In which Good Things Happen to Good People

My own failure to produce Big News this week is not by any means universal. My brother-in-law-in-law (sister-in-law's husband) got a fellowship at the National Institutes for Health earlier this week, and my friend E called tonight to let me know she's been offered a tenure-track position in philosophy at a college in Minnesota, one she really likes.

I am always gratified when the world validates my high opinion of the people I care about by showering them with the recognition and good things they so richly deserve.

The rhetoric of social inequity

Let me just say that I am not a victim. I am a neurotic, obsessive worrywart who likes to borrow trouble, but I am not a victim. The fact that I have been posting a great deal, or talking a great deal, or thinking a great deal about the short shrift women, and particularly mothers, get in American society does not mean that I feel personally victimized. I probably make close to the male dollar (not that there are many men in my profession at my level), and I am gainfully employed with excellent benefits, no harrassment, and no prospect of termination. My partner plans to take an equal role in the childrearing insofar as our company leave policies and respective biology make it possible to do so, and I feel fairly confident that family and friends would support (if not understand) any choices I made in terms of a career/mothering time allocation. The fact that I'm passionately interested in these larger social inequities right now is not an indication that I am personally suffering from them.

Conversely, and I think this is the corollary that many social conservatives fail to take into account, the fact that I am not personally suffering from these larger social inequities right now does not mean that they do not exist. It is perhaps to my shame that I am only really noticing and reading up on them now that they may personally affect me - the curse of the liberal bourgeousie, that we give lip service only until things fall in our laps.

Put more simply, and this is one of those core truths that seem obvious once stated baldly but that confuse many discussions on social policy:

Social trends do not dictate individual behavior or circumstance, but neither does individual experience disprove larger social trends.

I'm really tired of people trying to use anecdotal information to counter statistical arguments. Statistics are clumsy tools for estimating existent conditions and probability, but they're the best tools social science has. Every social statistic has a flip side, has outliers, has more complex explanations behind every individual who checks a box or clicks a button or answers a telephone survey; it's a given, not a negating factor.

That said, a few more links from my recent reading:

• Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? - the .pdf of the white paper on which the article I cited earlier this week was based, for those of you who like to read the actual study instead of newspaper summaries.
  
• Pregnant women preport growing discrimination - a gloss piece from USA today, not particularly recent, but chilling nonetheless.
  
• Homeward Bound - the Linda Hirshman article on "choice feminism" that sparked a lot of my own explorations into the phenomenon of what are known as "The Mommy Wars." This article is anecdotal, condescending, and judgemental of individual women's choices to stay home - it's not a neutral piece. It is, however, interesting (if inflammatory) reading. It's also another part of the discussion on statistics versus individual behavior, one I don't have such coherent thoughts about at the moment - the idea of "blame" in social trends, where the onus of social change is placed on the individuals making up X or Y side of the statistical split.
  
• My radical feminist married manifesto - Bitch, Ph.D.'s response to the article. I also dislike this post in various ways - it's strident and dictatorial - but I cite it here mainly because of an observation she makes which I'm sure is not new:

  In fact, I believe that this is the single most irretrievably gendered division-of-labor issue for couples who want to be, or think they are, equals: the person whose job it is to monitor that equality is the person who has the least power ... if you're going to have to monitor your marriage to make sure that it's an equal partnership, then that is in and of itself part of the labor of the relationship.

  That part makes a lot of sense to me, within the context of personal relationships but also in a wider political sense, and I found it quite illuminating.
  
• The 'Wage Gap' series, from Alas (a blog) - a fascinating series of posts, links, and general commentary on the gender wage gap - I havent' read all of this yet, but what I have is well-reasoned and excellently put together.
  
• Myth & Reality: Forget all the talk of equal opportunity. European women can have a job—but not a career - a recent Newsweek article on the actual impact of more progressive social programs on women's advancement in the European workplace. An excellent thought-provoker for those of us who tend to look to social policy as an equalizing force in this arena.

Also, GAH. I just opened the door to a couple of those young magazine-seller-type boys, who are endemic in this neighborhood, because I was expecting a package delivery. And I actually gave them money, which I never do, and now I am cringing. Sure, ostensibly it will be a book donation to a battered women's shelter and it will help them out with some trip they're saving for. But you know, I should have just said "no" and gone in and donated the money directly to a battered women's shelter, because I hate being pressured into buying things - and to keep the theme of the post, statistically, I have just encouraged this godawful marketing practice by becoming one of the suckers who fall for it. Now I feel icky. Fucking door-to-door bullshit. I wish I didn't work at home.

