Inevitable Comparisons

We used to be pretty much the only people our age that we knew with a baby – but we were just on the forefront of the wave. Everyone is pregnant. There are babies everywhere. I’m excited and happy for them all, partly because it’s such an amazing life event, partly because seeing friends with their new babies brings back the wonderful memories of our baby’s birth and first few weeks.

I think that choosing not to have children is a very noble choice and one that more people should make, given the population crisis and the disastrous impact on the environment of adding each new person. But now that I’ve had a child, I feel that people who choose not to are missing a kind of life joy that can never be replaced by the advantages of a childless life (more money, more pets, more toys, more time, more sleep). I feel fortunate that I am a parent. She brings us such happiness.

I wish that kind of simple, beatific joy was my only reaction to parenthood and to other people becoming parents. Instead, for some neurotic reason, I feel compelled to compare. All of us are trying to do everything right. But “everything right” is poorly defined, and the path so far has been fraught with compromises. I can’t help noticing what choices other people make and wondering if their babies will turn out “better” than ours.

The first compromise came before she was even born, when I cracked and asked for an epidural. I was so determined to do things naturally and not expose her to medication, but it was just too hard. When I hear about other mothers my age who had their babies naturally, I feel a sense of awe – natural childbirth is so much harder and more painful than I thought it would be, I can’t imagine how women did it throughout history – and I feel like they are indeed, a bit better than I am.

Then there’s breastfeeding. Only 15% of American women manage to breast-feed exclusively through the first six months, and I was going to be one of them. Instead, just shy of the five-month point, on a morning when she was crying with hunger and my milk supply was too low to satisfy her, we gave her rice cereal. Milk is still her only source of nutrition most days – but I’m not in the 15%. Other women I know have held out.

Then there’s playtime and social stimulation – is she getting the right kinds and enough? Am I spending enough time with her? Is she hitting the developmental milestones ahead of her peers? Am I reading to her enough? Is she getting exposed to enough different people? Is our apartment a safe enough environment, free from PFOA and lead paint and E. coli and bisphenol-A and all the other hazards? I just recently switched to using glass bottles (should've been using them all along, instead of plastic), and I’ve been trying to cut back on my meat and whole milk consumption to avoid dioxins (should’ve done that earlier; other mothers we know are vegan or vegetarian so their babies were healthier from the get-go).

It’s exhausting. I want the best for her, but I can see how impossible that is – for one thing, we can’t afford all organic clothing, food, and furniture. So I just have to hope that good genes and a strong set of kidneys will help her deal with all the toxins in her environment, and that by the time all our babies are 15 years old, the decisions we made when they were infants will be a wash.

Seeing Further Ahead

With the baby on the sofa next to me, sucking her thumb and temporarily conked, I'm stealing a few minutes to write...

I remember when we first brought her home from the hospital, I really just lived moment-to-moment. My priorities were finding an opportunity to put her down long enough so I could go to the bathroom, or figuring out a lunch I could scarf down in the few minutes that she was asleep (she MUST have slept more than a few minutes a day, but it never seemed like it). As the days passed, I was able to see just a little further ahead - enough to plan for the next week, perhaps. Now I can see far enough to be thinking about our future as a family. Some things I've been kicking around in my noggin:

- That first magical, incredible day and night will never come again. Even if we have another baby, it won't be as magical. There's only one time you can bridge the gulf from couplehood to parenthood - and that time is over for us. The wonder of realizing that I had a child, that I was a mother, that the baby in my arms was my own, brought me such euphoria for the first hours after her birth. I'm sure the birth of a second child is also amazing and wonderful - but the high can't possibly be as high. I didn't sleep for nearly two days after her birth, because I was so entranced looking at her. And we have taken approximately 1.8 million pictures of her. I don't think we could keep that up the second time around. Even the milestones - omigosh, she's pushing herself up on her arms to *crawl*! - are not going to be as riveting when we've seen it all before. But oh well.

- Raising a baby is really hard work! I look at parents now with six-month-olds and think, wow, they have come through so much already. There are so many hazards to navigate (dealing with the crying the first few weeks springs to mind, not to mention the hours of walking her around the apartment that we had to do each day when she was a newborn, plus breastfeeding challenges, keeping up with the immunization schedule, and learning to get around town with a baby). And parents of older children - toddlers, grade schoolers - I look at them and realize what tremendous stores of energy they have expended, and what an accomplishment it is to have a healthy child of any age.

- On the plus side, a baby is the best toy ever. We used to dote on the guinea pigs, and play with them every evening. Now, we still love them, but they seem so... limited compared to the possibilities in a child. You never know what new noise she's going to come out with, and she's so interactive and fun. I feel a little guilty that we don't spend as much time on the pigs as we used to... but, they are pigs. Hopefully they haven't noticed.

- I am super-busy these days. I feel like there's always slightly more to do than I possibly can do in the time available. Between my two jobs, housework, and keeping in touch with friends and family, I don't really ever have time for myself. I miss being able to read for fun.

- Everyone says to make your relationship with your spouse your priority, even as you're swamped with other demands. I'm not sure we're doing that right now. We have such fun with her, playing with her and laughing together in the evenings. It feels warm and loving and whole. But we do talk pretty much exclusively about her. I wonder sometimes if we'll have nothing to say to each other when she's grown.

- Because of job temporariness and other factors, this year may be a year apart. Who knows where we'll live, and what we'll be doing, this time next year? (Perhaps we'll have a bigger apartment?) I'm anxious about having to find a different job and make my way in a new environment, perhaps far from my family. So right now I'm trying to just enjoy each day as it comes.

Four Months Old

One of the nicest things about babies, I think, is their sheer physicality - the delicious warm smell of their heads, the plumpness of the soles of their feet, their unselfconscious farts and burps and other noises. You can rub their bellies and get right up close to their faces and gaze at them for hours on end. You can't do that with adults, or even children that are just a little bit beyond babyhood - it's an invasion then. But babies welcome your attention and see nothing wrong with staring nose to nose. For them, bodies are full of possibility and occasionally frustrating in their limitations, but never embarrassing. Their breath is always sweet. They don't seem to have any body odor. Before I had one, I never knew how delightful they could be.

A Vacation From Awareness

Four days of maternity leave left - I have to go back to work next Monday. All summer I was conscious of how precious the time was, and of how I might never get that much time off again. My plan, if I recall, was to use this time to figure out a new direction for my life - find a career that really suits me, or something like that. Failing that, I was at least going to read a bunch of great books - all the classics that I somehow missed in school - and join mothers' groups, and go on outings to gardens and parks. I was going to finish my write-up of our honeymoon. And make clothes with my new sewing machine. And go to yoga classes. Oh well. I spent time instead playing with the baby on the bed, nibbling on her toes and kissing the top of her sweet-smelling head, having conversations with her ("goo!" "oh really?" "ahhh-laaa!" "you don't say..."), and walking with her around our neighborhood. It was time well spent. I just wish I had it all over again.

Having a baby has also, in a way, been a vacation from thinking about environmental issues, since that's what I do in my work. For sixteen weeks I haven't read the news or worried about the planet. I cranked the AC in the car (can't let the baby overheat!), bought inorganic bananas, and did copious laundry. I started feeling like since I wasn't thinking about them, the problems of overconsumption in an industrialized society had somehow mysteriously been solved, and everything was OK after all. I even felt subconsciously, in the midst of my joy, that I'd found the answer to happiness: It's having children and matching living room sets and a home in the suburbs, after all.

Now I realize that the decision about going back to work wasn't just spending time in the office vs. at home, but spending time worrying and struggling for a cause that may already be lost, vs. just relaxing and letting everything go. No wonder I wanted to stay home. Not that I have such a critically important job. I'm way down on the totem pole, just playing a minor role and one that someone else could fill if I left. But it's the principle of the thing. I had sixteen weeks off from awareness - now I've got to go pick it up again.

