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Bedside Reading
In the roundabout of pregnancy, most women I know inherited a lot of maternity clothes. I got books. My upstairs neighbor gleefully dropped off a stack of texts including not one but two naming books (which I'm strangely finding more fascinating now that the kid has a name) and my close friend G. seemed quite eager to clear out her shelves, presenting me with an arsenal of volumes, slim and otherwise, on such topics as self-soothing and (jumping the gun a little) What to Expect...the Toddler Years.
Now that I have my little library I largely ignore it, except in dark hours when I'm desperate for a solution to the sleep paradox, at which times I squint at these texts hoping for simple answers, written in gentle matter-of-fact tones that haven't occurred to me. This research method is indirectly useful. While flipping around for the quick answer, I'll encounter some other issue I never knew was even brewing, and the existential funk it encourages eclipses everything else. Such is my 4 AM mind.
Fortunately, I'm not alone. My husband must have turned the wrong page one night because he staggered in growling: "Well, we've clearly broken the kid. We don't even have a copy of Goodnight Moon and the book says we should have read it to Felix at least 57 times by now." I don't know why the recommendation of what is "best" for the infant is invariably something that is completely enervating for the parent, but since Felix hasn't let me in on his preferences, beyond an interest in the marvelous finger puppet text Little Duck, he often gets an excerpt of whatever it is I'm reading. Someone would surely say this is an unfortunate practice because it doesn't sufficiently rely on repetition and familiarity to be edifying for an infant, but if I can see one thing in my future it is the endless rereading of stories on request, and while Felix is still pre-verbal, and I suspect pre-caring, he's going to have to endure.
Most recently, I'm entertaining him with the goings-on in Georgian England as described in Princesses: the Six Daughters of George III. I'm not halfway through (the King has only just survived his first serious bout of insanity), but if you're ever curious about the possible downsides to the princess lifestyle, look no further. The King and Queen were more attentive than most royal parents (even though they had 15 children, only two of whom died in early childhood) but they still managed to, uh, royally screw things up for their kids. Tales of nanny-poaching and discipline conflicts that we hear about today as being the product of yuppie culture are entirely familiar in 18th century England. The long list of children and their strangely stunted lives can't help but bring to mind all kinds of modern parenting issues: mother/daughter rivalries, favoritism, smothering vs. indifference, discipline styles, allowance... etc.
I feel very sorry for the princesses, whose happiness was frequently thwarted by a combination of excessive restrictions and neglect by their parents. Their father held them too close and then lost his mind and their mother couldn't bring herself to shepherd them once her husband was lost to her. (Some were never able to marry; one was rumored to have an incestuous thing with one of her brothers and did have an illegitimate child, surely by someone else; almost all of them wound up rechanneling their considerable energies into various "womanly arts:" landscape gardening, embroidery, illustration, paper cutting, letter writing, fashion.) At the same time, I really pity Queen Charlotte. Married at 17, she began producing children immediately (all natural births, but no breastfeeding). She was ardently attached to her family but utterly collapsed when her husband's porphyria rendered him mad. A shy woman, in a country not her own, afraid of the government her title represented, she retreated and never really emerged again. Her daughters needed a champion and she wasn't up to the task.
I don't generally read histories for the object lessons, I'm just an 18th and 19th century enthusiast, but I am surprised at how strongly I've been reacting to the story of the princesses. What Felix hears of it is all gobbledygook to him right now, but perhaps he can get something out of it- a mother who can adequately guide him, I hope. In the meantime, I'll consider regaling him with Goodnight Moon, or at least the book I'm imagining is the sequel to Little Duck.
posted by Elise at 7:40 PM
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Candid Camera
When our dinner companion walked my husband and me home, I figured he was enjoying the damp air and chill of early spring. When he invited himself upstairs, I guessed he wanted to continue regaling us with stories of his unusual travel interests (he prefers staying at home, but if pressed will visit places he feels are most like the United States; unaccountably, Sweden is one of these hotspots). Once inside, his unfortunate agenda was revealed. We were forced to watch this fellow's home movies of his young child doing the things that young children will do: crawl, laugh, take a step, look drunk.
The videos lasted an eternity, and while standing there, struggling to compose my smile, I had a real urge to tuck Felix under my arm and hop out the window. I'm only on the second floor; I could easily limp to a bar and fortify myself until the coast was clear. It was raining, though.
