Living on the Edge

I just finished Mary O'Hara's wonderful trilogy about life on a Wyoming horse ranch. This is from the third one, The Green Grass of Wyoming:

He had a sudden strange feeling that things were all in one piece, not strung out in time. Life was like a patterned cloth being drawn over a knife-edge. The knife-edge was the NOW and what was happening now - but the patterns were there on the cloth, all the same, before and after it had run over the knife-edge.

Wow.

Aha

Finally got some answers! I had an ultrasound that confirmed that I have polycystic ovarian syndrome. It was pretty clearcut - 16 follicles on each ovary, when I think the typical number is one or two. But the diagnosis is weird:

1. It's a kind of chronic long-term syndrome that usually crops up in early adolescence, not something that you develop later. But I had regular periods for years before I got pregnant the first time, and I didn't have trouble conceiving then. Why would I have developed this syndrome after my first pregnancy?
2. Often a pregnancy resolves the condition. In my case, it apparently triggered it, which makes no sense at all.
3. Some of the hallmarks of PCOS are being overweight, being diabetic or borderline, and having excess body and facial hair, acne, and painful periods. But those don't apply in my case (hmm, maybe the acne a bit, but it's not too bad). I guess I am an atypical patient.

At least I have a diagnosis. It was so hard not knowing what was going on and having to fend off suggestions like
"maybe you secretly don't want a baby, and this is your body's way of telling you"
"just adopt"
"maybe you're not trying hard enough"
"maybe you're trying too hard"
"maybe you're not 'doing it' right"
"oh well, it was easy for me"

The last is probably the one that drives me craziest. Some people have full, interesting, busy lives - they're advancing in their careers, traveling, doing home renovations, and still manage to get pregnant in their spare time without really trying. In my case, I've gone to soooo many doctors' appointments - expensive and time-consuming. I've been trying to relax, eat better, change my exercise routine, etc. all in hopes of improving my fertility by reducing my stress. And I'm still nowhere near the point where they'll be able to start treatment, let alone the point where I might achieve a pregnancy. It bugs me that some people have it so easy and apparently don't understand how hard it can be for others.

The standard treatment for PCOS is birth control pills (and as soon as you discontinue the pills, the syndrome comes right back). Obviously I don't want to do that. I have to do some more stupid tests now before I can schedule a consultation with my doctor and renew my requests for Clomid, the ovulation medication I've been asking for for a year. I hope he'll prescribe it. I read that patients with PCOS have a much harder time getting pregnant and have a 50% miscarriage rate (compared to the normal 15-20% rate), which is a bit scary, but I don't think there's much I can do about that. I just hope that in that area, I'll also be an atypical PCOS patient.

Update:
I talked to my doctor today. He said that the average number of follicles in a healthy ovary is 10-12, and that he'd rather see too many than not enough. So that makes me feel a little... well, closer to normal. Here I was thinking I was some kind of monster freak with my 16 follicles on each side.

I also underwent an HSG today (hysterosalpingogram), in which dye is squirted up through the reproductive tract to outline the uterus and fallopian tubes to make sure there isn't a blockage. Everything looks fine in my case. I was amazed to see that on the left side, the fallopian tube does a loop-the-loop! The doctor said that was perfectly normal and that the ovaries and tubes actually move around a bit in the pelvis and often are in unusual configurations, not just out to the side like the crosspiece of a capital T. Still. A loop-the-loop! Those little eggs have a long way to go on their roller-coaster ride to the uterus.

Bluffing

Today I took my daughter grocery shopping and we got one of those carts with the little plastic car built onto the front of it. She always asks to get one of those, but I usually refuse because they're so heavy to steer. Today I relented and she was beside herself with happiness, giggling the whole time we were shopping.

Afterwards, I loaded the groceries into the (real) car and then returned the cart to the collection area. When I crouched down next to the little car and said, "It's time to go home now. Come on, hop out," she said, "No, I'm going to stay here."

I said, "Right here?"

She said, "Yes. I'm going to stay here all night!"

I said, "Want me to come get you tomorrow morning?"

She nodded solemnly.

"OK," I said. "I'll pick you up before breakfast, OK?"

"OK," she said.

"Have a nice night," I told her. Then I got up and walked (slowly) away, straining every second for her to call out to me. When she did, I stopped right away. She was scrambling out of the car, saying, "No, Mama, I change my mind! I want to go home with you."

"Really?" I said, feigning surprise. "Well, okay." I picked her up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She was giggling with relief as I carried her back to our car.

As we drove away, I thought
1) how much I love her
2) how someday, probably sooner than I expect, she'll call one of my bluffs
3) how it was almost as though we were putting on a show of how perfect and cute we are together, for a stranger who might think, "What a great mom. What a great kid," when in reality I don't always know what I'm doing, and she has her difficult moods, and it's not always sunshine and roses between us,
4) but most of the time it is.

Gotcha!

Today I caught a rabbit. With my bare hands.

That's a lie, actually - I was wearing gloves. But still! I just reached down and grabbed it! It was like I tapped into some superhuman powers and moved so fast I was just a blur.

I was in my garden, staking vampires - I mean tomato plants. I lifted a leaf, and there was the cutest little coney hiding under it, with its ears slicked back along its back. Oh my gosh it was adorable. It was like the pictures of cute bunnies that artists do watercolors of for Easter cards, with huge eyes and plushy brown fur. Even as I was marveling at how cute it was, my inner farmer rose to the challenge and I cried, "What are you doing in here? Inside my garden? Git!"

I might note that the garden has no fewer than three types of fencing around it. There's a four-foot high metal fence (to keep out the groundhogs), a smaller-mesh plastic fence as an inside liner (to keep out the rabbits), and netting over the top (to keep the deer from jumping in). There are woods and fields and plenty of things in the vicinity for the local wildlife to eat, but they seem drawn to my garden all the same. Anyway, I have no idea how a rabbit got in.

