Some Bold Plans

I've been researching places to give birth. The back seat of a taxi is looking like a better and better option. Just kidding.

Actually, after talking to a couple of hospitals in the area and touring a local birthing center, I am leaning toward the latter. It's basically an old farmhouse with three bedrooms - you show up when you're in labor, and a midwife checks on you periodically, and you have the baby all by yourself. The advantage is, no interventions, no pushy doctors, no fetal monitoring, no IV drips, no C-section. I'm worried to the point of obsession about being forced into a C-section. I know my body can do this on its own, given time. The down side of the birthing center is, no pain relief. They have hot showers, but no epidurals. When I told my friend that I was thinking of having natural childbirth there, she said, "You're brave." I don't think of it as brave though. I think of it as my only choice if I want to avoid being sliced up (now, and again for any child I might have in future).

I'm a little frustrated that it has to be this way. Despite the widespread availability of modern forms of pain relief, I'm going to have to do things the old, nineteenth-century way (actually, the way of all the previous centuries), suffering through every contraction, just because hospitals are so hyper and insane about interventions. I know that only 8-10% of women "need" a C-section (because their pelvises are too small, or because the presentation is wrong). But the hospitals in my area have a rate of 40%. Most of the time, the C-sections are given simply because doctors are tired of waiting and want to speed things up. It frustrates me that I have to hide at a birthing center just to escape that. Why can't it be my choice to labor as long as I want? Why can't I be the one to decide, instead of a doctor who doesn't even know me?

Anyhoo, so my job for the next six months is to psych myself up for natural childbirth. On days when I'm feeling good, it seems very doable. All those mantras about women's bodies being designed for it ring loud and clear. But then I stub my toe or hurt myself in some other way, and think, "Ahhh! I don't like pain! Make it stop!" and labor seems completely terrifying.

I also think I'd better keep my plans to myself. I just know that if I tell anyone, they will cheerfully say, "Hoo boy, you are crazy," and start relating tales of agony and try to convince me to go to the hospital. Even if it's really that bad, I don't need to hear about it. I need to be told, firmly and repeatedly, that it is fine and I can do it. "Si, se puede!"

Walking in Snowdrifts

It seems like I can't stay healthy for more than a few days at a time before I catch another cold. It feels like walking in deep snow, making just a little progress on the thin crust before I fall through into a mushy drift. I'm currently in the hacking-and-choking stage of the third cold of the winter. I managed to hold it at bay for a whole week - every morning I'd wake up with a sore throat and think, "This is it!" but then over the course of the day it would disappear, until I almost had hope that I was going to win.

Last Sunday the cold finally lost patience with me, stopped lurking, and went on the warpath. I went home early from work on Monday, fighting not to throw up in the bus. It was awful. The whole way home, I could feel my stomach heaving, and my throat starting to retch, and I just had to clamp my teeth shut and pray that no one was noticing. The second I got in the door to my apartment, I ran for the bathroom and threw up. It's not because of the pregnancy though. The baby's an innocent bystander, and actually hasn't caused me more than a few moments of nausea the whole time, which I appreciate. Although, I guess my immune system is probably suppressed on its behalf, and that's maybe why I'm getting sick so much.

I will also blame riding the bus, though, since people on the bus are always sick. It happens like this: I get on the bus, and invariably within a few minutes after I've sat down, the person next to me starts hacking. I quickly look away to inhale, hoping to get some uncontaminated air. The person on my other side chooses that moment to let loose a large, wet sneeze. I wait a moment or two so as not to seem rude, then quietly get up and move down the aisle to the standing-room-only section, where some guy launches a series of phlegmy coughs directly into my face. What gets me is the way no one on the bus even tries to cover their mouths. It's like a different culture.

Oh, enough complaining, though. The good news is that all the pregnancy books I anxiously peruse seem to agree that catching a cold isn't dangerous to a fetus (though taking cold medicines can be). So, that's all that matters anyway. I'm also happy because some friends gave us a bunch of baby stuff, so we won't have to go shopping for clothes, bassinet, etc.