What is it about classic demonstrations of parental adoration that brings such a reptilian chill to my heart? (And here I am thinking of my reaction to extended home movies, incessant bragging about the precociousness of children born to mothers who didn't have epidurals, competitive comparisons of developmental milestones, long stories without punchlines about the baby's daily routine, and detailed discussions with people who are not close friends, relatives or medical professionals about excrement.) These are all quotidian obsessions, universal points of pride. The absolute, unquestionable joy I feel when my child smiles for me is, I'm sure, felt by most parents with their own children, and I would never begrudge anyone (not even my husband) the pleasure of documenting his or her baby. But I find watching the home videos of strangers' kids is like watching bad sex scenes: they're embarrassing and stultifying.*
There is also something uncomfortable about the short-cut to intimacy that comes from being presented with so much information at once. Not only was I a captive audience member watching this fellow's child walking (at normal speed and in slow motion), the video also gave him a point of entry to talk about the merits of fatherhood, his home decorating skills, his bold plans for the designs his future houses. Conversation ceased to exist. The evening turned into a one-man show, with visual aids, punctuated with the occasional "That's great," or "He's so cute" from the supporting players.
Where does this urge to show everything, present everything come from? In many, it seems to be born along with the child, though I have to say, I don't have these tendencies. I actually have the opposite problem of being completely tongue-tied when people ask me about my son and am beginning to dread my stumbling stock answer: "He's doing well. He's big." How is it that absolutely nothing interesting about him comes to mind when I can spend pre-dawn hours finding him utterly amusing?
Felix catapulted me forward into a new kind of life where there are lots of new people and new kinds of communication. There is no question in my mind that my dinner companion would have restrained himself from showing his home movies if my husband and I did not have a baby ourselves. I know that things are different, but in many ways I am not. I am still the same girl I was a year ago, before Felix was a hint of a glint in anyone's eye. I would love to be comfortable and entertained by the monologues of strangers about their children. It would be good if I could be extremely invested in the parenting theories and techniques of others. I would certainly be more relaxed if I didn't get twinges of anger and impatience when faced with relentless bragging about children I don't know. But I am afraid that if I do come to embrace these things, I will have become something I hate. Is there a middle ground where I can appreciate without capitulating? If there is a way to be myself and not-myself at the same time, I would love to be able to manage that because I do want to be part of a community, and I want my son to feel comfortable in the world, but I can't bear to watch endless home movies.
posted by Elise at 4:29 PM
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Intellego, Intellegis, Intellegit
It was sometime in the late autumn of 2001 that the news became a swamp of paranoid advice that only served to make a freaked-out populace more shaky. Do you remember those completely un-comforting recommendations to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape? I certainly do, and not because my closet is littered with those anti-terrorist talismans. For me, the plastic and duct tape advice recalls an instance of spectacular rudeness.
One day, in the wake of the suggestion that left hardware stores barren, I collided with a woman I know vaguely who asked if I had laid in supplies. I confessed that I thought this all amounted to some kind of snow job courtesy of the government. Her reply: "Oh, well, you don't have children. You wouldn't understand."
Oh, but I did. The insult may have only been a flesh wound, but I was still annoyed. So I said: "But I have a dog."
The idea that being childless dooms someone to dimwittedness and insensitivity is so offensive, and now that I have a child I can't understand what about my experience is so unknowable. Obvious things- my new obligations, my inability to consume more than a glass and a half of wine without falling into my dinner, the pleasure and pain I get from my son- should be comprehensible to any halfwit. And if someone doesn't "get" it, I suspect this lack of understanding comes from the person not having something much more fundamental than a child. As for the shadier, more subtle aspects of my experience, I'm just as pleased that they aren't on display for the world. I'll impart them when I please.
On the subject of my dog, there are perhaps plenty of voices crying out that while my acquaintance may have been condescending, I was just plain horrible, equating my dog with her children. I don't think so. I really do reject the whole question of Hierarchies of Love (and ranted about it on 3/27/2005 "Who Do You Love?"). From the moment I was noticeably knocked-up, my misguided superintendent always greeted my dog with a sorry shake of the head and: "It's only a matter of time before you become Number 2." Again, I had to be unpleasant and say, as sweetly as gritted teeth permit: "You don't know me very well." I know that dogs and kids are not the same thing at all, but really, each demands love and responsibility and I resent being told that I don't have the capacity to provide for all the creatures in my charge or that my dependence on my dog is merely immature sentiment that should wane now that I have a child. I know myself. I'm not going to change, and I certainly don't need anyone implying I haven't sufficiently internalized the lessons of "Puff the Magic Dragon."
