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Soap Box Interlude
So I have health insurance but little faith in the insurance business. I understand that it is in each company's interest to keep me as worried as possible about my health, so I'll always be insured (and really God forbid anything bad happen if one is not a card carrying member of some HMO or other), while also wanting me to be as healthy as possible so I won't file any claims, thus making my premiums all profit.
Two remarkably ugly articles about the insurance business in the United States have appeared in the last week or so. Malcolm Gladwell had one in the New Yorker's August 29 edition called "The Moral Hazard Myth." What it says is incredibly infuriating, yet hardly surprising, a combination of qualities that is really all too familiar, given the way businesses and the government tend to conduct themselves.
Gladwell's piece makes a bid for national health insurance and in so doing he makes some interesting points about why our current insurance mess exists. It is a matter, he says, of pervasive economic theory as much as it is one of politics and corporations. The idea is that if health care were free (or even affordable), then people would take wild advantage of the benefits the same way that people in an office will drink more soda if free cans of the stuff are sitting around waiting to be gulped down. Applying this kind of thinking to something like health care is so strange that it seems, well, stupid. This thinking has been completely absorbed by the minds of policymakers, though, so it may be an eternity before the idea that everyone needs health insurance, not just so-called "affordable" health insurance catches on. The article will make you angry.
An unpleasant corollary can be found in "Pricey Therapy," a piece Whitney Morrill wrote for Slate about her experiences with trying to sign up with a new insurance company after she had gone to a single session with a psychiatrist to discuss the possibility that she might have post-partum depression. Her odyssey of wildly inflated premiums and appeals is truly miserable, and her conclusion is not triumphant.
From my third trimester on, I was constantly given information about post-partum depression. When I left the hospital, I had all kinds of pamphlets about signs of depression, exhorting me to seek help if I should see them. When Felix's birth certificate arrived, I was amused to see that it came with more pamphlets about the signs of post-partum depression and cautions not to shake the baby. The news has been so full of stories about PPD, celebrity opinions about PPD, testimonials about it, and public service announcements, that it seems like something people should take care of. Insurance companies, apparently, feel otherwise. They see PPD as some kind of horrible liability, not a treatable disease so much as a sign that you are going to be seriously expensive for them and thus, not a good customer. What a crappy bind this puts women in. PPD is horrible, but being afraid to seek treatment or deciding to get help off-the-record by paying cash and such is a luxury not everyone can afford.
I won't paraphrase these pieces further, but I do hope that more people read them and feel outrage and keep the problem of health insurance in mind at election time.
posted by Elise at 12:08 PM
3 Comments
I Want to be Evil
Children, they say, are sort of like people. One shouldn't be surprised when they act accordingly. And yet...
Let me start again. I was never sanguine about having children or being a mother and had been perhaps a bit too zealous about cultivating a lot of fears, over which I still stumble regularly (consider the CPR Night of Terror).
Among my worries: what if my kid thinks I am rotten?
This fret only sounds ridiculous. It's happened before- not with Felix, but I was quite shaken when I realized how deeply one friend's child dislikes me. It is so easy to recall this moment of realization. We were all at a restaurant and suddenly, my soup turned cold, shivering under the icy gaze of this kid who wished me dead, a little bit, at least.
This was probably my fault, since I know I expressed not entirely gentle impatience with the kid once, but it's astonishing how easy it was to suddenly be beyond redemption. In an effort to combat the kid's distaste, I tried to be appealing and cool, bountiful and accessible, but eventually I gave up and now my position on the outs has calcified and become quite solid.
Of course this was to be expected. No one likes being told what to do or disciplined. Of course this whole event makes me cringe. It is true the child was driving me crazy, but what are the rules about when one can say something to someone else's child about being quiet or not being rude or at least not being hostile? Can one say something or should one simply sit and hope that the kid's mother notices the unpleasantness and calls her child to order?
