Nature Deficit Disorder

I took the baby for a long walk yesterday. I felt the need to get out "in nature" - I was reading a book about camping in the Alaskan wilderness, and just wanted to be out somewhere quiet, in the cathedral-like gloom of a forest, with no one else around. The closest I could find was an old closed-off road that goes through a park. Technically pedestrians aren't supposed to go back there but it was the only woodland within walking distance of our apartment. So I headed down the road carrying the baby in the Snugli. Little birds flitted across the path in front of us. The wind shifted the trees overhead, making the patches of shadows dance. I thought about "the need to be versed in country things" and hoped that as we walked she might absorb some of the peacefulness of the setting and somewhere in her subconscious a love for solitude and nature might be sparked.

But five minutes into our walk there were things I couldn't tune out any more. Like the persistent honking of traffic from the highway next to us. And the regular pounding of hammers from a crew of roofers nearby, followed by the buzz of jackhammers from a construction site that we passed a little later. And the glimpses of houses on both sides through the trees. And the strong reek of raw sewage that apparently the city dumps directly into the creek (are they allowed to do that? really?). As the path dipped under an overpass, I saw a couple of orange construction cones and a sign that warned that this was a lead removal area, and that eating and drinking were forbidden. We kept walking, but we couldn't get away from it all. At all. I then began to worry that at this formative stage the baby might learn to associate woodland with the stink of sewage, and would grow up to hate nature.

Maybe we should move to the country. If we can find some place in the country with decent schools, liberal politics, and no confinement agriculture facilities nearby.

Guess What Book This Is

"Where's this bally Rush got to?" said Edmund a good deal later.
"I certainly thought we'd have struck it by now," said Peter. "But there's nothing to do but keep on." They both knew that the Dwarf was looking anxiously at them, but he said nothing.
And still they trudged on and their mail shirts began to feel very hot and heavy.

This is a shoe-in to guess because lots of people are reading this particular book right now. But it's a terrific book and deserves to be read a lot. I have probably read it a dozen times already and I still really enjoy it each time. I'm reading it out loud to the baby.

Happy Birthday!

Today is my daughter's first birthday!

I can't quite believe that she's really a year old. All day (actually yesterday and today) I was noticing the time and recalling exactly where I was, and what I was doing, a year ago.

3 pm yesterday - feeling the first cramps.
3:30 pm - realizing -omigosh!- those are contractions!
7 pm - walking around and around our apartment, breathing heavily.
10 pm - walking around and around, leaning over the sofa arm, groaning.
1 am - on the way to the hospital, feeling spacey and eager and a little nervous.
4 am - pacing the halls in the hospital in a stylish tentlike gown.
6 am - watching the sun rise, with my midwife at my side, and hearing her say something about how I'm still only in "early" labor. aaaah.
9 am - groaning, pacing, panting.
11 am - crouching in the tub. It doesn't help. Starting to feel panicky, like I can't keep ahead of the pain; asking for an epidural.
noon - blessed relief, lying in bed after the epidural. The room was dark, and my husband and I both dozed. I thought of how soon I'd have my baby in my arms, and my eyes filled with tears.
2:30 pm - time to push. Painful but exciting. I felt totally focused on the job at hand.
3 pm - the birth! seeing my beautiful baby for the first time, feeling how real she was as she wriggled on my chest, warm and wet and dark, all long limbs and big dark eyes. Feeling totally in love with her and with my husband.
5 pm - eating dinner with one hand while I held my baby with the other.
9 pm - surprise visit from my brother, after my parents and husband had gone home. In the warm, quiet room, we marveled together over the baby.

It was a wonderful birth day for her, and an experience I'll treasure always. Probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. I remember I held her in my arms and nursed her all night long, only putting her down briefly to go to the bathroom. I couldn't take my eyes off her. I felt that little surge of happiness that you get sometimes when something particularly good happens to you - but I felt that way for hours and hours on end.

And now she's a year old, a whole year of discoveries behind us. She's grown from a little 6-pound swaddled bundle whose only desire in life was to nurse, nurse, nurse...to a real little person who kicks and struggles and growls at me if I take too long getting her dressed - a person with ideas and a sense of humor, with my husband's ears and her grandmother's eyes and my dark hair. She's spirited and playful. We love her so much it hurts.