How much string is in the world. Who has it. by Michael Tieg

I am, for no good reason, totally obsessed with the title of this poem. It gets stuck in my head at odd moments. I find myself adapting its rhythm to other questions or observations about the world. I love its unorthodox punctuation, its unanswerable nature, its whimsical curiosity. Although I do wish that the "is" were removed from the first sentence - as I originally read it and got it embedded in my brain that way - leaving "in" as the functioning verb, which is also a delightfully odd usage. How much string in the world. Who has it.

How much string is in the world.
Who has it.

There is a dog barking, no dog to see,
the piebald horse seems small for the field.
It is too bright and I need a nap.
It is practically burning with flowers.

I’ve heard of the light
no one wants to be photographed in
and this must be it.

Consider once, it was snowing, I made a little bird
but it was a pathetic thing
all duct tape and longing
and knocking about the chairlegs like a dustball.

I made another but the fucker bit me.
I made another
this one completely empty.

Or how in a good month for conversation
my Uncle Frank in a field sensing deer
shot himself in the foot
and his first wife continued with the dishes
looking out the window at the laundry line,
power line, pig’s ear, who knows?--
and later driving away with the car
while he remained on the couch watching hockey.

Consider the cold and tomatoes come together
and how of course I’d love to have you.
Here, have a balloon. Have two.

Pregnancy is really not for control freaks.

Um, the doctor sent me home, to my total astonishment. He said my fluid levels hadn't gone down, but we would for sure induce next Tuesday.

Last week I freaked out because he was making induction noises and I wasn't ready, this week I'm freaking out because I was ready for induction and he gave me another week. I am so indecisive! But he's lifted some of the bed rest and I could sure use another week at work, as could Himself. So this is good, in some ways. I'm kind of in shock, though. He seemed so sure last week that we would induce today - he even told me to bring my bag packed for labor!

This is, I suspect, just the first of a great many lessons about the futility of "planning" with children.

Wow.

D-Day

I'm headed to the hospital in about an hour for some more routine testing, and then almost certainly an induction. We'll be home sometime between Thursday and Saturday, depending on how it goes, with wee squid on the outside at last. Please think good (safe, quick, easy, healthy-baby) labor thoughts our way!

I didn't get all the work I wanted to do done - and Himself wasn't able to completely clear his schedule either - so we'll be learning to parent at the same time as we are dealing with loose ends of this and that professionally for the first few weeks. Ah, well. I got further with my to-do list than I ever thought I would, being on bed rest, and I will have to be satisfied with what I have managed and not fret about the rest. We had a lovely weekend, in any case, with a visit from my beloved friend A and a nice dinner out on Sunday - the last one that won't require either a babysitter or a high chair for a while!

Because I'll likely forget, later: Top five things about this pregnancy:

5. Getting to eat pretty much whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted.
4. The way people have been so helpful and gone the extra mile for me in the third trimester.
3. < tmi>My butt does not itch, for the first time in more than a decade. < /tmi>
2. No periods. I cannot say enough about how awesome this particular aspect has been.
1. Baby. The whole point of the exercise. Items 2-4 do not even come close to making the process worth it. In the end, it's all about this one thing.

And incidentally, I may also have gotten smarter. The article could have used a more focused writer, and the mouse/human link is a wee bit tenuous, but I would desperately like to believe this is true.