Crying It Out

First, a rapid-fire update:

The baby is ten weeks old! She's wonderful. In the mornings when she wakes up smiling and cooing, my husband and I lie in bed and play with her, and it's like some kind of idyllic vision of family life, like the Norman Rockwell version of a family (except that he would probably paint us wearing more clothes). It's the life I've wanted since I was first able to imagine leaving my parents' family and starting my own. It makes me dizzy with pride and joy to think that it's really true, and we built it ourselves.

I have four weeks of maternity leave left. It's rushing by so fast. I am lucky I was able to get so much time off - and my lovely, generous boss is letting me come back to work part-time instead of full-time, which is a big relief. I'm still not looking forward to going back to the office though. I would be so happy if I could just stay home indefinitely. Taking care of a home and a baby is what I want to spend my time doing. But going back to the office is the right thing to do, for complicated reasons.

Not everything at home is perfect, of course. The past week has been hard because we started putting her down in her cosleeper instead of letting her sleep in our bed with us. For the first nine weeks of her life, she slept cuddled up to my flank, knowing that I was right there to protect her. She could nurse whenever she wanted to, then drift peacefully back to sleep. But the pediatrician yelled at me for having her in bed with us ("bedsharing kills thousands of babies a year!"). I think we were doing it safely, but after that lecture I got scared.

So now she has to sleep alone, and she has to wake up all the way and cry in order to rouse me when she's hungry. It's hard on her. She starts crying as soon as we lower her into the cosleeper, and sometimes cries for up to an hour. And each time I feed her in the night, she cries when I put her back in the cosleeper. It wakes my husband up. I just managed to convince him to come in from the sofa where he spent the first six weeks of her life, and share the bed with me again. I promised him that I could keep her quiet enough at night that he would be able to sleep (he has sleep issues). Now, each time she squawks or whines at night, and he flops over uneasily in bed, I feel guilty. I'm afraid he will head back to the sofa.

So here I am between a rock and a hard place - trying to do what the books and the pediatrician recommend, but it robs all three of us of sleep and makes both of them frustrated and upset. And it's so hard listening to her cry in the evenings after we've put her down. I go in periodically to check on her, but my presence only seems to rev her up. Last night when I went in, she was lying on her side facing the wall of the cosleeper, eyes open, crying her heart out, and I felt such a stab of remorse for what we were doing to her. She looked so abandoned and miserable. I felt the tears spring up in my own eyes as I looked at her. This is a time in her life when she needs to feel safe and cared-for, and instead she may just be learning the hard lesson that sometimes no matter how hard she cries, no one will help her.

There are other times throughout the day that are good, of course - when she grins at us and appears to be a happy, well-adjusted baby. She gets lots of cuddling and attention from both of us. Perhaps I am just projecting my own issues onto her. I had a lot of sleep problems in my childhood too - I remember waking up after my parents had put me to bed, and feeling miserably lonely. Loneliness is worse for children, I think, because they don't have the emotional resources that adults do. They can't tell themselves, "It's ok, maybe you just had a weird dream - now go back to sleep." It feels like it's not ok at all. I remember not being able to fall back asleep until one of my parents had come in to reassure me. When I pick her up and say soothing words to her, and she gives a big shaky sigh and relaxes against me, her neck all sweaty from her crying jag, I hear my mother's voice coming out of my mouth, saying those same gentle reassuring words.

A quote I read recently: "Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." (Elizabeth Stone) Before I had a baby, I would have thought that was sappy. It probably is. But now it also feels true.

Ramblings on Motherhood

The baby is almost a month old now (I'm being weird and not wanting to use her name here yet). Her existence, and the fact that I'm a mother, are still so amazing to me. I thought parenthood would change me fundamentally. But I feel like I'm pretty much the same person as I've always been. I move through the familiar contours of my life, noticing everything in its place the same as always - my books lined up on the shelf, my calendar hanging on the wall, the guinea pigs rustling around in their cage same as always - yet here's this astonishing, thrilling, totally different thing, this baby, asleep on our bed in the middle of the afternoon! Can she really be ours?? I wonder how long it will take for the shock to wear off and for it to feel natural that I have a baby, for me to be able to take her outside without feeling self-conscious, or say, "my daughter" without the words sounding alien in my ears.

The past month has been full of discoveries:
- My husband is great with babies. He's actually better at soothing her and entertaining her than I am. I love watching him play with her. He is so tender and nice with her, sometimes I even feel a mild little twinge of jealousy - wishing I was as good with her as he is, or wishing he would play with me as whole-heartedly and inventively as he does with her. I think I'm incredibly lucky to have found a guy who is such a good father.
- The sleep deprivation isn't that bad. I don't even feel particularly tired during the day. It seems like as long as I can get 2-3 hours of sleep several times in the course of a 24-hour period, I'm fine.
- That said, we've had a few nights that were pretty rough, when she was just crying and crying, and I felt pretty much at my wit's end. Before I had a kid, I had no idea what vast amounts of patience parenthood would require. I am a pretty patient person, I think, and I've had a lot of experience working with animals, which requires patience since they have their own ideas about things, and you can't tell them directly what you want them to do. But soothing a relentlessly squalling baby in the wee hours of the morning demands patience on a level above what I've ever needed before. It gives me a whole new insight into what my parents went through.
- Breast-feeding has been a really interesting experience. I wasn't sure I would be able to do it, but it's gone smoothly. She makes these adorable little snorting and grunting noises when she's rooting for my breast, like a little piglet. It's tremendously satisfying to be able to feed her that way, and to be a source of comfort to her in such a fundamental way.
- I really don't want to go back to work. I've used up five weeks of my maternity leave so far, and I have eleven left. I know it's going to fly past. Every day my mind is churning, trying to think of a way I could manage not to return to work. It's more about self-respect and career path than finances. We could manage, if I stayed home with her and took the occasional freelancing job. But I'm worried about what my husband might think of my (lack of) ambition if I just stopped working. I don't want him to feel that he's carrying my weight because he's working hard every day and I'm not. I don't want him to feel funny when people ask what I do and he has to answer, "She doesn't work; she's home with the baby." From time to time I remark that I don't want to go back to work, hoping he will say, "Maybe you shouldn't," but he's not saying it.
- I'm extraordinarily inefficient these days. It seems like one task or outing, along the lines of a grocery store run or a weeding session in the garden, is about as much as I can hope to accomplish per day. It takes ages for us to get ready to go anywhere. I have to start the process of getting myself and the baby clean, dressed, and fed hours ahead of time. And there's no routine whatsoever - I can't predict how often she'll want to feed or how long she'll sleep. Maybe that's just how it is with a newborn. Somehow I imagined I'd have time during my maternity leave to do all sorts of fulfilling, creative projects during the hours of downtime I'd have each day. Ha!
- I feel so protective of her. Sometimes I just sit and gaze at her as she's nursing, memorizing her every feature. I wonder how her life will turn out, and I worry about the bad things that might happen to her, and wish that I could keep her safe from them all. She's so precious to me.

BABY!

Our daughter was born on Sunday, June 17th!

She came out healthy, alert, and wide-eyed. I was on such a high after her birth that I stayed awake the whole first night nursing her and gazing at her in astonishment - just the two of us together all night getting to know one another. I haven't wanted to be parted from her ever since (nor have I slept much since!).

I thought I would enjoy motherhood, but I never expected to love her this fervently, to find myself settling into my new role so easily, or to whole-heartedly enjoy taking care of a little human so much. The whole thing is magical to me. I'm trying to absorb every aspect of the experience because I know it's fleeting - she changes so much even day by day - and I'm simultaneously enjoying it and mourning that it's so limited. She's only a week old and already I am dreading having to leave her and go back to work.

Perhaps it's just hormones talking again, but I feel like this is pretty much the happiest time in my life. I'm so glad my husband and I are sharing this time together.

