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What Would You Do?
The dryer is fixed, which is a relief after multiple misdiagnoses and all kinds of unpleasant scenarios in which we would drape wet laundry over convenient surfaces and point fans at it to encourage mildly faster drying. This latest fix appears successful (knock wood), though it required two visits and two dryer analysts to perform the cure.
One of the remedies they insisted upon when they came over the first time, two weeks ago, was that I replace the venting hose with a metal one. (Ours was some sort of plastic thing, which is apparently an enormous fire hazard- word to the wise... and rather frightening that we lived with that thing for years, oblivious to the danger.) Needless to say, accessing the hose required some contortions and in my current state, I'm not exactly in shape to slip and nip delicately behind appliances, so I asked if they could help a bit.
They balked, naturally. Why? Perhaps they're lazy or their union doesn't let them. Maybe their backs were bad or they were hungry. On my end, the dog was barking, the kid was looking to make some kind of trouble under the couch, and I felt ashamed for acting the weakling so I told them to leave, that I would deal with the hose and that they could return when they had the part that promised to definitively fix the dryer.
They hit the road pronto, and I made what would have been a spectacle of myself, had anyone been around to witness me, extracting the offensive vent hose.
Later, a friend scolded me about my spinelessness:
"Why didn't you ask these guys for their mother's phone numbers? Because I would like to know what they would have to say to their sons who wouldn't give a pregnant woman a hand with something that is pretty much their job anyway!"
It had occurred to me to be irritable, but not indignant.
And yet, as I have perhaps indicated already, I'm having a hard time accepting my body and its new, albeit temporary limitations. I'd rather make a fool of myself than accept help. It is preposterous that I've been down this road before and have yet to learn that there are easier ways to do things.
EDITED: In the words of the Lady of Shallot, "the curse is come upon me"-- the dryer has stopped working again. That's what one gets for thinking ill of the repairfolks.
posted by Elise at 4:42 AM
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It Never Gets Old...
One of the advantages of being pregnant in winter is that one can sort of disguise the enormous growth, although this does leave one somewhat prone to encounters in the supermarket like this one:
Dog-Owner Neighbor Who Must Have Been Away: Good grief! Are you pregnant again?
Me (trying to look sprightly, and not limp): Oh, yes, only a couple of months to go!
D-ON: When the Hell did that happen?
Me: Huh. I don't know. August maybe?
Checkout Lady: You're pretty small for only having a couple of months to go. You should see my sister. She can't walk or get off the couch or anything.
Me: Well, it's tiring.
CL: No, I mean it. She is stuck on the couch.
So, that wasn't so bad as that kind of chat goes. But then an encounter with a relative burst my bubble.
Relative: How big is your belly? Let me see!
Me (trying to sound chipper): Well, I am almost done. Only about 8 or 9 weeks to go.
R: That's a really long time and you're really big!
Me: (Stewing while smiling, husband braces for something bad)
Of course, there is really nothing to say to a pregnant person about how she looks or how big or small she is- especially one whose first kid was well over 9 pounds at birth. (I'm well aware of just how big one can get, and just how hard it is to breathe under those circumstances.) It's a losing proposition.
I'm sympathetic to all parties. Even if she looks great, there's a great chance that the average pregnant person going to feel that she's ungainly and funny looking no matter what at the end of the game, and if she has a toddler in hand as well, she's probably a bit more tired and frazzed-out than she was the first time around anyway.
But hey, my winter coat still zips, and the word is that some snow is coming, so I'll be able to look lumpy under a down covering for a little while longer. And I really don't have too many more months to go before having to start the ever looming, totally daunting body-restoration project.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
posted by Elise at 7:12 AM
2 Comments
NOT on a Lighter Note
There's no way to soft-soap it. There's been a lot of death for a lot of people this year. That's certainly true every year, but the last six months or so has been a little staggering for so many people I know.
And interestingly enough, I'm not alone in feeling this fragment of the zeitgeist. The movie version of a book I loved as a child has just come out (with a hideous preview) - Bridge to Terabithia.
Sadly, I don't recall the book so well, which suggests I should give it another read, but Emily Bazelon has a blunt but very moving piece in Slate about the book and the film and about trying to grasp death.
