I believe there are a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of people in the world who are much, much smarter than I (and also do not abuse parenthetical statements/explanations, which seem to be my trademark). And although I won't be applying for a Mensa membership any time soon, I do know that I am not stupid. [Side note: Last week, I had lunch with another pregnant person who admitted she is worried that her baby won't be smart enough. Because she is very smart. And her husband is "probably a genius." I felt a little saddened by this worry. Of course I want my kid to be capable and intelligent, but I don't need him to be the smartest kid in the room. I'm not worried that my kid won't be smart; I'm worried my kid is going to have red hair, which is probably worse and way, way more shallow than worrying my kid won't be a genius. On women and little girls, it's fine, but boys? I don't know. You just can't have someone named Enzo with fiery ginger hair. Those people have names like "Harry" or "Ron" or "William." I did just google "redheaded men" and there are some good looking ones. However, I can't remember meeting IRL a redheaded male that wasn't plain fucking terrible. If you know one, please let me know they exist.] Oh, and before I move on, another (not-so-)quick word on "genius" and intelligence. As a public school teacher, I've encountered a lot of people in my career--some really smart, and some really dumb. But intelligence comes in many forms. I had a kid once randomly assigned to be my TA because he had been banned from AP English in his senior year of high school. He was instead taking English at Lydian Academy, an expensive off-campus site that caters to wealthy kids who can't hack regular school for whatever reason, but only because he and two friends had chosen to torture two teachers for a rather lengthy time by defiling their classrooms, even going so far as to lay brick in front of one teacher's door so that when she arrived in the morning, there was nothing but a brick wall next to her room number where there would normally be a door. In some ways, this is sort of funny and clever, but these kids were mean, and they did plenty of other shitty things to these people (nice people), as well as to vandalize campus in myriad ways, including throwing dirty mattresses into the swimming pool. Administration eventually went so far as to have campus aides and custodial staff stake the place out at night, ninja-style, to try to bring these fuckers down. What eventually did it, however, was that one of these idiots brought the very same bricks to English class that they had used to brick the door. I'm not sure why the kid brought the bricks--his dad was a contractor and he was using the bricks in some sort of demonstration. Maybe he was one of those martial arts brick-breaker people. It doesn't matter. In the end, they were busted, and two of them were expelled, and the third was allowed to remain in school for whatever reason, but could not take English on campus and also had his admission rescinded from Harvard as a result of his actions. This was a book-smart kid. (I can't speak for his companions--one of them I didn't know, and the other had straight D's for the entirety of the year he was enrolled in my AS English III course. After eight parent meetings in which his mother implored an explanation from me as to why her child was not earning decent grades, and every time the answer was, "He doesn't turn anything in," I couldn't really say for sure whether he couldn't hack the work or if he simply had no work ethic. He certainly didn't have a personality worth noting. How he was admitted to AP English in his senior year is beyond me. Also, he had orange, fiery, ginger hair. And his name was either Harry, Ron, or William.) Anyway, regarding the kid who was allowed to stay enrolled--getting into Harvard is no easy task, and this guy recently won $30K on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" for having a lot of random (although clearly not terribly useless knowledge). And yet... wasn't it pretty dumb, not to mention unkind, to do all of those things to campus and to his teachers? I guess my whole point here is that certain types of intelligence are more highly valued in our society than others, and being book smart doesn't necessarily denote empathy, kindness, or an ability to maintain positive interpersonal relationships. Which I may demonstrate myself in this next portion of today's post, because I am probably going to sound like the world's biggest asshole, or least a minor asshole, maybe, possibly. Let's get to it.
Yesterday, Adam asked me why the mucus plug doesn't have a nicer name. Like, why didn't they name it after the doctor who discovered it or something? My answer to that is that "mucus plug" is pretty much as self-explanatory a name as there could possibly be, and therefore helps one identify exactly what it is that has just expelled itself from one's nether bits. In actuality, the technical word for the cervical plug is "operculum," and the purpose of the operculum is to seal the uterus off from the dangers of the outside world and keep bacteria and other nasties away from a developing fetus. It forms around the twelfth week of pregnancy, and although it can come out at anytime, it will regenerate if necessary, or it won't, if your labor is ready to begin at some point in the near-ish future. (Apparently you can lose your plug weeks ahead of labor, which is sort of a bummer when you are waiting, waiting, waiting for something to fucking happen.) Anyway, I lost mine yesterday (although I think a more accurate description might be that I found mine yesterday, after getting out of the shower. It just, like, fell out and landed on top of the toilet seat. It was weird and gross but not entirely unsurprising or unwelcome, and I am truly sorry, dear reader, if this is TMI for some of you. Don't worry, I immediately disinfected the area), and so I felt compelled to google "mucus plug" just to make sure that's actually what it was (and, truly, I don't know why I felt like I needed to do that. There really isn't anything else it could have been).