I would have been spared considerable discomfort if I had kept my mouth shut. I am not overly fond of being hated. I do have to say, though, that I hope my friends feel comfortable offering gentle correctives to Felix. I want him to feel comfortable and not threatened by the world and it seems to me that if people show him that his bad behavior effects them, perhaps he will learn better how to conduct himself in public.
Now, when my friend's kid and I encounter one another, I try to imagine myself as a classic villain, Cruella de Ville without the fashion sense. If I can wallow in the glamour of being disliked by one child, perhaps it will inoculate me a little against Felix's inevitable rage and door slamming when I do have to correct him. It will happen, I just have to try to keep in mind that villainesses have a certain allure. Consider Catwoman. For that matter, consider one of Eartha Kitt's signature songs. The lyrics say it all. I hope I can keep them in mind when the time comes.
posted by Elise at 3:31 PM
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Stay Away from the Xiphoid
So you would think that attending an evening-long infant and child CPR and safety class would be a responsible and comforting thing to do, the kind of thing that would make one feel wise and, I don't know, adult-esque.
I've just come back from one of these sessions and what I am, now, is frightened. Suddenly, the prospect of my kid choking on something or having his heart stop for reasons I can't imagine or encountering somehow a flaccid latex balloon (which is, apparently, among the worst things a child can swallow) feels almost imminent. I hadn't given these things too much thought before and now they are monsters in my mind.
The teacher confessed that she herself, way back when her child was little, could not look in the CPR and Safety manuals because even the clip art drawings gave her an anxiety attack. She tried to soothe this tendency in her (small but cranky) class by saying that the only chance of remaining calm in a terrible situation is to have the feeling that you know- or at least knew once- what to do. She even had for sale ($40) a kind of electronic crib sheet that looked like a remote control, except when you pushed the buttons a man's deep voice blared: "Remain calm!" and then prompted you to check airways and start rescue breaths or chest compressions. No one bought one.
I am someone who has always done well in a pinch, who thinks about horror and disease rather casually, who has always loved scary movies, who has never backed down from a story no matter how gross others might find it. My friends have always known that if they ever need an audience for any tale of birth or injury or illness or ick, I am their girl. Now, I admit, Felix has altered me a bit. It has been hard this week to see the headlines of the New York Daily News that have dealt with a baby nurse who shook her charges causing untold damage, but I thought I was just a little soft. I would never have thought that merely attending this CPR class would make me feel like cringing or fleeing. I didn't do either, of course. I sat tight, practiced resuscitating a little dummy infant in various ways, learned that it is important to avoid doing chest compressions on the xiphoid (the little tag of bone at the end of the sternum), heard about car seat and household safety and now I just feel worried, as if a whole yellow brick road of worry has just opened up at my feet.
And there are little pitfalls all over the place. There is a whole list of scary foods (not to mention household items like coins and chalk). Certainly fat whole grapes are dangerous, but who would have thought that raisins would be completely unacceptable until a child is 3 or that kids shouldn't get popcorn or peanut butter until they are 4? The key, by the way, to food acceptability is that it should always be something that easily breaks down in the mouth. No Red Hot Fireballs for Felix, all the more for me.
I am glad I sat there this evening, though I can't say I feel wildly capable. Mostly I think if the instructor came over and saw my house she would have a fit of apoplexy. Perhaps if I take her advice and practice on one of Felix's stuffed animals from time to time, and cleaned up a little I'll be more in command of things. But I have to say that these classes encourage one of two things: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or despair. I wish I had the energy for OCD because I hate having to worry that I’m not smart enough to see around every corner, and I really don't think I'll be able to bring myself to ask all of Felix's friend's parents if they know the Heimlich maneuver. I do want him to have friends.
On a more personal note, I suspect I am especially sensitive to the impossibility of keeping a child eternally safe tonight because just this afternoon I learned of the death of the daughter of some friends of my family. She was close to my age and pregnant and just hearing this horrible news makes me ache for her parents who are good people for whom there can be no consolation. My thoughts are with them and I am so very sorry.
posted by Elise at 8:36 PM
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New World, Not Necessarily Brave
August is the month for conjuring, I think. Every time I mention an issue in passing, it pops up in the newspaper. Every time I think of someone I haven't heard from in a long time, he or she suddenly phones or writes, often with big news (a wedding even- congratulations JC & LS).