Ode to Stretch Pants

Covering, not confining,
Shapely and refining -
To think I almost took you back
After try-on, to the rack!
Not work-appropriate, I thought.
Some instinct stayed my hand.
I relented, and I bought,
These pants that now I know are grand.
Now I wear you everywhere,
To work, and bed, while cutting hair.
"You'll wear those out," my mother said,
"Long before you reach month nine."
Little does she know - instead,
I'll wear you for my whole lifetime!

Tired, Happy, Worried, Tired

Things are good. I'm almost ten weeks along. At first I was really anxious and careful, I moved like I was made of glass, and was afraid of miscarrying from stress or exercise. Everything I had to do (climbing stairs, lifting and carrying boxes, taking a trip by plane), I instantly thought about the pregnancy, and then felt upset because it was all required for work, not anything I could get out of. As soon as I got home from work each day, I'd lie flat on my back, hoping to cancel out the day's worth of activity.

I've relaxed a lot now. For one, I seem to have come through all the stressful stuff fine (still pregnant, anyway), which gives me confidence that this baby isn't as fragile as I thought. For another, I don't really feel that pregnant. At first the knowledge occupied my every waking moment. Now there are whole afternoons when I completely forget about it. I haven't gained any weight, despite my best efforts. The first few weeks I ate at every possible opportunity, and even drank protein shakes before bed. Didn't gain a pound. I'm about to give up on trying and just let my body do what it wants, assuming the weight will come naturally in its own good time.

I'm really tired these days. Supposedly that is a common symptom of pregnancy. In my case it's because I started a second job, the kind of thing I can do from home. I wanted to get it underway now and then have it as an option to earn some money during my maternity leave. It is bringing in extra money, which is great, but it's also quite a time commitment. No more time for naps at the end of the work day. I worked a lot over Thanksgiving and will have to work every night and every weekend day for the next month, just to keep up. I feel like I'm running all the time, and never get a chance to rest. Of course that's not true. But the feeling of being harried, and being overwhelmed, never quite goes away. I haven't even had time to find a doctor yet, which is something I really need to do.

On the happy front, in those moments when I'm not actively working or worrying, I just close my eyes and feel gloriously happy. Having a baby is something I've dreamed about most of my life, that I was afraid would never happen. I'm so excited and glad. It's brought a particular tender new dynamic to my relationship with my husband, which I love.

I do get flashes of worry - not just about the regular practical things, like will I be able to avoid a C-section and will the baby be healthy and can we afford it - but about the long-term implications. Things we do now without a second thought, like spontaneously deciding to go to a movie and walking out the front door to make the next showing at the theater down the street, will be things we can never do after we have a baby. Or spending a whole day at a museum. Or going to lunch with friends. Or (gulp) sleeping more than three hours at a stretch. I'm anxious about the potential damage this will do to our day-to-day happiness. I don't want him to feel that I brought this on him before he was ready, or for him to get the brunt of the negative changes while I bask in the joy of motherhood. I will do my best to make it easy on him, but there's no getting around the fact that a baby will throw a lot of the pleasant aspects of our life together out of whack. So, we'll just enjoy our freedom while we have it, and keep our fingers crossed.

Then and Now

Feeling happy and lucky today. Sometimes I think back to my college days, or even high school, which were wonderful times. I remember staying up all night talking with my friends about life, the universe, and everything - the kick-ass play that we wrote together in high school - the afternoons I spent sitting on my dorm windowsill overlooking the quad, full of angst and loneliness, feelings of such overwhelming sadness that it was like a fierce joy inside me. I was usually lovelorn over some guy or another - or over love in general. It was how I wanted to be. The experiences I had in those growing-up years made me who I am, and I am glad to have had them. But when I compare that life to my life now, I can see that I have a baseline level of happiness now that I only used to achieve then on a particularly good day. Back then, I was ecstatic if I saw the guy I loved on my way to math class, if we exchanged a wave or a few moments of platonic conversation. Now, I get to see the guy I love every day. I get to kiss him! I'm allowed to hold him, and see affection in his eyes looking back at me. It seems nearly too good to be true.

Where's Erin??