I chased it into the squash plants. Then it slipped past me into the pole beans. Then I chased it into the Swiss chard. It ran back to its original hiding place and dove in there under the tomato leaf. Like I was going to forget about catching it if I couldn't see it. I lifted the leaf again, put my hand down, and just grabbed it.

It scrabbled in the air a few times with its hind feet, but I set it down inside a handy plant pot and put my hand over the top to keep it from jumping out. Then I carried it over to the woods behind our property and let it out. As it slid out, it seemed a little dazed. I thought, "poor thing, it's probably asphyxiating of fear." But after I'd taken two steps away, I turned to look back, just in case it was just lying there gasping. A blade of grass was swaying. The rabbit was gone. I had visions of it beating me back to the garden as I tromped back across the lawn.

Still don't know how it got in there. What do I need to do, dig a moat around my garden?!

P & P x 3

I read Pride and Prejudice again recently (as a prelude to reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; I felt like I had to refresh myself on the original in order to get the most out of the parody. Zombies actually turns out to be the exact same text as the original, with "and turning, she rapidly slew three zombies in succession" inserted here and there.)

The first time I read it was in high school. I loved it. I couldn't wait to get through my math homework each afternoon so that I could read the day's quota of P&P. It seemed to have such relevance to my own life; I was in love, and I didn't know how to approach him, and here was a book all about a girl my age, dealing with misunderstandings and hurt feelings and social intrigue and gossip and class consciousness. I wrote him a letter pouring out my feelings. A few days later, we got to the part in the book where Elizabeth receives "the electrifying letter" from Darcy. I felt like I was burning with embarrassment and excitement at the parallels in my own life. At the end of the book, of course, love triumphs. At the end of the school year, we graduated and I never saw him or heard from him again.

A few years later I read Pride and Prejudice again. I remembered it being so juicy and full of suspense. But the second time through it seemed just silly. I couldn't understand why the characters spent time chewing over gossip and conjecturing what things might possibly have meant instead of just talking to each other directly and straightening things out. Why didn't Jane get in touch with Bingley herself, instead of pining? Why didn't Elizabeth go out with Colonel Fitzwilliam, who seemed like the nicest guy of the bunch? I felt impatient for things to get resolved and kept flipping ahead to see how many more pages there were. The women's exaggerated ladylike frailty seemed fake (Elizabeth colouring up every time she heard anything interesting, having to retire to her room for half an hour to regain her composure, Jane being sick in bed for days after being out in the rain for just a few minutes). I was working a job, sharing an apartment with roommates, and paying my own way in the world. I didn't have patience with such silliness.

This third time through, however, I loved it again. Partly because of the rich and intricate use of language. It's wonderful to read it out loud; the sentences start out in one direction, then curve over their own backs and interweave into unexpected spaces like a vine weaving its way through the ironwork of a railing. Partly because Austen does such a good job of blackening Darcy's character that even though you know he's going to be redeemed, in the early stages it's hard to imagine how that will be done. Partly because it was relaxing reading about people who have no obligation to earn a living and so much time on their hands that they can just while away their lives with needlework, long walks in the countryside, and social visits. The girls didn't even have to fix meals or do any housework, all that was done by servants. Partly because now that I'm married and boring and all the heart-pounding astonishment of falling in love is behind me, probably forever, it was nice to read about people having crushes on each other and being thrilled with the slightest mark of regard, and wondering with fascinated passion whether the other person still liked them or not. I could relive my glory days a little.

P&P is the only one of Austen's books that I've ever read. I'm so uncultured, it's awful. I have to at least read Sense & Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey, my mother's favorite.

So Far...

One week in, and being pure has been easier than I expected. I've resisted the cookies in the kitchen at work, the ice cream in the freezer at home, my favorite sugary yogurts, the cereals in my cupboard, even things like ketchup and popcorn seasoning that have sugar in them. The cravings haven't been too bad. I am letting myself have fruit, so in place of my usual dessert I just eat a handful of raisins or something and then I'm fine. I'm also trying to eat more greens and whole grains, and fewer fried things. I have this idea that the more I do it, the easier and more natural it will be, and the less I'll even want the junk. I even watched Julie & Julia - all those dinners smothered in butter, all that rich chocolate cake - without particularly wanting to eat anything afterward. The part of the movie I liked was her cooking the food, not the idea of eating it.

I slipped up just once so far - at a Fourth of July dinner party. My friend had made panna cotta (kind of lime-flavored mousse made with mascarpone cheese and topped with wild blueberries). It was chilled, in goblets, and they looked so pretty all lined up on the counter, cream and violet. She had already set one out for me and I wasn't going to turn it down. It was heavenly.

One week down, three to go!

A Month of Purity

Today is my last day of eating junk food for a month. I decided that my approach to my infertility so far (i.e., wailing and gnashing of teeth, getting angry at my body for being "wrong," and comforting myself with potato chips and ice cream) was not actually that productive. If I'm going to give myself a fighting chance, I really should be eating well so I am as physically healthy as possible.

Plus, this enterprising chick gave up eating anything produced by Monsanto for a whole month, which is way harder. Any processed food, anything with corn or soy, most vegetables, and most meats come from Monsanto or its subsidiaries, which doesn't leave a whole lot of options. She had to subsist on seaweed and nuts for a couple days until she found some suppliers of guaranteed Nonsanto food. In the end, she had a really healthy month - and she ended up pregnant! Which she seems pretty calm about, but for me it would be trumpets and banners and wild, joyful/tearful celebration.