Somber for a Friday, I know, but I'd rather plug a wonderful book than indulge myself in describing my latest big worry: that I haven't been eating enough (non-mercury infested / non-endangered / politically acceptable / tasty) fish, thus threatening to render this latest kid I'm carrying less likely to be mental superpower.
This is the problem with reading the newspaper, of course.
posted by Elise at 9:13 AM
1 Comments
So I Am Supposed to Say Something...
One of the ways in which I tend to feel most remiss as a parent is that I am not so good at maintaining strict protocol that isn't of a kind of disciplinary policy. I'm not too consistent about schedule. I don't read to my kid at the same time every day. Our routines are pretty casual and I always always forget to do the daily repetition of things that supposedly forges learning. It is very difficult for me to remember the things I need to do in every other patch of life... especially in this moment when I am distracted by the fact that it is hard for me to reach behind and under things anymore. (It's terrifying how savagely quickly one's physique changes in the third trimester, and how inconvenient that is.)
The latest is that I am actually supposed to tell my kid about the baby (according to the pediatrician) and point out other babies and say that one is showing up and that sort of thing. I have remembered to do this about three times in two weeks. It's just so stilted - more stilted than conversations with toddlers are as a matter of course.
I thought I'd try the book route, but the only thing I managed to find that wasn't really hideously annoying was this one by Madeline L'Engle: The Other Dog. But it isn't really entirely to the point, even though it is good without being cloying.
On other fronts, my inclination to believe everything is a lie and an old wife's tale has just been blown out of the water. Apparently heartburn in pregnancy IS a (possible) sign that the baby will be hairy. (Though I should say the Felix wasn't unduly hirsute and I was popping Zantac and Tums as if I had stock in the company.)
posted by Elise at 7:52 AM
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Lunar New Year Cheers
Today is the Lunar New Year, so yesterday we went on an excursion to Columbus Park in Chinatown for the flower and plant market.
Felix selected this pig planter, replete with now mildly wilted flowers, which was for sale since this is, indeed the year of the pig (or boar) and since his sibling is due in the pig year, it seemed like a nice opportunity to mention the impending baby again to him (this is something I still do regularly, with little response) and he was nonplussed as always, but obsessed with the flowers... and of course the pig.
Our excursion turned less festive with our next stop, which was for a "Family Size" container of this fabulous loquat-based cough syrup I have been using for a zillion years. (I see it comes with an indication seek a doctor's counsel before taking it if one is pregnant, but fortunately I am - knock wood - not the person who is currently hacking away in the house.)
In other news, the countdown is on for school notifications and everyone I know is highly on edge. I would probably be more so if I weren't having a late-pregnancy "issue" that is painful but not significant. If anyone has any tips about how to do with pelvic bone pain, I'm taking them.
Happy new year to all.
posted by Elise at 4:20 AM
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Watch Your Mouth
Once again, New York Magazine comes up with a semi-puzzling article about how to be a parent that points out all the things one is probably doing wrong. In this latest dispatch, the magazine floats the notion that it is unwise to praise one's child excessively generally- especially for being "smart."
According to this piece, elling a kid he or she is smart is just asking for frustration and sadness and sets the child up to be a total underachiever.
Now, this doesn't really apply much to me at this point in my kid's life since I'm still firmly lodged in praising him for extremely concrete things: putting toys away, not pouring water on the floor (increasingly rare), being gentle with the terrier (not too bad as these things go), wearing his coat without getting all cranked up.
The argument floated is that children become "addicted" to praise but also skeptical of it, especially if they are regularly told they are great for things they don't appear to have had anything to do with. If they are told, for instance, that they're "smart" they feel they are lucky but not necessarily capable of replicating this smartness, or unclear what to do with this praise. On the other hand, if they are praised for working hard or thinking carefully, then they can form a plan of action that can guide them to greater success.
Huh.
This is an interesting idea, I suppose, but as always, one gets a bit sick of the media's enthusiasm for telling parents that they shouldn't be strict or lax or encouraging or discouraging or tolerant or intolerant. . . that one is simply lost unless one is, well, extremely "smart" or "lucky."
