I surely don’t know, but I guess I use this as a warning shot, of sorts, that I am more likely to sit back and let my child figure things out for himself amongst his peers. Obviously I would step in to prevent injury or to deescalate a bad fight, but I like the idea of kids experiencing gain and loss, of struggling to understand their own power. But you know what? This view of parenting may make my child incompatible with other kids (or, more likely, it may make me incompatible with their parents). He may be seen as a bully or a jerk and I might be seen as a Bad Parent if I take this tack. But I strongly believe that we learn better through experience, not verbal remonstration. Teaching when they’re ripe for it, not green, as the article discusses.

It’s going to be like trying to find firm footing in a marsh, this theory of letting my kid understand power via experience.  I suppose the best thing that I can do is ask other parents, Do you want me to step in, or can we let them figure this out? But parents I see on the playground are so quick to jump in before other parents, almost as if they’re competing to see who can be Most Involved, as if that makes them a better parent, so I can’t imagine they will respond well to my approach. And I certainly don’t argue the opposite, that neglect produces “better” or more creative children. I just want to find that middle, somewhat squishy ground where my kid can develop his understanding of power naturally, operate within the parameters of a semi-polite society, but where we his parents serve as guides, not dictators or interventionists. That balance just seems incredibly tricky, if not impossible, to find.

I know this blog isn’t a hotbed for discussion, but I would welcome thoughts and experience on this topic, as it’s one I’m just beginning to contemplate.

You have nothing against Skunks, per se; you think some of their ideas are okay, although they seem a bit too black and white for your taste (you believe the quill is mightier than the anal gland, for example), but the Skunks you grew up with were wonderful people and you bear none of them any personal ill will. In the end, both are trying to coexist in the same general habitat even though they have quite different ways of expressing themselves.

So would you be at all suspicious when your families keep giving your child textiles with skunks on them? Bath towels, blankets, and shirts? Is this some sneaky rhetorical persuasion they’re attempting? Or do porcupines simply not have the same childish appeal and family values as their symbolic counterparts?

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

My sister is the eldest. Mom only had to threaten to count and my sister would dissolve into tears. “Don’t count, Mommy! Don’t count! I’ll do it!” And after the drama subsided, she would run along. That’s probably why she practiced her music so diligently, later earning medal after medal at music festivals in preparation for a successful career in music, and why she never got suspended from boarding high school.

My brother was the middle child, and he discovered that Mom was soft enough to use fractions: “One. Two. Three. Four. Four and a half. Four and three-quarters.” Probably when Mom broke out the sixteenths, he’d go do whatever it was he was supposed to do, knowing that she’d lose her patience as the math got progressively harder. This early scientific probing into the limits of possibility combined with the mathematical education it offered is likely what propelled him to medical school and beyond.

And then there’s me. The way the story goes, my mom only tried counting with me the one time. She put a hand on her hip and held up a finger: “One.” And then I piped up, “Two! Three! Four! Five! Hmph!” and planted both hands on my hips and glared back at her, Consequences be damned. (This from the same child who cried when she wasn’t allowed to leave the table before eating her lima beans and finally, an hour later, still sitting at the table, took her dad up on his offer to “give you something to really cry about.”) My utter lack of concern for profitable outcomes sufficiently explains, I think, why I majored in English.

I bring this up because we’ve reached the end of the pregnancy countdown: The baby is forty weeks today (“Thirty-eight,” Matt would say), and I fully expected to have him by now. But it seems that he has a little bit of me in him, as just right now he’s doing a headstand on my bladder and, instead of counting contractions, he’s keeping score of his kicks to my spleen: “Two, three, four, five, hmph!”

Matt, leaning down to help tug up my pants: Y’know, I enjoy taking your pants off a lot more….

Anyway, when I returned to the forum to see how the episiotomy discussion had progressed, I discovered that these particular pregnant women were far more interested in the bandwagon approach to pregnancy decisions, and an immoderate number of women voiced their decision to avoid an episiotomy “at all costs” because they’d “heard it’s easier to heal if you tear naturally.”