Giving up the sugar is going to be the hard part for me. I crave sugar so much that sometimes when I'm reading a book or working on my computer I literally can't concentrate, my desire to get up and get something sweet is so strong. I can feel that 90% of my attention is devoted to wanting a cookie, and only 10% is on the task at hand. But I know refined sugar is bad for me. It ages the skin, it causes acne, it messes up the metabolism, it's hard on the kidneys, it's bad for the teeth, it's linked to various cancers, it makes one fat. I even made myself a list of 30 reasons why I should stop eating sugar. And I tried to give it up for Lent this year, but only lasted about a day. My willpower is incredibly weak when it comes to sweets. Last year I actually did successfully give up sugar for Lent - but oh, how I longed for it; it consumed my thoughts during the last few days. I stayed up the night before Easter and dug into a pie with my bare hands at midnight, and in the days after Easter I binged on sweets. Going sugar-free for 40 days didn't reduce my desire for it one whit.

Still. In the larger scheme of things, this should be an easy sacrifice to make. And I want a baby ever so much more than I could ever want a candy bar. So even if denying my sweet tooth can only distantly and very indirectly affect my infertility, by improving my overall health, it's still worth doing.

So, July is going to be a pure month for me. No sugar, no junk. And no whining. I will just think positive thoughts about my ovaries producing beautiful glowing white eggs.

At the same time, I am jumping through the hoops to get referrals and preauthorizations for treatment at a fertility clinic. Just passing all their diagnostic screening criteria to demonstrate that I have a problem (as if not having a period in three years wasn't proof enough) will take months, so it will be ages before I can actually get the treatment I need. But I'll try to be patient.

Last week I confided in a friend that I am going to this clinic. And it turns out she's going to the same one. She and her husband have been trying to have a baby for a while now, and she's been working with this clinic for the past year. No luck yet. I wish I'd known so I could have given her some support. And I feel greedy, somehow, that I am trying for my second child and working myself up into knots of self-hatred and sorrow about it, when she doesn't even have one child yet. I thought about it and realized that if I somehow had the power to choose which of us would succeed in this endeavor, if it could be only one, I would choose her, just because that would be fair. I really would. So perhaps when I'm feeling particularly miserable about being infertile I can remember that and a buddhalike calm will come over me.

Somewhere Out There

Somewhere near my house, a fawn is having the worst night of its life.

I was walking home this evening when I came across a doe that had been struck by a car. It looked like she had walked just a couple of paces from the road and then collapsed right at the edge of the shrubbery in the park. Her forelegs were folded in and her head was tucked, the way our greyhound used to sleep. Her eye was liquid and dark and open. I stared at her for a long time, even though I was pretty sure she was dead, because I just couldn't believe it. I kept waiting for that eye to blink. I felt like somehow she couldn't be dead. One of her forelegs was scraped raw and bloody, but otherwise she didn't look injured. Usually when I see an animal by the side of the road, its eyes are just sockets, and it looks all mangled up and awful, but she looked like she was just lying down, waiting for me to leave.

I felt - not sad, but awestruck, I guess, at being in the presence of death. There before me was someone who had passed through that great and terrible experience that's waiting for all of us. I used to feel that way when I saw mothers with new babies - I'd think "She has been through childbirth," and I would wonder if it would ever happen to me. But death is infinitely more scary and you know it definitely will happen to you. It's too big for the mind to really process.

Then I noticed that her udder was swollen like a cow's. And I thought that she must have been returning to wherever her fawn was hidden, where it had lain all day, not moving, barely breathing, trying to be scentless and invisible. All day long it must have been getting hungrier and hungrier, waiting for its mother to return. Finally it was dusk and she was on her way. But she never made it back. And right at that moment, as I was staring at her, the fawn was somewhere hidden nearby, getting desperate with hunger, but perhaps still afraid to move. I wondered if it would eventually get up and wander somewhere, if it knew how to eat anything yet. I thought how I felt when I was nursing and away from my child, how as the hours passed I grew increasingly anxious to see her, how sweet and what a physical relief our reunions were - and how, if I were killed on my way back to her, my greatest sorrow would have been for her loneliness and fear, not for my own life unlived.

Humorectomy

A friend of mine has a theory that the act of getting married causes people to have a humorectomy. He noted how so many of his friends used to be interesting, spontaneous, funny, clever, etc. before they got married. Now they're just bland and never want to go out.

Another friend chimed in with, yes, not only is that true, but it happens, oddly enough, even to people who were living together and essentially married for years before they actually tied the knot. You'd think they wouldn't change, but they do.

Is it because they've "won," so they no longer have to act interesting and keep their beloved liking them?
Is it because they get caught up in nesting and don't care as much about the outside world?
Is it because they're following a standard behavioral mold set by those who have gone before (including, unconsciously, their parents)?

I'm definitely not as interesting as I used to be before I got married. I chalk it up to working too much (no time to read) and having a kid (no opportunity to go out). If I didn't have those things going on, I'd still be sneaking up forbidden spiral staircases in the cathedral at night, and rappelling down cliffs on weekends. I'd be going to Scrabble tournaments and entering strawberry shortcake contests and rehabilitating mourning dove chicks. I feel like the fun, slightly weird, loner-wild Erin is still in there, still inside me, just waiting until I have time in my life to be like that again. I hope she doesn't die. Hang in there, I want to tell her. I'm sorry I'm so dull right now, but I'll be you again as soon as I can!

Impasse

All this angst about not being able to get pregnant again, all these hours spent Googling "secondary infertility", all these doctor's appointments and blood tests, and in the end I'm no closer to knowing what's wrong... and it all may be moot anyway, because my husband doesn't want to have another kid.

All this time, he thought I was trying to get my period back just so I could be normal again. When I said, "no, I don't care about that, I just want to get pregnant again," he said he thought one child was enough. He pointed out how exhausting it is to care for her, how we're barely holding it together. It's true that our lives aren't peaceful and well-ordered like they were prekid. We no longer have the ability to go out in the evenings, do fun stuff together, meet friends for dinner, or plan trips. Because I can only get freelance work done after she's in bed, I'm scrambling to meet deadlines all the time, perpetually sleep-deprived, and frustrated that I'm never able to have time for myself. He pointed out that just putting her to bed is a hassle - she malingers so badly (and fights each step of the way). It takes forever and usually ends in her crying. Listening to him say this, a number of thoughts went through my head:

"Yes. He's right. We don't have fun any more. And it's putting a strain on our marriage. We used to look at each other with such affection - now we're too tired to feel anything but resentment, because we're convinced that being this exhausted means the other person must be slacking."