Well, as a result of googling, I found myself reading a blog, where women have actually sent pictures of their plugs (vomit) so the world can see examples. The author of said blog invited readers, in the comments section, to post their mucus plug stories, and although I might sometimes claim that nothing can surprise me anymore, that would be false. This is where SAHdz hervilla comes in (and to be clear, all typos are to be credited to SAHdz; all parenthetical asides are all my own) when she comments, "My mucus plug is coming out my nose left nostril ." (No, SAHdz, that's not your cervical mucus plug. That's just regular old snot.) She goes on to reveal that "I remember taking my medication for depression and that very first pill on top did something inside my belly and it felt like it turned my whole insides into the opposite direction this was weird but is there any way you can explain what might be going on with me ." (Well, there are several possibilities. My bet would be that your "doctor" practices "medicine" from a van with no windows outside your local crackhouse and your "antidepressants" are actually a fine-tuned mix of PCP and DMT.) "I been having sex with my husband who is now passed" (are you a necrophiliac?) "but I never got pregnant and I remember his mom telling me 'no more babies' (wait... I thought you never got pregnant?) which is wrong who is she to tell me that ." [She is/was (although it's hard to say, SAHdz, since it sounds like your husband might be dead despite the fact that you've been having sex with him) your mother-in-law and it sounds like she might be onto something there...] "She probably had this done to me." (She had what done? The mucus dripping out of your nose or the internal shape-shifting?) "I never used contraception (unfortunately) yet my husband had a affair n got that woman pregnant." (Jesus fucking Christ.) "Not to mention after my third child (again... I thought you said you never got pregnant?) I got pregnant but I lost it ." (Ummmm. This doesn't feel like a huge travesty to me. #sorrynotsorry) "I took a pregnancy test which came out positive . I think they gave me plan b at that time I was sniffing stuff for all u know I sniffed plan b lost the baby I must have been about five weeks." (Do you really think your mother-in-law slipped you some Plan B to sniff? And if she did, was that really the worst thing you could be sniffing? Are you sure it wasn't just dried, crushed up glue? And why are you snorting shit if you think you might be pregnant? Did you consider that maybe WHATEVER THE FUCK DRUG YOU ARE SNORTING CAUSED YOUR MISCARRIAGE?) "I had painful miscarriage nurse said for me to just lay down n rest when I went to the restroom it came out it was a pretty good size fetus in the toilet ." (Okay, here's the thing, SAHdz. At five weeks pregnant, you do not yet have a fetus. You have an embryo, and it's about the size of a sesame seed or possibly a blueberry, if you are actually seven weeks pregnant and counting from the date of conception as opposed to the LMP. If you drop your sesame seed or blueberry-sized embryo into the toilet, it is, sadly, going to look like a clot of blood. Not a fetus. Sorry.) "I went to the hospital a day or two later n they did pelvic ultrasound claiming I wasn't pregnant well of course I wasn't I had already had the miscarriage." (I'm not a doctor. So who am I to say? However, it takes more than two days for hCG levels to return to normal after a miscarriage. Is it possible your home pregnancy test gave you a false positive? I think your doctor knows better than First Response. Unless he really is just some dude in a van on the corner. Just sayin'.) "He didn't want kid ." (Your husband? The ultrasound technician? The doctor at the hospital? The anti-depressant dealing dude in the van?) "He left me that night in pain at home while he went out with his friend. Anyway the whole flipping of my insides didn't happen until I gave birth to baby number 5 it would have been 6 ." (Again: ummmmmm. What? I am so confused about the entire timeline of this story, which child/pregnancy it is that your mucus plug is escaping your left nostril, how long your dead husband has been cheating on you with his other baby mama, and why you're going to a regular hospital instead of a neuropsychiatric ward.) "But yeah can anyone explain what may be happening ." (Aside from the fact that no one ever explained to you that you don't need a space before a period, no. No one can explain what may be happening.) "This is uncalled for ." (I agree 100%.)
Two minutes after posting this, SAHdz adds a follow-up: "Lol my story sound weird and somewhat strange but it’s the honest truth. Please if u know anything or if ur a doctor can I give me a little bit of info that u think might be going on" (Truth is subjective and your personal truth clearly differs from my reality. I know a lot of things, SAHdz, but I have no fucking idea what's happening to you.)
Another interesting bit of material I came across in my pregnancy/baby reading came from the information packets given to us by our childbirth class instructor. Included was this handout.
Caption: "Your newborn baby will be a stranger at first. Give yourself time to get used to a new face around the house. Soon you will be able to anticipate your baby's needs by subtle differences in facial expression:"
It reminds me of Highlights for Children and People magazine, where they run the "Can you spot the difference?" feature every month. I suppose I never questioned the purpose of this feature, although now I wonder if it is either to A.) Make you feel stupid, or B.) Train you to read your kid's face to determine if they are hungry or simply shat themselves. Either way, I am hoping my baby comes with captions like the handout, because otherwise, I can't see any difference between the six pictures. Perhaps this means I'm destined for failure, or maybe it just means that I haven't given myself time to get used to the new face around the house. My consolation is that if SAHdz managed to squeeze 5 ("it would have been 6") out her mucus hole (or possibly left nostril), maybe there's hope for me. Of course, we don't actually know where SAHdz's 5 living children are, given her Plan B and mescaline anti-depressant sniffing life choices, so maybe I shouldn't use her as a basis for comparison in my potential for success as a parent.
