The Questions

These are questions from an evening brainstorming session that seem to have no answers - at least none my husband and I could come up with, without getting off the sofa and doing any actual research.

1. People who live at high altitudes often have larger than average hearts and lungs. Why are these disadvantageous to living at lower altitudes?
2. Can nearsightedness be reversed by doing eye exercises, and if so how does it work? How can one prevent the development of myopia in the first place?
3. Why do women in Africa perpetuate female genital mutilation? They know first-hand how awful it is, yet they don't stop it, and in fact are responsible for continuing it.
4. Why is Harry Potter such a success?
5. Why do street lights wink out just as you pass under them?
6. How come it doesn't itch when you shave your legs, but it does itch when you shave some other parts of your body (that's as much as I'm going to say about that one)?
7. Are single mothers more likely to have daughters, because somehow their bodies "know" they are in a difficult position and that a daughter is slightly more likely to thrive than a son, so they favor the implantation of eggs fertilized by X-chromosome sperm?
8. Why are some people unable to accept animals' awareness of the world, to the point of denying that animals can even suffer or appreciate better conditions?
9. Why do people prefer political leaders who subscribe to belief in a higher supernatural power?
10. Why do women accept - even embrace - sexist and unfair codes of conduct in some societies? 11. Why do people feel attracted to the people that they do?
12. Is it true that UV radiation is worse on cloudy days, and if so, why?
13. Why are women more often cold than men, even though they have a higher percentage of body fat? Is the fat in "strategic" locations that do not efficiently insulate? Are manly muscles better at insulating or producing heat than fat? Do men burn more calories/kg?
14. Why are some doctors/nurses so mean to women who want a natural birth?
15. Is eye color regulated by more genes than skin color?
16. Why does acne persist beyond the teenage years? and why isn't it selected against so vigorously - acne-affected individuals failing to get dates or reproduce - that it would disappear?
17. Is there a universal standard of beauty?
18. Is Larry Summers right?
19. Why does labor have to hurt so much and be so risky? Why do some fetuses develop heads that are bigger than their mothers' pelvic openings (when before the advent of C-sections, they would have automatically died, and their mothers too)?
20. Is olive oil actively good for you, or just not as bad as other oils?
21. Are low light levels bad for your eyes, and if so why?
22. Why do some women get urinary tract infections and others never do?
23. Where do guys like Tony Cox get their motivation? (he's a vet who vigorously defends big corporations that use antibiotics routinely as growth promoters in animals, thus compromising the effectiveness of medical antibiotics in humans) Does he really believe use of antibiotics is necessary for farming to be profitable? Is he just prostituting his morals for money? Does he secretly know he's wrong but he's repressed that knowledge?
24. Why don't men want to have children? It's easy for them - and risky and resource-intensive for women - yet women are usually the ones pushing to have babies.
25. Why do women get emotional/social benefits from marriage and men don't (or don't think they do)?
26. If a child of British and American parents can have dual citizenship, and a child of Swedish and French parents can have dual citizenship, and those individuals marry, can their children have quadruple citizenship? Does it ever end, or can people collect citizenships without limit?
27. Why do I always get hiccups on Sunday nights?
28. How do you keep someone loving you forever?

Cold

It's been really cold here lately. The kind of cold where the wind starts blowing, hard, blasting into your face, and you wait for it to stop so you can take a breath - but it doesn't stop, it just keeps blowing and blowing, and finally you have to breathe anyway. It's so cold that I wonder how people in areas of the country that are famed for their chilly winters, like Minnesota and Wisconsin, even survive. And I especially wonder how people who lived before the advent of central heating survived. Here I am feeling sorry for myself because I have to be outside for, at most, an hour a day in order to commute and run errands. But I can be indoors in 65 degree comfort, with still air, the other 23 hours of the day. Before central heating people never got a break from the winter until springtime. The Jamestown settlers had to struggle through wearing winter clothes that were all homemade, not like the microfiber and insulated coats we have today. They had to work outside all day, live in unheated buildings, curl up to sleep in below-zero temperatures and wake up with snow on their quilts. Laura Ingalls Wilder describes going out for sleigh rides with her beau, in weather so cold the horses couldn't even stop running or they would freeze. How did people keep their spirits up? Either they were made of far, far stronger stuff than we are today - or they were so inured to discomfort, from earliest infancy, that it didn't seem so bad to them - or they were miserable but saw no point in complaining. I should follow their example.

Fear and Loathing

I have an unreasonable fear about sidewalk grates. I hate walking over them - the way cows and horses hate walking over grids - because I always picture the grate collapsing under me and falling into the cellar below. Has this ever happened, to anyone?

My other gripe of the day is that I hate getting ready for bed in the dark, which I always have to do because I'm always the last to come to bed. I tiptoe around getting undressed in the pitch blackness, barking my shin on furniture and trying not to curse. Half the time I can't find my night clothes and have to just crawl under the covers wearing underwear or nothing. Not being able to see, and having to guess where things like my glasses case and jewelry box are as I get ready for bed, really annoys me. I fumble around for them knocking stuff off the bookshelf and dresser top. We can't have a nightlight in the bedroom or it would keep the baby and my husband awake.

I think wistfully of TV land where couples get into bed with the lights on. They lie back on their pillows chatting about the day's events, instead of having to be quiet (for fear of waking the baby, whose crib is right next to the bed). They can lie in bed and turn off the lights when they're ready to sleep. What luxury! If we ever get our own bedroom with bedside tables and lamps and it's all ours, I will never forget to appreciate it.

Read Read Read

One of my friends is a voracious reader. She's also really smart and great at literary analysis. Listening to her talk about books she's read (a huge variety of genres and authors) is like listening to a gourmet chef describe food. She has a way of explaining the premise in just such a way to whet your appetite without giving away what happens. Each title sounds juicier and more innovative than the last. I sit there thinking, "Yes! I want to read that too! Oh - I have to read everything that author has done, he sounds great!"

Then I go on one of my twice-weekly jaunts to the library and check out about 3 new books. The problem is that I don't have much time to spare for reading. I have periods of downtime each day, but I tend to burn them on crunches, or washing the dishes, or doing the crossword. I love reading, but I probably only read one book a week, which means that the unread books are piling up faster than I can dispose of them.

Right now, here's what I have sitting on my shelf:
Last Child in the Woods
Your Children Will Raise You: The Joys, Challenges, and Life Lessons of Motherhood
Ripening Seed (by Colette)
The End (the last in the Lemony Snicket series)
Love for Lydia
White Apples and the Taste of Stone (poetry)
Unpacking the Boxes
The Boat of Quiet Hours (also poetry)
Water for Elephants
The Extra Man
Love and Shadows
Smilla's Sense of Snow
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
Life Class
Silent Spring
Outgrowing the Earth
Winter World

I am excited to read all of these - actually I'm partway through about a dozen of them right now - but the list is a bit ridiculously long, is it not? At this rate, especially if I keep adding new books, I will never finish.