"Well, but he IS slacking. He's complaining about the hassle of her bedtime routine, but I put her to bed six nights out of seven. I do the morning routine, every day. I didn't even get to sleep in on Mother's Day, damn it - even though I was up late freelancing the night before, as usual, I had to get up early with her while he slept in until 10 am."

"Yes, but he's also working full-time at a demanding job and trying to launch his career in science. He works harder than I do, even if I work longer hours. He's just as tired at the end of the day as I am."

"Besides, if I want to convince him to have another kid, and the sticking point with him is how much trouble it is to care for her, maybe I need to take on more of that work. Maybe I should put her to bed every night, and not ask him to pitch in on the weekends."

"But how will I ever keep up with my freelancing if I never get a break from the childcare? There's a limited number of hours in the week and I'm already a zombie."

"Besides, is it so much of an imposition to ask him to spend some time with his daughter on the weekends? Shouldn't he want to do that?"

"If stress IS the reason I'm not getting my period, and if I try to do even more work, I'll never get it back."

"I still want another kid. Even though it seems totally illogical to want that."

"Maybe we don't deserve another one. Sometimes I run out of patience with her and I'm sick of her asking 'what?' ten million times and never listening to the answer, and I just feel like crying. If I can't do a good job with one, maybe we shouldn't have any more."

"But everyone else who wants two kids gets to have them, even if they're not perfect parents. All my friends are pregnant with or have already had their second. We're falling way behind the curve."

"At least once a day some well-meaning person asks me whether we're having another kid. I laugh it off with 'oh, maybe, we'll see, this one keeps me busy enough.' If only they knew how much it hurts me to be asked that question. Just today my mom was on the phone with a friend who asked her if she was getting any more grandchildren, and she had to laugh it off the same way. How can he be insensible to that kind of pressure?"

"If we get divorced, it will be much more difficult for me to find someone new if I've got two kids."

"Maybe having another baby would keep us together though."

"Does that ever work? Celebrities are always trying it, and it always seems to fall through."

"Divorce? What am I thinking? Surely things aren't that bad. That's like my worst-case scenario (after him or my daughter dying). I'll do whatever I can to avoid that."

"But what if staying with him means never getting to have another child - and what if I could get divorced and have another with someone else, someone who would pitch in more and be more affectionate?"

"I don't want someone else. I just want HIM to pitch in more and be affectionate like he used to be. Anyway, all our friends have these perfect marriages where they totally love each other. How could we stand the shame of being the first to fail?"

"Arggggh. This shouldn't be so hard. No one else has to fight tooth and nail to get their guy to propose, to get him to have the first kid, to get him to have the second kid. Why doesn't he just naturally want the things that I do?"

And so on. I didn't actually say any of those things out loud, and the discussion was never resolved. He asked me how bad I wanted another kid, and I said, "I really, really want another. If I never have another child, it will be something I'll always regret." Then I tried to convince him that it would be a good idea by suggesting that this time around we could try for a boy, and he got sidetracked into researching online whether you could time conception to increase the odds of a boy, and was reading scientific papers instead of listening to me. Displacement activity to avoid finishing the conversation. He was absorbed in his computer after that and I couldn't get his attention back on me. At some point he left and went to clip his nails, his other stock activity when he wants to avoid finishing a conversation. He will clip them nightly if necessary, and he will spend half an hour or more doing it. I waited for a while, then couldn't afford to wait any longer because I had a deadline, so I gave up and went to do some freelancing.

I wish things were different.

Freak of Nature

I went shopping for a new bra a few days ago, because none of mine fit any more. I used to buy B cup bras, the kind with stiff cups, just to look like I had a shape. They didn't actually touch my breasts, let alone support them - just curved stiffly around them. Then at some point I decided to embrace my natural flat-chestedness, and started buying A cups. But even my A cups don't fit any more. They just slide around on my flat chest and the straps are constantly falling down, like every five minutes. When I'm at home or on the weekends, I wear sports bras, which at least stay in place.

Anyway, I decided a racerback was what I needed, so off I went to the store. Alas, the bra companies of the world do not appear to make bras for people my shape. I need a racerback 36A, but A cups only come in size 32, which is much too small, and B cups are definitely too big. I would go braless if I could, but now that it's t-shirt weather I can't go around in public without one. I guess I'll keep wearing my old bras and pushing up the straps every few minutes.

I also was unable to find pants that fit when I was in a pants-buying flurry a few months ago. All the pants I tried on gapped in the back and looked egg-cuppy from the side. Size 2 is ridiculously tight, size 4 is tight in the crotch but gappy around the waist, and size 6 falls right down. I went to lots of different stores and tried lots of different brands, and they're all like that.

Between not being able to find clothes that fit the top or the bottom of me, and not having periods any more (my doctor is frankly confused and says she can't find a physical reason for it), I am starting to feel like a freak - no longer a "real woman." What is wrong with me?

My Kidlet

It's Mother's Day and I want to write about my daughter. So often these days I'm charmed at her perspective on the world, which is coming through now that she's got more language to express it - and surprised at how much she really does understand and remember.

Yesterday, she was eating a slice of cantaloupe. She bit it into the shape of a crocodile - with bumpy eyes and even a slit for the mouth. Then she made it lollop across the placemat toward me, saying "Watch out - aump, aump, aump!" (biting noises) I said, "Ooh, what is that, a snake?" She laughed, "Aaoh, nooo, Mama, issa cocodile!" And at once I saw that it was indeed shaped like a crocodile. She made it gnaw on my arm for a minute before she efficiently dispatched it.