Things I know are, in fact, true, and would desperately like to disbelieve:

Despite women's gains, mothers still face hiring obstacles* Jenny Deam The Denver Post Feb. 16, 2006 12:00 AM Two accomplished, midlevel professional women walk into a job interview, both with identical qualifications and nearly identical résumés. One has a child. One doesn't. Only one walks out with a new job. Hint: It's not the mommy. A landmark study by Cornell University has quantified what many working mothers have suspected for years: Women with children are less likely to get hired and are paid less in starting salaries than similarly qualified fathers or women without children. This disparity often follows them throughout their careers. "Sadly, it's not surprising," Melissa Hart says about the study. Hart is an associate law professor at the University of Colorado who specializes in employment discrimination. "It's a huge problem." The findings become especially significant since about 70 percent of American women with children under 18 work outside the home. Additionally, in six of 10 marriages, both parents hold paid jobs. While women may have made enormous strides toward parity with men in the job market, Hart says when children are added to the picture, the attitudes of potential employers change. Dick Gartrell hears it all the time. As director of human resources at the University of Denver who also runs seminars to teach corporate managers good hiring practices, Gartrell says employers complain when told they shouldn't let parenthood influence hiring decisions. "They have a job to fill, and they want to be able to ask a woman if she has children or if she is going to have children so they know if she will leave. I tell them you have no more reason to ask ... than you would to ask a man if he is going to have a medical disability," Gartrell says. Still, there is little legal recourse if an applicant feels wronged. There is no federal law prohibiting a potential employer from asking a woman - or man - about their family. Some states have such laws, but their effectiveness varies widely. Shelley Correll, author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y., says she not only found proof of discrimination in her 18-month study, she also found salaries for working mothers tended to decrease exponentially with each additional child. She launched the study - "The Motherhood Penalty" - after hearing complaints from mothers for years. To test her suspicion, she created two fictitious applicants seeking a job as a marketing director for a communications company. Both had virtually identical qualifications and résumés with no indication of gender or family status. The applications were presented to 60 undergraduates - both men and women - for evaluation. The reviewers found the applicants to be equal and said they had no hiring preference. Correll used undergraduates because she believed them to be most closely attuned to the current hiring climate. She also assumed they had been raised in an age when sensibilities about working mothers had changed. Next, the same résumés were shown to another set of undergraduate evaluators. This time, though, the applicants were both women. A memo was slipped into one of the application packets mentioning she was a mother of two. Her résumé was changed slightly to include a reference to being an officer of a parent-teacher association. The outcome changed dramatically. The evaluators said they would hire the childless women 84 percent of the time. The mothers were given a job only 47 percent of the time. The mothers also were offered a starting salary of $11,000 less than their counterparts without children. Correll recently moved her test into the real world. In an undisclosed Northeastern city, she created 300 pairs of cover letters and résumés to apply for advertised midlevel marketing positions. One "applicant" said in her cover letter she was relocating with her family. The résumé mentioned the parent-teacher board position. The other cover letter said the "applicant" was relocating but made no mention of a family. Early results of this study show the applicant who did not mention a family was called in for an interview twice as frequently as the mother. "It documents what a lot of working mothers already feel," says Correll. It's not that employers don't like mothers, Correll adds. On the contrary, she thinks society values motherhood. But she does think "cultural ideas of motherhood are seen as pretty incompatible with cultural ideas of the workplace." According to the "ideal worker" belief, says the study, a committed worker is willing to "drop everything at a moment's notice for a new work demand," will "devote enormous hours to 'face time' at work," and will work late nights and weekends. "The cultural logic of 'intensive' mothering in U.S. society ... assumes that the 'good mother' will direct her time and emotional energy toward her children without limit," says the study. "It's Neanderthalville all over again," says Liz Ryan, a 25-year human resources executive and mother of five. Ryan is founder and chief executive of WorldWIT, a Boulder, Colo.-based national and international online community for professional women. "I hear it all of the time from my members: It's 2006, and (companies) are still asking 'Are you going to have kids?' " she says. Ryan speculates the tightening job market is giving potential employers a sense they have the upper hand and are more free in their questioning than they would have been a few years ago. She also wonders if there is a backlash brewing against mothers - and increasingly, fathers - who have demanded more flexibility from companies to be with their families. Ryan tells this story of a friend working in Dallas: The woman's company was bought by another in Chicago, and wanted her to relocate. She negotiated a way to spend most of the week in Chicago and work one day from home in Dallas so she would not have to uproot her family. The company agreed, then sliced her pay 20 percent. Gartrell says he cautions employers not only is it bad form to ask about children during job negotiations, it is dangerous for the company. While not illegal, if a comment has been made during an interview and then a problem later arises, that comment could come back to haunt. Certainly examples abound of working mothers who have succeeded in their fields. But, Ryan says, often those negotiations occur after a woman is established and valued within a company and then has children. What troubles her most about this new study is it proves working mothers are being barred at the front door. Hart, the law professor, also worries about the tension between women with children and those without in the workplace over such things as time off for sick kids or leaving promptly to spend more time with families. She calls it a systemic problem in the corporate climate of this country. "No one is given life balance," she says. "Forget about family balance. People are resentful (of women with children) because they are looking over their shoulder and thinking someone is getting a better deal than they are. But the truth is no one is getting a good deal."