Yeah, well, I hear that ninety percent of bad decisions are based on hearsay.

I don’t say this because episiotomies are a good idea; I just think having a categorical refusal to have one is ignorant (have you read about anal fissures**? NOT FUN), and I’m kind of alarmed at how these women made healthcare decisions — based on not evidence, but on what they’ve heard. Perhaps a great deal of the blame falls on the medical community for not educating patients as to evidence-based medicine (and, in some cases, not performing evidence-based medicine), but as patients I think we need to step up and educate ourselves. And by that I don’t mean the first Google search result or polling other pregnant women in an online forum.

* I assume I lost nearly half my potential readers at this point; oops.

** And I probably lost the other half here.

Oh, sorry, should I have put a TMI warning there? Well, you read this regularly — you should really know by now.

But that’s what the number means. It drives Matt crazy, that numbering system. If we’re talking about how far along I am, he has to pause to do mathematical gymnastics to figure out how old the baby actually is. To him, that precision is Important; I just want to flick his forehead. I’m not the one who made this system; it’s Science. (Normally I’m the one who rolls my eyes when that authority is flung in my face, but it is kind of sweet vengeance to be able to do it to him. Also, when your pregnant wife yells at you and bursts into tears during what shall henceforth be referred to as The Noodle Incident, that’s Science, too.)

At any rate — or rather, at the Scientific rate of thirty-eight weeks, twenty-one hours and some minutes — we’re pretty much ready to go. The carseat is in the car (trunk, actually), the baby’s room is relatively set up, the birth plan is filled out, the goes-to-hospital pile intact; most important, we have diapers and blankets and family with cell phones next to beds on standby, so, yeah, I think we’re ready.

[This is where all you Established Parents are welcome to snort with laughter at our naivete; go on. You know you want to.]

Except…the snow and my doctor’s vacation plans are putting a mild kink in my plans: I had originally intended to begin exercising and the consumption of spicy foods in the hopes of ejecting the 38-week-old parasite (“36,” Matt would say after a calculating pause), but since my doctor has the audacity to go, like, on vacation, I find myself taking it easy instead. Probably because it’s hard to work up the energy to exercise or cook spicy food WHEN I HAVEN’T BLOODY SLEPT IN A WEEK.

Oh, have I mentioned the Insomnia?

Internets, this last week was hell. No longer do I think sleep deprivation is an ethically acceptable form of torture or coercion; the fact is, it sucks and it makes you want to give up on everything you could possibly care about. Add that sense of utter desolation to a patient whose doctor won’t give her sleeping medication and you end up with a raging, inconsolable, unbalanced lunatic who realizes, through her hazy perception of reality, that hurrying the baby’s arrival will only prolong the insomnia.

So I apologize for any unnecessary moodiness or snappishness to those who may have encountered me this past week; I apologize to Lucy for the lack of walks, my in-laws for the unclean house they’re soon to arrive at, my sister for my lethargic phone conversations, and Matt for The Noodle Incident. It’s not any one of you; no, I blame Science.

Now, my idea of a perfect labor is a natural, medication-free experience where I spend most of my time in a jetted tub with cooling compresses and sips of apple juice, joking with my husband and awing the nurses with my cool, calm, collected nature until my perfect baby makes its pain-free appearance with one or two light pushes. I may make a low moan, but only once.

However, simply knowing that this is a fantasy stirs up my fear, which is much closer to reality, and that is that labor is going to involve me screaming, writhing, begging for it all to be over, and yelling at people to JUST GET IT OUT ALREADY, FOR THE LOVE OF DONKEYS. And as much as I do spend my Sundays yelling at the television (yesterday’s Broncos game is certainly no exception, although I did blush a little when I mistook a Chiefs player for a Broncos player and my screaming was something along the lines of, “Run, run, run! …Wait, no…break his leg! His leg! BREAK HIS FUCKING LEG!”), I rarely yell at other people, especially people like nurses who are there to help, or my doctor, a master of various Looks that are the most concise way of answering stupid pregnant-woman questions (Me: “Braxton-Hicks contractions don’t really hurt; will the real ones feel different?” Her: The Look. Me: “Um, that’s what I thought. Mega pain. Right-o.”), or even my husband, although that’s just ’cause he’s perfected the puppy-dog eyes and fuck all if that doesn’t still work on me even after lo these nine years. Suffice it to say, I worry that the god-awful pain is going to turn me into a person I have never been and that everyone is going to hate me and I’ll end up delivering this child by myself onto a cold, concrete floor, and then some brave rescuer-type will come into the room and snatch the baby to be raised with Humans and not the depraved soul who gave birth to it, who has finally lost her voice from all the yelling and whose limp form is now being circled by wild dogs….