I wonder about the haughtiness of so many modern parents, who suddenly act so entitled, so ineffably worthy because they have children, as if their lives were somehow worth more than those who don't. I keep hearing about conversations in which parents literally say their lives are more valuable than those of the childless- as if we all had to prove our worth or risk being recycled for not being valuable enough. It's as if we were all living in some parent-centric version of Logan's Run, where procreation, not youth, gives one permission to live
It's appalling, in the same way that it is awful that people who have kids are somehow deemed incapable. Throughout my pregnancy, I had twinges every time I heard about how impossible it is to be creative when one has a child, because there is no way to clear out mental and temporal space. I found relief from the dread that I would never be productive again in Jane Austen's correspondence (so charming, so informative, so savage).
It can't be argued that Austen was unproductive, and while she did not have children, her life was more chock-a-block with obligations, dependants and responsibilities than any parent I've ever met. And if she could write her novels while constantly moving her household, taking care of her relatives and friends, maintaining her family's budget, corresponding widely, and complaining about her hectic social schedule ("Another stupid party last night; perhaps if larger they might be less intolerable,") there is hope for me in the modern world with Felix.
I'd love to declare a moratorium on superiority. Those without children should stop assuming that people with kids can't do anything beyond the minimum, and parents should refrain from suggesting that the childless have it so very easy. In short, and this goes for parents and kid-less alike: neither assume you know someone else's experience, nor imagine you're entirely alone in yours.
posted by Elise at 8:47 AM
4 Comments
No Rest for the Wicked
It's springtime and everyone is measuring everything from hemlines to waistlines to pollen counts to how many hours the baby will sleep. While walking my (shamefully) lively terrier this morning, I tried to count the hours I had slept and figure if I really had any right to be so bleary. By my loopy calculations I should have been feeling reasonably reasonable.
But then I ran into my neighbor whose daughter is a few weeks younger than my kid, and I had to stop deceiving myself. She looked great, terrifically chipper, and didn't seem to have any difficulty focusing her eyes, (I had forgotten to put on my glasses). We did the usual early-morning-how's-your-baby, and how's-YOUR-baby roundelay and it was then she revealed that her tiny child is Sleeping Through the Night. She's actually doing better than that. What doctors call "sleeping through the night" is a puny five-hour stretch. The baby down the hall can happily check out for ten hours.
In her defense, my neighbor confessed this with some embarrassment. There are some invisible points of new-parent etiquette, I’m learning. Bragging about your kid's ability to sleep is not quite as irritating as calling him or her a genius, unless you happen to be talking to someone who hasn't spent five consecutive hours unconscious since her second trimester. (I'll venture out on a limb here and say that it is bad form to gloat as a general matter, whether or not one has a kid.) Still, I practically drooled at the thought of ten hours of sleep and this made me an instant object of pity. My neighbor very kindly suggested I talk to her baby nurse, who has the singular talent of figuring out how to get babies on schedules. I am grateful for her generosity, willing to admit defeat- my missing short-term memory makes that all too obvious anyway- but I hesitate to knock on her door.
What gives me pause is that, while I don't subscribe to any particular theory of childrearing, I'm a contrarian. If I seek out the baby nurse's help, what will happen if I don't like her suggestions? Will I wind up in the uncomfortable position of having to account for my truancy while feeling silly for not having given her plan a shot? (My social awkwardness extends beyond my neighbor. Have you met many baby nurses? They are remarkable people, but I am wildly intimidated by their easy answers and extreme competence- and at the same time, I can't help but disagree with them.)
The sleep problem brings up the worst of a parent's insecurities. Everything you do is questionable. If one is an Attachment Parent (which, for the record, I am not) one has taken this route because of powerful beliefs that many people find strange and problematic. If one chooses to let one's children Cry it Out, one feels hideous for letting the baby cry in the first place and has to face criticism that one is cruel from the outside. Sleep is so fundamental and without it we are so irrational, it can't help but inspire extreme attitudes and extreme ideas. No one appreciates that slimy vague feeling of being jet-lagged, and I find my most hysterical paranoid mind-spins happen during the pre-dawn hours when Felix is eating or fussing and I'm thinking darkly about my career or the Ebola outbreak in Angola. Sometimes I have lacerating arguments in my mind with people who have annoyed me through the ages, and the other night I started making lists of all the different services that are available 24 hours a day in New York City. (I comfort myself with the thought that when I am up with Felix at three or four in the morning, pastry chefs and donut bakers in every borough are also awake, turning out delicious creations.) Sleep is an element that occurs so naturally, it is hard to imagine it is anything that needs to be taught.