* Article is linked here but requires you to fill out a survey form to read, so I have reproduced it here in its entirety.

Because there is more to life than being knocked up...

...even if it's not what I'm focused on right now. Just some links...

• When Gender Changes The Negotiation - a worthwhile look at the ways that men and women negotiate job benefits and salaries differently, and how work environments can contribute to or minimize conditions that lead to this sort of self-selected gender inequality.
  
• The Permanent Energy Crisis - Hampshire College professor Michale T. Klare on the enduring nature of the problems we face. No huge surprises, but a succinct and well-put summary of the issues.
  
• Political Books - Polarized Readers - a graphic analysis of the 2004 purchases of the top 100 political books on Amazon.com. Fascinating look at balkanization at work, with nice links to other related analyses.
  
• Frames That Bother Me - Bias and perspective on the idea of "free speech." Not sure this is entirely in line with my own vague ideas on the topic, but an interesting perspective on the American spin on the cartoon riots nonetheless.
  
• Women's Empowerment: Measuring the Global Gender Gap. A World Economic Forum report that has some interesting reality checks - the US ranked only 17th overall, when compared with other countries on a variety of criteria, including economic participation, economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment, and health and well-being. The whole report is interesting reading.

Squidlet update, redux

36 weeks and ticking...

Well, ye olde amniotic fluid index was down to 7.7 today. Which means there was a good chance that the squid could have been a Valentine's baby - thank goodness, the doctor decided to hold out for one more week. I'm on even stricter bed rest, and I'll probably be having a baby next Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on how long the induction and labor take. This is me, quaking in my metaphorical boots.

That said, the squid is healthy, active, growing well, showing no signs of distress, and spent all night last night partying like it was 1999. While it's entertaining to watch the distended surface of my stomach move around like an alien being, it's starting to get uncomfortable. The squid weighs, according to the ultrasound, somewhere between 4 lbs 10 oz and 6 lbs 8 oz (5 lbs 9 oz with a 15-ounce margin of error), which is good.

We may also have found childcare, which seems nothing short of miraculous, considering that some people we talked to had wait lists of over a year. I've spoken with two or three providers who really impressed me over the phone with their attitude and professionalism, and who have infant openings around the time I will be going back to work. We got on their lists and will go visit as soon as we can after the birth. That's a huge relief, at least.

Tonight's entertainment (we aren't big Valentine's Day people, though I may beg Himself to pick up a cheeseburger from The Good Pub In Town for me) includes the writing up of the birth plan - basically just a preferences indicator for the nurses and doctor. I've only been able to work on it a little at a time, as the childbirth sections of my books make me anxious if I read them for too long. Tonight I'm resolved to finish it - one more little thing to check off the ever-dwindling list.

I actually had a full-on sobbing breakdown last week about how scared I am of labor and delivery, and I cried again, just a little, today in the hospital and driving home. It's going to hurt. A lot. And no matter what anyone tells me about the "different" quality of the pain or how it's "worth it" or whatever - that's really, really scary. I don't need reassurance - it won't work, you can't tell someone about something that has no analogue in their own experience, really. The only way out is through, and so I'm just going to take a lot of deep breaths and a lot of shallow ones and probably make some totally weird noises and say some regrettable things and ... let it happen. The inevitability and unknowableness of it doesn't make it less terrifying, of course, but I am practicing my graceful resignation in the face of things I can't control. I knew it would come to this, after all, and I started down this road anyway; you pays your money and you takes your pick, so I should just take my own oft-given advice and suck it up.

