Tag: pregnancy

Notes from the Underground

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again many, many times, but we don’t spend nearly enough time telling people about the responsibility of raising humans. You get married, you’re happy (maybe), have more time and disposable income than you even realize (maybe), and then you get the baby itch (or society makes you feel like a wretched, selfish asshole and you cave) and a few months later, you are knocked up and wandering around Buy Buy Baby with a registry gun, arguing with your spouse about what kind of nipples you should register for.

Someone probably throws you an adorable party with cookie shaped like onsies or rattles, someone (likely the gay uncle) gives you a $500 cashmere blanket your kid will NEVER be allowed to touch, and you spend your evenings folding and refolding tiny clothes and sitting in an empty nursery thinking about your forthcoming bundle of joy. At this point we are at least 8 months into this whole thing and still NO ONE has so much as mentioned that your baby will not stay a baby. You’re inundated with questions about natural childbirth vs. an evil and completely unnatural (eyeroll) medicated birthing experience, what kind of nipples you registered for (BECAUSE THIS MATTERS A LOT), and whether you’re going to be gender specific with your new born (eyes rolling so far back in my head they may be stuck).

Then, it’s about your boobs. Strangers asking about your plans for feeding your child. Suddenly you feel like a capitalistic satan for registering for nipples in the first place when you’re obviously going to breast feed your child until he is using a sippy cup (or at least pretend you are so some wealthy organic wheatgrass farmer with nine children who have never had the flu doesn’t shame you in line at the Whole Foods).

Then it’s happening. YOUR BABY IS BEING BORN. You have a beautiful hospital bag with silk pajamas and snacks in it waiting next to the door. Your husband is whispering encouraging words to your unborn child before the three of you drift off to sleep. And in the middle of the night you soak your brand new mattress with enough amniotic fluid to sink the Titanic and the moment has arrived.

Still. No one has mentioned that your baby will not stay a baby. No one says, “hey, you. Babies are fleeting. Humans are forever.” In fact, the ASPCA likely spends more time reminding folks that puppies become dogs than the universe does reminding us that babies become people.

And become people they do. Infancy is hard. It’s physically straining, emotionally demanding, and it makes you question all the things you thought you were good at. But babies live in tiny warm bubbles. You can control every single thing about an infant except the infant itself. There’s almost no limit to what you can protect an infant from. (Save dying from something horrible because the anti-vaxxers are a bunch of Satanists. Oh, hey, Measles in Europe.)

But humans are harder. At some point you realize that your child doesn’t need you to get from breath to breath. They need you to help them navigate the universe and understand humanity. They start to need answers from you that you don’t have. And you can’t just stick a boob in their mouth and make everything okay. (Until they are about 17. Then a boob [NOT YOURS] may do the trick again.)

Little humans are a special kind of mind fuck. We have one at home currently. He’s not an infant. He’s not a toddler. He believes he has some kind of master insight and reason about the world and he is totally wrong. But it doesn’t change how he feels. He feels massive injustices are being done to him on a daily basis. (Nope, you can’t watch TV. Nope, we aren’t going to wear the same shirt for 16 days. It’s growing mold. Nope, you’re not allowed to take that in the car.)

But he’s also beginning to experience real emotions that we can’t control. Exclusion. Loneliness. Uncertainty. Jealously. Emotions that even now, as adults, we don’t fully understand. He wants to know why someone said something hurtful or why someone wouldn’t play with him. As a parent, your first reaction is to light the school on fire or hunt down the 3-year-old that hurt their feelings. But you have to take a step back. You have to understand that human emotions are complicated and necessary. And if you don’t allow them to feel these things, to try to work through them, they will become emotionally stunted fuck heads when they are older.

The world is moving a lot faster than it did when I was a kid. We could blame it on technology, but that wouldn’t tell the whole story. It’s just a different world. It’s more connected, while simultaneously being completely disconnected. We have more access than ever, but things also seem strangely inaccessible. Kids are shepherded out of childhood more quickly to give them more time to be adults. More time to excel and be accomplished grown ups. As a parent, I can’t help but feel like that’s misguided. If there is anything about my life I wish I could have extended, it would be my childhood. It would be those years before boys and college– and certainly my twenties– when long, hot days were spent cellphone-free at the pool, ordering chicken fingers and playing Marco Polo. It’s easy to idealize our memories, but I don’t think I’m crazy to believe that the less I knew, the easier it was to be happy.