Single Moms

I am in awe of single moms. How do they do it - really, how do the logistics work? I was fairly prepared for our lives to change when we had a baby; I knew you can't leave a baby alone ever, so I figured we'd do a lot of swapping off baby duty so we could both keep going to our jobs, doing the grocery shopping, taking showers, and all the other necessary things of life - that, or take her with us. And with the help of my amazing parents, it has worked out. I feel like my share of the work is a bit bigger just because I'm still nursing, so I have to drop what I'm doing every 3 hours and pump or nurse, then wash out bottles and pump parts. I'll be glad when that phase is over.

Anyway, my husband is on a ten-day business trip right now so I'm on my own with the baby. I still have to go to my job and I have a huge freelancing assignment that is eating up all my spare time. I'm a bit stressed about finishing it. I get the work done in 5 minutes here, 3 minutes there, hopping up constantly to attend to the baby's needs. She plays quietly for a few minutes at a time, but then wants to interact with me, or goes after some hazardous item in the apartment, so I really have to supervise her with one eye the whole time I'm working, and it slows me down to a snail's pace. I get most of it done at night after she's asleep. Since this job is so enormous, lately I've been staying up till ridiculous hours to get my daily quota done. I'm only getting a few hours of sleep a night. I usually have to eat (raisins, chips, or something) the entire time I'm working just to stay awake - otherwise I find myself nodding off as soon as I sit down. Not to gripe; it's an interesting assignment and I'll be glad of the money. I just wish I didn't have to do it on top of everything else. I wish I was only working at my office job. Or only taking care of the baby. Or only doing the freelance job. Having to do all three, with no backup (except for the aforementioned amazing parents), is rough.

So having had a taste of working single motherhood, I just don't understand how it's possible. How can you look after a baby if you have to work, which if you're single you must, in order to support yourself? I guess daycare is the answer, but I know my salary alone would barely cover the rent on our one-bedroom apartment, so I certainly wouldn't have any money left over for fripperies like food or daycare. Do you just go deeper and deeper into debt until the kid is old enough to go to school, when (finally!) there is a safe, free, supervised place where you can leave them all day and you can start to make some headway against the bills? And if you are alone and have no one to pass the baby off to, how do you manage things like dentist's appointments, job interviews, or even a movie with a friend, where you just can't bring a baby with you? I guess you just get more aggressive about finding babysitters (so far we have yet to leave her with anyone but my parents and, twice, with friends). But babysitters are expensive. From every angle, raising a child alone must be a Herculean task.

A Handy Rhyme

Here's how to remember the difference:
Medicare is for people with no hair.
Medicaid is for people who don't get paid.

Or perhaps I'm the only one who gets those two mixed up.

In other news, I tried circus peanuts - the candy - for the first time in about 20 years today. I remember liking them as a kid, and I thought perhaps they would fall into the category of Things That You Know Are Bad For You But You're A Sucker For Them Anyway, like chicken nuggets and Reeses Pieces peanut butter cups. I'm happy to report that they are awful! I will have no trouble at all resisting them for the rest of my life. They are like plasticky pieces of styrofoam infused with chemical perfume. After I'd eaten one, the sickly-sweet plastic smell kept wafting out of the bag, until I had to get up and throw it away.

I Wore Pajamas to Work

By mistake. My neighbor was getting rid of a big bag of clothes, so I rummaged through it and was pleased when I found a few things my size that I really liked - a few long-sleeved casual tops, a pair of drawstring pants I can wear for yoga, a white pullover, and even some shoes that fit. Everything looked like it was still new.

This morning I reached for the white pullover, which is long enough to go down over my hips and tight-fitting in the sleeves, and has little tiny nubbins all over it. It seemed like a perfect choice for a day that was unseasonably chilly, and it looked sharp with dark pants and dangly earrings. It wasn't until I got home that my husband took one look at me, laughed, and said, "You wore your pajamas to work!" I said, "What do you mean?" "Those are long johns," he said. "Of course they're not," I said. Then I went to look in the mirror. He's right, dang it.

Luckily no one at work looked at me funny or said anything. Maybe I got away with it?

Watch Out for Farmers

Sometimes I really feel at odds with farmers. I am supposed to feel sympathy for them - farming is such a hard job, after all, and most small farmers have to work a second job in town just to keep ahead of the bills, and the loss of rural communities across America is so sad, etc. I guess I feel respect for the ones who are trying to do a good job - trying to farm organically or abide by humane standards in the way that they raise their animals.