Brief squidlet update

Still on bed rest, going stir crazy, but both squid and I are doing well. Tomorrow will be 36 weeks (lung development, check), and if I can make it another week, the squid will be more or less fully baked. And then, let the wild rumpus labor begin, because dear Lord I am tired of being large and unwieldy and having heartburn and being short of breath and nervous about childbirth, not to mention lying down all the motherfucking time. Doctor's appt tomorrow, at which I am crossing my fingers I will be put on less restrictive bed rest (so I can stop feeling guilty about sitting up to do paperwork and running the occasional ten-minute errand), and at which we find out the squidweight (within a 10% margin of error). At least he is growing symmetrically - the doctor said sometimes with placental insufficiently they grow lopsided. Eeep.

But! The reason I am really posting this is to show you the picture of the dogs and the squid Himself took in our backyard the other day. Behold my largeness! Behold the total fucking awesome cuteness of our dogs! < /picspam>

Out of the woodwork

Wow. I'm not really very good at asking people for help, or being the one who gets taken care of, but this unexpected bed rest has really amazed me with the way people have stepped up to help. Not only have my parents made multiple trips out (to sit with me in the hospital, help me with laundry, run errands, etc.), but my mother and sister-in-law have both offered to come stay and help, and multiple friends have called to check in and give advice or sympathy or to offer to run little errands.

Friday I panicked a little - the baby could come anytime, and we didn't have so much as a diaper in the house. We had a sling, a onesie, and two pairs of booties, courtesy of wonderful packages from thoughtful friends, but nothing else. But then my mom came down, with things from her and her co-worker S and my Aunt K, and suddenly I had clothes and diapers and a sleep nest and blankets galore! Himself's friend L sent a blanket and a hat and a bib from Israel, M sent a blanket from Chicago, J emailed to say his knitting needles were busy with a baby garment, and A called to get our address right so she could send a mystery gift. My mother-in-law generously got us the carseat and stroller and an assortment of things we needed for feeding and diapering. My mother generously gave us the breast pump. Then online mama friends J and D descended on me like ministering hand-me-down angels yesterday, with a co-sleeper and a baby bathtub and a breastfeeding pillow. Suddenly, we are as ready as stuff can make us!

It's so amazing to have such supportive friends and family. I am awed and humbled by how they have just come out of the woodwork, without my even having to ask, when they are most needed. We are so lucky to be so rich in the love and caring of the people in our lives.

And as if to add joy to happiness, I got a letter Monday. There's something about good old-fashioned letters that email will never trump, for me, even though I much prefer email as a mode of regular communication.

And this letter - I mean, it makes me kick myself for not having sent out holiday cards every single year. Why did I wait so long? In 1993, in Tianjin, China, I had two of the best friends I will ever have - my roommate H and my friend WF - and I lost them both in the ensuing decade-plus. (H married, had a baby, and moved to follow her husband, while WF emigrated to Canada with his girlfriend - I saw him in Vancouver in July of 1998 and he moved the next month with no forwarding address. I haven't been able to find him since, though I've considered hiring someone who specializes in that sort of thing to do so.) On a whim, I sent H a card this December, to the last address I had for her (almost ten years old).

And she wrote back.

The postman apparently did some serious research to find her (god bless postal workers who go above and beyond) but my letter got there. Her son is seven, her career has changed, and God knows if we'll have much to say to one another now, but she was one of the most important people in my life at a very pivotal time and I was so happy to get her letter I cried. (Yes, pregnant and hormonal, but still.)

The squid is healthy (fluid levels are maintaining, and he is active), I am healthy (if still on bed rest), Himself is home from his travels, and we are loved, loved, loved. May you all be surrounded by such wonderful people as those that fill our lives.

Reviews: pregnancy and childbirth guides, and related books

Disclaimer: These are only my personal opinons. I read some of these books more thoroughly than others, and some more recently than others. I am not an expert, or a doctor, or a midwife, and I haven't even gone through labor yet. I'm planning on a fairly standard hospital birth, with pain medication, and I lean toward the medical and away from the mystical when it comes to thinking about pregnancy and motherhood. I'm a feminist, a liberal, and a control freak with a penchant for pragmatism, and that subjectivity necessarily colors these reviews.