There’s not a Buy Buy Baby for these years. There’s no registry list for those years when the things you tell your children impact the way they see the world, or the kinds of humans they start to become. These days, I laugh at the tough choices we made between the UppaBaby and whatever the other option was. Because how I pushed my child around the city seems a much easier choice than how I teach my child not to push others. Curating a nursery, though necessary and fun, seems to have overshadowed the time when my husband and I should have talked through the kind of human we wanted to raise and our plan and path to get there.

How do you raise a good human? Or can you? I don’t know. When you drop them off, move them in, or give them away, how will you ever know that you’ve made the right choices or shown them the right things? How can you be sure that they will go forth with confidence, humility, and a sense of what is right and wrong?

Maybe you can’t. But it’s worth trying.

 

Caution Parenting Failures Ahead

If someone would do me the favor of writing me an advance check that would eliminate the need for a day(ish) job, I am all set to write my series of pregnancy and parenting books. There will likely be three or four in the series, but since I haven’t even gotten my human yet, I can’t be entirely sure that it won’t be closer to 6. Like Game of Thrones only less like Game of Thrones and more like Game of What the Fuck Were YOU Thinking. 

We’re in the third trimester. Unlike the prior trimester– the second one– which was a big bag of lies and deception, this trimester feels like pregnancy. I’m no longer wondering whether people aren’t giving up their seats because they can’t “tell” if I’m pregnant, but rather standing uncomfortably close to people who won’t get up so that they may enjoy the feeling of being trapped and wonder what exactly that smell is. (It’s not a bad smell, per say, but it’s not anything easy to identify. Some combination of powder, corn chips, an Inkan village, and peppermint.) There are also entire days that go by when something doesn’t feel quite right, but it’s not until I’m in hysterics, naked, at 2AM, eating Triscuits, that I realize I it’s just hormonal. That happens. You spend the day wondering if maybe you forgot to eat or take medication or poop and in the end you realize you didn’t forget shit. Your body actually does chemically hate you. 

Periodically I have an enlightened moment in which I realized I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life, not only by being knocked up, but by marrying the hubs, living in Boston, choosing the career I’ve chosen, picking the apartment I live in, driving the car I drive, along with a whole litany of other things. (Fuck this fucking shampoo and it’s stupid fucking smell and the people who make it.) In those moments I find it’s best to simply lie on the floor and let the tears flow silently from my eyes. After ten or fifteen minutes I usually feel better and then commence the Kafka-like task of rolling around on the floor like a bug on its shell trying to get up. That either ends in laugher or another 10-15 of silent tears. 

But by far the most rewarding part of the third trimester is watching our inner parents slowly creep out. We’re slowly becoming comfortable judging our friends and the choices they’re making with their offspring, confident that while we don’t have the baby here yet, we’ve clearly observed enough to be superior. Turns out the hubs is the horrifyingly irrational and overprotective one, determining everything introduced to the nursery a murder weapon in soft, organic clothing. As for me, I’m more of a mad scientist. “If we do this, what do you think will happen?” (Cue disconcerting laugh.) 

In all seriousness, though, shit is getting real and the conversations about who he will be when he grows up have quickly shifted to “who the fuck is going to take care of him after six weeks?!” The books we’re reading no longer mention lower back massages and pregnancy friendly sex positions (like we’re having sex…), but what to do when your mucus plug makes an appearance in your tent sized panties or how to cope with giving birth in a taxi. (Pull over. As if the backseat of a car isn’t how you ended up here in the first place, Dirty Legs.) 

One thing we’ve been very diligent about is training ourselves to stay focused on our baby, not other people’s babies. I know first hand that grade A underachievers can still grow up to be real people. (Uh hem… every member of my family. Immediate and otherwise.) The small boy may not be speaking on time, but so long as he eventually finds an acceptable form of communication that doesn’t require poo flinging, I think we’ll be okay. He certainly doesn’t need to go to an Ivy League college, but it’s important that he not limit his options via laziness. Like his mama. 

Already we see it emerging. Friends asking friends if little buttercup is rolling over yet or lamenting that moonbeam hasn’t found her hands yet. Frankly I wish I’d taken me a little longer to find my hands– what’s the big deal? But the creeping envy and judgment is there. Meanwhile, despite the pregnancy books that insist the small boy must be having a party in my uterus, he continues to prefer a more sloth like existence. The day is dead to him, the night an opportunity for some light rearranging. Something could be wrong with him. Or he could be exactly like his parents. 