But the vast majority don't seem to care much about things that are so critically important to me. Like the environment. They drench their fields in pesticides and rake over the ground with their tractors until the soil just crumbles and blows away. Or they stuff chickens into cages so small that any thinking person would hurt to look at them. They talk about vegetarians as though they're vampires - they talk, seriously and with great conviction, about how "vegans are out to get our kids". It's almost as though they get set, at some point, into a kind of antagonism with the earth and nature - bent on extracting whatever they can get from organisms that, they think, owe them a living. Even the occasional organic farmer that I meet has this weird worldview - what I think of as an exploitation complex - that the earth is here for us to use, by any means possible. One I met said he didn't believe animals could suffer - that what might appear to be suffering was really a misinterpretation on our part. I'd like to stick him in a farrowing crate, in a space so small he couldn't stand up or turn around, and misinterpret his cries for help.

At the Same Time

Before now, I never knew it was possible to be simultaneously ribby and paunchy. Not that either is an extreme - I don't look like a starvation victim or anything, and I think I am safely out of the realm where anyone could mistake me for being pregnant. I just look like a normal thin person with a slightly poochy belly. I wonder if I will always have it, if it's one of the trade-offs involved in motherhood that everyone learns about and quietly gets resigned to. It's like having a few white hairs and simultaneously a few zits - two other things I didn't know you could have at the same time. Alas, you can.

I read recently about a mom who's expecting her 18th child. She's only 41 and is planning to have "as many children as God will give us." I think it's so unfair that some friends of mine have invested thousands of dollars and untold emotional energy trying to conceive a baby, and recently have had to come to terms with the fact that they cannot have children. They're only in their late twenties. And meanwhile this couple has so many - surely more than they "need" to feel fulfilled, and far more than this overburdened earth needs from a single couple. I loved being pregnant; I hope I get the chance to do it again someday. But oh my gosh. 18 times? That's just too many.

Feeling Protective

Visiting a neighbor with a one-year-old baby:
I lifted my daughter out of her carseat and set her down on her feet by the sofa, where she could hold on (she's quite good at standing now). She gazed around looking slightly startled and concerned. Piers, the one-year-old, was obviously heftier than she was and much more mobile, toddling rings around his stroller and all over the living room, picking stuff up, and babbling happily to himself. He toddled over to her and clutched at her face, patted her shoulder, then grabbed again at her face and cheek. She looked concerned. I reached over to tactfully disengage Piers, but he slapped at her and hit her nose, and her face crumpled into tears. Piers toddled off cheerfully while I told her, "It's OK." I could feel her fear and hesitancy about the situation, and felt a rush of love. I wanted to protect her. But parenthood is all about putting your child into unsafe situations, repeatedly, so that they can grow and learn to be independent. I had to just sit there and watch as Piers approached again, though I wanted to sweep her up and take her away.

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. :)

Shrimpiest Baby on the Block

I've been worried recently that my kid wasn't getting enough to eat - my milk production doesn't seem to be any higher than when she was a newborn, and it's a battle getting baby food into her. She kicks and twists and cries when I try to spoon-feed her. Most of the food ends up in her hair or smeared across her face thanks to her shenanigans. I even buy her the good stuff - organic fruits and veggies - and warm it up so it's as appealing as it can be, and make "mmm!" noises and airplane swoops with the spoon. She fusses and cries the whole time, basically from the moment i lower her into her high chair, to the point an hour or so later when I finally give up and lift her out to put her to bed.

Her 9-month doctor's appointment last week confirmed that she's not eating enough. She weighed only 15 pounds and change - she's in the 5th percentile for her age. The doctor was gentle but firm with me, told me she's "severely underweight" and needs 24 oz. of milk a day, not 14 (my best guess at what she was getting), and three meals, not one. I'm frustrated and disappointed in myself for not being able to make enough milk for her. I nurse her every few hours when I'm home, and I pump while I'm at work, but the supply is chronically low these days. Sometimes I'm hooked up and pumping away for 10 minutes at a time, and there's just nothing coming out. I feel like I should be able to make enough for her, and I'm upset at myself for not being able to.