Still Pregnant!

I'm a week overdue now. Still feeling good, peppy and in pretty high spirits. I hope the baby comes soon though.

At my last appointment with my midwife, I had my membranes swept to encourage labor to start. I was prepared for it to be pretty painful, and... it was definitely uncomfortable. But nothing I couldn't handle. She said I won't have a hard time with labor if I can get through a membrane sweep with so little fuss. I hope she's right!

A Post That Is Not About Pregnancy

Today I'm thinking about money. Over the weekend we checked out an open house in our neighborhood - a small, 1950's era house with three little bedrooms, a nice kitchen, and a living room with a fireplace. It had dark wood door frames and glass doorknobs and a kind of creaky charm that reminded me of the house I grew up in. The real estate agent sized us up and told us it was "a great starter home." It was recently reduced in price ... to $740,000.

I felt a kind of reeling despair as we walked away from the house - not because I wanted that particular house so much, just because the expectation that at my stage of life I should be able to afford a mortgage like that is so far removed from the reality. Our combined paychecks would be less than the monthly payments (and that's assuming I go back to work full-time and find some magically free child-care). How can we ever "start"? We'll be tripping over piles of things in a one-bedroom apartment forever. Our child will grow up and go off to college and I'll still be easing open the closet door like there's a tiger in there, fearful of being buried under the avalanche of stuff that I know will leap out.

(I know. The second wolf is supposed to be on a diet. But he's cheating.)

Yesterday I tried to buck myself up a little - it's just real-estate agent talk, after all; it's his job to convince people the house is right for them. Then I read this article about money, which said that a typical college grad can expect to earn a starting salary of $40,000. I've been working ten years and my salary isn't close to that. My first job out of college paid $23,000 and I was glad to get it. I do the other thrifty things the article recommends, like not buying lattes. But I don't think that's going to be enough.

Life is about being happy, not rich, so it's silly to measure myself against this bar and feel frustrated that I fall short. I should just take it one day at a time and seek pleasure in the little things.

But lately (one last kvetch and then I'll stop, I promise!) all the little things have been chores. I've spent the last two weekends working, working, working. It's starting to feel like you can rotate the things, like you can stay home and freelance instead of being a cubicle drudge, or you can dig weeds in the garden instead of cleaning the kitchen floor, but still: all of life is things you don't want to do.

C'mon Horsie

My friend is having her baby today, RIGHT NOW, as I write. I am so excited for her and hoping everything goes well.

Pain is on my mind a lot these days. It was easier in the early days when I was reading about "childbirth ecstasy" and how marvelous it feels to be awake and aware during the whole experience, to say that I wanted to go all natural. Why would I drug myself up and miss out on such a powerful, earthy, life experience? let alone the effect it could have on the baby, and the risk that it would prolong or derail labor, or lead to the dreaded C-section. I felt pretty confident in my ability to get through anything under my own power.

But now I'm going back and forth a lot in my mind, and I can feel my resolve isn't strong. It's like being on a horse rushing pell-mell toward a fence, and feeling the horse doubting, feeling that it wants to refuse, and in fact will, if you don't tell it right now to go on. On a horse, you have to make a split-second decision to either have confidence enough for both of you, and communicate that through your body language, or else agree that yes, perhaps this fence is too high, and we ought to pull out now. I'm in the terrible wavering stage where I don't know which course is the right one.

Yesterday afternoon I got a cramp or something - not a contraction, I don't think, more like a muscle spasm - but it was painful enough that I had to breathe shallowly and hold onto the edge of the sink for a minute until it passed. I could feel my mind all clouded, like a red mist. Panicky little thoughts flitted through - "you're fine, just relax, it will get better in a minute" but I knew I was just grasping at straws. And that was just for a minute or two. If that sensation is going to happen to me repeatedly, over a period of 16 hours, and intensify the whole time, I know I'll crack and ask for an epidural. But after everything I've read about the risks, and all my fine intentions, how can I accept one? I really wanted to prove to myself and the world that I could do this.

I know that the labor experience is inconsequential compared to the enormity of actually having a baby, that I'll forget about the pain afterward, that no one will care or blame me for seeking pain medication even though I said I wouldn't. The rest of my life is on the other side of the fence and it's going to be marvelous. It's just... the fence does look awfully high.

Careening Toward Hippo-dom

It's starting to feel like a race. I know I have to keep eating - now's not the time to go on a diet. But the weight is piling on so fast, it's scaring me a little. I have to have the baby before:
- my feet and ankles swell irretrievably
- I gain so much weight I end up with a 9-pounder or more
I hope the baby knows to come out at the right time (and turn! turn, baby, turn! don't you think it would be nice to be occiput anterior?).

The Wolves

I read a story over the weekend that I really liked. A Cherokee grandfather is passing on wisdom to his grandson, telling him that in everyone's heart there is a war between two wolves. One wolf is patience, kindness, love, sympathy, generosity, etc. The other is anger, jealousy, bitterness, and greed. "Which wolf wins?" the boy wonders. The grandfather answers, "The one you feed."

Henceforth (at least for a while) I vow to put the second wolf on a diet - and stop bellyaching about how we don't have space in our apartment, don't live as well as all our friends, etc. I'm blessed with a wonderful husband and family, which is all I really want in life. This focus on materialism is new to me, the kind of thing I usually shrug off without a problem. But I would rather trip over things in our cozy little apartment and know that my mom is coming over to see me, than live in a country club mansion far away from my parents.

Independence

I come from a long tradition of upstream swimmers. My mom's side of the family is renowned for their stubborn independence, and has its share of coots who lived alone into their nineties, doing things their way and vigorously refusing offers of help. As an only child surrounded by solicitous older relatives, my mom also developed a resolute "I'll do it myself!" attitude toward life. My dad is maybe even more so. Once he makes up his mind about something, no amount of peer pressure will make him change it - it's even cost him jobs on occasion, when he clung to doing what was right versus doing what his boss wanted.

So why am I so susceptible to social pressure? Why is it that criticism, even mild, sends waves of hot-and-cold misery washing over me? And why is it that all the friendly comments coming my way, suggesting that our apartment is an unsuitable place to have a baby, get under my skin so easily? I wish I could muster up my mom's "the hell with that" attitude. Or even just respond logically, as my dad might, that babies have been successfully raised in smaller quarters, and that this baby, born into a middle-class family in a first world nation, will have more opportunities for health and happiness than most of the world's babies. Instead even the videos in our childbirth classes - with their depictions of spacious sit-com living rooms, two-car garages, and fully decorated nurseries - upset me. The underlying message is, "if you don't have this, you're doing it wrong." I can't imagine how much social pressure moms must feel who are single, or teenage, or in any other way bucking the norm.

Ai. Anyway. It does seem that the stubborn independence gene is making itself known physically, if not mentally. As the weeks go by, people are getting very solicitous of my health - rushing to offer me seats, telling me not to carry things or lift things. But I still feel capable of standing, walking, and carrying things. My body has a kind of inherent resistance to change, I think. It stayed about the same through various cycles of being vegetarian, being omnivorous, working out, not working out, being stressed or not, etc. I could lift weights every day for weeks and never gain any muscle. Now, although I have gained a bunch of weight, I'm not feeling that encumbered by pregnancy. When I walk, it doesn't feel that different. I still fill up my backpack at the grocery store and walk home just as I did before pregnancy. I shouldn't jinx myself... but so far, I'm not even peeing more than usual, let alone suffering all the other symptoms women at my stage usually do. All the fuss over me makes me feel mildly embarrassed.

The fuss is sometimes unavoidable, though - like yesterday when I wanted to move a table. It was a heavy table, but I didn't want to act all weak and frail and attract attention by asking for help, so I just moved it myself the way I would have before pregnancy - then attracted attention anyway as people told me I shouldn't have done it myself.