She's potty trained now (although she still wears a diaper at night) - for a while I thought it was hopeless, until all of a sudden she got it. The key was just putting her in underpants, even though she didn't seem to be ready. Once she was wearing the underpants she learned very quickly what the point of the potty was. Anyway, she'll occasionally wake up in the night needing to pee and will call me. A few nights ago, at 3 am, I heard her calling to me, so I took her into the bathroom. She pulled off her diaper, which had Disney princesses on it, and chatted away quite gaily to me as she peed. My eyes were half closed but I did pick up enough to realize, after a while, that she was pointing to Ariel on the diaper and singing an approximation of "Under the Sea." She has seen the Little Mermaid (actually just the first half of it) only once, and it was several weeks ago. I said, "What are you singing?" She said, "Singing like c'ab. In the water! da, da, da, da-da, da-da-da-da-da..." I said, "Oh, you mean Sebastian, the crab? When he sings 'Under the Sea'?" She got a huge smile on her face and said, "Yes!" I couldn't believe she had actually retained that from the one time she had heard it, weeks ago.

Another time, when we were walking around on the deck outside, I was being cavalier and not wearing shoes, and I got a big splinter in my foot. She heard my indrawn breath and said, "Mama? Hurt cherself?" I said, "Yes, my foot," and sat down to examine the sole of the foot. The skin was broken and the splinter was lodged in it. She leaned over it and kissed the sole of my foot. "There - all better?" she asked. And it was.

I have so many hopes for her. I hope she'll grow up strong and healthy, and be surrounded by friends. I hope she'll be pretty, because life is easier for pretty people. I hope she'll find work that inspires her. I hope she'll be more ambitious and self-confident than I am - I feel so incapable of confrontation in its various forms, particularly managing and directing other people, that many career options are closed to me, and I don't want her to be limited like that. I hope she will love the outdoors and animals the way I do (although I worry that she might not - so far she is clearly more interested in tractors and trains than in living things). I hope the world that she grows up into will be resilient enough to survive the harms that human societies continue to inflict on it. I hope she will find a man who appreciates and loves her and whom she can love as well - and that they'll make me some lovely grandkids. Mostly, I just hope that I can keep her safe as she grows up - guard her from all the perils - so that she'll at least have the options to achieve her desires.

Screaming

I have a bird who is 20 years old. He's a gold-capped conure, which means he can live to 30 years or more. Sometimes that seems like such a long time, I wonder if I’ll make it to that point with my sanity intact.

The issue is that, being a conure, he screams. Piercing, deafening screams that ricochet off the walls of the room and make my ears ring. I think I have actually suffered some mild hearing damage from having him scream in my ear so much. He generally screams and bites me if he’s on my shoulder and I try to remove him. I can’t figure out a way to get him off my shoulder that doesn’t result in the scream-in-the-ear, so I try not to let him get up there any more, but sometimes he sidles up anyway.

Here’s advice to anyone who does not own a conure: For the love of God, don’t get one.

His screaming upsets me the most when I’ve just taken care of his needs and I feel like he should be satisfied for a while. I can understand screaming if he’s hungry or neglected. But after I’ve brought him out of his cage to share breakfast with us, petted him, cleaned the cage, fed him, left the cage door open so he can hang out on his platform if he wants, and given him some veggies or fruit to keep him busy, I feel like he has no right to scream. Yet he often does. Moments after I’ve left the room, he erupts in a volley of deafening shrieks.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly saintlike, I go back in the room and say in a gentle voice, “Please don’t scream,” and cover up his cage (even though he was just covered all night, and it seems ridiculous to be putting him back to bed just an hour after he got up). If I am feeling slightly more frazzled or my daughter is whining and pulling at me or we’re running late and need to get out the door, I close the door of his room as a way of at least muffling the noise so that we can carry on (though the screams through the door are still loud enough to make it difficult to hold a conversation in the house). Some days I just lose it altogether. I walk back into his room, intending to tell him nicely to be quiet, but instead I yell, “SHUT UP! YOU BASTARD!” and wish I could wring his little birdy neck. I feel really ashamed of myself after I've done that. He's just a bird - I shouldn't let him get to me like that. But oh - if you could hear the intensity of the shrieks and how difficult it is to accomplish anything else in the house while it's going on - you would understand.

It amazes me that I harbor such angry feelings for this bird. There was a time when he was the light of my life. When I got him, I was just a kid, and he was my best friend. He would sit with me while I did my homework after school. He was my baby. I really missed him when I went away to college and couldn’t take him with me. In those days, his screams didn’t bother me so much – what bothered me was that my parents would yell at me: “Can you do something about your BIRD!” I would defend him, saying that he didn’t know any better and was just trying to communicate.

Now I feel like I’m completely unable to see inside his birdy head to figure out what he’s trying to communicate. Why is he so ungrateful that immediately after I’ve spent time with him, he’s demanding more? Why can’t he understand that I can’t attend to him every minute of the day? There are times when he makes the house virtually uninhabitable. He screams so incessantly and so loudly that we simply can’t stay indoors – I hustle my daughter out the door and we go shopping or go to the park to “wait it out.”

A true animal lover and ethologist would look at the pattern of his screaming and develop a compassionate plan for teaching him to change his behavior. Hmmm, he generally screams at the following times:
- in the morning after I’ve taken care of him
- around noon during or after the two hours of classical music that the radio is programmed to play automatically for him
- when anyone comes home (it sucks to step in the door with your arms full of stuff, tired and looking forward to sanctuary, only to get screamed at)
- when anyone is trying to talk on the phone
- when my daughter is being rambunctious
- when he sees a shadow that he thinks might be a hawk, or possibly a leaf
- when we have friends over
- when it’s “too quiet”
- in the late afternoons when the sun is slanting into his cage
- when anyone walks past the door of his room
- in the early evening when he’s getting tired.