But there's time for self-flagellation later. My immediate concern was just getting more nutrition into her, so when I left the doctor's office I drove straight to the store to buy a canister of formula - the "liquid poison" that I've had it drilled into me (by books, La Leche League, other moms, and breast-feeding advocates in general) I should never use. I felt like a traitor to the cause as I bought the stuff. Then home to try it out - where the baby promptly refused it. She gagged and retched when I gave her a bottle of formula, and pushed it away from her even though I knew she was hungry.

So I opened a new jar of baby food instead - the peaches kind, that I know tastes good - and spent half an hour fighting to get it into her. She was bobbing and weaving the whole time she was in her high chair so I strapped her into her carseat. I had to pin her arms down so she couldn't swat the spoon away, and pinch her cheeks to get her mouth open, before I could get any food into her mouth. Then she still spat it out, crying furiously. I sat on the floor next to the carseat with my severely malnourished, screaming baby, feeling like a total failure as a mother. Back in the early days, when she was hitting all her milestones early and was a total delight, I loved motherhood so much. Now I feel like it's nothing but fighting, fighting, fighting - to get her to eat, to get her to hold still long enough for me to change her diaper or put her clothes on, to go to sleep at the proper times. I'm worried that lack of nutrition is going to hurt her development (maybe it already has - why isn't she babbling yet, like she is supposed to be doing? or pointing at things? or clapping her hands?). I feel like everyone is going to judge me for having this shrimpy baby - just as, involuntarily, and even unwillingly, I had judgmental thoughts about other mothers I know who made choices for their babies that I thought weren't optimal.

Well, now back to our regularly scheduled self-flagellation... Probably the reasons she's not getting enough milk are 1) I stopped the night feedings and forced her to start sleeping through the night. I think she was probably getting a significant portion of her calories at night. 2) I started jogging and doing sit-ups and trying to eat less, in hopes of reducing the belly bulge, but it also is probably reducing my milk production. I feel better about myself now that I'm sleeping more and exercising, but my baby is suffering for it, and that just makes me feel like a selfish monster. I'm putting my own wellbeing ahead of hers, which as a parent I should never do.

A friend of mine had her baby two days ago. I am so thrilled and happy for her. Yet even as I heard the news (from her dad, telling me that all went well and that she had a natural childbirth) and even as I said, "Oh, that's terrific! I'm so proud of her!" etc. I knew in the back of my mind that this was going to send me into a tailspin later. As it did - over the next few hours, as happy as I felt for my friend, and as glad as I am that she was able to do it, I still felt increasingly awful about having had an epidural when I had my own baby. I wanted to go natural and I set it up as this great thing in my mind. But when I was actually in labor, the pain was so through-the-roof horrifically intense that I felt desperate for relief. I was happy with my decision at first. The baby came out healthy and alert, I was able to deliver her in a state of relative calm (although it still hurt so much as she was coming out that I almost asked them to crank up the epidural), and there were no complications. But over time, as more people I know have babies and succeed in doing it naturally, I can't help feeling that it reflects on them as stronger and better than I am, mentally as well as physically, and I feel wretched for the decision I made. The very first choice I made in my career as a parent, and it was "wrong." Even though I know that if I had a chance to do it all over again, crouching over the edge of the bathtub in the throes of that one awful contraction I would ask again for an epidural, without a doubt. And if there's a next kid, chances are I'd ask for an epidural (i.e., FAIL) again. Outwardly I try to act like I'm confident about my decision and supportive of everyone else's, but internally I'm just frustrated with myself for being weak. My friend can go through life knowing that she did it, that she is strong and amazing, whereas I will always know that when push comes to shove, I'm a wimp. I hate that.

Perhaps things will be better in a couple of weeks. People keep telling me that babies change so fast, whatever is going on won't last long. And maybe by then I'll be able to stop obsessing about the stupid epidural (at least, until the next friend succeeds in going natural).