Today our baby is 36 weeks old, which will totally not count toward anything when he’s born, except  for developed lungs and so forth. But still. That’s pretty cool. One more week and he’s full-term. One more week and I start eating spicy food and jogging and doing anything in my power to GET IT OUT, GET IT OUT NOW.

Speaking of which, I don’t think I’m alone in readiness to be done — the kid is, too. I swear he’s going to come out with running shoes and and race straight out the labor and delivery door, which is just to say that OH MY GOD HE KICKS SO MUCH. I mean, I want him to play in the NFL, but I’m not sure he needs to start working on his field goal skills now. However, he seems athletically versatile: just now as we were watching the end of the Cowboys-Packers game, he was doing a pretty good flutter-kick imitation and, if I do say so myself, generating some serious forward momentum (more than the Cowboys, har har). I really hope that skill shows up at the delivery. Swim, baby, swim.

So I have an excuse for my ignorance; what’s the rest of the country’s?

Oh, and if anyone tells me to stop watching football in order to lower said blood pressure, I will commence head-in-sand activities. Broncos are on a bye this week anyway, so…la la la….

And then again, it’s my blog. And here’s the part where I strongly resist adding, “Neener, neener.” I am thirty, after all.

Anyway, here’s how things are going. Skip if you’re uninterested and/or terribly cynical and bitter.

1. Pregnancy sucks.
The horrible thing about feeling this way is that my pregnancy, by all standard measures, has been a good one. I got through the first trimester’s morning sickness, I haven’t had complications, my baby looked great at its 20-week ultrasound, and there is nothing worrisome aside from some high blood sugar that seems to be controlled by diet and exercise. Yet in spite of all the good things that I am taking for granted, I am tired and self-concious ALL THE TIME: I’m only 31 weeks along and have attained roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale*; I cannot clip my toenails, much less paint them, and I nearly fell over this morning trying to put on underwear. I won’t even address the indignity of putting on a swimsuit twice a week for my class where all the other moms are cute first-timers in bikinis showing off their adorable bellies, whereas I cover my blubber with the World’s Ugliest Suit, the kind I swore up and down I’d never wear. Ha. Ha ha. Oh, Karma, you are such a bitch.

Pregnancy also sucks when you work in a men’s prison and people make inappropriate comments. It sucks when your hormones make you want to cry and punch someone at the same time. It sucks when you want to drink beer and watch football — in fact, that sucks so much that one might even go out and waste $7 on a pack of O’Doul’s, just to see if it’s worth it (soooooooooo not). It sucks when you realize you cannot fit both the dog crate and the baby’s carseat in your car. It sucks when your husband leaves for a weekend and you don’t go, because spending five hours in a car is about as comfortable as a 24-hour plane ride and your pelvis feels like it will slither down your hips and land right at  your ankles when you’re finally able to get out and walk around.  It sucks to get up at night to pee. It sucks to get up again, and again, and to know that the light at the end of this parenting, sleepless-nights tunnel is about eighteen years away, if not longer.

2. When it doesn’t suck, it’s great.
Feeling the baby kick is probably the best part. Monday night I came home from work and was chewing ice cubes. Every time I swallowed, I’d get a swift kick to my stomach about eight seconds later because that baby was not enjoying the cold sensations. (I know, what kind of twisted parent gets enjoyment out of freezing their child? I AM SO CRUEL.) And pretty much every night when I go to bed, I watch my belly bounce around for at least ten minutes.