What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts about mucus plugs, geniuses, or election day in the comments below! Hooray! (Egregious punctuation in the form of parentheses or exclamation points not required.)
Saturday, November 3, 2018
39+1
There are a lot of things that I didn't know about pregnancy, childbirth, babies, or the whole damn realm of parenthood before experiencing it for myself. And I know I'm not the only one, because I once overheard my friend Maria explaining to a group of students as I passed by her classroom how it is determined "how far along" you are. She didn't know this before she got pregnant either, and just this week I found myself explaining it to another colleague, one with whom I never in a thousand years imagined I would be using the words "last menstrual period" in daily conversation. Life is weird and filled with surprises, is it?
Anyway, it turns out that, according to the formula (if you could even call it a formula; it's not more than basic math, really), you're pregnant before you even have the sex that causes you to be with child. How's that, you ask? Well, it's dated from the first day of your last menstrual period, and obviously if you're menstruating, you're not pregnant yet. So, your estimated due date is 40 weeks from the first day of your last period, not actually when you conceived your little embryo.
So here I am, 39 weeks, 1 day pregnant. I've been off work for three weeks, and I feel somewhat sure I've never been so bored in my life. I am pretty sure I know people that would take umbrage at that, as they love their time off more than anything. The thing is, being off work is great, but the problem is that I don't have the energy to fucking do anything. Thus far, I've read a lot of books (not entirely ignoble, but admittedly, it's mostly been the works of Stephen King and Gillian Flynn, who are not, in my estimation, the height of literary laudability [is "laudability even a word? Seriously, though. Is it?] Also, I would LOVE to publish a novel, let alone one as wildly successful as theirs, so please don't take that statement the wrong way. A book is a book is a book, but I probably wouldn't teach Gillian Flynn in my classrooms. Just sayin'), watched a lot of The Sopranos, and spent an embarrassingly large chunk of time playing a really, really stupid game on my phone. Not Candy Crush, but close. (Adam, wonderful husband and life partner that he is, says it's fine to play to games on my phone, and part of me tries to convince myself that it will help keep my brain sharp. In reality, though, I feel it is a massive waste of valuable time in which I could be doing something more constructive. But again, I'm just so tired.) Adam also says, "Why don't you write?"
He is right. He is always right (and has been since Day 1. The door handles at our old condo complex even said so. "Adams Rite" was stamped on every handle. It wasn't properly punctuated or spelled correctly, but the message was the same). And while writing sounded like a good idea, it really didn't interest me at all until this very moment. I imagine he was talking about working on my long-silent novel, which I haven't opened since July 17, but blogging is also writing, so here I am. It feels good to write, even if I'm writing about nothing, and it's likely no one will ever read (possibly with the exception of Ed). Adam himself, who has also not worked in a few weeks, has written nearly 70 pages of a book. Granted, he can walk without waddling, can get off the couch without straining himself, and doesn't fall asleep at the very thought of pillows, but still. I should open that novel. The whole beginning part of it is about late pregnancy, and now that I have experience, I think I could make it a lot better. I'll let you know how things go.
In the meantime, I'll be here with my massive pumpkin belly, counting new stretch marks every day and marveling at how fat I've grown (seriously--if you ever decide to get pregnant, exercise and eat salad. It will be worth it. Back fat, as evidenced by the picture below, is not attractive). Also, I guess this blog is not so anonymous anymore as it just is the ana-log:
Anyway, it turns out that, according to the formula (if you could even call it a formula; it's not more than basic math, really), you're pregnant before you even have the sex that causes you to be with child. How's that, you ask? Well, it's dated from the first day of your last menstrual period, and obviously if you're menstruating, you're not pregnant yet. So, your estimated due date is 40 weeks from the first day of your last period, not actually when you conceived your little embryo.
So here I am, 39 weeks, 1 day pregnant. I've been off work for three weeks, and I feel somewhat sure I've never been so bored in my life. I am pretty sure I know people that would take umbrage at that, as they love their time off more than anything. The thing is, being off work is great, but the problem is that I don't have the energy to fucking do anything. Thus far, I've read a lot of books (not entirely ignoble, but admittedly, it's mostly been the works of Stephen King and Gillian Flynn, who are not, in my estimation, the height of literary laudability [is "laudability even a word? Seriously, though. Is it?] Also, I would LOVE to publish a novel, let alone one as wildly successful as theirs, so please don't take that statement the wrong way. A book is a book is a book, but I probably wouldn't teach Gillian Flynn in my classrooms. Just sayin'), watched a lot of The Sopranos, and spent an embarrassingly large chunk of time playing a really, really stupid game on my phone. Not Candy Crush, but close. (Adam, wonderful husband and life partner that he is, says it's fine to play to games on my phone, and part of me tries to convince myself that it will help keep my brain sharp. In reality, though, I feel it is a massive waste of valuable time in which I could be doing something more constructive. But again, I'm just so tired.) Adam also says, "Why don't you write?"