Willpower

I have been sorely lacking in willpower lately. When the baby naps, all these things that I want to do swim to the fore of my mind - I want to organize the pictures in the album, and pick up that novel I was working on writing two years ago, and get some exercise for Pete's sake before that belly bulge makes itself any more at home, and call the friends I've been neglecting, and watch the rest of the Thin Man movies, and buy sneakers, and maybe even grab my husband and remind him what it was like when we were first married. :)

But instead, I generally carpe opportunity to clean the apartment, which is nice and of course necessary, but never lasts. Or, often, I collapse on the sofa and take a nap. Or, if I can retain consciousness on the pit of sleepiness that is our sofa, I read a K.M. Peyton book and munch. My appetite, particularly for junk food, seems endless these days. I cannot get enough of brownies, potato chips, banana bread with chocolate chips, Girl Scout cookies, Heath candy bars, sugared dried mango slices, bread smeared with Nutella, cream top Brown Cow yogurt, apple crumble, Breyer's vanilla ice cream with the little shreds of vanilla bean in it, strawberries drizzled with honey, etc. It is ridiculous. Every day I wake up and grab my belly flab to see if it is still there, and feel miserable that of course it is, and vow to go on some kind of regimen involving dry toast, tea, and 12 hours in the gym each day. But I'm craving the Nutella before I even get my socks on in the morning. And no matter how bold my resolutions, I give in time and again. My willpower is all spongy like when your brake pads are shot, and the brakes just give under your foot, no matter how hard you stamp down.

Today was a good day though. I got up early and took care of the baby as usual, and the guinea pigs, and myself, in rotation until everyone was fed, clean, and happy for the time being. Then I left her cooing in her playpen and my husband asleep in bed, and went for a run around the track at the local high school. I haven't run since before we got married, I think. I wanted to prove to myself that I could still do it. It was incredibly hard - I wanted to quit over and over again - but I stuck it out, kept running the whole time, until I'd done 12 laps (3 miles). Afterwards I felt so glad. If I can bust out a 5K without even training, in just under half an hour, I can't be in that bad shape. I walked home through the crisp early morning, showered, ate a reasonably healthy breakfast, and started my freelancing job. By 2 pm I'd finished it (a couple days ahead of schedule, which meant I could relax all weekend). I took the baby for a walk, read a book to her, played with her, fed her, put her down for a nap. I baked bread. Then in the evening I worked on the novel, which is a long way from being readable but I'm so, so happy to be making progress on it again. I thought about it the whole time I was running, trying to solve some of the problems with the plot, and managed to work out some of the kinks.

Here's my theory. Being unhealthy (potato chips, relaxing on the couch) feels good. But being virtuous (laps, salad, writing) feels good too. And the longer I go on doing things that are good for me, the easier it is to resist the unhealthy habits. Of course, it's only been one day, but today, glowing from the exercise, I actually wanted to eat oatmeal and not chocolate chips for breakfast. I didn't feel like it was a tremendous effort to exercise my willpower, like I usually do. So I just have to keep it up.

Stomachs & Zzzzs

They say it takes nine months to gain the weight to make a baby, and nine months to get it all off. So I still have a month and a half to go. I am actually back to the weight I was pre-pregnancy. But I still have a belly bulge that I find unduly distressing. It's been a fixture for the past few months and doesn't show any signs of leaving, in spite of the ab tightenings I do throughout the day and situps when I think of it, so I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be able to get rid of it. Plus, there is a dark vertical line down the center of my abdomen that appeared halfway through the pregnancy and has only slightly faded.

Back when I was a runner, I used to have a great stomach, flat as a pancake. Now there's a lot of extra skin there and it sags. When I wear tight jeans, it blops forward over the waistline. For the first time in my life I'm buying nonfat dairy products and feeling guilty about eating cookies. I'm thinking about all the skinny little tops I have in my closet, some of which I bought just before becoming pregnant so I've never even worn them - and maybe I never will be able to. And what will I wear to the pool this summer? If I wear my bikini, I feel like everyone will stare at me: "what's up with that line on her stomach?" And some women might be all smiley and ask me if I'm expecting.

Sleep, sleep, sleep. I'm losing heart just as the end is nearly in sight. Ever since June, I've been getting up every 2-3 hours all night long feeding the baby. Coupled with late nights freelancing (because that seems to be the only time I can get anything done), my window of opportunity to sleep has shrunk to just a few hours a night. It's not enough. My stay-at-home mom friend told me she goes to bed at 10, sleeps till 9:30 or 10 every morning - and her baby sleeps through the night. She looks rested, relaxed, and happy. I feel like I'm getting the crazy-lady bags-under-her-eyes look.