What say? There's a fair amount of research in this. Does it make sense?
posted by Elise at 4:21 AM
6 Comments
Coffee Lovers, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose In Terms of Your Kid's Birthweight
Well, this is indeed a heartening tidbit from the New York Times, and I only hope various members of my extended family check out the Health section once in a while. I've actually been quite pleased to be largely pregnant in winter so that my coat (for now) covers up the kid and I don't get flack for ordering full caffeine, and I don't have to get short with anyone.
Anyway, it seems that the threats of low birthweight for kids born to mothers who drink caffeinated items a bit more liberally (that is, more than one coffee per day) will not come to pass, according to a new Danish study.
So while one might not want to indulge in that 20 cup-a-day habit so fashionable in high school, it is still nice to know that you don't have to quit caffeine just because you're knocked up.
posted by Elise at 4:27 AM
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Another Stroller Battle
Something about strollers really gets to people and I’m not sure when or how this happened since I have always thought of them as the baby equivalent of a knapsack: practical, kind of inconvenient, lumpish, necessary.
Of course stroller marketing has changed and now they're more like cars than knapsacks, and so many are status symbols and many have achieved mammoth proportions. Also like cars, many of them have really appalling drivers.
So recently in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, where there really are lots and lots of kids, a Barnes and Noble has instituted some stroller restrictions. They aren't banned from the store, but they have to be ditched somewhere, presumably to limit aisle clogging and assorted traffic jams. This has provoked enormous ire on all sides, of course, and it is a little shocking to see how rapidly the argument turned into a battle about having children in the first place.
This seems to be the place where all fights land these days. One can't just, say, be annoyed with people who are probably just as hateful with kids as without, everything has to turn into some sort of referendum on privilege and entitlement with the whole question of kids as the worst example of hideous consumerism and selfishness slapped at the center of it all. It just seems pointless. (I'm really more equal opportunity about my hatred, my thoughts recently wandering into a kind of homicidal rage for about 77 percent of the Upper West Side while trying to buy a bottle of water.)
Also pointless is to declare oneself oppressed for having to separate from a stroller briefly. Of course it's a pain, but I really hate becoming a walking obstacle course. Maybe being a dog owner prepared me for this. I'm just used to compromising on the way I shop or do things, depending on which critter I have with me at any moment. Those are the breaks and I don't really see what's wrong with this bookstore's policy, especially since it doesn't ban strollers outright. But maybe there's something I don't understand. I'm not intimate with the neighborhood (though I'm aware of the large and vibrant parent community there, and mentioned it here in the context of the "boy's hat debate"), but this all seems like just much too much. If you don't like a store's policies, or if the place is too much of a pain to deal with, why not skip the trip? On the other hand, if you're an anti-kid type who finds the stroller-set disruptive to your novel writing, which has to happen in a bookstore, perhaps it would be wise to set up camp in some area that is unattractive to the fancy, the fashionable and the under 15 set. Toddlers rarely frequent the comparative religions and reference sections, unless there's really something about Park Slope I don't know.
posted by Elise at 8:40 AM
2 Comments
Historical Perspective
I'm reading Antonia Frasier's fascinating book Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King, and was extremely intrigued by what his mother, Anne of Austria endured.
In the first place, she married Louis XIII when she was 14 years old and didn't get knocked up until she was 37. (There are various mystical accounts about this miracle though it could also have had something to do with the King finally showing up at the right moment). It is heartening, in a way, that she wasn't kicked to the curb after 23 years without producing an heir. (With her son, Anne also achieved a powerful career, when she became Regent upon the death of her husband.)
The royal birthing bed sounds like a dream: "this was three feet wide, and consisted of two planks between two mattresses, a double bolster for use under the shoulders and two long wooden pegs on either side for the Queen to clutch during her ordeal."
But to me, the really charming aspect of seventeenth century birth practices is found in the following passage:
"The labor took place in public, or at an rate in the presence of the court, as was the royal custom of the time, so as to prevent the possible substitution of a libing baby for a dead one- or a son for a daughter... In view of this attendance, courtiers had to work out a private signal for indicating the vital sex of the child without vulgarly shouting it out. Whatever her use later in dynastic matrimonial stakes, the birth of a girl was always a sourtce of vivid disappointment at the time; one royal princess of this period, whose husband wanted an heir, volunteered crossly to throw her newborn daughter in the river. Thus arms were to be kept folded for a girl, hats to be hurled in the air for a Dauphin."