Reviews of pregnancy and childbirth books:

Pregnancy:

Your Pregnancy Week By Week, by Curtis and Schuler. Not recommended. Not recommended despite the fact that I consulted this book a little more often than others, just because it was nice to know what was different week to week. Sites like pregnancyweekly.com or StorkNet's Pregnancy Week by Week will give you similarly thorough weekly information, and the book chapters were mainly padded out with other pregnancy advice. This was a very poor organizational choice, as the section on multiples was hidden in the third trimester and I kept finding pieces on nutrition scattered throughout - it wasn't a book you could or should read in a linear fashion, and yet it was ostensibly organized along a timeline. Use the web sites for the weekly stuff and buy another book (I've recommended two good ones below) for the general pregnancy information.

The Expectant Father, by Armin Brott. Neither recommended nor not recommended. I skimmed this, and was not horribly impressed. Himself read it and didn't find it overwhelmingly informative. My feminist sensibilities were fairly offended by the amount of space it devoted to financial planning and paperwork, and the assumption that such things were the Role Of The Man. Full of dorky speculation on how your wife might feel and common-sense text-box pullouts on nice things to do for her, along the lines of newspaper columns that suggest red roses and chocolate for Valentine's Day. More clearly hetero-marriage-normed than almost anything else I read. Still, it's nice to have a resource for pregnancy that isn't about all the biology and birth process stuff of it and focuses more on the support and life planning aspects.

Pregnancy and Childbirth:

The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth, by Sheila Kitzinger. Not recommended. This has nice graphics and neat anecdotal information (genetic eye color charts, full-color pictures of fetal size and positioning, etc.) That said, I found the tone of the book overemotional (a great deal of "your baby" this and that right off the bat, and a lot of speculation on how you might feel about/during any given part of the pregnancy). I was also highly unimpressed by the circumcision section, which mentions infant death as a possible consequence in the first paragraph, among a list of other highly negative factors. I'm not particularly a fan of circumcision myself, but I like to be presented with unbiased information and allowed to make my own choices in discussion with my partner, not fearmongered into one position or the other. Bias toward natural childbirth.

Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn, by Simkin, Whalley, and Keppler. Highly recommended. Tons of information, good timelines, nice clear graphics, good tables, checklists, and thorough coverage of everything from breathing patterns to positions, nutrition to possible complications, choosing a hospital to preparing a birth plan to breastfeeding. Well-indexed, with a nice "resources" guide in the back as well. For those who like encyclopaedic and comprehensive reference sources. There's some coverage of emotional states (which is good, you don't want a book that totally ignores them) and no detectable bias in terms of medication, etc.

Planning Your Pregnancy and Birth, by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Highly recommended. This was given to me by a friend who had found it unhelpful, so as with all reviews, this is just my opinion. I found the information in this clearly presented, relatively unbiased, conducive to neither panic nor complacency, and quite thorough. There are useful informational charts throughout, and the advice is soundly based in research rather than sentiment. Their checklists are invaluable (in terms of what to do to prepare for the hospital, etc.), practical, and easy to use. If I had to buy one book for the pregnancy side of things again, I'd choose this one - it's not necessarily better than the Simkin, Whalley, and Keppler book, but it's more concise and therefore I was able to assimilate more of the information wholesale, whereas I tended to use the other book as a "dip in" reference rather than an overall guide.

Labor and Delivery:

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskin. NOT recommended. I should have known better than to pick up a book on natural childbirth in my 35th week, particularly this one. Not only was the cant of the book far from my own sort of pragmatic, medically-oriented perspective, I found her statistics and rhetoric on everything from epidurals to C-sections scare-mongering. If I want to read about c-sections, I certainly don't want to read a whole subsequent section on the underrepresentation of maternal death, for chrissake. Worriers, panickers, and control freaks should avoid this one at all costs. I felt better and more confident about labor before skimming this. And as for her suggestion that women who are not comfortable playing with their clitorises while delivering "go see Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues," BITE ME, Ms. May. I am quite comfortable with my body, and it's rude and disingenuous to imply that prudishness or repression might be the only reasons someone might want to avoid a particular technique.

The Birth Partner, by Penny Simkin. Recommended. It's written for the person supporting the laboring mother, but I read it and found it very helpful myself. It covers possible complications, but not in a scary way (I felt much more okay about the idea of a C-section after reading it than before) and gives a good idea of sort of the physical and emotional stages involved in a typical birth, while acknowledging that each experience is unique. No visible medication/non-medication bias, though it does seem to assume a hospital birth for the most part. Includes a very nice scale to use in thinking about pain medication preferences. This is the book I asked Himself to read to prepare for becoming my labor support.