You Get What You Pay For

Lately I have been trying to save money. I go to sometimes ridiculous lengths to save a few pennies here and there. I'm a bit myopic about investments - I know if I was informed and made the right decisions, I could save much more money that way. But I don't know how to do it. So I stick to things I understand, like buying in bulk at the grocery store when things go on sale, and walking a mile to avoid spending .35 on the bus. And, instead of buying new baby gear, I've been trying to get the clothes and stuff my daughter needs on Freecycle.

It's a little frustrating though. I wanted to get her a booster seat, for example, so she could have her meals sitting in an actual chair. I went to the baby store and found exactly the model I want. It costs $25 brand-new. Then I posted a "wanted" request on Freecycle and our neighborhood list-serve. I got a couple of responses, and, because I didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth and thought it was kind of them to donate their booster seats to a total stranger, told each of them that I would love to have the seat.

One day after work I went to pick up the first seat. The couple who had offered it lived in a big house in the ritzy neighborhood a couple miles from our apartment. I felt more than a little outclassed as I opened the iron gate and proceeded up the front walk, which was paved in flagstones and surrounded by acres of well-maintained lawn. When the husband answered the door, he was dressed in expensive casual clothes, had a nice haircut, etc. Behind him in the living room, a grand piano shone. He greeted me warmly and invited me in. As he went to fetch the booster seat from the back porch, I gazed around at the art on the walls, the vases of flowers on the mantel, and the warm Oriental rugs on the floors. There was classical music playing on the piano. His eight-year-old daughter capered around, showing me the cartwheels she had recently learned to do in gymnastics class. When he returned with the booster seat, I saw right away that it wasn't what I wanted. It was way too big, was an ugly gray color, and had a fussy tray that took a fair bit of strength to snap in place. It was also grimy from being outside the past few seasons. But I thanked him profusely, said how kind it was of him to give it away, and took it. Then I walked the two miles home carrying it.

A few days later I went to pick up the second booster seat. I figured I would keep whichever one was better, and give the other to Goodwill. I didn't meet the second giver; she left the seat in a bag on her front porch, so I just picked it up there. Again the house was gorgeous though, giant and surrounded by nice landscaping. Through the cut-glass window next to the front door I caught a glimpse of elegant newel post and curving banister, and a table in the hall with a lamp and a mirror hanging over it. When I looked in the bag, the seat was the same model as the one I'd wanted in the store. It was the right size and was a decent color (white with a green seat back). But again it was filthy, and the plastic was scratched and scuffed. And the tray was missing. I can't use it without a tray - what am I supposed to put her food on?

I don't know now which seat to keep. I feel like I went to a lot of trouble just to save $25. And I still don't have the booster seat I want. I also feel that the people who donated the seats exist on a completely different social plane from me. I should be grateful that they gave me the seats, right? Not grousing that they didn't even bother to clean them off before handing them to me. But I just wish I was in a place financially where I could feel comfortable going to the store and buying the thing I want. With Freecycle, you get it free but you also usually get crap.

Capering

Right now it's so easy to be a heroine in mu daughter's eyes. We go to the playground and I run in circles around her as she stands there giggling, or I start skipping, or climb up on the big blue plastic hippo. She thinks I'm hilarious. She admires me because I always have the solution to every problem - I can disentangle the strings, find the right hole for each shape in her puzzle, and even tie my own shoes. In just a few years, maybe she'll think I'm dumb and out of touch. She will notice things like, my shoes have holes in them and are the same pair I've been wearing since 2002.

If only, someday when she's a teenager, I can win her back by capering a few laps around the playground.

Bellyaching

If I see one more banner ad with a 19-year-old model who has never been pregnant looking down at her perfect concave stomach in mock surprise and delight as she holds up the ends of a measuring tape (as though it measured any different from the last time or the time before that)... it'll be one banner too many.

Alas, here we are many, many months after the baby and even after I finished breast-feeding (after which, I promised myself, I would go on a strict diet and get back my girlish figure). I've been doing crunches almost nightly since April, and recently started running again. I'm a few pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight (the same weight that I was all through college and my twenties). My breasts are nearly nonexistent. But I still have a belly that looks like I'm about 3 months pregnant. Why, oh why, is my body hoarding fat there? I have exactly one pair of pants that is comfortable and that I wear continually up until the moment I must leave the house, when I put on a pair of pants that cut into my stomach. I don't understand why most women find it so easy to get back their flat stomachs after the first pregnancy (the second one, though, seems to be a different story) - but apparently this hasn't happened for me. When I run, I can feel my belly wagging slightly from side to side in front of me. Ugh.

I guess part of this angst is just my unwillingness to accept that I am getting older. I don't want to admit that I can no longer blend in on a college campus, and wear all the same clothes with the same ease that I did back then. I want to present an appearance to the world (as some women are capable of doing, and real women, too, not just celebrities) that says, "Child-bearing didn't change me. Here I am, still the same lithe and beautiful person as ever." But, clearly, child-bearing did change me. I have the marks of it all over my body - more stuff sags, more stuff is stretched out, there are pale, feathery marks all over my flanks. I wanted to manage the whole biological event with the utmost of grace. Instead, I have daily reminders that I am mortal.

Separation of Church and School

I was talking to a blow-hard recently about kids and schooling. He has some young kids he's planning to enroll in Catholic school. His reasoning was, "It's too confusing for kids to get the different messages from home and school. I don't want my kids being told these contradictory things, and having to go to their teacher with, 'but mommy and daddy say this,' or 'my priest says this.' " I felt a sudden, quick, burst of sympathy for teachers who might be faced with such children. If I was a teacher, my blunt reaction would be, 'So what? I don't care what your priest says, this is how it really is.' It's not that I'm anti-religion. I just think that a lot of it is parables and poetry, and I don't have patience with people trying to substitute it for reality.

The blow-hard's other complaint about public schools was that science class never goes into the morality of certain issues. I guess he means sex ed doesn't tell the kids that premarital sex is sinful, or gay people are evil. I suggested that there was no moral consensus across cultures and that morality wasn't a scientific judgment anyway, so that was why schools didn't go into it. But I think my words fell on deaf ears. I know some people do emerge from the private school system with intact logic and reasoning, and a few even go on to become scientists. One of the smartest guys I know attended Catholic school. But I feel like a school that could mix morality with science (in fact, that deliberately planned curricula to do so) would stack the deck against its students. Oh well. If this guy wants to spend the money to send his kids to private school, I guess there's nothing I can do to convince him otherwise. I just feel a little that the kids aren't getting a fair deal.

Journey

Today I was thinking how awesome and bold my husband is. I've lived in this same city all my life, including for college, and have never been more than a short drive away from my parents (who are still my best friends, and whom I still visit at least once a week just to hang out and chat). But my husband left his family of origin eight years ago and created a new one, in a totally new environment. He came east to attend a school hundreds of miles from home, where he didn't know anyone. He found a place to live, learned where to shop, learned how to get around on the public transportation system, made friends. He found a wife and started a new family. It seems to me that he's so brave for building a new life like that. Maybe it's easier for men to strike out on their own that way, and maybe it's easier for people who aren't quite as close with their parents. But he still gets props from me for doing it.

An Actual Serious Question

This might come across as frivolous, but here's the burning question that is currently occupying my mind: How many kids should a couple have, for optimal happiness?