He is right. He is always right (and has been since Day 1. The door handles at our old condo complex even said so. "Adams Rite" was stamped on every handle. It wasn't properly punctuated or spelled correctly, but the message was the same). And while writing sounded like a good idea, it really didn't interest me at all until this very moment. I imagine he was talking about working on my long-silent novel, which I haven't opened since July 17, but blogging is also writing, so here I am. It feels good to write, even if I'm writing about nothing, and it's likely no one will ever read (possibly with the exception of Ed). Adam himself, who has also not worked in a few weeks, has written nearly 70 pages of a book. Granted, he can walk without waddling, can get off the couch without straining himself, and doesn't fall asleep at the very thought of pillows, but still. I should open that novel. The whole beginning part of it is about late pregnancy, and now that I have experience, I think I could make it a lot better. I'll let you know how things go.
In the meantime, I'll be here with my massive pumpkin belly, counting new stretch marks every day and marveling at how fat I've grown (seriously--if you ever decide to get pregnant, exercise and eat salad. It will be worth it. Back fat, as evidenced by the picture below, is not attractive). Also, I guess this blog is not so anonymous anymore as it just is the ana-log:
Thursday, August 2, 2018
all the best ideas
I have all my best ideas when I’m lying in bed, in that hazy gray that exists between sleep and wake. I have all of my weirdest thoughts then, too, and that is how I know I’m close. The weirder my brain, the closer I am. It’s like an orgasm, in a way. You can tell you’re getting close, and there is nothing you want to do to impede that sweet moment of takeover.
And this is why I don’t keep a notebook or a journal next to my bed. I think I used to. I vaguely remember jotting down dreams in the middle of the night, and I supposed I could keep something in the nightstand to write down all of these amazing ideas I have just before vanishing from the waking world. Of course, there are two problems with this scenario:
1. In the morning, my beautiful ideas will probably just sound asinine and confusing, and
2. I have trouble staying asleep these days, so turning on the light to write shit down would most likely be really counterproductive to my current primary objective, which is to get as much sleep as possible.
Why, you ask? Or didn’t. I don’t know. Maybe you don’t care, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Mostly it’s because I’m terrified of being tired. I’ve been terrified of being tired for the last ten or so years, since I started teaching and really needed a sharp mind to effectively make it through the day. Sure, there are days when I stagger into work and put on a bigger show than usual, because I’m so fucking exhausted I can barely think straight (fights keep me up. Almost any kind of argument with anyone. And overthinking stupid things I’ve said or done, mostly to colleagues or in class. I’ve said a lot of inappropriate things in class. You want an example? Seven years ago, I was teaching 2nd period Creative Writing, and ZK, a kid with a deformed arm and one of the shittiest, most entitled attitudes ((AND I had this fucker for two years in a row)) said, “I still don’t understand the difference between direct and indirect characterization,” for which the example that somehow burst from my mouth, the finest specimen of mouth diarrhea I’ve had to date, was: “Well, you could say that X is a porn addict, which would be direct characterization. You’re just straight up telling the audience he’s addicted to porn. If you want to indirectly characterize, you have to show this, through actions, dialogue, etc. So you might say, ‘X walked into the porn store and bought ten dildos, which isn’t telling anyone anything, but subtly insinuates,’ at which point my brain finally caught up with my mouth, and I took in the sight of the entire classroom, 30 adolescent faces staring at me with wide eyes and little round Os for mouths. Where this example came from remains a mystery. I wasn’t into porn, didn’t own a dildo, or know anyone who might even potentially face this particular scenario. Who knows how our brains really work? In retrospect, dildos aren’t even necessarily related to porn. There’s no direct correlation other than that one could be used in a scene in the other, or that they are both sold in sex shops. Unless I know even less about porn and/or dildos than I think I do... Anyway, that one definitely kept me up at night, for a long, long time, and I really couldn’t even laugh about it until a few years ago. Maybe I was just exhausted, which really just proves that I have reasonable ground to so deeply fear being tired). So I’m very afraid of being tired, and as my second trimester of pregnancy slowly winds into the third, I can already feel that thick quilt that plagued me for the first few months beginning to descend.
The beginning of the school year is, inherently, a very tiring time. There’s a lot to do, so teaching coupled with pregnancy, which is not only debilitating insofar as the lack of energy goes but also now includes crippling back aches, sciatica, heartburn, and constipation (fucking AWESOME), sounds like a little too much to bear.