The screaming can be silenced sometimes by covering up his cage, but not always. He definitely knows I don’t like it – when he’s been screaming and I approach the cage, he scuttles back into it like he knows he’s in trouble. But why does he keep doing it then? The ungenerous part of my brain wants to interpret his behavior as malicious: doing something he knows is aggravating.

Maybe he is just lonely and bored. Maybe he screams more than he used to because he doesn't get enough attention. I feel bad about that - after all, he's my pet, and it's my responsibility to meet his emotional needs. But I don't see how I can give him more. Like I said, I'm trying not to let him get on my shoulder any more because of the inevitable scream-and-bite, and having him on my hand makes it difficult for me to get stuff done. And most of the hours of the day I am either at work, busy freelancing, doing housework, taking care of my kid, or running errands. If I had any extra time to sit around... I'd use it to sleep.

So it's tricky. Besides the time issue, I am not sure I can really work with him to teach him anything different. For one thing, it would require me to be in perfect control of myself as I respond to each of his screaming fits – and that’s a time when I’m usually feeling furious. For another, I don’t think he is smart enough to learn anything. The way he screams when he knows (or should know) by now that it’s not the way to get what he wants, and the way he still freaks out about hawks or imagined hawks or falling leaves (when nothing has ever hurt him), suggest to me that he’s not the brightest bulb in the light string. Also, I would have to be really consistent about my response to his screaming. And that’s exactly why his screaming upsets me so much. I can’t drop what I’m doing every second to attend to him – that’s what I think he is demanding with his screams, which is unreasonable and spoiled of him, and I want him to understand that he can’t have that. I will give him daily affection, keep his cage clean, give him fresh food and water, regular baths, time outside, and toys – but I can’t be at his beck and call every moment.

Of course, my unwillingness to try to change his behavior means that the only course of action is to wait it out. It’s another 10 years, or more, if I take good care of him. It feels like a punishment.

Let Me Go To Rehab: I Say Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

I was reading an article about women who have severe post-partum depression – like, really severe, to the point that they’re having suicidal thoughts and just can’t function. There are a few clinics around the country that specialize in that condition where women can check themselves (and their babies) in to get round-the-clock care until their condition resolves.

Then I started thinking about drug and alcohol clinics, and rehab in general, and… I don’t mean in any way to make light of how serious these conditions are – beyond anything I’ve experienced, for sure – but honestly, it just sounded… nice. I wish I could check myself into a clinic somewhere, to recover from life in general. Recently I’ve been staying up late to work– it’s the only way I can meet my deadlines, since I can’t do editing work while my daughter is awake. On the days that I go in to the office, my typical day goes like this:

7 am: get up and take care of her, feed the animals, tidy up, pack lunches, get ready for work
8-9 am: commute to work
9 am-5 pm: work at my jobby job
5 pm-6 pm: commute home
6-8 pm: fix dinner, wash dishes, put her to bed
8 pm-2 am: work at my freelance job
2-7 am: sleep

I am so drained and exhausted from the late nights. I nod off at my desk all the time, during the day. I’m falling behind on my work, despite my best efforts. On the days when I don’t have to go in to my jobby job, I just slouch around home like a zombie – trudge to the park pushing the stroller and sit glazed-over on a bench while she plays, scoop Spaghetti-Os out of a can for her lunch, participate in her games and potty training and other activities in silence and like I’m moving in slow motion. I have to use every minute of her nap time to edit, or I'll fall further behind – though what I want most in the world is to have a nap of my own.

To me, the idea of getting away to a clinic where I could sleep – sleep! – and someone would bring me meals, and people would talk to me about how to resolve my problems – it sounds heavenly. I have fantasies that the stress is the only reason I’m not menstruating, that if I could just get a little more rest, my fertility would come back, and my clear skin, and my shiny hair, and my husband would look at me with adoration again. But right now I’m on a treadmill and I feel like I'll never be able to get off.

Gettin' Served

Today I had blood drawn to figure out why, oh why, after all these months I am still incapable of getting pregnant again (no angst there), and then, because it was a fasting blood test and I was about to faint, I got an oatmeal at Starbucks. In both places, I had the sense of being cared for by efficient, warm, service-industry people who had to get through hundreds of transactions a day but still managed to be kind to me, the individual customer they might never see again. I've been reading a psychology book about people who have trouble interacting socially (diagnoses like autism and severe antisocial tendencies). I thought how, at a basic animal level, my psyche would interpret both encounters as random strangers expressing caring for me, and if I was antisocial, they might represent a small bit of progress.

The phlebotomist greeted me with a warm smile and asked me if I'd had a good weekend. While she was filling up vials with my blood, she said, "Doing ok?" She was calm and reassuring, the kind of person I could imagine coaching me through any painful experience. The Starbucks cashier said "Sure thing" when I gave my order. A few minutes later, another employee noticed me standing there, even though the place was crowded and busy, and asked "What are you waiting on, ma'am?" and when I said oatmeal, he pushed the bag that had been sitting on the counter (which I had suspected was mine but was too shy to reach for) over to me. I thought it was so nice that he even noticed I had been standing there for several minutes. He could easily have ignored me and focused on serving more assertive customers. I walked out with my oatmeal (delicious - warm, perfectly cooked - and it comes with a packet of brown sugar, some dried fruit, and nuts to mix in), feeling, even though I had just conducted business transactions with various strangers - loved.

Riddle-me-ree

Here are two riddles that my clever husband thought up.

Riddle #1:
"I look surprised, but I'm the one who shocks."

I guessed "electric eel," which just made him shake his head sadly. The answer is not electric eel. But it's something that you can guess, if you think about it.

Riddle #2:
"If there's just one, it's real, but if there's two, it's not."

This one is obviously impossible to get without a hint. So here's a hint: It has to do with Vietnamese cuisine.

And just for good measure, here is his all-time favorite joke (that I think he also made up):
"Why do giraffes make bad teachers?"