The whole time I was growing up, I worried a lot about the environment and the population crisis and vowed that I'd never have more than one or maybe two children, to avoid adding any more burdens to the earth.

Then the night my daughter was born, I was so over-the-moon full of joy I remember thinking, "That was great! I did it! I want to do it again - I'd love to have about four kids!" And so far parenting has been the best time of my life. I love being with my husband and my daughter, taking care of our family. I feel like I'm so much better at that stuff than I am doing my jobby job, earning my way in the world. In my daydreams I quit my job and stay home with the kids (lots of them) in a big rambling house in the country, and we all make our own butter and cheese, and the kids tend a vegetable garden, and we're all happy as clams.

But realistically. I'm too old to have a bunch more kids. And the environmental problems are still there, including climate change which threatens life as we know it, and is a menace no generation has ever had to face before. And even if it was guaranteed that the world we love is going to go on forever, and will be safe for our children to grow up in, I'm not sure my husband and I could afford to have more than one more child - not and provide the quality of life that I want for them.

So a lot of this speculation is just that, just hypothetical dreaming. If we *did* want to have two more children, the time to get cracking on that would be right about now, since I'm already 32 and I wouldn't want to take the risk of pregnancy past age 35. One of my friends who had her baby about the same time that I did is now eight months pregnant with her second child. I'm amazed. I haven't even gotten my period back yet. I'm physically incapable of becoming pregnant again, and here she's almost done carrying #2!

Anyway, back to the question of the hour. I can see that having one kid, even if it's a lot of work and fundamentally changes your life together, still leaves time for snuggling and the occasional date night and all the little joys. And one kid is portable - I can get around town on my own, carrying her and the stroller and her bag of stuff, and it's doable. But if I had two, I don't know how I'd manage to go anywhere. I just don't have enough arms. I can also see, based on the couples we know who have two young kids, that two soak up all available time - not that there is a whole lot remaining after the first one. These couples are in crisis all the time, slamming through the days, constantly struggling to keep food in the fridge, keep the house from descending into chaos, and collapsing into bed exhausted every single night. No more date nights, for sure. One tired mother told me, "One was fun. But two is just - I mean, we love him, but - we don't have a life any more. We're just hanging on and hoping it will get easier in a few years." Which means that three kids is a level of madness I can't even bear to contemplate.

But! but but but. Having a baby, the first time, was so great. And I loved watching her grow and learn. I couldn't even tell you what my favorite stage was. Wouldn't it be wonderful to get the chance to do all that again? and again?

So, back to the question again, which is: Have there ever been any scientific studies to determine the optimal number of children a couple should have in order to achieve or maintain happiness? The research would have to be relevant to young urban/suburban Americans living in environments similar to mine, of course. And the outcomes would have to be various, including both marital happiness for the parents and long-term happiness and positive feelings about their family for the kids. I wouldn't want to have a family where the kids leave home asap and never want to return even for holidays.

My hope is that if you sample enough families a pattern emerges, like - two kids bring about the perfect balance between adult and kid pursuits within the family, whereas three kids make the marriage strained. Or, three kids are optimal for allowing different personalities to flourish within the family and to create a well-rounded whole. Or, four kids is just right for creating that warm tribal sense of belonging. I just don't know.

I would be really interested to learn more about this. Maybe I'll check out the department of family and child psychology at the local university and see if they have any leads.

Sanctuary

This lion cub was rescued by Wild Animal Sanctuary from a Mexican circus where she was being mistreated. She's living on the Sanctuary grounds now. Some of the rescued dogs that also live there serve as her adopted litter-mates - giving her opportunities to play, socialize, and feel comforted. Usually I don't go for super-cutesy pictures of puppies and kittens cuddled up together - it just looks staged or anthropomorphic - but this is real, two real animals that have suffered abuse, have been rescued, and are deriving comfort from one another now. It's a good thing that organizations like Wild Animal Sanctuary exist.

Small is Beautiful

I always complain about how our apartment is so small. It is, I think, the smallest living space of anyone we know. I'm already worried about how we're going to serve dinner to the couple we invited over in a few weeks' time, because we don't have a table. We usually just eat sitting on the sofa or standing up in the kitchen. Ah well, we'll manage. Maybe they'll think it's charmingly bohemian to sit around on cushions on the living room floor.

But - three things I really like and appreciate about this space, and will miss when we eventually move out:

1) It's always warm in winter. It's one of those old-fashioned apartments with radiators, and it's super-warm even when we don't turn them on. We can walk around barefoot in comfort and even crack a window open for some fresh air. Normally I would worry about energy use and the environment and all, but it's out of our control. Someday when we get a house and are responsible for our own heating bills, I will probably feel compelled to turn the thermostat down to 60 degrees all winter.

2) It's easy to clean. There's just not enough space to get dirty. I can whisk through and pick up clutter, wipe down countertops, sweep the floors, and have the place looking decent in only a few minutes. With a big house, the cleaning must be never-ending.

3) It's only two blocks to the grocery store. I'm used to dashing out to get something for dinner, or going to pick up milk in the morning before work. Most people have to get in the car and drive somewhere to get groceries.

So, with these things in mind, no grousing. :)

Biophilia

My daughter's really into animals and animal noises lately. Things she knows:

Bears, lions, tigers, and - what the heck, most other animals - go "rrrrraaugh."
Cows go "mmmmmmmm."
Cats go "mmmmew."
Elephants go "aroooo-ugh." (based on my pathetic imitation of a trumpeting elephant)
Dogs go "eh. eh. eh."
Snakes go "ssss."

Things she doesn't know:

What a bear, lion, tiger, cow, elephant, or snake actually IS. She only knows their pictures in books. Doesn't she wonder sometimes, "what's the point of all this? Why do they drill me on this stuff, asking me 'What does the cow say?'" How do pictures of elephants - or even real live elephants - have any relevance to her life?

I should be teaching her useful stuff. Like, for example. what a table is. Or how to differentiate between a cracker and an apple. Or how to put on her socks.

We have an inordinate number of books with titles like Farm Animal Babies and Milo Goes to the Zoo lying around the house, either because most books for babies have animal themes, or because she's indicated an interest so those are the books I keep getting out of the library for her.

If she does just naturally incline towards animal pictures and noises, even without exposure to animals in her life, it suggests that there really is a kind of innate biophilia.

Teaching

As a kid, I always used to think I might make a good grade-school teacher. I used to pretend that I was my teacher, Ms. Koster, and imagine how I would organize the lesson. I still get a kind of wistful happy feeling when I'm on school grounds. On Election Day, I voted at the local elementary school. The hallways smelled of crayons, chalk, and lemon disinfectant. The lines of voters wound past bulletin boards displayed "Our Super Stars" and essays on "Why I Like to Exercise by Mrs. Kimmy's Class." It seemed like such a friendly, cozy environment, one where I could thrive.

But maybe not as a teacher, maybe more as a school secretary or something. Teachers have such enormous responsibilities. They have to be attuned to the individual academic and socialization needs of an entire roomful of children. If anything goes wrong they're the first to be blamed for not noticing or following the proper protocol. And they're stuck in the middle between an administration that sometimes doesn't understand their needs and parents who are fiercely, insanely defensive of their children. It's scary to have any profession where you're responsible for other people's children.