Stuart has provided some much needed context for our upcoming parenting endeavors. His continued belief that the changing table is a luxury cat bed has ruptured the hubs’ brain and his crying for love despite having food, water, and a perfectly good home is a daily reminder that if I don’t grow some patience soon someone is going to take my baby away. (Which would be really tragic, but also good fodder for a book…) 

With the light shining opaquely up ahead, I’ve realized three things: 

1. This was absolutely a poor decision.

2. Poor decision making is a hallmark of my life

3. The hubs has even less of a clue than I do

But all of that has led me to a very Zen-like place (save the aforementioned naked Triscuit binges). Every great decision of my life has had those exact things in common. I’m like a Phoenix or a Lotus flower. Poor decisions are a breeding ground for great Caroline success. I’m an adversity master. And while the hubs isn’t exactly a Lotus flower, he is consistent, even if it means consistently telling me I’m wrong. 

Wrong I may be, but at least I don’t think a pacifier is a baby suffocation device. 

 

 

A small boy and a marathon.

Yesterday around three o’clock I heard two cannons go off. It was Marathon Monday and the finish line is just a few blocks from our apartment, so it made perfect sense to me that someone would be firing off celebratory cannons. (I recognize that in the aftermath of the last 24 hours you could be wondering what special breed of idiot I am to think that, but in my defense, it’s a historic city and for some reasons I always associate cannons with something exciting happening.) 

But then things got weird. Through the open windows that welcome the sounds of the south-side of the city, came sounds like thundering cattle. Within ten minutes I could detect a concerning number of ambulances and sirens. My cannon theory was coming unraveled. Then the hubs texted, “Caroline. Turn on the news.”

Definitely not celebratory cannons. 

I’m not here to wax poetic or compare tragedies, but I will say this: the last time that someone said those exact words to me I was a senior in high school. My dad walked into my bedroom early on a September morning, pulled the covers back from my head, and said, “Caroline. Turn on the news.” 

There were no celebratory cannons that day either. 

In 2001 I lived so far away from New York that my mourning was little more than shock-induced patriotism. To this day I do not think any of us can fathom what truly took place on those city streets except those who were there. Then it was 3500 miles away. Yesterday it was three blocks. The tragedies incomparable, but the understanding that one brings to the other is invaluable. 

Twelve years later and I’m almost thirty. I’m five months pregnant with a small boy. Another small boy, an eight year old, is killed three blocks from my house while cheering on his dad at the Boston Marathon. My small boy is snug as a bug in a uterus, bouncing up and down on my bladder like it’s a trampoline. Another small boy was waving a sign and bouncing up and down to get a glimpse of the finish over the taller crowd. My small boy is just learning how to live. Another small boy is dead. 

The hubs texts again. This time it’s an expected stage of disbelief and grief. “Who the fuck sets off a bomb at the marathon?” I don’t have an answer. Then it’s his first paternal declaration, “Our small boy is never going to a public event. Ever.” Again, I don’t have an answer. 

But I do have an answer. Our small boy will go. Because fear of tragedy will only breed in him a fear of life. 

I don’t know how to raise a small boy into a grown man. I haven’t been given my parental membership card and I’m fairly certain that whomever is responsible for issuing them realizes I probably don’t deserve one. But I know that our small boy has to be given a chance to see the world as good, even if we’re standing in the wings, sick with worry. When he asks to climb higher, I know we need to respond with an emphatic “yes!” and try not to follow it up with a million caveats.

“Climb higher, small boy, and tell us what you see.” 

And one day, a day I know will come sooner than it should, something terrible will happen. A single moment of bad will create a thick cloud of uncertainty and our small boy will look to us to tell him what it means. And while we may not be card-carrying parents, I know we have a responsibility to give him an answer. And though we’ll remember other small boys, like the one who died cheering on his dad at the marathon, we’ll also remember the grown men who rushed forward to right all the wrong, to clear the cloud of uncertainty. 

“It’s a reminder that bad things happen. And then good things kick their asses.” 

Dear, Electrolux.

You may chalk this up to the crazy rantings of a pregnant lady, but I advise you to take heart. Deep inside this whale-like form is a struggling housewife, desperate for answers. 

Why does my vacuum suck so bad? I mean that both figuratively a literally. Why am I forced to go over and over every surface innumerable times only to watch the same string of fur or crumb stay exactly where I– or Stuart– left it? Why do I diligently buy those hard-to-find S bags on Amazon.com month after month when I know that they are doing nothing but trapping invisible particles from an invisible place in my apartment, not the real particles from the rug or hard wood floors? 