I'm here! I just haven't been writing much, and I'm not sure why. I think I am reluctant to talk about being pregnant in my blog because so much of it is really personal. Not that I haven't written about personal topics before. This just feels like something I want to keep folded close for a while. And, it seems silly to blog about what I saw at the bus-stop or the little intricacies of friendship, when the pregnancy feels so overwhelmingly important and exciting to me right now. It's like saying "pass the butter" when there are fireworks going off right outside your window.

I haven't told anyone yet except for my family and a couple of friends. I'm afraid of jinxing myself. I especially haven't told anyone at work. Partly because that's the thing to do, you're supposed to soldier on through the morning sickness and not let anyone notice, because in case you have a first-trimester miscarriage you don't want to then go around to ALL your colleagues and explain that you are not, after all, having a baby. So that's a good practical reason. But also, I just don't feel like sharing anything that is close and special to me with people at work. I feel like they wouldn't appreciate it, so I don't want to "waste" it on them. I felt the same way when I got engaged, I didn't tell them until I had to (because I needed to ask for time off for the honeymoon). They acted happy for me when I finally told them. But my overriding feeling is that these people are not my friends, they don't understand me or what makes me tick, and it's not safe to bare my soul to them. I hold myself apart from them and share as little as possible. It has to do, I think, with their assignation of me to the lowest rank in the pecking order, and my refusal to accept that.

So for now, it's our secret. I have started sneakily wearing stretch pants because I could no longer fit into any of my regular work pants. I looove the stretch pants! They don't squeeze me at all. They are more amazingly comfortable than I thought any piece of clothing could be. I have not gained any weight yet, but my belly is pushing out a little bit. So I guess some other part of me has lost weight to compensate.

I'll write when I can, or when I can think of something good to post. In the meantime, thanks for bearing with the intermittent updates and for still reading my blog. :)

Yesssssss

I'm pregnant! and delighted.

And, now that I know it for sure, having a hard time thinking about anything else.

Update

I saw the curious pair again tonight when my husband and I went to the grocery store. He was standing in the same place as before; as before, she came out and joined him when she had done her shopping, and they walked off together. This time, instead of a mask the guy had on sunglasses that covered up more than half his face, and a black bandanna over his head. My husband thinks the guy is at least in his thirties. I can never judge ages, especially men's ages; but this time I noticed the guy had stubble on his jawline, so maybe he is older than I thought. I bet they are sleeping in the haunted house down the block - they headed off in that direction.

A Curious Pair

A couple weeks ago when I walked into the grocery store, there was a guy standing in the entryway next to the shopping baskets. He was young, maybe even in his late teens, with a huge backpack on his back, so huge it bulged out comically. It looked like it weighed about as much as he did. He had three or four other bags around his feet. He was standing with his feet braced apart, gazing off into the middle distance. The most striking thing about him was that he had a mask over his eyes, a strip of black cloth with holes cut out for the eyes, tied at the back of his head. He was like a cartoon robber. I made a wide circuit around him, but he was just standing there, not doing anything, and he was still just standing there when I left.

Then a few days ago I walked into the same store and he was there again, in the same place, with the same giant bag. This time, as I left he was walking out ahead of me, and there was a girl with him about his age. She was wearing a miniskirt over leggings and was loaded down with bags too. They shambled off together. Suddenly I wondered if they were runaways, hiding out together. He guards the bags while she does the shopping. Then they go back to their camp - are they sleeping in the park? or at the rundown house where no one lives, halfway down the block? Are they hiding from her parents? I would have liked to say something, find out their story and help them if I could, but there was something proud and self-sufficient about the pair, about the tone of her voice as she talked to him (though I wasn't close enough to hear what she said) and I was afraid to approach them. Now I wonder if I'll see them again.

A Place to Hide Away

I wish I had more privacy. Sometimes I just want to crawl away into a corner and sit still until the dizziness and weakness passes, but I have to keep sitting at my desk and responding cheerily when people talk to me, and acting like nothing's wrong. It's so hard. I wish I had an office where I could close the door. I would totally lie down under my desk.