Maybe that's not how they see it. I was at the school playground yesterday, after school hours, and 20-some kids ranging in age from 5 to about 10 were romping around the junglegym and swings while three teachers supervised them. I guess they were waiting for the parents to pick up their kids. It was a pretty chaotic scene. The kids were constantly hitting each other with sticks and jump ropes, getting in minor arguments over whose turn it was, tripping and bumping their noses, running off into the woods. My only job was to supervise one individual kid, my own, who is only a toddler so easy to catch and unlikely to hurt anyone else. But I felt slightly stressed even doing that because there was just so much going on. The other kids were all over her, wanting to touch her, asking me how old she was. I had to keep a sharp lookout and physically deflect the occasional frisbee or ball that was about to hit her, and keep her from getting kicked or run over as she toddled around. I felt like if I was the other teachers, responsible for about 7 kids each that were constantly in motion and in danger from themselves and each other, I'd feel pretty frazzled. I tried to keep track of one little girl for a few minutes but she was zipping around like a chipmunk, I kept losing her in the fray. Yet two of the teachers weren't even paying attention to the kids. They were chatting together and laughing. The third teacher was comforting a kid who had grazed his knee and was periodically calling out things to other kids: "Ramon you put that down." "Kelsey, it's Diane's turn on the swings." "OK Amy, that's enough." She didn't seem frazzled either, but calm and in control. All I could think was, if I had her gig, I'd need to really chill out from where I am now.

YEA!!!!

We finally got it right. I am so happy.

Fabric Dreams

On my way back to the office after my lunch break I stopped in at the fabric store. It's such a tactile experience, I felt like a toddler again, enjoying using all my senses instead of just my eyes and ears. I spent a happy ten minutes running my hands over different fabrics - lifting shimmery silks, testing the pile on thick velvets. For some reason I always seem to be drawn to "old lady" fabrics - dark, flowered velvety material that looks gorgeous on the bolt but that I can't picture using for anything besides pillow coverings in a fussily decorated parlor. Back when I used to work as a cashier in a fabric store, I would wait until fabric like that went on extra discounted super sale - and then buy a yard of it, just to have. Then there were the notions. I lingered over shiny buttons, iridescent reels of ribbon, and bowls of thimbles. I'm probably the kind of customer they hate because I touch everything but buy nothing.

No one I know makes their own clothes any more, but the store where I worked was always full of people (okay, women) with craft projects. They were buying Halloween print fabrics to make costumes for their grandkids, tartans to make skirts, yarn to knit caps and socks, fleecey fabric to make coats for their dogs. They all had more ideas for projects than they had time to do them. And just in case a customer walked in who needed inspiration, every season the store was redecorated and we'd put out the new seasonal print fabrics, notions, and catalogs.

Perhaps now that the economy is in the toilet there'll be a return to old-fashioned ways of doing things and more people will frequent fabric stores. Not to make coats for dogs, but to make coats for kids. Which sounds sobering, but really it can be a good thing. I'm all for home haircuts, home cooking, and homemade gifts, so why not clothes, too?

The Right Stuff

Sometimes it seems like all of life is a quest to acquire and keep the right things. Get the right house, the right commute, the right job, the right shoes to go with that particular dress. Find the right man. Pick the right names for your children. Try to use up or wear out things that you don't especially like, like that hand lotion that smells of irises and chemicals, or the pasta sauce you bought five jars of because it was on sale (that, you discovered the first time you tried it, was on sale for a reason). Try to find clothes that work for you - when your shape, size, and style are a moving target. Try to find a circle of friends who are fun, reliable, share your values, expand your horizons, and enjoy you as much as you enjoy them. Comparison-shop to pick the right appliance. Find a brand of guinea pig pellets the pig likes. Get your money invested in the right funds. Use the right toothbrush. And all the time, figure out what to do when people give you things that don't fit, that you don't like or can't use, that fill up the space you have and make it wrong. I wonder how many more years it's going to take me to finally get it right.

Just Saying

It's 1 am and the apartment is quiet. I can hear the wind rustling leaves outside the living room window, and some kind of night-insect creaking away. It sounds like autumn. A good time to catch up on reading, writing, and blogging, so here I am, typey-typing away. In the bedroom, my husband is curled up on the bed with the baby, giving her a bottle.

After a while, I hear some gentle snores from the bedroom, so I suspect he has fallen asleep on the bed with her. I should go check on them. But I keep typing. Then I hear her making a little noise of wakefulness: "eh, eh" like she's starting to thrash around. I hop up and go into the bedroom - just in time to see her roll off the bed and hit the floor. She lets out a scream of pain and surprise. I scoop her up and rock her as she continues to scream. My husband lifts his head; he was stretched out full-length on the bed, facing away from her, and sound asleep. She was down by his calf when she rolled off.

There are many things in this parenting game that he is better at than I am. He's better at playing with her, making her laugh, giving her baths, and figuring out what she wants to eat when she's in a fussy mood. He's more patient with her and more humorous. He is a wonderful dad who does his share and more.

But. She slept in our bed for the first six weeks of her life, nestled up close to my flank. Each time she woke in the night, I would breast-feed her before she even had a chance to cry. I protected her with my body from my husband's occasional roll-overs. I knew there was no risk that I would roll over on her myself. I was so alert to her that the slightest movement or noise from her would bring me fully awake, instantly. I would never have let her roll out of bed or have fallen asleep with her in a dangerous position. And the very first, only, time he slept next to her, he did. Of course, she wasn't really hurt. I soothed her and put her back in her crib, and she fell asleep immediately.

Just saying.

Tightening My Belt

Everyone is in cutting-back mode. It's tough, after a few flush years there - the economy was booming, I was working full-time, there seemed to be plenty of money to go around. But now I'm reminded daily that I need to be conserving.

I started writing down everything I eat and everything I spend these days, because I read somewhere that this is a proven effective method for reducing such activities. It's supposed to give you the willpower not to reach for that extra cracker or make that impulse purchase, because you know you'll have to write it down later. Alas, it does not seem to be working for me so far. I just gamely list my consumption at the end of the day: "3 handfuls potato chips, 1 slice cheesecake, Heath bar..."

Another strategy is to be willing to put even the smallest bit of food back into the fridge. This is what my parents do (and they're not even trying to cut back). When I visit them, I find things in their fridge that I would never have bothered to put away - like two spoonfuls of pasta sauce in a little Tupperware container, or a slice of apple. I would just scarf that stuff down and wash the pot.

Then there's the strategy of finishing everything in your cupboards and fridge before you go shopping. It's supposed to ensure that you really use what you buy, instead of letting it expire.

Finally, you can always just be too busy/tired to fix something to eat, which is how I am today. And it's only Tuesday.

Mama Bear

Now that my daughter is walking, trips to the playground or around the neighborhood are potentially a lot more exciting for her, because sometimes I let her out of the stroller to walk part of the way. It takes roughly 10 times as long, of course, because she stops to investigate every leaf, crack in the sidewalk, piece of litter, or ant that she sees in her path - and often stops dead in order to point at a dog or squirrel, or turns around and walks the other direction. But she loves it. She'll toddle down the sidewalk doing little shrieking giggles of joy that she can get places under her own power, and is being allowed to do so.