Here's hoping the baby will inherit not just the stubborn independence gene (which also runs strong in my husband's side of the family) but the ability to shrug off criticism and be happy whether or not she does what everyone is "supposed to" do.

Through the Window

Last night I saw a baby I wanted to kidnap. We were touring the maternity ward at the local hospital. The venetian blinds were down covering all the windows of the nursery, but I peeked though a gap at the corner and found myself looking right into the face of a new baby lying in a bassinet on the other side of the window. She wasn't all red and wrinkled like I thought a newborn would look - she had round cheeks and rosebud lips and big, long-lashed eyes. She looked right back at me, our faces just a few feet apart, and jiggled her arms up and down, as different expressions went across her face. I wanted to pick her up. Actually I wanted her to be mine. I can't decide if I'm fickle because I'm so ready to be disloyal to my own baby and steal this other one - or if it's, again, hormones misfiring, telling me to fall in love with the next newborn I see.

Missing in Action...

...a pair of shapely ankles. Last seen sometime last week. This week, there is a direct segue from my legs, which increasingly resemble tree-trunks, to my feet, which increasingly resemble boats. Bemused, I have taken to wearing sandals - thank goodness it's finally warm enough outdoors.

My angelic husband packed up the contents of some shelves that were taking up space in the bedroom, and we've put the cosleeper there, so now there's a placeholder of sorts in the apartment for the baby. Just seeing it there in the corner of the bedroom makes me happy. It's physical evidence that we have made some preparations after all, so now no one can accuse us of being wholly unready.

I also took a look at myself in a mirror recently and realized that I'm enormous. So all my early fears about not being able to gain any weight were unfounded. All this time I was rushing, rushing, rushing to try to eat enough protein and gain enough weight, and now that I've proved I can do it, I suddenly want to put on the brakes. I want the baby to be big enough. But not too big...

Seven weeks to go and it seems like an eternity. Practically speaking everything is easier right now than it will be after the baby's born - right now, her needs are met instantly, whereas after birth keeping her happy will involve complicated shenanigans with diapers, wipes, breasts, blankets, rocking, swaddling, and who knows what else. And despite our best efforts there will probably be times when she is inconsolable. But I still long for the time when she's out and I can see her and hold her. I also look forward to getting my old limber self back. I remember being able to spring lithely up from a seated position, or at least get out of bed with a modicum of grace. It will be great when I can do that again.

Just Hormones, I Hope

A lot of things are vaguely upsetting me these days. Hopefully it's like Calicat said and just hormones. Here's the run-down - not to be a whiner, just in hopes that writing it all down will give me some peace of mind:
- Smoke. Someone in one of the adjacent apartments smokes like a chimney, and due to some quirk of the ventilation system, the smoke always comes right into our apartment. Opening all the windows just seems to create a vacuum that sucks it in more vigorously. This morning I woke up and the first thing I noticed was the smoke hanging in the air, permeating everything in the apartment. I just felt desperate to get ready for work and get out of there. It's one of the reasons I wish we could live in a house - even if that's less environmental than an apartment, and we'd have longer commutes, at least we'd have a little more control over the air quality. It makes me so intensely upset - to the point of anger - that I'm trying to do everything right in this pregnancy, that my husband and I don't smoke and never have and even if we did, would have quit prior to trying to get pregnant - and yet I still breathe smoke all afternoon and evening when I'm home. I just hope that it's not at a level that is harming the baby. (If I did some research online I'd probably discover that there is no safe level of exposure.)
- Paint thinner. I was at work last week when I suddenly smelled a really strong odor like paint thinner or varnish, something sprayed from an aerosol can. I put my sleeve over my nose and breathed that way for a while, but I could still smell it. Based on some thumpy construction-type sounds I heard through the stairwell, it was something building maintenance was doing. I felt trapped, sitting at my desk at work breathing in this stuff that was probably killing off brain cells right and left - mine and the baby's.
- Cold. This isn't unhealthy, it's just something that affects my mood. I feel like it's been winter for so long, and it's never going to be spring, ever. It's just going to be cold and miserable and rainy forever. Last night the wind was howling around the apartment like it was going to tear the screens off the hinges, like it was a living being full of hatred that wanted to get in and punish us. I don't have any warm clothes any more that I can fit into, either, so every day I think, "What will I wear?"
- Space. The final frontier. If I hear one more story about how I should be decorating "the baby's room" or if one more person asks me why we're not moving, I think I'm going to burst into tears. We have no place in our apartment for baby stuff, and yet the baby is coming inevitably. Maybe it's just a frustrated nesting urge turned on itself. I want to have a room - even half a room! - even a few square feet! - where we can set up the crib and a changing table and a dresser to hold the baby's clothes. And instead there is no place for any of that stuff.
- Breast-feeding anxiety. I really want to breast-feed for the first year. But I'm preemptively worrying about whether I'll have enough milk, whether I will get the hang of feeding, whether I will be able to keep feeding after I go back to work. I don't have an office of my own where I could close the door and pump, and if I use a bathroom stall to do it, there'll be constant traffic in and out around me. I wish we could afford for me to just stay home with the baby, and feed in privacy.
- Not being able to confide in my husband. He's under so much stress of his own right now that I feel like it's my responsibility to deal with baby-related problems by myself, and not drag him into it. But labor and delivery and parenthood are bearing down on me, and even though abstractly I know that his stressful time is going to pass and then he'll be involved and supportive - and even though he is being pretty much perfect these days and so loving and nice to me -, just because I can't worry aloud to him right now it feels like I'm facing everything alone.
- The knowledge that emotional stress adversely affects the baby. I have to somehow make myself feel happy and secure, even when I'm not feeling that way at all.

A Top Ten List

In the spirit of Sophia's list, here are the things most commonly said to me these days:

"Hi mommy!"
"How's the baby?"
"You're getting big!"
(These three are actually said to me every morning, in this order, by the same person. I'm running out of ways to reply creatively... maybe I'll just fall back on "hi, good, yep" every single day.)
"How are you feeling these days?"
(This one is nice; it leaves it open-ended whether I want to just say "pretty good!" and leave it at that, or delve into pregnancy-related talk.)
"So do you have your nursery all set up yet?"
(Argh. No. Our plan is to be terrible cruel parents who scar their child for life by denying her a theme nursery.)
"How many months?"
(This one always throws me off. How many left, or so far?)
"When are you guys moving?"/"Why aren't you moving?"
(You would think we were the only people ever to consider having a baby while living in an apartment.)
"Do you know what you're having?"
(A human, I think...)
"Excited?"
(Yep!)
and of course the inevitable
"Was it planned?"

Sometimes I feel glad that my personhood is currently subsumed by this project of ours. I don't have to prove all the time that I'm an interesting, creative, smart person. All I have to do is sit around, being pregnant, and people are automatically interested in me. It's nice always having that topic of conversation available.

But in the back of my mind I know this is temporary - pretty soon I'll be back to just being me, with the responsibility to be interesting on my own account. Then I'll have to find time to write, and go to dance class, and see art movies, and do other things so that people don't think my whole identity is "mommy."

And sometimes I get flickers of irritation that everyone is so focused on the pregnancy. I want to be liked for myself, not my burgeoning belly. It feels like I'm wrestling with people, trying to guide the conversation to something - anything - other than pregnancy. I feel like saying, "I'm still in here, you know! Still the same person you've always known!"