Ah but it is, and every single book about babies has a primer on how you can educate your infant in the gentle art of snoozing. Everyone, in fact, has an opinion about this. A woman in a store I visited the other day watched Felix flail his thumb towards his mouth and said he was learning how to "self-soothe," a term that gets tossed around a lot when you're not sleeping. It doesn't look particularly soothing. It looks like he's doing an impression of the scene in Alien when the monster attaches itself to John Hurt's face. If he is figuring out how to calm himself, more power to him; a large portion of my acquaintance could use a refresher course.
I think I do need to encourage Felix to sleep and this means there will have to be a little more separation that I have previously allowed. This is an experiment, and I can always call a "do over" if it fails, but I do think exhaustion isn't pretty for anyone. Tomorrow I will move Felix's crib from my bedroom and into his room (a friend actually cautioned me that it is much easier to do this before he's too savvy about his surroundings). Perhaps with this slight distance between us, he and I can become reacquainted with sleep. I won't lie. I am frightened of this, but I tell myself that I won't be losing my son, I won't be out of his reach, and I certainly won't miss those ruminations on glazed crullers and hemorrhagic fever.
posted by Elise at 6:40 PM
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One Foot on the Soapbox
Elle magazine published an excerpt from Judith Warner's book Perfect Madness, which I skimmed in the last week of my pregnancy, all the time thinking that it was unfair that she was saying how much easier, happier, more relaxed it is for women to be mothers in France, so soon after the world began cooking up leek soup because French Women Don't Get Fat. (To be fair, I visited Paris in my second trimester and the French certainly love pregnant people. A waiter beamed at me as he piled my plate high with shaved truffles saying that they are "good for the baby." That was indeed blissful.)
Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety is the full title of Warner's book and it has taken me some time to read it in part because, with Felix around, I squash in reading at odd times, but also because it is a polemic and, as perhaps you can tell from my response to the leek soup mandate, I tend to argue with them. I did read the book, and I saw a lot of the arguments against it, but I have to say, in these early days of motherhood Perfect Madness moved me.
Since I don't have a serene disposition, I anticipated feeling anxious after having a baby. I didn't, however, realize how deep these currents of angst would run. The Vaccination Problem was shocking to me, in part because I was unable to soothe myself with common sense and reassuring information. Warner discusses this feeling: "What's really unique about maternal anxiety today is our belief that if something goes wrong with or for our children, it's a reflection on us as mothers. Because we believe we should be able to control life so perfectly that we can keep bad things from happening." It's like being on a kind of existential tightrope. If you keep your kid in the air, there's a chance he may be safe and happy, but there's no net.
I won't summarize the book, which some people object to because Warner mostly discusses the middle class (primarily the upper middle class). She realizes that many of the problems she talks about are laughable when it comes to the more immediate life-sustaining issues that the poor face. But one of the qualities about the (upper) middle class that makes it interesting to her is that this group both aspires and creates aspiration. The middle class always wants more, but it also shapes standards for taste and education and lifestyle that influence other classes and help generate this monster she calls The Mess.
The Mess is the enormous amount of guilt and obligation with which mothers find themselves saddled. They have trouble balancing work and home obligations, never feel they are doing enough to ensure their children's future success, get obsessed with planning perfect parties, getting kids into the best schools, and never feel ever that they are succeeding or doing anything but treading water. Warner elaborates: "It is a wall of inner noise that blocks out other thoughts, thoughts that are really much more challenging than the daily contests of perfection that we impose on ourselves, thoughts that lead places that we really don't want to go, toward problems that we really don't want to face. It blocks out problems that strike at the heart of our marriages, at our sense of ourselves as in-control women, and at our society's priorities and values."
I know a little about being overwhelmed and guilty now, and I dread feeling worse. When I quizzed a close friend with older children, who seems to handle being a parent with incredible grace and pleasure, she admitted to feeling anxious often and when I asked if she could just stop all the running in place she said: "Of course not. If you aren't on board with everything, your kids get left behind. That's the crazy part."