Other random:

A Child Is Born, by Lennart Nilsson. Neither recommended nor not recommended. Nice if you can get it used or from a friend. It's got a lot of great photographs of in utero development, which are totally fascinating. No detectable pro-life slant to the text, but several people have mentioned to me that they found that the pictures themselves made them think about their own pro-choice views. That said, I've never heard of this book changing anyone's mind - I think the right has just co-opted fetal images to such an extent that any examination of them now makes people think of their beliefs on when life begins. I am very secure in my own views on this, and had no problem with this book.

Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, by Anne Lamott. Recommended. This book made me feel better about the whole idea of becoming a parent. Anne Lamott is excellent at showing how flawed and frightened people navigate difficult times, and this book was a wonderful antidote to all the Vaseline-lens depictions of motherhood you see elsewhere - it made me think, if Anne Lamott can do this, I can do this. It may be scary and messy and tiring and frightening, but look! Still good.

Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World, by Peggy Orenstein. Recommended. An interesting feminist look at women in with regard to careers, marriage, and children, analyzing the choices they make in the light of societal trends that disempower women and mothers. Like many books that focus on the social and gender implications of motherhood, this focuses on middle and upper class educated American women - those who have choices between staying home and working. Since I fall into that bracket, I found it an engaging and interesting lighter read, and to be fair, it's not intended to cover all women everywhere.

The Price of Motherhood: Why The Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued, by Anne Crittenden. Recommended. Again, this covers mainly upper and middle-class women; I think it's probably less interesting to authors (who tend to be middle/upper class themselves) to examine motherhood in the lower economic brackets, because there's more necessity than choice at play. That said, I would have liked to see MORE discussion in this one of the impact of these social trends at lower income levels. This was a devastating economic critique of the economic impact of mothering, including chapters on careers, taxes, and divorce and child support. Depressing as hell, well-researched, well-argued. I'm about 3/4 of the way through; will update this if I feel I need to say more after I finish.

Ornithology of the id.

Something in my house has been smelling intermittently of sour milk. I smelled it by the couch three days ago and moved all the furniture trying to find the source. And again this morning, by the couch, and again in the bedroom. I have just realized it is the dog. Ewwww. To the groomer's with the spaniel!

Continuing the theme of sudden revelations about ongoing issues, I've realized two things about why I'm having so much angst over the bedrest. First, I'm nesting. I had heard about pregnant women doing this, but never thought it would happen to me - I'm not exactly the Mama Bird type. I joked to people who mentioned it, "Yeah, if you see me cleaning, you'll know something out of the ordinary is going on!"

But it's happening, as evidenced by the fact that the things that are bothering me the most are not the loose work ends and the unfinished taxes, the untallied surveys and the unrevised timeline, the lack of child care arrangments or carseat - by rights, the important stuff. No, instead what has me fretting is that I haven't finished framing all the pictures and posters I had planned to hang, that the zipper on my purse has not been fixed, that I don't have enough meals frozen for after the birth, or that all the Christmas ornaments and lights have not been neatly stowed in the garage. This is the kind of stuff I can let go for months, usually, but suddenly it has achieved now now now importance. I'd roll my eyes, but it's biological and therefore hard to let go of, even if I can consciously identify the cause.

The other factor, methinks, is that I've fallen prey to my own pet sucker myth of personal change again. I think I conjured up this idea for myself that I could and would finish every undone thing in my life before giving birth - that parenthood would find me with a clean slate and a fresh start. I know better than this - I've proved the lie of this myth through career changes, grad school, geographic relocation, new year's resolutions, and a multitude of other things - but the lure of it is still one that I am prone to, it appears. This time it will be different, this time I will be different, this time it will all get done and stay done, etc. I had hoped, as I always do, that somehow change in my life would bring about change in my essential self - not that it won't, but I will not become a swan overnight, it appears. Damnit.

Not that any of these realizations make it any easier to stay in bed, but there's a comfort to me in unpeeling my anxieties, seeing what's behind them, dissecting. It makes it easier to let go, to say, "Oh, that's all? I don't need that." Not that i've managed that level of zen, yet, but I'm working on it. Slow and steady.