However, on the bright side, my friend Lindsey just sent out some photos of her day-old newborn, who is fucking beautiful and perfect, which reminds me that it will all be worth it. So worth it.
And this is why I don’t keep a notebook or a journal next to my bed. I think I used to. I vaguely remember jotting down dreams in the middle of the night, and I supposed I could keep something in the nightstand to write down all of these amazing ideas I have just before vanishing from the waking world. Of course, there are two problems with this scenario:
1. In the morning, my beautiful ideas will probably just sound asinine and confusing, and
2. I have trouble staying asleep these days, so turning on the light to write shit down would most likely be really counterproductive to my current primary objective, which is to get as much sleep as possible.
Why, you ask? Or didn’t. I don’t know. Maybe you don’t care, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Mostly it’s because I’m terrified of being tired. I’ve been terrified of being tired for the last ten or so years, since I started teaching and really needed a sharp mind to effectively make it through the day. Sure, there are days when I stagger into work and put on a bigger show than usual, because I’m so fucking exhausted I can barely think straight (fights keep me up. Almost any kind of argument with anyone. And overthinking stupid things I’ve said or done, mostly to colleagues or in class. I’ve said a lot of inappropriate things in class. You want an example? Seven years ago, I was teaching 2nd period Creative Writing, and ZK, a kid with a deformed arm and one of the shittiest, most entitled attitudes ((AND I had this fucker for two years in a row)) said, “I still don’t understand the difference between direct and indirect characterization,” for which the example that somehow burst from my mouth, the finest specimen of mouth diarrhea I’ve had to date, was: “Well, you could say that X is a porn addict, which would be direct characterization. You’re just straight up telling the audience he’s addicted to porn. If you want to indirectly characterize, you have to show this, through actions, dialogue, etc. So you might say, ‘X walked into the porn store and bought ten dildos, which isn’t telling anyone anything, but subtly insinuates,’ at which point my brain finally caught up with my mouth, and I took in the sight of the entire classroom, 30 adolescent faces staring at me with wide eyes and little round Os for mouths. Where this example came from remains a mystery. I wasn’t into porn, didn’t own a dildo, or know anyone who might even potentially face this particular scenario. Who knows how our brains really work? In retrospect, dildos aren’t even necessarily related to porn. There’s no direct correlation other than that one could be used in a scene in the other, or that they are both sold in sex shops. Unless I know even less about porn and/or dildos than I think I do... Anyway, that one definitely kept me up at night, for a long, long time, and I really couldn’t even laugh about it until a few years ago. Maybe I was just exhausted, which really just proves that I have reasonable ground to so deeply fear being tired). So I’m very afraid of being tired, and as my second trimester of pregnancy slowly winds into the third, I can already feel that thick quilt that plagued me for the first few months beginning to descend.
The beginning of the school year is, inherently, a very tiring time. There’s a lot to do, so teaching coupled with pregnancy, which is not only debilitating insofar as the lack of energy goes but also now includes crippling back aches, sciatica, heartburn, and constipation (fucking AWESOME), sounds like a little too much to bear.
However, on the bright side, my friend Lindsey just sent out some photos of her day-old newborn, who is fucking beautiful and perfect, which reminds me that it will all be worth it. So worth it.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Writing practice: Unknowns
This week I am signed up for a workshop called Explorations of Short Forms, through the Bay Area Writing Project. I don't know how I feel about it yet, which is unusual for me. I typically really, really like something, or I really, really dislike it, but although two days of the workshop have already passed, I'm still unsure as to whether I enjoy it or not. I know I definitely don't enjoy driving to and from Berkeley every day, although this makes me appreciate very much the fact that we stopped looking at houses in Oakland and just moved to the Peninsula.
Anyway, the week is really all about writing practice, or writing invitations, as the teacher calls them. The following is a short piece that came of one writing prompt/practice/invitation.
Unknowns
July 23, 2018
Tell me something I don’t know.
Something that you don’t know is what it feels like to bury your hands deep in hot sand, so that the grains roll over your flesh, warm and soft, until they grow cool and then cold, damp, a perfect juxtaposition to the skin on your still-sweating forearms.
Tell me something you don’t know.
I don’t know where the universe ends or how it began or if it even matters. I don’t know how many stars there are or the number of planets that lie scattered across the vastness of space. I don’t know what a black hole is, or how to measure using light years, or why a belief in god is so often used as justification for hatred and violence rather than the genesis of peace and beauty.
Tell me what nobody knows.
No one knows what kind of person you will be. No one knows what you will look like, what color eyes or hair you’ll have, if you will have skinny, knobby fingers or tiny little elvin points at the uppermost tips of your ears. You are a stranger but also not a stranger, because you live and breathe through me, and maybe you will love books like your mama, or art like your dad, or soccer like your yayo, or knowing all the names of all the plants like your grandma.