At a job I had a few years ago, I felt so awful one day that I crept away to a different part of the building that was under construction. There was no one there; the work was being done at night. I found a corner and lay down among the sheetrock dust and tattered plastic, and just lay there, breathing, until the feeling passed. It was eerie, watching the breeze lift the plastic, looking at the blue sky through a gap in the rafters above me. I could hear phones ringing in the other part of the building. My big fear was that someone would wander past and see me there. Finally I felt well enough to get up and go back to my desk.

At school, there was always a nurse's office with beds where you could go and lie down if you needed to. I wish offices had those too.

The Essential Confrontation

Over and over, I see this confrontation:

A thin, dark-eyed, passionate kind of girl, arguing against animal cruelty or for consumer rights, gun control, women's right to choose, carbon emissions control, immigration rights, etc.
Versus
A heavyset, scowling, florid-faced man, often with a handlebar mustache, arguing from the opposite perspective and often from an industry or business point of view.

I've seen it so often that it's starting to feel like all basic conflicts can be boiled down into this stereotype. It's all about individual freedom of choice, versus producers' control of the marketplace. Biodiversity and species' "right to exist", versus the desires of humans to expand their access to natural resources and improve their economic outlook. Idealism versus pragmatism. Compassion versus greed. Urban versus rural. Education versus experience. Both are sincere, unshakeably entrenched in their convictions. It would be a stalemate, except that the man is always the one with the power. He listens, arms crossed, his scowl deepening, but he doesn't have to do anything to change, and he won't. The girl can rail at him all day and he'll never change - even if it made sense for him to, just to spite her, he won't.

Bearin' Arms

On the bus this morning I noticed a little placard with vertical letters fixed by the window. It read:

K
E
E
P
A
R
M
I
N

It seemed like an odd message for the transportation department to be promoting. Keep armin'? Surely they don't want their passengers to be armed? But then I thought it might be a friendly little reminder that they know their audience. It's like they're saying, "We know you're armed, so go ahead, we're cool with it." ...like the ambulances that have "Keepin' It Safe" printed on their sides, to help them look like they're in touch with the community. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to laugh, until I almost chuckled out loud. I wonder if anyone else ever reads it that way.

Scavenging

One of the families in my building is always throwing away stuff - often pretty good stuff - in the recycling bin in the stairwell. I think they go through the kids' rooms and purge every weekend, because there are always kids' clothes, toys, and games in there on Monday mornings. Sometimes I pick the stuff out and save it to donate, because I can't stand to see it thrown away. There are household items like lamps, picture frames, drying racks, toasters, and books. Once I got a nice jigsaw puzzle. Last week there was a good laundry basket - the kind with mesh walls that folds flat. Then a few days ago, there was a big bag full of shoes, kids' shoes and women's shoes. The women's shoes are a half-size too big for me but I'm still keeping a few pairs (maybe I'll grow into them? That bunion gets bigger every day). They're barely worn at all. Now I don't have to go shoe-shopping!

Early Bird

This morning I accidentally got ready for work early. I got up at the regular time, got dressed, ate breakfast, fixed my lunch, and then realized I still had 45 minutes before I had to catch the bus. I don't know what happened there. Maybe it was just the magical effect of actually getting out of bed when the alarm went off, instead of repeatedly hitting snooze. Anyway, no point being dressed when I didn't have to be, so I got undressed and went back to bed for half an hour. I still ended up at work early - d'oh!

Worries

I think I may have gotten what I wanted. It's probably too soon to say. But now that the possibility at least is there, I'm suddenly filled with fear.

The General Rallies His Troops, Wide-Screen Version

A bunch of churches in the area were showing free screenings of An Inconvenient Truth, which I hadn't seen before, so I went to see it last Friday. I chose the least churchy of the churches, a non-denominational "forum for people who believe in good" but don't worship a particular deity. Basically, atheists who worry about stuff. It's a nice group of people, I've gone to a few of their meetings before.

The movie was really powerful. It was based on the slideshow that I saw Gore give last year, with some added footage of glaciers breaking up, Katrina devastation, etc. The scene where the Larsen B ice shelf broke up and vanished into the Antarctic Ocean was particularly affecting. The ice shelf was so huge that scientists studying it assumed it would be there for centuries - but it broke up in a matter of days. I heard people around me gasping. One woman said, "Jesus." Another watching the glacier crumble said, "My God." In times of extremity, I guess even atheists reach for those familiar words to express their shock and sorrow.