Is one of the things that makes some people reject the Perfect Madness polemic the fact that it suggests giving up a way of life by stopping the insane competition and struggle for perfection? True, it is an existence that doesn't reward, but then again, the obsessive compulsive doesn't continue washing her hands because of the pleasure. She does it because she is afraid that Something Horrible Will Happen if she doesn't maintain a routine, even if it is exhausting and unrewarding.
Warner believes all the extras that we keep chasing are distracting us from paying attention to the real problems that we stopped fighting for after the huge feminist breakthroughs of the 70's. Women worked hard to be able to choose what they wanted to do with their lives and their bodies, but now we feel we have to do everything perfectly, and our children's lives depend on it. Warner suggests that we would be best off dropping the "Mommy Mystique" and looking beyond ourselves, to society and our government to help change the circumstances that have brought us to this point. We need high quality, subsidized child-care, better public schools, affordable health care, vacation time- all sorts of things that have been squeezed out of our lives. We compensate for the feelings of hopelessness by trying to control what little we can, so we micromanage our kids and torment ourselves into exhaustion.
I write this now because I have a moment to consider it. Felix is happy as he is, and I'm OK with letting the dog drool on him and for now it is more than all right that I'm not bombarding him with flash cards and music classes. But it is possible these halcyon days will end and I'll look back on them and think I was a bad mother for not teaching him the ins and outs of Mandarin (which the inevitably annoying New York Magazine says is THE foreign language for kids these days because someday they will have to take part in the Global Economy). I wish I could become an advocate for future mothers. I wish Warner were more clear about how we could fight for relief. I hate the threat of guilt and the fear that I will not be good enough for my son if I am not a sufficient overachiever. If anyone has any ideas for social change, I'd love to hear them, because the Perfect Parent Bandwagon is one no one should aspire to get on.
posted by Elise at 11:02 AM
2 Comments
Noseybodies, Crackpots
Traipsing up Hudson Street recently, I was pleased to see that Antarctica, a rather lonely-looking watering hole, had its chalkboard out. This is always a welcome sight because the Antarctica blackboard always has an ever changing amusement written legibly on it- some funny quotation or little factoid that if it manages to get lodged in one's memory is singularly useful at dinner parties when one is seated beside a dull stranger.
Knowing the kind of delight I usually take from Antarctica's missives, imagine my displeasure when I discovered nothing lively at all. Instead there was a shrill message (with website and book recommendation) about the evils of childhood vaccination. How unwelcome.
Felix was up to start his course of immunizations and this was exactly the sort of message I did not need to see. Guilt and angst are old acquaintances of mine, but since I became a mother, they have become sharper and more insistent, largely, I assume, because I am now making choices for someone else. (If there is virtue in responsibility, why does it make one feel so awful so often?) I have done all kinds of vaccination research, talked to doctors and friends and read any information I could find. In spite of everything suggesting that contemporary immunizations are not hazardous, I am nervous.
And I’m not alone. If anything was proved by the last presidential election, it is that- regardless of how much calm, reasoned information there is available- people tremble before any unfounded suggestion that something unwanted might happen. It does not matter how much real, hard, practical information I have, the hysteria and fear that I could Make a Terrible Mistake lingers. Creatures sit on each of my shoulders. The monster on my right advises me to make the sensible, informed choice, while the one on the left shrilly warns to take no chance, to avoid anything that might cause a problem.
These wrestling monsters leave me vulnerable to crackpots and noseybodies. I'm not interested in criticizing anyone else's choices, and I'm shocked at how difficult it is to make a move without someone trying to shake my tree. It was easier to maintain a sense of humor when I was pregnant. The fact that my doctor said I could eat sushi was wonderful, and I admit that I didn't mind at all raising an eyebrow or two as I gobbled raw fish in my eighth month. That thrill is gone now that Felix is in the world.
What's truly marvelous about the issue of immunizations is the way it crystallizes every kind of new-parent paranoia. To get the shots is to participate in a dangerous government-run program that exists primarily to support pharmaceutical giants. Extremists suggest the inoculations cast the shadow of autism over one's previously unblemished child. Any and all badness is the result of this one foolish decision that a gullible parent makes with the encouragement of the corrupt medical establishment.