And seeing that little heartbeat during the ultrasound? Watching the arms and legs of a 6 oz. baby flail about? Seeing him suck his thumb and bonk himself in the forehead? Feeling him push back when I poke my belly in the morning to make sure he made it through the night? Internets, I love him so much already that I think I have enough love to not only make it through labor and delivery, but also the terrible twos and up through age 12 awkwardness and then the angsty teen years.

And then there’s the husband, who talks to my navel and explains how he loves the baby so much he’s going to make a special doghouse for Baby and Lucy to share (Lucy would LOVE it), and how we’re going to decorate baby’s nursery in a special extra-sharp-and-pointy Samurai theme, and how the baby is going to secretly be named Ziltoid (over baby’s mother’s dead body, apparently). And there are other things he does, like giving me Kleenex when I burst into tears over the goddamn fruit tart not coming cleanly off the baking sheet or when I throw my burger in his lap and scream, “FINE, THEN I JUST WON’T EAT.” Husbanding this big ol’ bag of crazy is not for the faint of heart, and yet he does it better than anyone else could, and rubs my feet and mows the lawn to boot.

*acknowledgements to J.K. Rowling

I may, come to think of it, have a bit of a control issue.

Anyway, this is relevant because in last night’s childbirth education class, I found myself mentally critiquing the educator, which of course is ridiculously hypocritical since it’s not like I’m the most fabulous teacher to spin the magic web of rhetoric. But seriously, I give you the following situations:

1. To start with, she made a sexist generalization at the beginning of class, something about how women’s labor stories are like men’s fish stories (implying something about lying about the length thereof, I guess), and mostly I was offended because I fish, too. And I have not yet lied about my labor experience (head’s up: I WILL win), so the expectation rankled.

2. Then there was this dandy question, clearly meant to gin up some discussion in the class:

Educator: How do you time contractions?

[ten seconds dead silence]

Me: Um, with a watch?

I knew what she was getting at, although not exactly — something to do with frequency and/or duration of contractions — but when you ask an unclear question and no one answers, rephrase and clarify what you mean. Or else you get smart-asses like me answering. (Though, professional confessional time: I love smart-asses. They make class fun and keep me on my toes. Double bonus. Although I’m not sure this educator feels that way about me.)

3. This is a rhetorical complaint: Everything she says is declarative: You WILL do this, you WILL do that, you WILL like this, you WILL not like that, etc. Um, no, thank you. Being told what I will and won’t do or think works about as well on this 30-year-old as it did on this 15-year-old. I realize I’m knocking my own maturity level here, but thanks to feminism and consumerism AND SCIENCE, women have a lot more childbirth choices than we used to, and I don’t appreciate childbirth “education” being presented as a map with stations where you get your hand stamped before moving on to the next level. If that works for the next woman, great — but not me.

Tangential confession: Last night I was a little taken aback when the educator asked who all was reading books on childbirth and I was the only one who raised a hand. Seriously?! How can you approach one of the biggest events in your life without planning? (And no, I don’t think childbirth education indoctrination counts.) I mean, I know I like to plan, but … HOW DO YOU NOT PLAN?

4. Finally, this childbirth educator pronounces the word “dilated” “dillatated.” THAT IS NOT A WORD, and I know because I triple-checked it on dictionary.com so as to not be made an ass of (which happens often enough as it is).  And I know I should be more worried about what it means to be 10 cm “dillatated” than how she mispronounces the word, but it strikes at the heart of her ethos and those twelve or whatever years she spent on a Labor and Delivery ward.

Ugh. Somehow in my life I have morphed from the back-row, I’m-not-here student into the front-row, know-it-all critic. What’s worse, I remember how I hated those people in college, and thus this post is halfway between a cry for help and a blubbering confession. I guess when I’m stuck spreadlegged and naked at 8 cm dillatated and wondering why my epidural isn’t working, I’ll have time to ponder this further.

I admit that a very small (teensy, really) part of my liking for the boy’s name we have mostly settled on is that it would sound great if an NFL sportscaster were announcing it as part of the Broncos starting lineup. What can I say — I have a sickness.