Last week I snuck out for a drink with a friend and neighbor who is in the process of adopting a child, and we started talking about what she believes is going to become a big issue in the next decade: children discovering that their parents are not biologically their relatives.
She was referring to people who conceive children through IVF with donated eggs and / or sperm and who decide never to tell their kids about their origins. This impulse, she suggested, seems similar to the now extremely outdated "recommendation" that people not tell adopted children that they were adopted (people are now, by the way, strongly encouraged to talk to children about their biological origins).
That evening, I picked up the mail and flipped through the hefty September issue of Elle magazine that had just arrived, and lo, on page 430 (a plump issue, indeed) was the article "Whose Life Is It, Anyway?" by Nancy Hass. The piece discusses at length whether people (and when I say "people" the magazine usually says "women") should tell their children that they were the product of IVF and donated eggs and / or sperm (again, the article tends to emphasize the donated eggs in question), and tries to explore the psychology of why both men and women would resist revealing the truth.
All of these questions come back, in some sense to women feeling the need to defend themselves as mothers, and in mounting this defense, they may unintentionally hurt the ones they love most. I didn't have IVF or use any donated anything, so it is not really mine to suppose how I would feel were I in that position, but I am struck by how so many facets of this problem are products of shame.
It is astounding to me how easily problems with fertility- and pregnancy generally- mutate into body shame, how there seems always to be a moralizing narrative attached to the difficulty no matter how ludicrous it is to imagine one. It doesn't help to assign fault to infertility, yet people- if not the women themselves, often their families and friends- want to uncover a story with a moral. The awful truth is that often badness simply is, for no good reason at all.
And then there is another kind of shame. So many people keep the fact that they used donated eggs or sperm secret, which is of course their prerogative, but the quietness makes the choice seem lonely and peculiar. Without easy language or models to refer to, the issue makes people defensive and unhappily, this reaction can had negative repercussions, emotionally if not physically on their children.
I'm pointing out this article not because I have any insight or authority, but because I hope that bringing attention to these questions will make them less threatening and that perhaps some clarity will make people feel like the good and careful parents they are, not people living with an invisible secret shame that puts everything happy in jeopardy.
posted by Elise at 11:10 AM
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Is It Possible?
I write these words with some surprise, but I find today that I concur with something Ayelet Waldman wrote for Salon. Usually I find she is either manufacturing an issue or generating a lot hyperbole so as to create a mountain out of a rather small matter.
Today, Waldman writes about how parenting leaves people prone to scolding... other parents. She mentions people who attachment parent as being particularly zealous about making other people aware that letting children cry is tantamount to tickling them with a cattle prod, or that certain kinds of breast feeding enthusiasts chide and hector strangers they suspect might not be breast feeding (there is a term for these folks, floated in the Northeast, at least: "uberboober"). Of course the list of things parents can feel superior about is endless: cloth diapers, organic food, television, child care, cosleeping, progressive education, travel, antibacterials, irony, music, clothes, pets...
In general, these folks haven't come my way (with the exception of some people objecting to the way I went about having Felix) though I know my time will come. My formula to ward off unwanted comment is to volunteer little and express mild interest when given suggestions, and I always keep a new topic of conversation at the ready. Having said that, I know there is a boiling point easily reached in me. A woman at a rest stop near Woodstock, New York once tried to tell me that I was awful for having a purebred dog, and I'm afraid she got quite a lecture that began with my dog not being any of her business and ended with a list of ways in which I've donated time and money to animal rescue. I didn't need to explain anything, of course, but here's hoping she'll keep her mouth shut at future rest stops, if only out of fear of getting a lecture.