Soothed

I'm feeling better about things. Perhaps due to:

• A nice encounter with a four-year-old who came over to see my guinea pigs at the park, was shy at first but warmed up to me and was soon bringing me flowers to put in my hair, feeding the guinea pigs grass, and asking me questions about them. I love it when kids warm up like that - you can almost see the moment when they decide you're okay and start returning your smiles.
• The realization that we can get along fine in our current apartment. Even if it's small, it's close to all of these things that will be good for a baby (and new parents) - walking distance to a community garden, a library, two grocery stores, a couple of playgrounds, a yoga studio, restaurants, coffee shop, etc. People who live in big houses in the suburbs may have color-coordinated nurseries, but they have to load the kid into the car to get anywhere. Besides, the four-year-old's family lived in our exact same apartment building from the time that she was born until she was two years old - so it can be done.
• The prospect of a lot of free time this summer to spend with my husband. It looks like we'll both be home with the baby for a few months, so it will almost be like an extended vacation for us. We can relax and glide into parenthood together.
• My seven-month appointment with my midwife, who confirmed that everything looks great and the baby is right on schedule.
• Sudden, out-of-nowhere confidence in my body to know what it's doing and get me through labor. I'm used to viewing my body with a bit of skepticism, being sometimes frustrated that it didn't measure up to my expectations - but it seems to know exactly what to do when it comes to building a baby. I've had a super-easy pregnancy. Maybe the final stage will be likewise - well, I don't expect it to be easy - but ...doable.

Doubt and Stuff

Today I feel full of doubt. I started reading natural birth stories online, because those usually buck me up - after hearing over and over that other women have done it, and been flooded with euphoria and satisfaction afterwards, I can usually envision myself coming through labor successfully. But today it didn't help - I just kept picturing myself stuck at some advanced stage of labor, wracked with relentless contractions and stuck, and feeling helpless and trapped and panicky. What if I just can't get the baby out? I've never felt trapped by my own body before.

I think giving birth scares me because there is no way back, or out of it - once things are underway, I've got no option but to go forward, through something that seems physically impossible. With ten weeks to go I'm already starting to eye my belly nervously. It looks so large. How will I ever manage to give birth to what's in there? In the moments when I have empathy to spare for the baby, I think with fear of how she will experience the birth. Maybe to her, it will seem impossible too.

I know I ought to be feeling confident and dreamy, looking forward to the birth, and having long conversations with my belly where I bond with my baby. According to all the books and articles I've read, I also ought to have a color-coordinated baby nursery set up by this time. Instead, I go home every day and look at our one-bedroom apartment, which is packed to the gills with all of our stuff, to the point that there is no wall space where we could even put a crib, and feel a wave of anxiety. Where will we put this baby? What were we thinking, getting pregnant before we had a home of our own? Maybe this is why everyone is asking, "Was it planned?"

(I hate this question. It implies that, like thoughtless teenagers, we were just too stupid or careless to prevent a pregnancy, and that there is some doubt as to whether it would be a good thing for us to have a baby. We're married adults in our thirties, after all, and neither of us has any genetic disorders - why don't people assume that we intended to get pregnant?)

But back to the space issue. I've always been resolutely committed to not acquiring stuff. When I got a baby catalog in the mail a few months ago, full of glossy pictures of $500 cribs and matching duckie-print drapes, I laughed at it and tossed it in the recycle bin. "We don't need all that stuff," I said. But now everyone is asking about our arrangements, and when I say we haven't really made any preparations, they raise an eyebrow and get concerned expressions on their faces.

So now I feel jealous of my pregnant friend who has her own house - a whole five-bedroom house, with a garage and everything. She and her husband have room for all their things. She can keep her clothes in a closet, instead of heaped in piles on top of a bookcase. She has a crib, and a diaper genie, and a rocking chair. She also has decided to be a stay-at-home mom, so she's not racking her brains with worries about insurance or employment or daycare. I feel like I'm supposed to be where she is, but there's no way I can get there.

Added to these worries is the nagging concern that in June my husband's job will wrap up, and we will both officially be unemployed (well, I'll be on unpaid leave). While we have enough savings to coast for a little while, the uncertainty about what we'll do and where we'll live is enormous.

Yesterday I talked with my parents, my closest friends, who always know how to make me feel better. They tried to reassure me. "We'll go shopping next weekend and get a crib at the thrift store. If worst comes to worst, you can put it in the middle of the living room where the coffee table is," my mother said cheerfully. She said all I need is a couple packages of cloth diapers and some clean towels, that the toys and Moses basket and stroller and monogrammed receiving blankets my friend has stocked up on are not in fact necessary for infant well-being. She said I can carry the baby in a sling made out of a sheet. I listened to her and gradually my hyperventilation slowed down to a normal rate of breathing. I hope she's right.

Life Outside the Matrix

I'm reading lots about labor & delivery and about the stay-at-home/work-and-use-daycare decision these days. It's all starting to feel a bit overwhelming. Being pregnant is like a vacation from reality - everyone seems happy for me, I'm pleased and excited that my body seems to know how to grow another human being, it's fun feeling the baby move, I imagine that being a mother will bring feelings of fulfillment and an outlet for nurturing. So I'm just going through the days like "lallalala..." But in the back of my mind I know this isn't reality, and the occasional visions of the future feel like cold water in my face: glimpses of real life outside the Matrix.

For example, I imagine being in the middle of labor and realizing it's more than I can handle, after all, and feeling powerless and frantic with pain. Or holding a squalling newborn who just can't be soothed, meeting my husband's eyes with concern - "oh no, what have we done?" Or trying to run errands with a toddler, having my kid hit me or do something else "unacceptable" in public, and not knowing how to handle it, and feeling like a failure as a mother. Or maybe worst of all, seeing my husband's shoulders sag and feeling that I brought this all on him, that it's my fault he's getting worn down with responsibilities.

I still have the sense that parenthood was my idea. I feel like somehow it's my job to make sure it turns out ok, that having a baby around is "fun," that raising a child won't hurt our marriage and in fact will bring us closer together. What if these things don't turn out to be true? What if, through no fault of her own, she's a fussy baby or has problems or sucks all our time and energy so we never have any good time as a couple any more? It's not that he expects me to make parenthood a smooth ride when so much of it is beyond my control. All the same, if I fail, we might drift apart under the strain. And I can imagine that we'll both resent the control the baby has over our lives and schedules. So many of the nice things we take for granted now, like peaceful evenings shoulder-to-shoulder on the sofa, or fun outings with friends, will be thrown askew by the introduction of a third, needy, person to our stable dynamic.

And then there's the morass of working and daycare. I keep changing my mind about what to do. I feel concerned about trying to breast-feed for the first year if I'm working, and about being stretched too thin if I try to hold down a job, keep my marriage strong, stay in touch with friends and family, and be a great mother too. On the other hand it feels important to me to earn enough money to pay my own way, and to carry half the weight of our child. I'm also afraid that if I step off the career track I might not be able to get back on - and this isn't about just me and my ambitions, it's about our family financial security. I can't expect my husband to carry us all on his own. And I don't want to. If I quit working and stayed home, it would feel like something I'd have to re-justify to myself every day, and I'd constantly worry that I was less of a person for making that choice - in my own eyes, if not his or my friends'. No judgment on others here, every family does what's best for them. I just can't figure out what's best for us.

In a way I guess this just highlights the larger issue that I'm really not sure where my career is going, so I don't know how much of my energy I should be putting into it right now. The impending arrival of a baby just throws a spotlight on any preexisting problems a couple might have - health, financial, housing, work. Well, we will muddle through somehow. I keep reminding myself that, all things considered, my quality of life is probably in the top 1% of people in the world. Elsewhere, people are digging through garbage just to try to feed their kids, not worrying about the effect on their sense of self that parenthood will bring. That's what it's really like outside the Matrix. Really I have no excuse to be anything but happy.

Wide-Eyed Innocence

This morning my eyes seemed a little wacked-out, and my vision wasn't as sharp as usual - but I didn't think much of it, since they're often wacked-out. I do a lot of reading and other close-up work. Anyway, a few hours later I glanced in a mirror and noticed that my pupils were scarily dilated. Aha! No wonder so blurry. But - why? I was pretty sure the hallucinogenic mushrooms I'd consumed the previous evening had nothing to do with it. The concussion following that run-in with the circus thief in the back alley was also probably just a coincidence. I looked up dilated pupils online and found out they're a symptom of cocaine use, brain tumors, and various other scary things. "Get to a hospital immediately," was the general consensus. "If left untreated, the condition can progress to death quickly."