Because their explanations go over their students' heads!

Playing Her Like a Fish

Two thoughts about parenting.

First, I think since my daughter's birth I have frequently had the sense, in a pervasive but generally subconscious way, of being superhumanly patient with another person's rudeness. That's a blunt way to put it. What I mean is, despite knowing on a conscious level that a baby is just a wild and helpless, uncivilized little being, not responsible for its behavior, not in control of its feelings, and having expected that from the time before I became a mother, and being fine with it - on an unconscious level there is a feeling of forbearance as I continue patiently, calmly, cleaning up after and reassuring this little person who is screaming bloody murder in my face.

When she's pitching a tantrum or hitting me because she's frustrated and exhausted, my instinctive response is to give as good as I get. I'd like to defend myself and wallop her right back, but instead I talk to her in a soothing, gentle voice, helping her calm down, reminding her that we don't hit. When she's overtired, I put up with her shrieking at me and basically taking out her unhappiness on me, even though I did nothing to deserve it. As she throws her dish of vegetables on the floor and yells, "No Mama! NO broccoli!" I instantly tamp down the flicker of anger that flares up and respond in a measured, thoughtful way. As she whines and clings to my knee because she's bored, I would like to kick her loose, but instead I ignore her and continue wiping the kitchen countertop to show her that that's not a good way to get my attention.

I'd never put up with an adult treating me the way she does. Having spent very little time around babies before I had one, for many years I've been accustomed to civility and reasonableness. With a kid, I have to set aside those expectations and rise above it. I am getting good at it. I wonder sometimes if this daily repression of my true feelings is going to have any long-term consequences. Is it going to just make me a much more patient and nice person, willing to turn the other cheek when adults treat me badly too, just because I've had so much practice? Or am I going to erupt in craziness one day because I'm so fed up with responding to ill manners with graciousness?

Which is not to say that she's such a monster. 90% of the time, she is adorable and sweet and so good-hearted. She hugs and kisses me all the time. I love listening to her pretend to read out loud to her stuffed animals. Her giggle is my favorite sound in the world. It's just when she's overtired or hungry that she turns into a brat. Because she is so wonderful most of the time, it gives me strength to get through the difficult moments and to try to have sympathy for her feelings.

My second thought about parenting is that I often get a vision of myself playing a big, powerful fish on a line. When I'm trying to get things accomplished or to get her clean/fed/dressed/whatever, I have to be subtle about it. I watch for my opportunity as she flings herself around, then quickly reel in some line, then let her fight a bit more, then when there's a chance reel in a bit more. Like when I'm putting her to bed and she's resisting. You can't just march her through the steps. You have to give her a five-minute warning, then subtly get her down the hall to the bathroom, then into the bathroom (and close the door behind you or she'll run back out), then calmly put toothpaste on her brush as she hurls herself on the floor whining, wait for her initial fight to die down before you hand her the brush or she just flings it aside, give it to her at the right moment, etc. Walk her through the steps of toothbrushing, diaper change, bedtime story, and transfer into the crib. It takes some skill. She's strong enough now to resist, and it's not always possible to force her to do something, so we have to be smart about it.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the sequence of events that has to transpire before we can get out the door and to a particular destination, but then I just shorten the focus to what's happening right now, and to the next step that I need her to take, and it becomes a simple decision: is she, at this moment, actively struggling while I wait for my chance, or is she resting and I can reel in some line?

These are not the kinds of thoughts I expected to have about parenting. Back when I was pregnant, I thought it would be all starry-eyed discoveries like "she can chew on her own toes!" and relating cute things my kid had said or done. Now I look at people I know who are less patient or less gentle than I am and wonder how they will manage when they have kids. It's both a bigger and a more interesting challenge than I expected.

Because It's There

My husband bought a large jar of Nutella to make sandwiches with, and put it in the cupboard. It turned out to have a really short half-life. I guess I've forgotten how good Nutella is, it's been so long since I had any. It is amazing. It's this creamy, rich, chocolatey, very smooth and velvety delicious wonderfulness that is like licking the best ice cream in the world. But better. I found myself completely unable to resist sneaking out to the kitchen in spare moments to eat it directly out of the jar. Who needs sandwiches? My preferred method is a spoon.

At last, thank goodness, the temptation was gone. The jar was empty.

Tonight my husband wanted to make a sandwich and was looking for it. I tried to play it off at first. "What jar?" Finally I fessed up. "You're looking for the Nutella? It's right here." - patting my stomach. He was mildly horrified that I had actually eaten all of it. "But the jar was almost full!" Yes indeed. And now my stomach is. Honestly, I made it last for most of a week. It was pretty good restraint, considering how yummy I find that stuff to be.

"Oh well," he said, and pushed aside some stuff in the cupboard and hauled out a second, secret jar that I hadn't known about. Aaah! Now that he's opened it, I've got to deal with the roaring temptation all over again! I want to chuck that stuff out the window. Or put it in the lunchroom at work. It's like crack to me. As long as that opened jar exists, I will be conscious of it and wanting it - because it's there.

At least I do have a plan for coping. Last spring, I gave up sugar for Lent. It was really difficult - turns out sugar, or its equivalent, is in almost everything. Some of my favorite foods that I had to forgo included peanut butter, jelly, yogurt, popcorn with seasoning, tea with honey, pancakes made from a mix, a lot of cereals, and of course anything of the cookie/cake/dessert persuasion. I craved those things like you wouldn't believe. At midnight on Easter, I was watching the clock in the car as we drove home from a party, and at 12:01 am I was ripping into a blueberry pie and eating it with my bare hands. I vowed that I would never be so foolish as to give up sugar again.

Anyway, my new plan is not to try to give up sugar, but rather to pay for it as I go. I have a routine involving crunches and other ab exercises, that takes about 7 minutes to do. My plan is that I have to do that routine at least once a day, and again every time I eat a serving of something dessertlike. I don't get away with it if I'm too busy one day or if I forget - it just gets added to my tab and I have to do it at some point.