Squid update, redux

Okay, so, the doctor called. And really, this blog is not all about babies/pregnancy/bed rest, but it is the easiest way to update everyone all at once, and people seem to want to know, so for a little while, it's just going to be this way, apparently. Apologies for typos and/or rambling; typing while lying down on my side is not easy!

He said that the amniotic fluid is really pretty low. With fluid this low it's likely that the placenta not working very well and the baby's kidney's are not profusing well. I asked if it was a kidney issue or a placental issue or both and he said the kidneys on the ultrasound look okay - we probably have a placental problem but the baby is growing well.

I told him I was hoping to make it to March, and he countered with hoping to make it to 36 weeks (February 14 -21), because "at some point the cord will be compromised."

He's serious about this bed rest stuff - I should be lying down as much as possible. Flat and on my side is preferred, and reclining in the recliner is okay but only if I kick it as far back as I comfortably can and angle myself a little. I think I should probably stop working after next week - just power through and get as much done as possible and then stop - because typing while lying down on my side is really not easy and so I've been doing more reclining and less lying down in order to get more done.

I asked if I should cancel the prenatal classes and he said yes. Good thing I read all those books, but it's still a little scary not having learned any breathing or anything - hopefully he won't be too busy with other patients and we'll get good nurses who can help me out during labor! I told him we had a baby shower thing for the 26th, and his response was "The odds of you being pregnant at that stage are pretty small," so I cancelled the houseshower/babywarming, and my dental appointment, and some meetings I'd been waiting to hear about. Guess we're having a baby soon...

This was all very surprising to me, as everything I had read and heard about low amniotic fluid and my situation had led me to believe that it was not going to be a big deal and wasn't a reason for induction in and of itself. But I trust this doctor, so I will do as he says. On the bright side, it means that my parents can probably be around for the birth. And we will get to meet young Ray soon! Holy shit, imminent parenthood.

Squidlet update

Week 34 and ticking...

Or rather, bonking about madly. I woke up at 5 this morning to a wild squidparty in the womb and instead of my usual amusement at all the kicking and roiling could not stop thinking about fish out of water, gasping and flopping about in the dry. At least he's active, and the heartbeat is strong, but I can't help but be concerned. Yesterday's appointment showed decreased amniotic fluid again (from a level of 4 or 5 when they put me in to the hospital last Wednesday, to 9.6 when they let me out Thursday, to 8.6 when they checked me yesterday morning - they'd like to see something more like 12 or 13, and no, I have no idea what these numbers mean either, outside of constituting a general range from in-the-hospital to just-fine) despite the fact that I have been drinking so much I practically slosh, so I continue to be on "modified bed rest." I have a whole list of questions in to the doctor to try and discern exactly what this entails, but it seems to involve a lot of actual lying down, which is not my forte. Sitting, yes. Lying down, not so much.

Part of the problem is that we left a lot of things to the last month and a half - with the holidays, and then Himself gone on business for all of January, February was really our window in which to go to prenatal classes, find childcare, and tie up a lot of loose ends. So now there are loose ends everywhere, and my work is expanding to fill the available (or unavailable) space, and I'm supposed to lie down a lot. We also aren't sure, with the noises about induction, when the squid will arrive - and we really don't have anything ready for him, as the babywarming party was/is scheduled for the end of February, and we haven't taken any classes (and now I don't know if I can, what with all the lying down I'm supposed to be doing) and my parents are now scheduled to be out of town visiting my brother for a week in early March, so they may miss the birth, and it's all really a bit more of a mess than I can gracefully cope with. Please note the modifier; I can cope with many a mess, but whatever grace I had on this one is dwindling.

I wake up each morning and look in the mirror and my belly says to me, "In a mere few weeks your life will change forever." I don't know about you, but that's a hard thing for me to hear before coffee. I had just about gotten used to being pregnant, but that was still really just me - great-bellied and tired, but me. Now my reflection tells me: "In just a little while, you will no longer be the most important person in your own life." I knew this - I've had eight months to get used to the idea - but it's still terrifying in its imminence. "No!" I want to say. "Wait! I'm not ready!" I woke up this morning feeling fussy and anxious and whiny, and read a book for a few hours before getting up, until I felt ready to face the world. What will I do when there is someone more fussy and anxious and whiny than I to take care of?

Hold me, I'm scared.