So then I tried to forget I had ever noticed my dilated pupils, and guiltily went about my regular work. Two hours later, my eyes seemed back to normal. Sometimes, I guess, dilated pupils are just a symptom of it being a Friday morning in March.

Facing Some Limitations

Pregnancy is finally catching up with me. So far, I've been humming merrily along, answering the daily "So how are you feeling?" queries with "Great!" and marveling to myself that pregnancy doesn't really feel any different. Aside from little things like having to roll to the side and push myself up with my hands (using my stomach muscles to get up seems to trigger sharp, sudden pains), I haven't had any inconvenient symptoms. I regularly walk home from work, which is about three miles, stopping partway to load up on groceries at the store. There's an element of pride about it for me - that despite pregnancy I can still do everything I did before.

But I think I'm finally getting to my limit. Recently I've been on my feet a lot during the day and have done an unusual amount of walking to various events in the evenings. The kind of thing I'd think nothing of if I wasn't pregnant. But at some point last night, about two miles from home, mildly lost, on a dark street in the rain, puffing as I hurried up a hill on my way to a movie screening, I felt the baby kick and suddenly felt a pang of apology for what I was doing. It's fine for me to skip dinner and hurry off to some event, when it only affects me. The equation is more complicated now though.

Later, after a marathon (not literally) amount of walking, I felt unexpectedly sore and achy. I could feel my stomach and inner thigh muscles crying out whenever I took a step, and my hip joints ached. I never used to feel that way before I got pregnant.

I've also reached the point where it's apparent to others that I'm pregnant, so when I get on the bus someone usually offers me a seat. I always say no because I feel awkward turning someone else out of their seat just because I managed to get myself knocked up. I feel like they're offering just to be polite - hoping I'll say no. But lately I've started wanting to say yes, and wondering at what point is it okay to give in.

People Who Shouldn't Have Dogs

This morning I saw something kind of awful. It was a pair of golden labs cantering along side-by-side, taking quick happy glances at each other as they ran, almost literally kicking up their heels with pleasure at being outside on such a day. Everything was washed with sunlight and the hedges in front of the apartment buildings were blanketed in banks of snow. It was so lovely - but something about it seemed weird, and then I realized it was that the dogs were out on their own, without an owner.

"Are they loose?" someone at my bus stop asked, and someone else said, "Yeah." The dogs ran kind of aimlessly up the block, then turned and ran back down, and abruptly raced out into traffic. A woman nearby cried out, "Oh! OH, NO! God, I can't look," and clapped her hands over her mouth in horror as six lanes of traffic screeched to a halt. The dogs made it across the road and gallivanted off.

Just then my bus pulled up and I got on, out of sheer inertia. Even as the bus was pulling away from the curb I was thinking about what I should have done. I should have gone to catch those dogs. I was already late for work, but so what. I should have run after them until I caught them. I could use my scarf to loop through their collars to hold onto them. I could take them into my apartment and shut them in the bedroom while I called the humane society. Or I could look at their collars for ID tags that might have their address. About halfway through the bus ride I realized I'd seen them before, leaving a house in a neighborhood about a half mile away. The owner was some guy who followed after them as they trotted down the street. He didn't have leashes on them that time, either, but at least he was with them. I'm so angry at him for being careless with his dogs. Why can't he walk them on leashes like he's supposed to? and take care that they don't run away? I blame him for putting them in danger. Perhaps even now he is frantically driving up and down the streets looking for them, out of his mind with worry. I hope so.

It reminds me of the guy I saw loading his pickup, on the side of that same road not too long ago, with his puppy hanging out with him. The dog was just gazing at the guy with adoration, sitting in the road watching him. Cars had to swerve into the next lane to avoid hitting the dog. The guy didn't even notice. Someone said to him, "Watch that dog," and he absent-mindedly snapped his fingers at the dog, which moved closer to him but still not entirely out of the road. But honestly! You wouldn't set your infant down in a lane of traffic while you're loading your truck, so why would you let your dog sit there? I hate it when people are irresponsible with their animals.

The Friend

Last night my friend called, the one whose calls I dread. I didn't even realize I dread them until I picked up the phone and she said "Hello," and my heart gave a kind of unhappy thunk, just the way it does when I hear the particular squeak of the side door when mi amigo comes in to start his rounds. What's wrong with me? I should be pleased to talk to friends, right? But both relationships just make me feel kind of trapped and obligated. I don't feel like I have any control over either of them. I'm always desperate to leave the office on time so I won't get trapped in a language lesson (and smooched - he is always very affectionate in greeting me, more so than I'm comfortable with). And when my friend calls, I just know I'm going to be asked to do something I don't want to do.

The heart of the matter is that we're very different people. She's very adventurous and has a kind of wild, disorganized life. So what's fun for her - like going at the last minute to a steel drum concert in a shady part of town - isn't fun for me, and she makes me feel like a wet blanket for not wanting to do things like that. Sometimes I think, much as I admire her courage, that we're friends only because we've known each other through turbulent times.

Last night I was in my pajamas and all ready to spend the evening cozily reading. It was a blustery, cold night outside, and I'd walked partway home, so I was tired and so glad to be indoors. Then the phone rang and my friend said, "I need to ask you a favor." I said, "Sure. Just please don't make me go outside again tonight." But indeed I did have to go outside. In the end I had to cook her dinner (because her life is wild and disorganized enough that she hadn't had any - which is fine, I didn't mind that), and then we drove over to her apartment in a sketchy neighborhood and packed up some of the stuff she didn't get a chance to take when she moved last week, and loaded it into the car, and drove to a different sketchy neighborhood to unload it at her new digs. It was so cold and I was carrying heavy stuff, just like I didn't want to do. And driving in a bad neighborhood late at night, which I hate. My friend is very blase about it and confident - after all, she chose that place to live. She even talks contemptuously about people who are scared of bad neighborhoods. But it upsets me. I would pay twice as much to live somewhere safe.

After I left her place, I drove back through the bad neighborhood and got lost, of course, like I knew I would. I was just trying to follow the same route back, but the streets didn't look familiar. I drove up and down, pulling U-turns on side streets as I searched for the turn. I got honked at when I pulled over. The car was starting to make some weird shuddery noises and sound like it was going to break down. I felt paranoid and vulnerable every time I had to sit at a traffic light - trapped again - trying to avoid eye contact with people on the streets. Finally I got home.

Even after I had locked the deadbolt on my apartment and was back in my pajamas drinking hot chocolate, I still felt miserable. It was like the experience made me sick, and I couldn't shake it off even though it was over. Probably part of it is pregnancy hormones, telling me, "Don't do that. OK, you did it. Don't do that - ever - again." But I knew from the start that I didn't want to, and I still had to. Ugh! I wish these things weren't asked of me.

Advice columnists always say that no one can take advantage of you unless you let them. But I don't see where I was allowed to say no. She needed to pick up her things last night, because she needed clothes for work the next day, and I'm her only friend with a car, and there was no way for her to get from the old digs to the new digs on public transport. And no good reason for me to refuse, except that doing that kind of thing makes me feel sick inside - which she wouldn't have understood. It's true that she could have planned better and gotten the stuff she needed last week. Or taken a cab. Or asked for the favor during daylight hours on a Saturday. But she didn't, because to her driving around late at night isn't a chore and certainly not scary, it's a "wacky adventure," and why would anyone refuse except to be unreasonable and mean? Even now I can't find the words I could have used to tell her no.