I've always thought that folks who are overly aggressive about birth- and I got it coming and going from people who thought that I was inferior for not having a natural delivery and from others who thought I was endangering my life and Felix's by not having a scheduled induction- feel this way because labor and delivery is something of a near-death experience.
Once the kid is in the world, though, all bets should be off. Of course each step feels like a doozy, everything is unknown, but I'm not convinced anyone really knows better than I do what is best for Felix.
So Waldman makes a point, but I wonder why she doesn't go further with it. Why do people feel the need to comment and scold and interfere with other parents? Would they ordinarily mind their own business? Can I blame this tendency on the Patriot Act that seems to encourage us to be suspicious of any behavior that we don't condone ourselves? If only I could.
I don't have a serene disposition really, and neither does my father, but increasingly, I believe in the "Eleventh Commandment" that he used to invoke when I was a kid (especially during middle school). The Eleventh Commandment is: Mind your own business.
posted by Elise at 10:33 AM
2 Comments
Purity
So I'm now at full crank, having bypassed cranky some time ago.
The door to the world of "solid" food (what some would call "real" food) has been opened for Felix, and there was much rejoicing by various family members who have been longing for this moment. I wonder, a bit, if their pleasure would have been the same if they had been party to the scene I call Carrot Everywhere, but maybe I underestimate them.
The terrier, really, could not have been happier.
But, as I really should know by now, with realsolid food comes a bucket of issues that curdle my humor.
First there are the protocols.
-Start with rice cereal. If you don't start with rice cereal, you risk all.
-Only offer one color vegetable at a time. No fruit.
-NO! They can have fruit. Who says they can't?
-Fruit is fine but no banana.
-The BABY KNOWS WHAT'S BEST (oh?) If the kid grabs at something you're eating, that's what it should get.
-But only if it is organic.
Organic became something of a stumbling block for me. I found myself panting, unable to keep up organically. Somehow the little jars of organic baby food I was so proud I remembered to buy were not good enough. I kept reading that only home-milled baby food was nutritious enough and that I should not be fooled by the so-called "organic" organic baby food in jars because somehow its convenience and ready-made-ness is a sign that it is not good enough. Homemade is the only true organic.
(Of course I read all of this while consuming enormous quantities of Twizlers (the black ones), which rather puts the lie to my organic intentions. Maybe this will give Felix a taste for Pernod.)
People love the book Super Baby Food. Super Baby Food apparently solves all your problems by telling you how to make all your baby food easily, how to store it, how to administer it and how to do it safely and responsibly. I'm sure its great but I'm reluctant to crack those pages. The true Super Baby Food zealots I've encountered (not my friend, M, who dabbles in it) remind me of the people who became obsessed with the Bradley birthing class. To take a different path suggests a violation of everything that is decent in the world. I have a friend who I suspect still thinks Felix is not sufficiently bonded to me because he was induced.
Why can't there be a rhetorical middle ground? Realistically most people don't maintain the perfect schedules set out in books and courses, so why does everything have to come with threats of disaster, lack of bonding, allergies, indigestion, hatred and guilt?
I'm going to have to opt for semi-ignorance, tread lightly, and grope along with help from the pediatrician, because adding a new set of rules I can screw up is not part of the summer game plan.
The word for the day is avocado (organic, of course).
posted by Elise at 2:45 PM
2 Comments
But It Works
As I've mentioned, neither Felix nor I has any talent for breastfeeding in public. But recently, a friend whose dainty baby eats out all the time without humiliating her mother turned me on to something that has actually helped me deal with this stumbling block of mine. While I'll never be able to feed Felix with great elegance and panache, at least I won't be red-faced and threatening to give unsuspecting pedestrians an unfortunate show.
There are no doubt innumerable breast feeding covers out there, but the one I was introduced to is the- please bear with me- Bebe au lait. I appreciate the difficulty of coming up with baby product names. It is hard to convey a delicate purpose without sounding clinical or nauseatingly cute, and I have to give the Bebe au lait people credit for knowing when they started down a dark path. This device, you see, was originally called the Hooter Hider. Frankly, any product that refers to breasts as "hooters" really can't be interested in minimizing them, or the attentions paid them. While Bebe au lait isn't a particularly descriptive moniker, at least one doesn't cringe while saying it.