Hole-Puncher Happiness

It is a truth universally acknowledged that it's more fulfilling to do things that are meaningful - like drafting policy, or negotiating contracts, or participating in coalitions - than it is to do the little maintaining-the-status-quo tasks that keep everything else running smoothly. Even my inner critic gives me a kick in the pants now and then, reminding me I should be moving up in the world. But the types of things I enjoy, honestly, are often really little things. It actually makes me happy to empty the hole puncher when it's all clogged up with punches, and put it back on the shelf clean and functional again. Or process the time sheets and file them away in the binder so if I ever need to look something up, I can do it at a moment's notice. Or fix up a document that's cluttered with spelling and formatting problems. What's wrong with me? I should want to WRITE the document, not fix it up! I should have my mind on higher things than the hole puncher. I am not supposed to enjoy those things. No one else around here does.

Yet the types of jobs that I yearn toward instinctively, for a moment or two, are often organizational and delivery jobs, like bike courier or mailroom clerk. I even wondered if it would be fun to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles (ditched that idea when it was finally my turn at the counter, and the girl who served me was so zombie-like and miserable she barely even made eye contact with me).

I think that deep down, part of the appeal is that those jobs are so clear-cut and simple, you can do them perfectly. You can deliver the envelope to the right address, and it's done, and no one could have done it better. Jobs that use more brain cells tend to be more subjective and there are lots of ways to go wrong, and you're never really done. Even if you think you are, part of your job is to keep coming up wtih fresh ideas and new ways to implement things. I love being creative, but on my own time - having it a job requirement makes me anxious.

So the goal of the decade, or one of them I think, is for me to come to terms with this aspect of my nature and find something I can do that is both satisfying to me in all the little ways, and also worthwhile in a larger sense, and also pays the bills, and also allows me to have self-respect and not mind telling other people about what I do. Cripes. That's probably most people's goal for their whole lives, and I doubt more than a small percentage ever achieve it.

Punnett Square

People who are beautiful are doubly blessed, I think, because they go through life seeing constant approval in the eyes of everyone around them. It should be easy for them to be confident - everyone is ready to say "yes" to them before they've even asked the question. People who aren't beautiful have it doubly hard, because they have to develop strength and personality to make up for their looks - and do so in a vacuum, with approval grudgingly given. What's interesting to me is the people who buck the trend - beautiful people who somehow don't realize it and end up shy, and not-so-beautiful people who have confidence to spare.

Being a Dork

I hope I never outgrow the kind of dorky helplessness that makes postal clerks call me "baby". I'd rather be nice than righteous, any day of the week.

Doing Your Best

In third grade we learned a song that went like this:

When I first came to this land,
I was not a wealthy man,
But I bought myself a farm,
And I did what I could.

And I called my farm Muscle in My Arm
But the land was sweet and good,
And I did what I could.

The song goes through numerous verses where he acquires a livestock, a wife, etc., giving ironic names to everything (the cow is named No Milk Now, the horse is Worse and Worse). It always bothered me a little that he names his wife as though she is another of his animals (Trouble and Strife) - and she apparently doesn't get a say in that. But what I liked about the song was its confidence that it is possible to do all you can - that you can set yourself this simple goal, accomplish it each day, and go to bed knowing you did what you could. If only life were that simple. In reality, how can you ever know you are actually doing all that you can? Maybe you could be earning more money in a different job. Or being a better person by taking evening classes or going to bluegrass concerts. Or making more friends at the corner coffeeshop. Or staying in better touch with the ones you have. Or learning to knit. Or spending time shopping for the perfect birthday present that will really make your husband happy. Or giving more to charitable organizations. Or getting more exercise. You can always do more, though it will always be at the expense of something else, and it's all about setting priorities and pushing yourself in directions you don't want to go. I would like to get up every day and do my best - but it's a constantly shifting target and I never know where to put my energy.