Then we get to the playground. When she was little, the only thing she could really do was sit in the swing while I pushed her. Now she can toddle around in the sandbox, pick up toys, climb the steps on the junglegym, even go down the slide on her belly. All of this stuff is so much fun for her. I stand around watching her with a stupid grin on my face, or sometimes try to make conversation with the other moms there.

The other kids are often a pain though. Part of the reason we go is for her to see some other people her age and get some socialization practice. But there are usually some kids just a little older than her, like 3-year-olds, who are stuck in the "Mine!" phase and aren't much fun to play with. When they see her coming, they immediately grab away all the toys and glare at her. If she does manage to get her hands on a little plastic shovel or something, she generally goes up to the closest other kid and holds it out. She assumes they'll take it and say "thank you" and then hand it back in a minute, the way we do when she gives us stuff. But the kids never hand it back, they just snatch the toy away. She stares at them, then looks up at me in bewilderment, plainly saying, Is that okay, what just happened? Or are you going to do something about it?

I always wonder - am I supposed to step in? Should I pull a toy away from someone else's kid, possibly making them scream or cry, in order to give it back to my kid? Because I'm a nonconfrontational sissy, I usually just smile encouragingly at her, as though nothing happened. Or I try to find something else to give her, but often the older kid immediately snatches that from her too. Grr. I want to kick sand in those kids' eyes.

Then there are the kids in the 5-7 year age range who are roughhousing, who are so busy chasing each other around the playground that they occasionally run right over her, knocking her down. Usually boys. But there was a girl last week who, in a fit of pique, threw a toy at my daughter's head. And there was a kid of unknown gender who threw open a gate, smacking it into her so that she fell to her knees. I rushed to pick her up and comfort her as she sobbed. The kid's mom was right there and I expected her to at least tell her kid "oh be careful honey," but she didn't.

I think I'm so used to being easygoing and letting other people call the shots in social interactions that I'm expecting, all the time, the other parents to do something about their little darlings' behavior. I know if my daughter took a toy away from some other baby, I would take it from her and hand it back. But the other parents never seem to step in. And I just feel weird about disciplining other people's kids. I'm scared that some kid will go running to his mom: "That lady took my shovel!" What's wrong with me, that I'm afraid of 3-year-olds? Where's my fierce mother instinct?

Holidays

I was thinking of "home for the holidays" the other day, and I got an amazing rush of holiday nostalgia. Winter sun slanting in through the bay window in the living room. Music playing from the stereo, so lively and bright in the morning that no one wants to sleep in. The smell of bread and cookies baking. The cheerful, warm clatter of activity in the kitchen, my mom emanating a sense of comfort and peace as she bustles around. The knowledge of days off from school stretching ahead, and the prospect of family meals, presents, or other special activities. Most importantly, all of us being together. It seems like we need a special occasion to all join in a common pursuit. Normally my brother disappears into his room, my dad is watching TV so unavailable for conversation, and it ends up being my mom and me chatting in the kitchen - which is nice, but I like it when it's all of us.

I wonder if you ever manage to recreate that feeling of comfort in your second family - the one you build with your own spouse and children. So much of feeling happy at the holidays, for me, was basking in the sense of being cared for, of being a small cherished piece of the family unit. When I'm in charge of recreating that for my child, I can do it, I think - but will it feel as comforting for me?

Maybe I'll just enjoy it vicariously through her. I've noticed that many of the joys of parenthood come from living vicariously as your child discovers things. It sounds like it wouldn't be as good as experiencing things yourself, but actually I think it is. I get this huge glow of pride and happiness whenever she's happy.

Starvation

I just came across a picture online that breaks my heart. When I saw it, I almost started crying. It's a photo of a baby in the last throes of starvation, all heavy head and stick-thin legs, trying to crawl toward a United Nations food camp while a vulture watches in the background. The baby looks too young to even know how to crawl yet. According to the caption the camp was a kilometer away. I wish I was there so I could pick up that baby and carry it to the camp myself. Or adopt it. I can almost feel how its bony little body would feel in my arms, how I would be afraid of cracking a rib as I carried it.

How can photographers take pictures of things like that and then just walk away? (As this one did - he apparently left the scene immediately after taking the picture so no one knows what happened to the child.) I know their job is only to document misery, not to alleviate it, that they don't have the resources to save every starving child they see, that they can't save one and leave others behind... but still. How could he not have intervened this once to carry the child that 1-kilometer distance that meant the difference between life and death? I know it's not that he wasn't affected by the scene. This particular photographer committed suicide just a short time later, alluding in his suicide note to the overwhelming pain in the world. He's right about that. The capacity for suffering in this world seems to have no limit.

Why I Don't Mind Paying Taxes

Baby on my hip, I walked cheerfully out of the bank, holding up my car keys and jingling them to amuse her. "Keys," I said cheerfully as I unlocked the car. I tossed them on the front seat to have my hands free for buckling her into her car seat. Then I kissed her on the forehead and slipped into what biologists term a fixed action pattern: locked the car doors, shut them firmly, and walked around to the driver's side, reaching into my pocket for my keys as I went. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no! There was my baby, grinning up at me from the back seat. There were the car keys, sprawled on the front seat. There were the four doors, firmly locked. Ahhhh!

As the first jolt of panic hit my heart, I ran around the car trying the doors anyway. Of course none of them opened. Then I ran back into the bank. There were tons of people standing around in the lobby waiting, but my stride got the attention of the employee at the main desk, who glanced up at me in alarm. "I just locked my baby and my keys in my car! Can I use your phone?" I blurted. The phone didn't have a long enough cord to reach the counter, but he was nice enough to dial the number for me and hand me the receiver.

Quickly, I told my husband what had happened. He has the only other key for the car. "Can you come meet me?" I asked. But how? We only have one car, and we live about a mile from the closest train station. He would have to catch a bus to the station, then it would be a 45 minute ride to the closest station to me, then he still would have no way to get to the bank. As we talked, I thought of the sun beating down into the car. Of course, I had parked in the sun. "There used to be a spare key hidden on the car," he remembered. It was in one of those magnetic boxes you stick under the front bumper. "I'll go look," I said, and hurriedly hung up.

A few minutes later, I was road tar and oil up to the elbow, and my hands were bleeding from brushing over the fragments of glass embedded under the bumper. I couldn't find the box, though. I think it probably fell off years ago.

Next I sized up the car windows and tried to decide which one to break. If I could smash the little one in the back, I could probably reach in and unlock the door. But I couldn't see anything in the parking lot that looked sturdy enough to smash a car window with. No rocks or chunks of asphalt or anything. I also felt anxious about putting a rock through a window when my daughter's car seat was right there - even if it's supposed to be safety glass.

I ran back into the bank. The bank guy winced slightly as he noticed the oil and grease all over my hands, but he dialed for me and handed me the receiver again. "I can't find it!" I told my husband. He advised me to call the police. So in a minute I found myself speaking to a 911 dispatch operator. "Is the baby in distress?" she asked. "Not yet," I said. In fact, the baby had fallen asleep at this point, but that didn't diminish my panic much.