Nobody knows the sound of your voice, the strength of your grip, or the trajectory of your heart. Nobody yet knows your name. These are just some of the things that nobody knows.
What do I probably know by now?
By now you know the flavor and the feel of your own tiny thumb. You know the force of your fists and your kicks and the shape of my hands, pressing and probing from without. You probably know the vibrations of my voice and the rhythm of my heart and the rise and fall of my breath, expanding, retracting, always.
What do you really need me to know?
Above all, what I need you to know is that I have never wanted to meet anyone more than I want to meet you, that I will never love anyone the way that I already love you, and that I have never been more afraid of anything as I am that I will be responsible for you.
What I really need you to know is that despite the horrible things that are happening in the world, there is always the capacity for change, for betterment, for goodness. What I need you to know is that you have a responsibility not to be passive.
I need you to know that right now, you are just one tiny person, but already you are the most important one.
Anyway, the week is really all about writing practice, or writing invitations, as the teacher calls them. The following is a short piece that came of one writing prompt/practice/invitation.
Unknowns
July 23, 2018
Tell me something I don’t know.
Something that you don’t know is what it feels like to bury your hands deep in hot sand, so that the grains roll over your flesh, warm and soft, until they grow cool and then cold, damp, a perfect juxtaposition to the skin on your still-sweating forearms.
Tell me something you don’t know.
I don’t know where the universe ends or how it began or if it even matters. I don’t know how many stars there are or the number of planets that lie scattered across the vastness of space. I don’t know what a black hole is, or how to measure using light years, or why a belief in god is so often used as justification for hatred and violence rather than the genesis of peace and beauty.
Tell me what nobody knows.
No one knows what kind of person you will be. No one knows what you will look like, what color eyes or hair you’ll have, if you will have skinny, knobby fingers or tiny little elvin points at the uppermost tips of your ears. You are a stranger but also not a stranger, because you live and breathe through me, and maybe you will love books like your mama, or art like your dad, or soccer like your yayo, or knowing all the names of all the plants like your grandma.
Nobody knows the sound of your voice, the strength of your grip, or the trajectory of your heart. Nobody yet knows your name. These are just some of the things that nobody knows.
What do I probably know by now?
By now you know the flavor and the feel of your own tiny thumb. You know the force of your fists and your kicks and the shape of my hands, pressing and probing from without. You probably know the vibrations of my voice and the rhythm of my heart and the rise and fall of my breath, expanding, retracting, always.
What do you really need me to know?
Above all, what I need you to know is that I have never wanted to meet anyone more than I want to meet you, that I will never love anyone the way that I already love you, and that I have never been more afraid of anything as I am that I will be responsible for you.
What I really need you to know is that despite the horrible things that are happening in the world, there is always the capacity for change, for betterment, for goodness. What I need you to know is that you have a responsibility not to be passive.
I need you to know that right now, you are just one tiny person, but already you are the most important one.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Stay Puft Forever
So... clearly I'm not a very good blogger. Before deciding to start using this thing, I had a thousand thoughts on a thousand subjects which to write about, and now it's all a blank. Or maybe it's not blank. Maybe it's that I'm too fucking exhausted to consider expending energy on stringing words together, like beads on a wire, in a way that makes sense let alone rings with beauty. After years and years of formal creative writing programs, that's what writing is supposed to be--beauty--and because it takes a lot of concerted effort, not to mention editing, to create anything I'm happy with (ever, for even five minutes), writing just falls to the wayside and I spend too much time doing things that don't feel satisfying in any way (read: Instagram, Wheel of Fortune app, etc). Maybe that's why I called this blog the Anonymanalog. In anonymity I don't have to worry so much about whether things are good or not. And considering I've not provided anyone I know with the means with which to find this blog, I'm not sure who, if anyone, is reading it. Each of my previous two posts show 4 views apiece. Does the counter go up if I look at my own blog or is someone out there actually reading it? I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, because writing is about more than just beauty. It's about expression and communication, even if the only person I am expressing or communicating with is myself. My present self, my future self... I'm not sure. I do know that I wish I had saved more of the things I had written in the past, so I could return to them now and see who I used to be.
Presently, I am a 24-, almost 25-, weeks pregnant woman who is both marveled and disgusted by my own body. I know, of course, many wonderful mothers who have gone through 1, 2, or even 3+ pregnancies, and I am not sure if I failed to ask or if I failed to listen to the myriad changes your bodysuffers, errr... experiences, during pregnancy. This morning I sat on my couch with a cup of coffee (yes, fully caffeinated. One of the sweetest surprises of pregnancy was my very first phone call with the OB nurse who said, "Don't just have your daily cup of coffee; enjoy it," and so I have) in a pair of shorts and gaped at the cellulite on my thighs. Of course, this led to googling "cellulite pregnancy," wherein I was assured by a thousand internet opinions that added cellulite is a perfectly normal part of pregnancy and that is will most likely retreat from whence it came once the baby has made his grand entrance into the world. Normal? Sure. Desirable? Not so much.