Good idea, right? The first day I put it into effect, it worked. I was sitting in my chair thinking about getting a slice of banana bread to eat after dinner, and then I thought about all the extra crunches I'd have to do, and decided not to eat the banana bread. Yay!

The only problem is that due to a few nights of abandon I've now racked up a rather high tab. I owe (the universe? myself?) 11 exercise routines. Doing the routine more than twice a day is really difficult, I find - my muscles get so tired and shaky I can barely get through it. In order to catch up to where I'm supposed to be, I'll need to both avoid sweets and do extra crunches. Urgh. I must be kidding myself to think that I could ever get through natural childbirth, with willpower this weak.

Again with the Childbirth Stuff

What is it with celebrities? I'm convinced that they are able to defy the physical laws that govern the rest of us. I always figured that yes, they have the financial means to do whatever they like, and access to ridiculous luxuries that the common folk don't, and they live in some sort of exalted atmosphere where they all know each other and only date one another. But, I figured some things would still apply. Celebrity mothers who want to have their own babies still have to go through childbirth like the rest of us, for example.

But no. It seems that even there, the rules don't apply. I was reading an article about Gisele Bundchen's home birth (home birth, and especially natural birth, is very popular among celebs), and she said, "It wasn't painful - not even a little bit." That astonishes me. Childbirth pain seems to be a bit different in intensity for different people, ranging from "pretty bad but I could handle it" to "extreme torture and I wanted to die." But natural unmedicated birth not even a little painful? How is that possible?


And what's up with her modeling six weeks after the birth and apparently, being back in model-shape? How in the world could she get her flat belly back in that time? I'm 2.5 years post-partum and my belly skin still sags. My midwife told me not to do any kind of exercises (except Kegels) or housework for the first six weeks, to give my body time to recover and to avoid tearing the stomach muscles, which are all stretched out after delivery. Of course, models are used to just not eating for a few weeks at a time, which probably helps, but if you're breast-feeding, which she is, you have to eat. So how did Gisele do it?

And she's not the only one. I've seen pictures of Nicole Kidman two weeks after delivery, apparently wearing skinny jeans, and other celebrity moms like Jessica Alba who looked toned and completely flat while their babies were still only a few months old. I know they have access to personal trainers and special diets, but still! It seems miraculous. I have to assume that the same superior genetics that give them better than average looks also help them recover their prepregnant appearance so quickly.

Even the basic rules of biology don't seem to apply to them. I recently read that the "pregnant man" (Thomas Beatie) is expecting again. This will be the couple's third child in three years. That's a feat - bearing a child takes so much in the way of resources, it's impressive that he is able to do it back-to-back like that. My child will be three years old soon and I'm still not capable of getting pregnant again (sigh - the period I wrote about before wasn't for real after all). And he was conceiving and carrying to term in a body that had been confused for years by hormone infusions. It's surprising to me that after all those hormones (he has a beard, for goodness sakes!), his body still knew how to grow a child.

To top it off, his wife is breastfeeding each child. She was able to induce lactation with a combination of hormones and breast-pump stimulation, even though she didn't give birth. Lots of women who did go through pregnancy and give birth to their own children then find they can't breastfeed, for whatever reason. And here this woman who was not even pregnant is doing it like it's no big deal. I feel like less of a woman than either of them.

Birth

My midwife who delivered my baby a couple years ago just had her own first child. I knew she was due right around now and was checking her web site every few days, hoping for good news. She just posted the pictures of her beautiful daughter and a brief birth story. She had her baby at home, a water birth in her bathtub, with her husband to help her. I am so happy for her that everything went well and that she had the "right" kind of labor and delivery that she wanted.

I feel like the stakes were higher for her than for other people - she's assisted thousands of women with their childbirths (and is a staunch proponent of letting things happen naturally and avoiding unnecessary interventions), so I think people kind of had their eye on her - thinking, "so when it's her turn to be in labor, is she really going to decline pain meds?" Not that she pressured me in any way when I was in labor. At prenatal visits, I announced my intention to try for a natural birth, and she said she'd do everything she could to help me achieve that. After 20 hours of labor when I asked for an epidural, she didn't try to talk me out of it, just said "OK!" and turned to the nurse and relayed the request. Afterwards she said, "I'm usually anti-epidural, but I think in your case it was helpful."

All the same, since she's assisted so many births and studied the process for so many years, I think people expected her to really make her own childbirth an example, do it the way she felt was best for everyone. And she lived up to that. I can't imagine that having a 10-pound baby with no pain relief in your bathtub could be anything short of excruciatingly painful, but she did it, and didn't sound too phased by it in her birth announcement. I'm relieved, not just that the baby is healthy and she's fine and everything is going well, but that she has nothing to kick herself about now. She will know forever that when it was her turn, she did it "the right way."

It does make me feel - even though I'm not in a position where I need to be an example for anyone; I'm accountable to no one but myself - that if I ever have another baby, I should really try to do it on my own. In other words, at home without drugs. A lot of women who have epidurals the first time around seem to be able to manage without them the second time. Maybe because labor is typically faster, maybe because they have the simple confidence that they can do it. Obviously I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about not having done it naturally, my first time, and I would like to be able to manage better the second time. I can't explain why this is important to me. I don't really believe that the epidural was harmful to my baby, and I really was in agony when I requested it, and since the option exists it seems silly to decline it. Like climbing Everest without oxygen, when you could just as well take some and lose a lot fewer brain cells getting up to the summit and back. It's that purist, black-and-white, right-and-wrong mentality that I usually like to avoid.

All the same. There is something so warm and wholesome and family-oriented about the idea of having that experience. Of proving to my husband how strong I am. Of doing something together that will become a part of our family history - having those first moments belong to us, rather than to a hospital room.