It probably only took a few minutes for help to arrive, but it seemed like ages. I leaned over the back of the car and tried to block the sun with my body while I waited. Inside the car, I could see my daughter's face was red and there were droplets of sweat beaded on her brow. She flopped around uneasily in her sleep. Finally, in the distance, I heard a siren - gradually getting louder - oh my gosh, is that for me? I had expected a single cop car. Instead, there was a giant rescue squad ambulance van, about as big as a fire engine but without the ladder. It took up most of the parking lot. A couple of guys in their early twenties hopped out and came over to the car, and, with a nod of greeting at me, started working on the problem.

First they wedged a tool that looked like an ice scraper into the side of the door and levered it open as far as possible. Then they used a pump to crack it open even more. With a wire they tried to roll down the window or jiggle the lock mechanism open. Minutes passed. After a while one of them glanced at me and spoke for the first time, with a sheepish grin: "It usually doesn't take this long." At least now I know the car is hard to steal. It took multiple tries with different tools from their kit, and about 10 minutes of work, before the door suddenly popped open. "Yes!" one of them said.

Quickly I opened the back door and hauled the car seat out so my baby could get some air. I gushed some thanks to the rescue guys, who were all business ("all in a day's work, ma'am") as they headed back to their van. The bank customers who were standing around watching the scene dispersed. I drove to my parents' house, which was nearby, so I could call my husband back and reassure him.

Later that afternoon, I got a couple of spare keys made. Of course, this will probably never happen again. But if it does, I'll be ready. And in the meantime, yea for 911 and emergency rescue services!

Umbrella Angel

When I stepped out the front door, it wasn't raining. When I got on the bus, it wasn't raining. But on the way to work, the skies opened. By the time I arrived at my stop, it was a torrential downpour - water sluicing off the top of the bus down the windshield, wipers barely able to keep up - and I didn't have an umbrella. I scurried over to a nearby cafe and took shelter under their awning while I tried to figure out what to do next.

My office was three blocks away. First I thought I should just make a dash for it, but I saw a few people splashing along the sidewalk without umbrellas, and they were soaked to the skin. One guy was wearing a nice suit, plastered to his skin. I didn't have any dry clothes at the office that I could change into. I tried holding my backpack over my head and made a quick foray out, but the rain was so intense that after only a few steps I ran back. I wondered if I should just wait it out, but worried that it might be a while.

While I was standing there in an agony of indecision, a woman walked up to the cafe under a big umbrella. I barely glanced at her, but envisioned a perfect world in which she would just give me her umbrella. In this world she would say, "Hey honey, would you like my umbrella?"

Then she said it again, "Hey honey, would you like my umbrella?"

I turned and realized she was actually talking to me. She said, "You can bring it back later. I'll be here until six." She gestured at the cafe and I realized she was an employee there. I said, "Really?" I couldn't believe my luck. Here was a total stranger offering me salvation. I practically fell over myself thanking her. It was a good umbrella too, one of those great big ones that stretches out about two feet on all sides.

Walking toward my office, I felt flooded with gratitude. Whenever something happens to make me think that people aren't particularly nice - like that boy in the library - I get a reminder that indeed, most of them are, and that nice things happen far more frequently than not-nice things.

The office routine was petty, and my boss was in a foul, vengeful mood, as she has been for the past few months. But I felt like I was just floating above it. Nothing could touch me. I took the umbrella back at noon, and passed it over the counter to her along with a bunch of flowers. She's my umbrella angel.

Recapturing the Innocence

The other night we went out to dinner. Usually I check to see if I'm wearing a clean shirt as we head out the door and that's it, but this time I felt like dressing up a little more. I put on a flirty little dress from my college days, and some makeup, and even a necklace. I felt like I was trying to be pretty for my husband to remind him what it was like when it was just the two of us out on a date.

Of course it ended up being our usual dinner out, tag-teaming, one of us eating while the other held the baby and tried to keep her from fussing. It was late and she was tired and fidgety. No romantic gazes across the table; we were too busy keeping water glasses out of her reach and snatching forks and knives from her fretful grasp. No stimulating conversation either; we talked about her nap schedule and how many Cheerios she'd eaten that day. As soon as the check came, we hustled out of there. That's life with a baby.

Next week we're going on vacation - without her. I'm going to miss her terribly. I won't be able to just let go and enjoy this trip as fully as I did our honeymoon (the last trip we went on) just because part of my heart will still be at home. But it will be good for us to get away and reconnect.

In a way this trip will be about recapturing that time when it was just the two of us. But I don't have any illusions about those days. People always sigh and say about their pre-kid life, "Oh, it was so great." In reality, I remember feeling pressured and anxious all the time, worried that he wouldn't want to marry me, that I was getting older, that we wouldn't be able to have children. Overall, despite the stress of everyday existence, I'm happier and more relaxed now than I was then.

Snub

Yesterday, in the library, my daughter took a shine to a 10-year-old boy who was picking out books. She toddled up to him (yes, she walks now!) and tried to catch his eye, giving him a winsome smile. He walked away, so she followed him. I went after her and found him crouched down pulling out another book from a low shelf, while she watched him. She was grinning - she likes kids, even big kids. I smiled at him too, kind of a "my baby likes you!" smile that I've shared with cashiers, old ladies on the street, and various other people she has flirted with. But the boy just looked back at me stone-faced and said, "Can you take him away."

The smile crumbled off my face as I said sure and picked her up. I wanted to snap at him, "It's a girl!" or "She wasn't bothering you, just looking," or "This is public space, you know." I know not everyone likes kids, and not everyone is going to think my kid is cute. I don't expect that. All the same, the rejection hurts. I felt glad that she's so little she didn't understand she was being rejected - all she knew was that I picked her up and took her away.

I guess it will be even harder when she's old enough to recognize rejection for what it is - when a preschool friend doesn't want to play with her, or the other girls in her class don't think she's cool, or when she's grown and a man she loves doesn't want her. I don't know how I'll help her deal with those things. All I can think to say is, "But *I* love you!" and sometimes Mom's love just isn't enough.

Money Again

Recently I was reading about debt and savings. Just a couple of generations ago, most Americans lived within their means and even were able to sock away some savings every year. It must have been a great feeling of security to know that, even if your daily grind wasn't much fun, you were "making progress" all the time toward a better lifestyle and a comfortable retirement.

Now, it seems like everyone has thousands of dollars of credit card debt, and everyone is signing up for first-time-homeowner mortgages that are about 20 times my annual salary. I come across articles all the time about people who, after decades of hard work, had no savings to show for it and were plunged into bankruptcy by an unexpected illness or the loss of a job. And the housing market is swooping around like a rollercoaster. One couple we know bought a house a few years ago, then watched as the value of their house plunged to half of the mortgage they had committed to.

Whenever I read those articles, I eagerly check out the tips for saving money at the end - but it's always mundane things like brewing your coffee at home instead of going out every day, or trying to carpool instead of driving to work by yourself. I don't drink coffee and I ride the bus. And those things really don't save much money, anyway. I can't pat myself on the back for my coffee-free lifestyle or my lack of credit card debt because people who DO go to Starbucks every day generally earn a lot more than I do. And they have much greater earning power and potential for advancement. I feel like, even though I have a solid education and a good work ethic, I'm incapable of earning any more money than I do now. I can't envision a job I would be capable of landing and doing competently that would pay more than the one I have now. I had a lot of potential back when I was in school. It bothers me a bit that I seem to have maxed out now at such a low level.