It's not like I felt great about my body before becoming an incubator for my son (my son. I don't know if I've ever called him that before. It's so weird. Inexplicably weird). One of the things I remember most clearly about third grade was the day I went to put some lotion on my legs, and some kid in my class said, "Wow. That sure is a lot of lotion," to which my other classmate, Rafa, responded, "That's because there's a lot of surface to cover." Or sixth grade, when I took three weeks off from school to go to Spain, and when I returned, Jennifer A. asked if I'd brought home a lot of souvenirs, and JD Palmer, the bane of my middle school existence, said, "Yeah, rolls of fat." These comments still sting a little, some twenty-five or thirty years later, and as my body grows along with the baby inside of me, a lot of these insecurities are brought right back up to the surface.
I think the world is a more body-positive place than it was when I was a kid, or even a teenager. While we're still surrounded by images of impossibly thin women, there are also other body types in the mainstream media and on social media, which I think is a great thing. Still, it's difficult to look at myself in the mirror and fully appreciate what my body is doing right now, because of the years of shame I've associated with bellies and cellulite and any sort of jiggle. I know there are people out there that would say that makes me selfish, or shitty, or unaware, because there are so many women in the world who want to bear children and simply can't. And I would never want to diminish this experience, because as shocking as I still find it to believe that I will be someone's mother (soon!), I fully appreciate the experience and wouldn't give it away for anything, even if it meant not having another day of heartburn, backaches, sciatica, or having to pee every thirty minutes. But despite the fact that pregnancy is, in such a cliched term, a miracle (I mean, come on. The placenta alone is a mind-fuck. I grew a whole new organ out of nothing to sustain this kid), I still don't feel attractive or desirable in any way. And let's not forget: I am an old mom. I'm thirty-eight years old. My fat is so stubborn at this age, I'm not sure a plastic surgeon's lipo vacuum could coax it out. At least I'm not famous. I don't know if I could deal with that sort of scrutiny (although, is the scrutiny of teenagers less toxic than the scrutiny of paparazzi? Who's to say?). At least I don't live in France, where women are regularly harassed by their OBs for gaining too much weight.
I feel like blog posts are supposed to end with some marvelous insight gleaned from whatever topic was being written about, but I don't think further pondering of my gravid body has led me to any fuzzy warm feelings about the fact that my arms, never the supple willow branches I've always longed for, are now so jiggly, I can't tolerate the idea of writing on the Smartboard when school starts in a few weeks for fear of starting a hurricane with their massive vibrations. I don't feel better about the extra layer of flab that now hangs off my butt, or my steadily growing second chin. I know I am not the only woman to "gain weight all over," as they say, as opposed to just the belly. And like I said earlier, I was kind of a chubby child, so maybe I should have known pregnancy would lead me here. I mean, I thought I was permanently past the fat stage of my life. It doesn't make it any easier when expectations for the female body are already set preposterously high. Ah, well. And "so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," as Fitzgerald so aptly put it.
Presently, I am a 24-, almost 25-, weeks pregnant woman who is both marveled and disgusted by my own body. I know, of course, many wonderful mothers who have gone through 1, 2, or even 3+ pregnancies, and I am not sure if I failed to ask or if I failed to listen to the myriad changes your body
It's not like I felt great about my body before becoming an incubator for my son (my son. I don't know if I've ever called him that before. It's so weird. Inexplicably weird). One of the things I remember most clearly about third grade was the day I went to put some lotion on my legs, and some kid in my class said, "Wow. That sure is a lot of lotion," to which my other classmate, Rafa, responded, "That's because there's a lot of surface to cover." Or sixth grade, when I took three weeks off from school to go to Spain, and when I returned, Jennifer A. asked if I'd brought home a lot of souvenirs, and JD Palmer, the bane of my middle school existence, said, "Yeah, rolls of fat." These comments still sting a little, some twenty-five or thirty years later, and as my body grows along with the baby inside of me, a lot of these insecurities are brought right back up to the surface.
I think the world is a more body-positive place than it was when I was a kid, or even a teenager. While we're still surrounded by images of impossibly thin women, there are also other body types in the mainstream media and on social media, which I think is a great thing. Still, it's difficult to look at myself in the mirror and fully appreciate what my body is doing right now, because of the years of shame I've associated with bellies and cellulite and any sort of jiggle. I know there are people out there that would say that makes me selfish, or shitty, or unaware, because there are so many women in the world who want to bear children and simply can't. And I would never want to diminish this experience, because as shocking as I still find it to believe that I will be someone's mother (soon!), I fully appreciate the experience and wouldn't give it away for anything, even if it meant not having another day of heartburn, backaches, sciatica, or having to pee every thirty minutes. But despite the fact that pregnancy is, in such a cliched term, a miracle (I mean, come on. The placenta alone is a mind-fuck. I grew a whole new organ out of nothing to sustain this kid), I still don't feel attractive or desirable in any way. And let's not forget: I am an old mom. I'm thirty-eight years old. My fat is so stubborn at this age, I'm not sure a plastic surgeon's lipo vacuum could coax it out. At least I'm not famous. I don't know if I could deal with that sort of scrutiny (although, is the scrutiny of teenagers less toxic than the scrutiny of paparazzi? Who's to say?). At least I don't live in France, where women are regularly harassed by their OBs for gaining too much weight.