Of course, to deny one's child routine immunizations is to leave the kid open to contracting diseases the horrors of which we don't really know because these vaccinations work. Many of these diseases kill infants and young children. Many would say that it is playing a kind of microbial roulette with your child's life, since some of the diseases in question, like whooping cough, are still out in the world and still potent. It is hard for your kid to attend school or camp without countless waivers and complications. Pediatricians often won't work with children whose parents refuse inoculations. One friend of mine has gone so far as to say she would be reluctant to let her children play with unvaccinated kids.
In this, as in all things, people make the choices they need to make for reasons even they might not be able to comprehend. But what is so hugely troubling is that the stakes are so high with every decision that comes my way now that I am a mother. Everything from inoculations to attachment parenting is a do or die crapshoot where one is guided by noseybodies who feel that to vary from their parenting decisions makes you a criminal and crackpots who want you to know that their opinions, however oddball, are the ones you need to take to heart. No middle ground is ever safe. No deviation from whatever program is in favor can be permitted.
This is something I hate about being a mother. Why must there be a politics to every move I make with Felix? I understand that this is all just a matter of degrees, and that I've always had to deal with the political in the personal. (A friend who used to make a 90-minute trip just to use a "green" drycleaner was a terrible scold when she felt I was not being careful enough about the environment. She has noted, however, that cloth diapers were no help to anyone unless you dried them in the sun.) But one seems so close to having someone ring up child protective services these days. And one doubts oneself so much. There is a real awfulness to the fact that the things my mother did almost without thinking- she truly believes that childhood inoculations were the right thing for me- are now so fraught with threat. I'm interested in guilt. I have a lot to say about it, but right now I wonder why I feel so deeply that no choice can ever be quite right.
For the record, Felix got his shots.
posted by Elise at 8:07 PM
47 Comments
Myself With Udders*
New York City is teeming with subcultures, all of which seem to have their own peculiar economies and specialty stores that flourished long before the Internet made these things universally accessible. No interest is too small or too private and breastfeeding is an activity, an interest, a hobby, a lifestyle that is firmly embraced by the City's obsession with specialty shops.
I can't say I gave much thought to breastfeeding when I was pregnant. I assumed I would try (on bleak days I assumed I would try and fail), but I certainly didn't prepare myself in any way. "Just get yourself a nursing bra," a friend nagged about a week before I went to the hospital "You'll just look silly and feel terrible if you go without one." I had to obey - the only Voice of Reason I can successfully ignore is my mother's. When I got dressed to go home with my son, I knew I was less than bewitching, but at least I was prepared.
Alas, I was mistaken. The following day the milk came in and only then did I realize how far I had fallen from elegance. Nothing over the course of the pregnancy prepared me for this transformation. Even adolescence, when my breasts first announced that they could be a source of physical and emotional discomfort, didn't offer me a hint of how unnerved I would be. There is no handy metaphor to describe the sudden pain and growth that can happen overnight. I will merely say that catching sight of myself in the mirror was breathtaking, but not in the right way.
I didn't need a lactation consultant, but I did need help and I found it, again through a Voice of Reason of one of my sisters-in-law. She mentioned a store, saying: "You should go. It's useful, and it's an entertaining experience." The shop in question is a strange place with extremely limited hours (11 to 5 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, 1 to 5 on Thursday and Friday) called The Upper Breast Side.
Forgive yourself. I cringed too. This place is actually less a store than an activity center. It is indeed on the Upper WEST Side of Manhattan, and it is run by two women (a mother-daughter team) more enthusiastic about breastfeeding than anyone I have ever encountered. By this I don't mean that they are militant in the style of some La Leche League types. They just love breastfeeding. The older of the women (a grandmother) enjoys proving that, even though it's been many years since she had to, she still wears the nursing bras she sells. This is a little disconcerting.
The place itself is actually not a storefront at all. It is a ground-floor office space in an apartment building. Men are permitted in the outer room and while loitering there, my husband engaged the owner on the subject of breast pumps and lactation consultants. The store deals with a lot of distraught lactating women, believes firmly in the benefits of pumping, and is beyond skeptical of lactation consultants who suggest the pump is evil. One gets the feeling that it would be unwise to get on the wrong side of the Upper Breast Side. Beyond spouses, the front room is filled with breastfeeding books and videos, a couch for breastfeeding classes, breastfeeding-related jewelry, and desks where one makes purchases and where I presume client files are kept. My first task as a new customer was to fill out a questionnaire (which afforded me a wistful reference to my "normal" bra size) that I initially found rather intrusive.