I’ve done a lot of soul searching on this topic. I’ve applied my analytical and strategic brain to the task, devising a system for rating the vacuum difficulty of an apartment and I’ve rated ours as a two. Out of ten. There are no plush rugs hiding unknown specimens between their fibers, no crevices in which small items can cling to avoid the suction that has come to claim them. Only shiny hardwoods and the occasional close cropped rug. Essentially what it would otherwise take to vacuum this apartment would be a swift wind in a focused direction. 

Admittedly we have a cat. That’s why I gave the apartment a two on the difficulty scale instead of a one. He does have fur, but as my husband pointed out, it really shouldn’t rival that of some of our more masculine friends. I personally have the hair of a cancer-ridden fairy and the husband doesn’t ever disrobe so I’m fairly certain any shedding he does is confined to his garments. But, yes, we do have Stuart and he does shed fur. Which is actually why we have a vacuum, rather than a Swifter. 

Before you start down your twenty questions to prove this girl is stupid path, let me review some of the things I’ve checked about my vacuum: all the filters are clean and intact, there does not appear to be anything clogging the hoses (though that’s only because I have to stick my hand into the vacuum with alarming frequency to dislodge NORMAL VACUUM SPECIMENS and send them along their merry way), and I change the bag very regularly (even though the little light on the vacuum has never told me to). Additionally, I’ve never tried to vacuum an animal directly, pick up large pieces of cloth or clothing, mix cement in the hose, or do anything crazier than vacuum my living room. And yet. And yet. And yet. 

What hurts the most is how much I believed in you. I wanted a Dyson. I’ve wanted a Dyson since that snively British man showed me the light and made me feel like a total asshole for not thinking of ball technology myself. But instead I bought an Electrolux. I bought it because it was supposed to be reliable. It was the vacuum my parents and grandparents used. I remember when they bought one from a door-to-door salesman. I believed in my Electrolux because I wanted to believe in America. I wanted to feel the loving arms of tradition wrap around my skepticism and show those snooty Brits that  I don’t need a ball or it’s fucking technology! I have a piece of vacuuming history in my house. 

And you proved to me that I should have clung to that man and his ball as if they were the last great hope for cleanliness. Because now here I am sweating like a coal laborer after attempting to vacuum a sum total of 400 square feet and finally giving up. My vacuum, the vacuum I saved for, invested in, and hoped would be my friend for many years, is a piece of shit. And I’m angry about it. 

I took some time while going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth over the same spot on the rug to think about all the things I’d rather do than have to keep vacuuming with my Electrolux Harmony vacuum cleaner. I’ve compiled a short list for you: 

• Be a prisoner of war

• Give birth to my baby through my nose

• Clean my apartment with tweezers

• Take a group of special education children to a water park

• Show up at a tent revival dressed like a whore

• Get a prison tattoo 

• Model for Sports Illustrated

• Buy a better fucking vacuum

I suppose at this point there’s nothing I can do. I made my choice and that’s what life is, right? Making the best decision you can based on the information you have and then living to regret the fact that you didn’t just buy the most expensive one to begin with. But now I’m staring down the barrel of parenthood and I don’t have a choice. I have to live with my crap-tastic suckless vacuum cleaner. At least I know I wont accidentally vacuum up a pacifier. Or a kid. 

I hope you’ll take this to heart. I hope you’ll take the next Harmony prototype into a room and vacuum with it before you put it on the market. You’re welcome to borrow Stuart if you want to add some kitty fur to the test cell. (I’d take him out before you start actually vacuuming, though, he doesn’t react well to machinery.) 

I wish you all the best. Even though I got the worst vacuum ever. 

Sincerely, 

 

Caroline 

NOT what you were expecting.

Everyone I know is with child. Everyone. I am not saying this to be one of those people who has to be the person with the most. There is a chance that you know more pregnant people than I do, but relative to the number of friends I have (very few), it’s a staggering number of pregnancies. I, for one, am totally into the multitude of friend pregnancies. Any opportunity for me to learn way too much about a subject and become a total know it all is instantly my favorite thing. Friends being knocked up = me learning everything you could ever want to know about pregnancy.

As a part of my dutiful pregnant friend training, I’ve picked up some books to read about the miracle of life. As a part of my dutiful blogging, I’m here to share a few key lessons and eye-opening facts that I’ve learned over the last few weeks. (You need to be sitting for this. That applies to guys and gals. You also need to make sure you’re only drinking clear liquids. You don’t want to be drinking milk when you hear what I’ve learned about cervical mucous.)