Monty Guinea Pig's Flying Circus

I have a new ambition for my guinea pigs. I will teach them to play soccer. It will enhance the Traveling Guinea Pig Circus immeasurably - so far, the only trick was jumping through a hoop, which, granted, is very impressive and something I'm sure people would pay good money to see. Who else in the world has managed to teach their guinea pigs to do such an amazing trick?? But soccer cannot be far behind. I have great faith in the inherent ability of the pigs to learn pretty much anything for the sake of food.

Last night I took the first step and taught them to touch the soccer ball (actually, a ping-pong ball) with their noses in order to get food. They picked it up pretty fast, and were even able to remember it for periods of time lasting from 1-3 minutes. Longer than that, and they would forget and have to relearn it. I'm using Official Animal Training Techniques from the pros (a verbal cue and instant reward - Temple Grandin says that if animals don't get a reward within 1 second of doing a behavior, they won't make the connection).

Anyway, as soon as they have that down, I will make them push the ping-pong ball a few inches in order to get the reward. Then I will make them move it in a particular direction. Then I will build little tiny goals that I will set up on opposite sides of the play area. Then I will teach them off-sides and scoring and out of bounds, and knit them little soccer jerseys, and we'll be on our way to fame and fortune!

A Cheerful Entry For Once

It's snowing outside, my boss is going home early, and the baby is doing a series of acrobatics that feel like a cross between jumping jacks and salsa dance. It feels lovely - like a massage from the inside. It's all good.

I don't have much to say today except that I wanted to post a cheerful entry because so often I only write when I'm feeling slightly out of sorts. Which gives this blog a negative cast when really, most of the time I am in good spirits. Right now I'm feeling like, even if there are big and serious and scary issues coming up in my near future, like what I should do with my career and how I'm going to adapt to parenthood, that everything will be fine. Things will fall into place as I get closer to them - and it's impossible to sort them out ahead of time anyway.

Now, I'm off to see if anyone has left any more pre-Valentine's Day chocolate in the kitchen.

Midnight Adventure

be-boop.
My dream of robot armies marching in serene formation
through deserted streets
takes an unusual turn.
A lost cell phone whimpers in the gutter
crying for juice.
One maternal robot picks it up.
be-boop.
This is no dream.
I stumble out of bed to find the phone,
through shoe and keychain detritus on the floor.
In the living room I find my bag by feel,
unzip the pocket,
rescue the thirsty phone.
Another stumbling foray locates the charger on a shelf.
Only one convenient outlet not in use.
I plug it in, go back to bed.
be-boop.
Crap. Wrong phone.
Stumble to the corner where hubby's clothes are hung.
His coat is on the knob.
Nice coat, thick lining, many pockets.
Many many.
Zips are well-concealed.
I find the phone, slim square thing,
and different charger from the shelf.
This one has no prongs.
??? Oh. They fold out.
Plug this one into outlet in the hallway.
be-boop.
This is not a phone! An iPod? trailing cables, earbuds -
Since when has he had this?
Oh well.
More searching for subtle zips.
Another slim square thing - ah, this is it.
be-boop.
Don't worry, little one.
Here is your juice.
Now please shut up.
I stumble back to bed.

Some Thoughts of the Day

It's so cold outside. Little gritty bits of snow are starting to swirl around - it's like the sky itself is cracking and freezing and bits are flaking off. How does anyone survive outside? Especially the little birds with their bare legs and feet. How is there enough for them to eat to stay alive? How do they last through the long nights when the air feels almost too cold to breathe?

Guilt. I walk past homeless people every day who are standard fixtures - the woman outside the McDonald's, the man who holds out a frisbee like a serving platter for people to drop change onto, Boombox Man who's often rocking out to his battery-powered radio. I nearly always say "Sorry" when they ask for change, but then I feel bad about it, because of that damn diminishing returns thing - a dollar would go further, and mean more, for them, than for me. So I should give them something. Here I am trying to decide whether or not to shell out $300 for Bradley classes, and thinking it might be worth it, and to them $300 is an incredible fortune, even $3 is not bad - it could mean having a hot sandwich instead of going to sleep hungry. But there is so much misery in the world. How can I possibly try to appease it when really, I could give away all I have and still not make a dent in the suffering?

Raw meat is disgusting. I'm eating meat these days because I couldn't seem to get the recommended amount of protein for pregnancy when I was vegetarian. The other night, peeling chicken skin off a drumstick, the cold slimy layer of fat flopping around and sliding through my fingers, making my chapped hands sting, I thought about antibiotic resistance and factory-farm cruelty, and wondered if I was really doing the right thing. The knife I was using sawed ineffectively against the chicken skin, then slipped out of my hand and skittered across the floor. A piece of chicken fat dropped onto a fork that was waiting to be washed in the sink. Hair fell in my eyes, but I couldn't brush it away because both hands were slimy. I felt like every surface in the kitchen was becoming contaminated. After the chicken was in the broiler, I disinfected everything like a madwoman. Small consolation that after cooking, the chicken legs were tasty.

I am not nearly as down as I probably sound. Perhaps I should call this a clog (complaint log) or wog (worry log) rather than a blog. I think I'm mainly just worn out, working too much, and tired of being sick. Perhaps I will be more chipper in the spring.

Needs Improvement

I'm suddenly overcome with yearnings to be different. It's silly, because I'm finally in a place in my life where I have all the things I've been searching for, for pretty much my conscious life (or at least since my teens) - most importantly love, but also a home, a vocation, and promise for the future. Outside looking in, everything is rosy. If I wasn't me, I'd want to be me. Actually most of the time I still do. But over the weekend I was smitten with admiration for how sensible and strong and wise my mother is, how much I'd like to have the aura of warmth that she has, and to approach things with her grace. I feel flittery and nervous next to her, even when I try to be calm. I would like to glow through the rest of my pregnancy and make motherhood look easy and natural, be the kind of mother to my child that my mother is to me. But I worry that I just don't have it in me. And the fact that I'm worrying is probably proof that no, I don't, because it's exactly the kind of existentialist crisis that I specialized in growing up, and that my mother is too sensible to ever fall into.

Failing that kind of grace, I would at least like to be an interesting person, with a lot of ideas and things on my mind, and a variety of unusual hobbies like the friends we saw yesterday. This isn't new; I always feel, after spending time with them, that I should be more like them. They're musical and talented, support a bunch of social causes, have already traveled the world, and have a home full of fun things like Lego and children's books (although they don't have children). Everything in their home has a story, and most things were gifts from their wide and varied group of friends, from the Chinese instrument on the wall that was a wedding gift, to the salt shakers from a friend's Peace Corps stint in Peru, to the crayon drawings on the refrigerator from a nephew. I'll never have as many friends as they do. I even envy the quick, instinctive understanding of one another that they have - it is as far as I can tell a perfect relationship. Next to them I feel like the only interesting thing I've managed to do lately is get pregnant, and I feel terribly un-artistic.

Probably both the strength and the interestingness are things that can be achieved through practice, or at least improved. I will simply have to work on it.

Tears for Fears

Yesterday morning I went off to work in high spirits after a giddy tickle-fight with my husband, who is awesome. Over the course of the day, the spirits were progressively dampened, and I started panicking about not having found a doctor I like yet, whether it's really safe to give birth at the birth center like I was planning, whether we can afford this, being so tired all the time, the fact that I'm coming down with yet another cold, possibly not being able to find another job if I take maternity leave and don't come back to this one, how having a baby is going to eat into the time that I have with my husband, etc.

I want this child so much, and yet I still have flashes where I think I'm ruining my life/our lives. By the time my husband got home, I was curled up in bed crying. He didn't even have to ask many questions, just crawled into bed to hold me and said "Chances are, everything will turn out fine." It's amazing how much those few words helped. I could feel the weight lifting off me, and the tears dried right up.

One of Those Weird Conversations

I went into the video store and paused just long enough to drop my video in the slot on the counter - then because the guy was sitting right there, I said hi to him.