But then, I'm not used to being handled by complete strangers, especially when my breasts are so compromised. Clearly, this discomfort was my fault because I waited until after I gave birth to visit the Upper Breast Side. The other shoppers in the back room were either repeat offenders or in their last weeks of pregnancy. It was far too late for me. I missed the opportunity to use these interesting little silicone disks called "Soothies" you can chill and put in your bra to soothe pained nipples, just as I missed learning how to avoid getting engorged, as I clearly was.
"Why did you buy a nursing bra a size too big?" was the first question posed, after I turned in my completed questionnaire. I had to admit that I ordered it online and guessed how large I was. Out came the tape measure and I stood corrected. In between scoldings, I was instructed in the proper use of breast pads. "Don't worry about anything, just pull that bra off and let the pads fall. I will CATCH THEM!"
She did indeed catch them, and followed up by having me try on a cascade of nursing bras and other things (including a shirt that ostensibly lets one nurse secretly in a crowd from a Swedish company called - wait for it - BOOB). The Voice of Reason, however giddy, was speaking to me again as she handed me undergarments and glasses of water. I left fully stocked, though I have to say, one doesn't leave swinging a bag of purchases feeling elegant as one might with the distinctive violet ones from Bergdorf Goodman or sexy as one does with a bag from Le Corset, or any of New York City's other pretty lingerie shops. The Upper Breast Side's bag with its swoopy purple logo make one feel rather as if one were wearing a sandwich board emblazoned with the word "Lactating."
Still, I'd rather be given away by my shopping bag than by my body, and dignity can always be found elsewhere. If you're in town, feeling game (or desperate) and have some free time during the limited business hours, swing by, and be glad your altered state gives you an entree to on of Manhattan's weird inner worlds.
*This title inspired by my father, with apologies to Carlos Fuentes.
posted by Elise at 8:03 PM
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Uncanny X-Man
Even before the recent turn of events that invigorated my rather lackluster interest in babies, I found infant eyes fascinating. First, there's the mystery of their color. So many of them start with that deep, slate space alien cast, only to turn into something quite different later on. But beyond that, their expressions are beyond describing.
When Felix started smiling in any way that I could trust, I truly started swooning for him. I try not to dare to believe that his smile and flashy eyes are for me, the result of any delight I can offer. Since I'm a sourpuss, I never believed in the power the infant's grin has over his mother. I was mistaken.
But that is my problem, as is this sense I have, this feeling I sometimes can't shake even though it goes beyond reason and common sense that my son is somehow savvy to the world. The way he gazes at me and the other people around him seems to suggest some knowledge beyond what he could gather in his mere eight weeks.
This isn't the case, of course, and I am reminded of a story that I heard (I believe I picked it up from the 1948 Humphrey Bogart picture Key Largo) that explains why we have the philtrum – that groove between your lips and nose. The rumor is that babies have all the wisdom of the universe, but just before they come into the world, an angel places its finger across the infant's lips, ensuring that the secrets of the world will be preserved. (An extremely casual exploration into the origins of this story reveals that it probably originates in the Talmud, in the Tractate Niddah. If anyone has any comments about the Commitment at Birth, I would welcome them. It is a hypnotizing notion.)
Between superstition and actual science, it is sometimes hard for me not to feel fragmentary regret for the talents Felix and all babies his age, have now (not to mention the rumor of lost wisdom) that they will lose before they can appreciate them.
Babies are born with a set of clever simian reflexes. They can grab things with great strength with their fingers and their toes.
They have an amazing ability to recognize sounds, which is why children are so clever at learning other languages. As we get older we lose the ability to "hear" sounds that aren't part of our linguistic experience, which is why, for example, it is so difficult for Westerners to learn Eastern dialects and speak with convincing accents as adults.
Watch an infant's face for a while and you can see it cycling through countless expressions. The baby is practicing for when it will really need to demonstrate joy or fear, amusement or skepticism. (There are, by the way, some fascinating discussions of facial expressions and the work of Paul Ekman in Malcolm Gladwell's new book Blink.)
If Felix could only hang on to these short short-lived abilities, he could be a semi-superhero, like one of the X-men - a person, but enhanced in strange ways - hearing languages the way they are meant to be heard, using his feet as extra hands, dissembling better than master-spies. Clearly these talents are meant to subside but for a moment my child is awash with possibilities that are terrifying and fantastic to watch. For my part, I hope I can observe and remember his time with them, so that they are not utterly lost.
posted by Elise at 8:33 AM
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