Likely the most interesting thing about reading up on the art and science of bringing a human into this world is how many things you realize you haven’t known to blame your parents for. Example: the fucked up swirly pattern that is the back of my hair? 100% my mother’s fault. Maybe if that useless milk factory had paid attention to the back of my head, and done the suggested head and follicle massages to avoid “irregular” hair growth patterns, I’d have a perfect ponytail like all the rest of the Heathers. She didn’t, I have the eye of a tornado on the crown of my head.

Thanks, mother.

If you are avoiding having babies because you are bashful about talking about menses, saying the word vagina, or chatting about your sex life, don’t worry. You won’t have to. There is an ENTIRE PREGNANCY LANGUAGE to keep you from ever knowing what the fuck anyone is talking about. This is not funny stuff. I will speak in this language for you.

“Hi! I’m 3DPO and waiting for AF to be a no show. My CM is EW so I’m really hoping we’ve done it! Send BD our way!”

WHAT?

No. Seriously. WHAT?

There’s no talk of periods, only of a woman named Auntie Flow. We can take our temperature vaginally, but can’t say period. Because that would be dirty. Auntie Flow (the period) becomes vilified in these pre-baby days. She’s an evil wench who does nothing but remind you that either you or your husband has failed to accomplish the most basic task. Don’t ever go on a message board if you’re fond of your period. Period fondness is not welcome.

Conception has the power to reverse hundreds of years of women learning to love their vaginas, even find them “beautiful” in their own special, fleshy, purply way. Conception is the anti-vagina. According to conception, your vagina might be a hostile environment, uninhabitable for sperm. (Try to imagine a hostile vagina without a Rambo-style bandana in there somewhere.) It’s hard to heard that you might have a hostile vagina. You don’t want to take it personally, but you do. And then you get hostile. Because no one calls your vagina hostile and gets away with it. No one.

If any part of you is impatient, prone to anxiety, or over analytical, I would suggest surrogacy. Or maybe adoption. One book, What to Expect BEFORE You’re Expecting, gave me such acute anxiety by the 4th or 5th page that I couldn’t sleep. The lists of don’ts was too much for me. No caffeine. Tea is okay, but only certain teas, but there was this study once that suggested that tea could cause flux in blood pressure in .00000013% of women and of those .0032% had a baby who was frowning when it emerged from the birth canal. So, if you can live without tea, it might be best. No one wants a frowny baby. OTC medications should be fine, unless you’re talking about allergy medication, which technically is fine, but it also can dry up your cervical mucous and then what happens? Your vagina gets hostile, of course. So you need to weigh your allergies against the potential of a hostile vag. Tough choice, but it’s yours to make. As for bathing. Fine. If you have to. You really should try to keep your parts from getting too warm, though. So if you’re stressed, you can do anything except relax in a warm bath, drink a glass of wine, or anything else that might actually work.

As for actually being pregnant. Oh wow. There are a lot of “you better be fucking kidding me” memos here. For starters, no raw fish. You know, because no one in Japan has ever given birth to a heathy or smart baby. Ever. Twinkies are fine, lunch meat is out of the question. Your gas will clear an amphitheater. And you’re now the proud owner of something called a mucous plug. (Assuming you don’t destroy your mucous with contraband like Claritin, it actually plays a HUGE role in conception and pregnancy. So I’ve learned.) Your relationship with your spouse, already strained from the sperm on command antics of the prior months, is at risk. The female is hot and horny thanks to the surplus of hormones racing through her veins. She is also orca fat, something that makes Mr. Midnight shy.

Many men also fear spearing the unborn child. It’s cute that they are so concerned. Kind of. The chances of a man folk spearing an unborn child is about as good as a penis getting stuck inside the vagina. While all ladies would like to flatter themselves by thinking their nethers are bear trap tight, we simply know that’s not the case. Unless your man friend has a 10 inch weapon for a private, the baby will be fine.

It’s not all bad, though. First of all, you’re bringing a baby into this world! (Hear the roaring applause?!) Second of all, your breasts get enormous. Sure, they’re filled with milk and leak every time you hear ANY baby cry, but they’re still huge. Some women even get the coveted glow; a transcendent iridescence that cascades them during the gestational phase. (Other women get disfiguring acne, but they still get the jugs and the new human, so it’s kind of a fair trade.)

Despite the paralyzing fear and anxiety that I can look forward to coping with someday, I’m more than certain that if there was ever to be a time for the blog to really get good, pregnancy would be that time.

My next read will be What to Expect When Your Expecting. Based solely on my experience with its sister book, I’m so excited I can hardly stand it.

Any other good reads?