Me: Hey, how's it going?
Video Store Guy: Ah, it goes, I suppose.
Me: Well, I guess that's all you can ask for.
VSG: But is it? Sometimes I think one could ask for more. Like a pause button.
Me: Or rewind.
VSG: Rewind. Yes. Is that too much to ask?
Me: Why not ask for both? I mean, you're not going to get either.
VSG: Sometimes if you ask for too much, it won't happen. But if you're realistic in your requests, it could.
Me: Well, it depends on who you're asking.
VSG: I suppose different deities have different policies on these things.
Me: Yeah.
VSG: Asking for the optimal amount. That's what I try to do.
Me: Yes, well, good luck with that.
VSG: Thank you. Rewind and pause. It's not too much, is it?
Me: Let me know how it turns out.
VSG: Indeed I shall.

Unrequited Love

Last night I dreamed about my cockatiel, who died a few years ago. I feel like I'm never going to stop missing her. I often still think of her, and when I see other cockatiels in pet stores, I'm drawn to them right away. I still remember how powdery soft her feathers were when she would nestle up against my cheek, and how her crest would go up and down in wide-eyed amazement as she looked at stuff. She was funny and clumsy and adorable and totally focused on me - as soon as I came in the door, she'd start calling, this particular "where are you?" greeting call. When I answered it, she'd reply with another particular type of whistle, like "oh! there you are." Sometimes if I was just in another room of the house, she'd check on me with a "where are you" whistle and I'd whistle back, and she'd go, "oh! there you are." I don't think my family really got why I loved her so much because she wasn't friendly to them, even though she'd known them all since she was a baby. She would hiss at them, then go all soft and cuddly as soon as I approached her cage.

Thinking about her got me feeling guilty about my other parrot, who I still have - but he lives with my parents since he's pretty loud and we're in an apartment with thin walls. He's a little more friendly with my family, but he's still focused on me. When I come in, he's all eyes for me, dancing back and forth and squawking to get my attention, and the whole time I have him out on my shoulder, he's preening my hair and talking in my ear and making kissy noises. He is lovely. But it's so sad that he's like that with me, when I only see him maybe once every two weeks and only spend a short time with him. He's chosen me, and he's been with me all through my late childhood and adolescence and growing-up, but I can never love him back the way he loves me. He's had to watch me go off to college and then find my own mate - who he obviously feels jealous of - it drives him nuts to watch us kiss -, and pretty soon I'll have a baby who will take priority over him too. Loving anyone just opens you up to different kinds of sorrow.

Figuring Stuff Out

So yesterday's entry was kind of a downer, but I didn't mean it to be. I had a great time over the holidays, and got to spend time with all the people I love. I also had ten days off from work which was heavenly. I can't wait for maternity leave, which I envision as an extended vacation, blissful mornings in a rocking chair while my baby sleeps in my arms, trips to the park with the baby, time to read all the books I like, etc. (sleep deprivation? what's that?)

My dad and I have the same New Year's Resolution: to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives. I like my job all right, but I think it might be time for a change, so I'm looking at this as an opportunity to step back and reevaluate. I would love to come up with some kind of plan for making money that would allow me more free time during the day, the opportunity to set my own schedule, and less need to be political/confrontational with people. Some people might laugh that I even think my current job is at all confrontational, but to me it is. I also feel like I ought to be making more of a contribution to conservation - to what really matters. Meanwhile my dad also has to figure out, if he's not going to go back to work, then what he is going to do with his time. We're both too young to retire.

It's kind of silly because I feel like I don't have enough time to do all the interesting things I want to do, and there really need to be two of me if I'm going to have two full-time jobs, working and raising a child - but he doesn't have enough to do, and needs to find a purpose to fill the time. The obvious solution, to have him live with us and help out with the baby, makes me just as uneasy as it did when my mother-in-law suggested we just move closer to her and she would raise the child for us. It's our baby; I want to do it myself. If that means I end up exhausted and overcommitted, I guess that's just how it will have to be.

Everything is going great with the pregnancy so far. I finally started gaining weight. It's all thanks to ranch dip, which I slathered on baked potatoes every day for a week. I am now porkier than ever before, and my belly is getting rounder by the day. Still haven't felt the baby move, though I do spend long minutes with my hand on my stomach gazing into space trying to figure out whether I am feeling fetal kicks or digestive rumbles.

Holiday Guilt

The holidays are over, and I'm a little glad. I love all the anticipation and the sense of celebration that pervades everyday life around the holiday season - cookies in the lunchroom for no particular reason, decorations all over town, people smiling at one another more than usual. But somehow it seemed like too much this year. I couldn't wait for the feast to be over so I could get into fasting mode.

Sometimes I feel terrifically guilty about Christmas. This year, we're supposed to be saving money for a house, but instead, we spent lots of money on gifts that maybe weren't exactly what people wanted. And got in return, lots of things that were thoughtfully chosen for us, that we didn't particularly want or need. Not wanting or not being able to properly appreciate a gift from a loved one feels somehow like I'm rejecting the person, or the affection they were trying to express. I don't mean to - I want to appreciate everything, and I always appreciate the thought that went into a gift. But sometimes I just don't need another electronic gadget. Or another box of tea, or a beautiful ornament to sit on a shelf somewhere. I would rather spend an afternoon in the park with my family than have any gifts at all.

When we got back to our apartment after everything was over, and I started trying to find places to put all the new things (when already the apartment is crowded and cluttered with things that we just don't have room for), I felt like crying. All this stuff was supposed to make me happy. I think overlaid on the guilt that it doesn't, is the wretched feeling of duplicity because of course I acted excited about each new thing, and thanked the giver, and came up with reasons why the gift was perfect, just right, etc. It's such an emotionally complicated time of year.

I think Christmastime is sort of a magnification and extension of the year-round guilt I feel about my father. I always feel that I should be doing more for him, spending more time with him, etc. He's very sensitive to rejection, more so than most people, and he puts a lot of time and energy into doing these wonderfully thoughtful things for me.

When I was a kid, for instance, every year for my birthday he would design a treasure hunt. The hunts got more and more complex and amazing as I grew older, incorporating ciphers and things I had learned at school that year, and I would usually invite a gang of friends over to help and it would be an all-day adventure. We'd race up and down the stairs, to the top of the yard and back, searching for the next clue in a frenzy of excitement. I remember those hunts with the same rush of joy as I recall Christmases of my childhood, when I was at a peak of happiness pretty much all day long. But as I got older, somehow the hunts stopped being as much fun. My friends were growing up too and weren't as interested in participating. A couple of years, I couldn't get anyone to come over, and walking around by myself tracking down clues seemed kind of sad. I also started feeling that the obligation to appreciate the cleverness of the puzzles was outweighing the pleasure I got from solving them. But I didn't know how to tell my dad that he didn't have to keep making me treasure hunts each year. Once or twice I hinted that maybe I was outgrowing them, but then he would get kind of quiet and I could tell he was sad that I didn't enjoy the hunts he put so much love into. Finally last year, there was no hunt, and I was secretly relieved. Why is it that when you say, "I don't love this thing, but I still love YOU," people tend to only hear the first part of the sentence?

I've been thinking more about my dad lately because he's at kind of a low point. He doesn't have a job or friends really, or anything going on in his life that he can put his energy into. He's one of the most intelligent people I've ever known, and to see his talent and potential going to waste is hard. I'm afraid he is depressed, and I don't know how to lift him out of it. From time to time I try to get him involved in new things, and he always really tries - actually he tries too hard. He sinks so much energy into things that he burns out. He can't just enjoy trying a new skill, he has to get really good at it, or else "fail" and feel miserable. New people aren't just acquaintances that he can get to know better, they're instant friends whose unintentional rebuffs or preoccupation wound him. I don't know how to get him to relax. In the meantime, he's lonely and sad, and the things that work for my mom (church) and me (work and friends) to keep us involved with the world aren't there for him.