Yes, because hats thrown in the air is so much less rude and ostentatious when you've just had a kid under the scrutiny of dozens of sets of staring eyes then anything anyone might actually speak out loud.
Anyway, say what you want about hospital beds, at least they're more than three feet wide.
posted by Elise at 10:33 AM
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Ask a Silly Question
Well, in fact, there's a reason I've been suspecting that all of the weird inconveniences of being knocked up have had an earlier onset than usual. At my latest check up my doctor reported that, indeed, all of the symptoms that the first time around start in the late third trimester, tend to kick in at the end of the second on subsequent pregnancies. Why? It's a mystery.
Also interesting was hearing that it is now New York State policy for pregnant women to have not one but two HIV tests performed, one in the first trimester, one in the third- in case the mother's viral status converted to positive. My initial thoughts about this were that this was yet another bit of bureaucratic horror designed to track- with nefarious intent- people whose HIV status is positive, but my doctor did indicate that there is a practical consideration as well. With early detection, mothers can take steps to prevent HIV transmission to their babies.
Am I being too much of a drag, though, for my suspicions about the local government's interest in women's viral load?
posted by Elise at 5:58 AM
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Symptomatic
It is probably inevitable that if one pretends not to be pregnant for the first 22 weeks or so of one's pregnancy, one will be surprised at how fast things seem to sneak up on one.
Since I've played this game before, it would be reasonable to assume that I would know the rules- and yet I am often surprised by sudden symptoms. I suspect my husband is getting sick of my saying: "Did heartburn kick in this early LAST TIME?" or "Was I really this big this soon with Felix?"
And then there are a few new things that have cropped up to keep me on my toes, literally. When I was pregnant with Felix, I had a really savage case of sciatica for about a month and I am wildly grateful that I avoided it this time. My new companion now is a nighttime visitor: the lurking charley horse. These things pop up in my hips, my legs and my feet every time I turn over, leaving me quite breathless (but unpleasantly so). I've tried the dietary solutions, but I fear this is just one of those pregnancy things, since nothing I consume seems to make much of a difference. (And, indeed, I am aware that what I am calling a charley horse is actually a mild misnomer. The medical term actually refers to a savage contusion in the quadriceps, but the name has fallen into more common use recently.)
The term "charley horse" is actually rather interesting, etymologically speaking. It appears to have emerged from the world of baseball (which, really, is responsible for so many fabulous idiomatic expressions, "chin music" being among my favorites). An extended discussion of the term in the journal American Speech (in the 1949 article "Whence 'Charley Horse'?" by David Shulman) credits the nineteenth century ball player Michael Kelly with the first printed use of the term in his book PLAY BALL: "I could dance in those days, because, you see, I never was bothered with `Charley Horse'." Needless to say, many players and teams (and even one ground keeper in Sioux City) are credited with coining the phrase.
All of this, of course, doesn't do much about the problem, but it certainly works better than an alarm clock at getting me up before the kid.
posted by Elise at 11:13 AM
6 Comments
Heroic Perspective
I have no particular opinion about the relative virtues of educational television for babies. Since I find it unspeakably irritating and my child has no interest in it, I happily don't have to have a dog in that fight (so to speak).
But I have been amused by this mini-fracas that popped up on Slate in response to Timothy Noah's piece about why it is absolutely ridiculous that it is ridiculous for the President to have honored the creator of the "Baby Einstein" videos as an "Everyday American Hero," whose efforts could compare somehow to those of people who jumped, in front of oncoming New York City subway trains and into the freezing Potomac river to save their fellow man.
Needless to say, the Baby Einstein honoree, Julie Aigner-Clark, was annoyed and wrote an obnoxious and point-missing letter back, following which Noah slammed her.
There is nothing really wrong with loving Baby Einstein and using it either to entertain or edify a kid (if you think the programs actually can do that), but unless we're talking about a kind of unintended heroism (as in "if my kid didn't watch this DVD, she would scream so much I would throw her off the roof") this praise and honor is misplaced and it isn't hard to be cynical about it.
posted by Elise at 5:40 AM
2 Comments
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