Childbirth, From the Other Side

I just came across an old draft in my blog that I never posted. Here it is:

I read that we are most fearful of situations we can't control - that's why people are more scared of flying than they are of driving. I wonder if it will help me during labor to think that it is at least a situation I'm controlling, something my own body is doing - and surely it wouldn't do more than I could handle.

Now that I'm on the other side of that great hurdle, I still look back on it - often - with a glow of pride and excitement. I did it! It seemed so impossible and frightening beforehand, no matter how many empowering natural childbirth stories I read. In fact, just getting pregnant was something I wasn't sure I'd manage, since I knew people my age who were having fertility problems, and I never thought of my reproductive system as particularly robust (I didn't start my periods until I was 16). And before that, I was terrified I'd never find the right guy to spend my life with, and motherhood and family life would just be something I'd never experience. I'd always be on the outside, looking in. It's amazing to me that I've surmounted all those obstacles and achieved the ambitions that were most dear to me.

But back to childbirth. Having been through it, I still feel an awe and reverence for people who do it. It STILL seems bordering on impossible. I look down at my hips and wonder how a baby ever managed to fit through there - and how I had the strength to make it happen. I don't think it particularly helped during labor to imagine that this was something my body was doing to itself. Maybe if I had been scared, that thought would have reassured me. But I didn't find the experience scary. I felt a kind of floating, powerful calm the whole time. It was the same feeling I had the morning of my wedding day. I expected to be jangling with nerves, but instead I just felt - serene. It was almost like a runner's high, when you feel spaced out and gloriously clear at the same time, so that nothing can ruffle you. At no point during labor did I feel frantic or terrified. At the worst point, I just felt like I couldn't breathe - like the pain was an avalanche tumbling down a mountain and I couldn't keep ahead of it. Maybe my body knew I needed to put my energy toward the labor and not spend any on flipping out. Anyway, it was simultaneously worse pain than I expected, probably the worst pain of my life, and also an experience that I felt completely able to handle, and that I look back on as wonderful.

Living Wages

Here is a neat little table showing the states that people most want to live in, ranked from most to least (from http://www.nlihc.org/oor2002/table9.htm):

52 Massachusetts $21.14
51 California $19.69
50 District of Columbia $19.21
49 New Jersey $18.85
48 New York $18.24
47 Connecticut $17.03
46 Maryland $16.82
45 Hawaii $16.74
44 Alaska $16.19
43 Colorado $15.99
42 New Hampshire $15.77
41 Nevada $15.54
40 Illinois $15.48
39 Washington $14.77
38 Minnesota $14.64
37 Arizona $14.49
36 Virginia $14.48
35 Florida $13.98
34 Georgia $13.83
33 Delaware $13.79
32 Vermont $13.58
31 Rhode Island $13.21
30 Oregon $13.18
29 Texas $13.18
28 Utah $13.14
27 Michigan $12.96
26 Pennsylvania $12.90
25 Maine $12.37
24 Ohio $11.79
23 North Carolina $11.57
22 Wisconsin $11.46
21 New Mexico $11.12
20 Indiana $10.93
19 Missouri $10.80
18 Kansas $10.65
17 South Carolina $10.50
16 South Dakota $10.44
15 Tennessee $10.40
14 Louisiana $10.31
13 Nebraska $10.22
12 Wyoming $10.20
11 Montana $10.19
10 Iowa $9.96
9 Oklahoma $9.94
8 Idaho $9.87
7 North Dakota $9.83
6 Kentucky $9.56
5 Alabama $9.31
4 Mississippi $9.05
3 Arkansas $9.02
2 West Virginia $8.72
1 Puerto Rico $8.56

Actually, it's the wage that a full-time worker needs to earn in order to afford rent on a two-bedroom apartment in these states. But it seems to me that it also functions as a ranking of desirability. No surprise that the states with gorgeous scenery and vibrant city life (Massachusetts, California) top the list, and states that don't have quite so much to offer end up at the bottom (Mississippi, West Virginia). No offense to anyone who lives in these bottom states. You can think of it as your states not having been "discovered" yet, if you like.

Things My Breast Pump Says to Me

The Belgian whooore - knows them aaalll
Atta giiiirl, atta girrrrl
Demo-craaat, Demo-craat
Yoga flirrt, yoga flirrt
Micro-chip, micro-chiip
You're gonna get paid, you're gonna get paid (or is it "laid"?!)
Amanda Byrnes, Amanda Byrnes
To write a poem, live in Poland
Gotta go sneeze

Notes from the Trenches

It's been a couple weeks since my last freak-out post, and things are going all right. The baby is eating (nothing from a spoon! Spoons are evil!), mostly finger food that we prepare for her in little bite-size morsels, and formula if we mix it half-and-half with breast milk. Looks like I'd better keep up the breast-feeding for a while. I'd like to give it up - I'm tired of pumping and lugging my breast pump around and keeping track of how long it's been since I pumped or nursed last. It is a royal pain. I can't even stay overnight at my company retreat because I need to go home and nurse. But she won't take formula straight, so I have to keep going for a while. The important thing is that she seems healthy and energetic - despite being so underweight. She laughs, plays peekaboo, crawls and pulls herself up all over the place, loves going for walks, loves watching the guinea pigs. She's a joy.

Meanwhile I'm crashingly tired, all the time, and longing for a vacation. I'm still working half-time at the office, and working from home the rest of the week and lately, both days on the weekend - and it's so, so hard to do work from home with a baby. I never realized. I thought it would be, if not a cakewalk, at least something I could manage comfortably - just stick the baby in the playpen, pour myself a cup of tea, and sit down at the computer. I didn't count on the fact that I would have to stop what I was doing approximately every 5-7 minutes, more often if she's having a "high-maintenance" day, and tend to her needs. I have to focus like a hawk in those few minutes I get after she's been handed a new toy or some Cheerios, or is down for a nap. And I have to draw on reserves of patience and unflappability beyond what I ever thought I had, the whole time I'm trying to work and care for her simultaneously. I feel achingly envious of moms who don't have to work while they're home with their babies - who can devote all their energy to taking care of a house and child (a more than full-time job in itself, that really does take all the energy you can give to it!), or who have time to read or volunteer, or go out and meet other moms. There are moms groups in our neighborhood but I don't have time to find them. Sometimes when people call me and want to chat during that golden hour of her naptime every afternoon, I feel irrationally angry at them - don't they know how valuable that time is, how it's maybe my only opportunity to get my work done by the deadline unless I want to stay up until 2 am?

I keep telling myself that things will get better, this is just a crunch time. As soon as I'm done with the current project, I'll get a breather. Then I can finally do things like my taxes that have been piling up needing my attention. I'll have at least three or four days before the next project comes in. And in the larger scheme of things, this is just a hard time because she's so little and needs me so much. In a few years, I can sit her down with a book, or drop her off at a friend's house for a playdate, or send her to kindergarten. I'll look back on these early days and feel proud of myself for getting through it. :)