Wasting Money

I've decided I can't be trusted with money. I have made some stupid decisions recently that I wish I could undo.

First, I forgot to buy more minutes for my cell phone before last year's minutes expired, so I couldn't roll them over. And it was a lot of minutes. No amount of begging and pleading with the phone company convinced them to give me my minutes back once I realized what had happened, two days after they had expired. Man! If only I had remembered in time! I just wasted the annual salary of a family in India, by letting that slip my mind.

I also got caught by one of those speed trap cameras. I was going 35 in a 30 mph zone and it cost me $40. There's the salary of a family in... uh.. Namibia.

I also seem to go on these spending sprees with food, mostly at farmers' markets where the produce is beautiful but the prices are high. Farmers' market food is a good thing to buy, but I don't need to buy as much of it as I do. My parents spent a weekend in New York and all they bought was a couple of bagels. They literally got by the whole weekend without buying anything else, because the hotel had a continental breakfast and they were "too tired" to bother going out to eat after a full day of activities. I am never too tired to eat. The amount of food that I buy and tote home and prepare for our family and eat, in huge heaping portions, is prodigious. We're only two people and an infant; there's no reason to go to the grocery store every few days or to spend several hours every evening puttering around in the kitchen. I bet I open and close the refrigerator 30 times a day. Good thing our utilities are included or I would be fretting about the electric bill too; as it is I only have to deal with the guilt of adding to climate change by wasting energy.

I also am not very savvy about investments. I just want to lock my money up for as long as possible, in some inaccessible location where I won't be tempted to spend it on organic rutabagas, speeding fines, or unused minutes. I think that really I should just gather up all my savings and give them to charity, before I fritter them all away.

Invisible

I just Googled myself, as I do from time to time, and was pleased to find that I'm still invisible to the all-seeing Eye of Google (like the Eye of Sauron, sweeping across the landscape). I don't have a Facebook page, and I don't show up on any alumni sites or even on my company's website, except on one obscure page that you have to be searching for in order to find. Anyone looking for me would have to conclude that I just vanished into thin air after graduation. I like that. Privacy is safety. I feel like I shed a lot of spam and baggage associated with my old life when I got married and changed my name, and so far the new one is clean and unknown to the spammers and stalkers of the world. I wish my daughter was as invisible as I am. Her name pops up on a few pages, unfortunately.

It's hard to articulate why I want to be invisible. It just seems better that way - as though, in a deep cool forest, I was walking without a trace, leaving no footprints, slipping through life untrackably.

The Worst Possible Outcome?

One of my coworkers just had a baby - well, his wife did. Last winter when I was talking with him about pregnancy and babies, he mentioned that they were going to have a natural childbirth. It's funny how emphatic some people are about it. He said, "We are going to go natural," and told me about the Bradley classes they were taking. Another coworker chimed in, "My wife went natural with all three of our kids. Women don't need epidurals and all that stuff. There's no reason more births shouldn't be natural."

I listened and nodded - indeed, during my pregnancy I was steeping myself in Ina May Gaskin's Spiritual Midwifery and a Bradley guide and many other resources that all said the same thing - , but when he said that I couldn't help thinking with a funny little shiver, what if labor goes differently from how you planned? How do you know it will all work out? It also seems odd for a man to be making those kinds of decisions for his wife. Since she's going to be experiencing the pain, it seems to me it should be entirely up to her. Of course, perhaps these guys were just repeating what their wives were saying, but it sounded to me like decisions they were imposing on their wives. And how can you ever require someone else's pain tolerance to live up to your preconceived ideal?

Anyway, after I had congratulated him and heard all about the new baby and gushed over the adorable pictures, I casually asked how labor and delivery went. He said, "It was, frankly, completely awful. She was stalled at 9 centimeters for hours and hours, we tried everything, but she just couldn't progress. So it was a C-section. The worst possible outcome. Very disappointing."

Again, I got a funny shiver in my spine, like he was disappointed not in the situation, but in her. I felt like saying, "I'm sure she did her best! How can you be disappointed, when she's given you this beautiful son?" I really felt for his poor wife. I think they were so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Bradley classes that they started thinking women who have C-sections are copping out, and no matter what I'm sure she feels his disappointment as a form of judgment on her.

I also wanted to say, "That's not the worst possible outcome! My goodness. The worst possible outcome is a dead baby. Or a brain-damaged baby. Or a dead wife." Birth is a scary, dramatic event where a lot of things can go wrong, very quickly, and the C-section he's regarding as a terrible stain on their record likely saved the lives of both his wife and child.

In the end I just made sympathetic noises and said, "But you have a wonderful healthy baby, and your wife is all right. And a few years down the line it really won't make any difference how it started." He said he guessed so.

It makes me feel glad, first of all, that I wasn't clinging so hard to any particular vision of how my labor and delivery would go that I would feel crushed afterward when the reality turned out different. And that my husband was so totally supportive of everything I wanted. And that I can look back on my own labor experience with such a happy, peaceful feeling.

Nice Things People Have Said

"What a cute baby!"
"She's adorable."
"You have a beautiful child."
Purrr. These are things that random strangers took the time to say to me as I was out walking around the neighborhood with my kid.

"Is she yours? Wow... you're so young."
Not really, but it sure is nice when people think that!

"You have body dysmorphia disorder. I think you look great."
- my husband, after listening to me bellyache about my belly

Ugh

Why is a visit to the DMV always such a soul-crushing experience?

Read This Book

I just finished reading an amazing book called The Diary of Ma Yan. It's the real diary of a thirteen-year-old girl living in a rural area in China, that was published after it fell into the hands of a journalist on a rare visit to the region. The area is so arid the government has declared it uninhabitable. About three million people still live there, scratching out a hand-to-mouth existence. Ma Yan describes her struggles to get an education, at a tiny school a 12-mile-walk from her home, and her deep admiration for her parents, whose ceaseless exhausting labor is barely enough to feed the family. She especially admires her mother, who has a serious medical condition that causes her such pain she occasionally sits down moaning in the middle of the wheat field she is harvesting - but the family can't afford to go to a doctor. No matter how hard the parents work, they are just one breath away from starvation. Ma Yan describes trying to concentrate on her studies when the only thing she has had to eat in the past 48 hours is a single bowl of rice.

I was awed and moved by this description. I felt like the discrepancy between this family's situation and our own - which until then I would have rated near the bottom among our circle of friends, since we are living in quite a small apartment with not even a separate bedroom for the baby - was extreme, nearly obscene. I looked around at all the evidence of wealth in our apartment, the Made-in-China baby toys, the fancy artisal organic cheese in the refrigerator that we are able to afford, the overflowing bookcases, the color TV and piles of CDs we hardly even have time to listen to. We have so much food that I complain about eating too much. It made me feel sick to think that I was munching away on blueberry tart while elsewhere in the world, young mothers my age are literally starving.