I feel like blog posts are supposed to end with some marvelous insight gleaned from whatever topic was being written about, but I don't think further pondering of my gravid body has led me to any fuzzy warm feelings about the fact that my arms, never the supple willow branches I've always longed for, are now so jiggly, I can't tolerate the idea of writing on the Smartboard when school starts in a few weeks for fear of starting a hurricane with their massive vibrations. I don't feel better about the extra layer of flab that now hangs off my butt, or my steadily growing second chin. I know I am not the only woman to "gain weight all over," as they say, as opposed to just the belly. And like I said earlier, I was kind of a chubby child, so maybe I should have known pregnancy would lead me here. I mean, I thought I was permanently past the fat stage of my life. It doesn't make it any easier when expectations for the female body are already set preposterously high. Ah, well. And "so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," as Fitzgerald so aptly put it.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Weblog, 2.0 or 3.0 or something.point.oh
I've only told one person, my old friend Lacey, that I started a blog (well, resumed might be more accurate, because I wrote a few--maybe even many--blog posts back in the day, but I deleted them all when I decided to begin again as a vegan travel blog, which clearly never went anywhere).
"What's it about?" Lacey asked.
Excellent question. What is this blog about? I gather that most blogs are thematic in some way, but I don't really want to limit myself to one particular topic. I imagine that my posts will revolve around pregnancy (because that is the primary thing I think about these days), vegan travel (because, as previously mentioned, I have been wanting to start a vegan travel blog for awhile. I never have because I always think all my greatest travel adventures are behind me, which may or may not be true, although I am guessing that with the arrival of bambino in November, our greatest travel adventures will be limited to the exotic Central Valley of California, where my husband's mother lives, and the even more exotic Chico, California, where my family lives. This falls under the realm of Very Depressing Thoughts, however, so I'll just move on), teaching (how I ended up back in high school, one of the more miserable periods of my life, is an ever-present mystery), and... I don't know what else. Whatever comes up in life that warrants writing about, I suppose. And that, I think, is what matters. This blog isn't going to be about anything in particular, so much as a place to flex those writing muscles that haven't so much gone weak as completely atrophied.
Writing used to be such an integral part of my day. I didn't even feel like a real person unless I had written about something. These days, my writing seems to be limited to lists: what I need to do, what I need to buy, things we might name our baby. Since I will be returning to the creative writing classroom this fall, not as a student but as a teacher, I think it's important to practice what I'm asking students to do. And really, I love writing. I always have. I love making things up and stringing the words together, but mostly I love putting it out in the world and hearing how it is received (not always well, of course; I have many, many battle scars from workshops past as well as many, many rejections letters from various publications that did not see my work as befitting their pages). So we'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll be successful, and maybe I'll be a miserable failure, but I'll never know until I start trying to write more.
"What's it about?" Lacey asked.
Excellent question. What is this blog about? I gather that most blogs are thematic in some way, but I don't really want to limit myself to one particular topic. I imagine that my posts will revolve around pregnancy (because that is the primary thing I think about these days), vegan travel (because, as previously mentioned, I have been wanting to start a vegan travel blog for awhile. I never have because I always think all my greatest travel adventures are behind me, which may or may not be true, although I am guessing that with the arrival of bambino in November, our greatest travel adventures will be limited to the exotic Central Valley of California, where my husband's mother lives, and the even more exotic Chico, California, where my family lives. This falls under the realm of Very Depressing Thoughts, however, so I'll just move on), teaching (how I ended up back in high school, one of the more miserable periods of my life, is an ever-present mystery), and... I don't know what else. Whatever comes up in life that warrants writing about, I suppose. And that, I think, is what matters. This blog isn't going to be about anything in particular, so much as a place to flex those writing muscles that haven't so much gone weak as completely atrophied.
Writing used to be such an integral part of my day. I didn't even feel like a real person unless I had written about something. These days, my writing seems to be limited to lists: what I need to do, what I need to buy, things we might name our baby. Since I will be returning to the creative writing classroom this fall, not as a student but as a teacher, I think it's important to practice what I'm asking students to do. And really, I love writing. I always have. I love making things up and stringing the words together, but mostly I love putting it out in the world and hearing how it is received (not always well, of course; I have many, many battle scars from workshops past as well as many, many rejections letters from various publications that did not see my work as befitting their pages). So we'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll be successful, and maybe I'll be a miserable failure, but I'll never know until I start trying to write more.
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