Anyway, this thing is apron-esque, one just flips the neck strap over one's head, drapes the fabric over the kid and lets the baby have at it. The device has a sort of underwire devise at the top so one can look down at the nursing child and make sure nothing untoward is happening. It even has a hidden burp cloth for those of us who always run out without one.
I get a lot of use out of this thing. Just last night Felix wiggled beneath it while letting me consume my own spicy Sichuan dinner. Somehow, in his flailings, he managed to anoint himself with spicy sauces and give me something of the aspect of John Hurt in his final scene from Alien, but I'd rather the threatened horrorshow than the actual peep show.
posted by Elise at 10:38 AM
1 Comments
A R8se By Any Other Name
In the course of things, I met some people on the street whose tiny daughter was only a handful of weeks old (so delicate, she actually had wrists, which I realize now is a rare thing in the under six month set). Introductions were made and they said they had a particularly hard time selecting a name for their child. I told them they were in good company. When Felix was about two weeks old, we ran into a couple who were wandering the streets with their very fresh child, completely at a loss for what to call him. ("Oh," said the husband, "Honey, they named their baby Felix. That's a good name, don't you think?" His wife smiled but was clearly shell-shocked. I haven't run into them since.)
Anyway, the couple with the daughter had, in the end, selected a blazingly popular name, a moniker that has owned real estate on the New York City and the United States social security lists for some time. They opted, however, to use an alternative spelling. The spelling was not only unorthodox, it was impossible to remember, and it took them several tries before they managed to eek it out, proving yet again that there is a fine line between creative and preposterous.
I always thought the whole spelling frenzy- The Kaitlin Syndrome, if you will- was a recent phenomenon, although, given how many ways people have written my name over the years (Ilyse, Elyse, Alyse, Allysse, Alease, Ilise. . .), I shouldn't be surprised.
In fact, the Katilin Syndrome reaches back many years, at least into the mid 1930's when P.G. Wodehouse started cranking out his Jeeves and Wooster tales. I've been reading a lot of them this summer (inspired by watching the British television series that features Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie), and nearly dropped my volume of collected stories when I saw this exchange between the feckless Bertie Wooster and his favorite Aunt.
"`Yes, Aunt Dahlia,' I said, `you have guessed my secret. I do indeed love.'
`Who is she?'
`A Miss Pendlebury. Christian name, Gwladys. She spells it with a "w".'
`With a "g", you mean.'
`With a "w" AND a `"g".'
`Not Gwladys?'
`That's it.'
The relative uttered a yowl.
`You sit there and tell me you haven't enough sense to steer clear of a girl who calls herself Gwladys? Listen Bertie,' said Aunt Dahlia earnestly, `I'm an older woman than you are- well, you know what I mean – and I can tell you a thing or two. And one of them is that no good can come of association with anything labeled Gwladys or Ysobel or Ethyl or Mabelle or Kathryn. But particularly Gwladys."
It is as if normal spellings leave people feeling uneasy, as if they were blank walls that cry out for decoration. A few extra "Y's", a little flourish with an "N" here or there and suddenly you have something that looks like one of Louis XIV's craftsmen had had his way with it. Perhaps the urge to redesign really says something about the zeitgeist. People want to appear original and creative, but secure and responsible. So they pick names that sound familiar and produce a good first impression and then go nuts on the spelling.
For my money, this is lazy and peculiar. There is no shame in the popular name, and the confusion of always having another kid in the class with the same moniker is no greater than the fact that no one will ever instinctively get the "novelty' spelling correct. If originality is that important, grab one of those books, fire up the Name Wizard, and stay away from those Top Ten Lists.
People have told me that they like the name Felix and contemplated it for their own sons, but opted out.
It was the "X" that scared them off.
posted by Elise at 3:46 PM
2 Comments
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