I can't imagine how all-consuming and horrific it must feel when your children are in real danger of illness and death, when your whole family is really just one catastrophe like an illness or a particularly bad drought away from destitution. It reminded me of the quote: "We all cultivate illusions of safety that could fall away in the knife edge of one second." (Barbara Kingsolver)

To assuage a bit of my guilt I called up one of those international aid agencies and pledged to sponsor a child in India. I have two other sponsored children, one in Brazil and one in Honduras. It isn't very much money and it only touches a few individual lives - when what we need to address the global disparity in wealth is huge sweeping reforms and changes to the global currents of trade. But I feel slightly better. Mainly I just wanted some family on the other side of the world to feel that they weren't suffering in utter loneliness.

Very Berry Good

Last week I went blueberry picking at a local farm and brought home six pounds of berries. They were sunwarmed and so ripe and plump they almost fell off the bush and into my bucket - and into my daughter's hands and mouth (I was wearing her in a harness on my front and she was reaching for the berries with both hands). Blueberries right off the bush are really different from the ones you get in the pint boxes at the store - much sweeter.

Now I need to do some serious situps to make up for my excesses. But blueberries are healthy, you say. Yes indeed they are, but as I found out when I got home and reached for my cookbook, the best ways to eat them - after right-off-the-bush - are: slathered with cream, baked in a tart, in a pie, in a cream cheese pie, rolled in sugar, etc. I made a blueberry jam crumble and a delicious blueberry jubilee tart that I have been noshing on all week.

So far I've been able to avoid bringing any more sugar into the house, though. I did all my baking using supplies on hand. This blog keeps me honest.

The Kiddie Years

There was a magician show just beginning in the children’s room at the library when I stopped by to return some books, so we stayed and watched it. It was so lame. The magician had to fill an hour, so he spent ages just warming up the crowd, getting the kids to chant his name, pretending not to be able to hear them until they yelled it, pretending to lose his magic box of tricks, getting everyone to sing the ABC song with him, asking the kids what their favorite colors were, etc. I can sympathize with the difficulty of entertaining 40 rambunctious toddlers and their associated nannies, mothers, and young siblings in laps. But the show was so lacking in content. Finally about 15 minutes in he did a trick where he pulled a scarf inside out and it changed color. Then he went back to having the kids chant his name.

My kid stared at him skeptically for a few minutes as the show was starting, then turned her back on him and spent the rest of the time looking at the baby sitting behind us. After 20 minutes I’d had enough as well, so we left.

Suddenly I felt acutely depressed – envisioning the years ahead of children’s theme birthday parties, sing-alongs, Disney stuff, Chuck E. Cheese outings, and so on that we will have to attend. You have to do these things with kids, right? I mean, she thought the magician was dumb. But soon enough I guess she’ll be into this stuff, and I'll just have to bear with it. I have to learn the stupid Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes song and that other one about the cheese standing alone, and find out who Dora and Hannah Montana are, and take her to Jonas Brothers concerts, or she’ll think I’m so uncool she won’t even be talking to me by the time she’s a teenager.

Maybe she'll turn out to be a weird socially awkward bookish child like I was, more interested in books and horse camp than boys, and so completely out of sync with her peer group that she doesn’t even notice she’s out of sync with them. Then I can give her all the horse books I loved as a kid, and we can bond over them.

Chocolate Rain

I went out with friends to a posh new restaurant specializing in chocolate. The menu has appetizers, salads, and five-course desserts all oriented around chocolate. It's amazing what variety there is - everything from chocolate vinagrette for the salads to grilled cheese topped with melted dark chocolate to chocolate-kahlua elixirs, and of course lots of desserts like fudge bars, white chocolate cheesecake, cream pie dusted with cocoa, and fruit plates decorated with curlicues of drizzled chocolate.

Most people order the themed five-courses, but in the spirit of restraint I just got a goat cheese and beet salad (yum) and the tiramisu. It was extremely good. One of my friends ordered the same thing but took some of the tiramisu home to her boyfriend, claiming that she was feeling ill from all the chocolate and couldn't finish it. I could definitely have eaten more chocolate. I can't really imagine having eaten so much chocolate that I couldn't eat a little more. I think I just have a higher tolerance for it because I habitually consume more. I'm like a smoker who can handle high levels of nicotine coursing through my system. She's thin as a rail and eats whole-wheat sandwiches with no mayo, carrot sticks, and small helpings of everything. Her body was probably like, "What IS this stuff?"

Most of the time I'm pretty happy with the way I look and with my food choices, but lately it has been more of a struggle. I feel myself descending into a newfound antagonism with food. I used to actually prefer healthy food. I never even liked chocolate very much until recently. But now, suddenly, I can't get enough of it. I crave fatty things like potato chips and cream and butter. I went into a Firehook Bakery last week and bought one of their giant chocolate espresso cookies. It seemed very unlike me, at least the old me, who I guess was like my chocolate-lightweight friend. The new me has a post-pregnancy belly bulge and a hummingbird's keenness for refined sugar. I even wander over to the kitchen at work sometimes just to see if there's any leftover food up for grabs.

I want to be better about all this stuff, embrace the no-mayo sandwiches and stop snacking all the time. I feel occasionally disgusted with myself when I look down at my paunch. Until recently I could justify the frequent eating with, "I have to keep making milk for the baby. Now's not the time to go on a diet." But now that she's a year old and is drinking formula and cow's milk in addition to breast milk, I could wean at any time.

What makes it hard is that I don't always feel strict with myself. Other times I look at myself and think I look fine, that there's no need to be extreme. Or, I simply feel unable to resist eating one more cookie.

Well, they say the first rule when you're in a hole is to stop digging. So here's my action plan. Starting now, I won't buy any more chocolate at the grocery store - even when the white chocolate bars that I love go on sale for $1 apiece and every cell in my body is urging me to stock up. No more ice cream or pound cake either. Or brownie mix.

I figure I can coast for a while on the cupboardful of sugar that I currently have. After that runs out, it will get hard. But I know that if you do a thing routinely, you start to enjoy it (which is the vicious cycle that has turned me into such a chocolate fiend), and if you can get out of the habit of it for a while, you stop enjoying it as much. So wish me luck - here I go!

The Shirt I Didn't Buy

There’s a thrift store across the street from where I live. It’s mostly old-lady clothes - saggy stirrup pants and garish blouses that smell like mothballs. But I still browse there occasionally; I've picked up some good deals from the children’s rack where most items are 10 or 25 cents.

I almost bought one toddler-size shirt not because it was cute but because it was just so awful. It had a picture of a pelican on it, and there was a flap of plastic attached to the shirt that was the top half of his beak, so you could lift it up and look inside his mouth. Inside, there were some shrimps hanging out at tables and drinking martinis, and there was a little stage with a jazz band (the performers were also shrimps). A banner across the top of the pelican’s beak proclaimed it to be “The See Food Lounge.” Hilarious! For 10 cents, I thought, I have to have this shirt. But oh my gosh it was ugly. In the end I didn’t think I could bring myself to put anything that ugly on my child. When I went back a couple weeks later, it was gone – so I guess someone else got a kick out of it.

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).