Last night I didn't finish my 'lancing until 1 am, went to bed, and slept till 5 am when the baby woke up. She is the only baby I know who still wakes up this often at this age. The books, pediatrician, and other moms all assure me that she's capable of going 12 hours without a feeding. So I have started feeding her a big meal with rice cereal and all the milk I can get her to take, just before midnight, then refusing to feed her again until morning. It means that she wakes up and screams her head off in the middle of the night because she's used to nursing ot get back to sleep. This is what I mean by the end being nearly in sight - if I can teach her to put herself back to sleep without being fed, we will all get more sleep. But right now is the toughest time because instead of just getting up to nurse her and going back to bed 20 minutes later three times a night, I'm now getting up to rock her and shush her and rub her back and do all the other things I can think of to comfort her short of nursing - then putting her back down and listening to her scream bloody murder for the next hour. Last night, she screamed from 5 am till 7 am. I should mention that because we live in such a shoebox, our bed is less than a foot away from her crib. My husband put in earplugs and went out to the living room to sleep on the couch, shutting the door rather hard behind him. I lay in bed for two hours listening to the screaming and trying to sleep. Finally it was 7 am, officially morning, and I could feed her - then had to head out the door and go to work.

Because I am so sleep-deprived, I have taken to falling asleep whenever I have an opportunity. I sleep on the half-hour bus ride to work in the morning, and on the way home - and I mean I really sleep, I dream during that time. Magically, I always wake up just before reaching my stop. I also sleep while I'm pumping milk at work, slouched over the pump with my hands holding the bottles. Sometimes I lie down on the floor with her and sing Christmas carols with my eyes shut to try to entertain her. This counts as a nap for me. I look forward to a day when I will actually feel rested with desperate eagerness.

I'm sorry for complaining. But I feel like I spend enough time being lit up with enthusiasm about her accomplishments (she is crawling! she is laughing! she is totally delightful.), and telling people, truthfully, how happy I am these days and how much I love being a mom. So this is my place to whine a little bit.

In other news, yesterday I heard about a mom who has four children under the age of 1. Yes, you read that right. She had twins, then another set of twins ten months later. I can't imagine what hell her daily life must be. Children are wonderful, they really are - but I have trouble understanding how mothers with just two children manage to have any time or energy for themselves. So I guess that puts my gripes in perspective.

Erin's Favorite Themes

I was thinking recently about themes that really appeal to me in literature, movies, etc. Our Netflix queue is just about empty - even when we searched their massive archives, we didn't turn up much that we wanted to watch. And at my last book club, none of the suggestions for the next book to read really sparked my interest. So what is it that I like, anyway?
- Coming of age stories. I love that complicated time between childhood and adulthood when everything is fresh and emotions run high. It was scary at the time, but now I can look back on it and enjoy dissecting it.
- Stories about people who are isolated in some way and not sure how to fix that, who in the end don't have to fix it because other people reach out to them and build social networks that involve them. I'm intrigued by the idea that all you have to do is exist, and others will bridge the gap. I don't think that's true in real life, but it's a plot device that I wish applied to my life.
- Revisionist history. Time travel stories where people get a second chance to live their lives and make different choices. I tuned into the Lexmas episode of Smallville on the basis of a 5-second trailer that suggested that theme, the only episode I've watched from that whole series. And I rented Sliding Doors, which otherwise looked unpromising. Neither was really great, but I still like the theme.
- Teenagers with supernatural powers. I must be interested in this, based on my eager watching of Buffy and Roswell.
- Stories about people who work hard and have a good sense of humor. That cuts out a lot of the classics, unfortunately.
- Lately, stories about pregnancy and birth. Not so much kids - everyone writes about their kids, but it's somehow not that appealing to read about other people's kids. I never think they're quite as cute as the authors do. I do like reading about pregnancy though, because then the future child is unknown and could be anyone, and it's easier to imagine myself in the story. And birth, because it's still so amazing to me that it works.
- Young adult fiction, because it's written taking the audience into consideration. I use that as the criterion for a lot of stuff. My husband laughs at me for it - like any cultural product is created in a vacuum without the audience in mind. But some of it is! Young adult fiction, for example, is written to inspire, entertain, or instruct, which makes it pleasant to read, whereas a lot of adult fiction is written to express some great unwieldy theme in post-modern culture.
- Books or movies with rich themes for discussion. They don't have to be unwieldy. Just rich.

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!