New Digs

Just a reminder: I'm blogging at my new online headquarters. Find me at www.katyranklev.com and the blog specifically at www.katyranklev.com/blog.

PI

So Miles and I were driving along Baum the other day and I noticed that there is a detective agency in Pittsburgh! Right there, in a ratty old building near the Shell station! It got me thinking about a number of things, including The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency series and google.

Sometimes I feel like I could have a very nice career as a private detective. A PI? A Dick? (Where does that term come from, anyway?) It also reminded me of the time I had jury duty and was seated next to a former PI all day. He had great stories. I probably blogged about them on here...this was back before my life revolved around poop and breastmilk.

But are PI's really useful in the age of internet stalking? Could this agency be running a viable business? If yes, why the ratty exterior? Just to fit into the ambiance, the stereotype of such a profession?

I would love it if someone had something that needed investigation and they hired this agency and then told me about the experience. I mean, does it smell like cigars inside? Does the PI wear a trench coat? Do they have free Wi-Fi? Your thoughts?

Oak Ridge Boys

Lately, I am obsessed with the Oak Ridge Boys. It all started when my mom began singing Elvira to Miles and my friend KK showed me the video on YouTube. Now I can't stop watching their videos and wondering what in the hell is wrong with people.

For example, they'll show an ORB thrust his hips, big old beard swaying in the breeze from his tambourine shaking, and then pan to the audience swooning. Or the deep voiced one will point his finger to the sky and then wink and ladies clutch their bosoms. And then the one with the teeth will grab the lapels of his orange leather jacket or run his fingers through his curly afro...

I have watched almost all of the videos from YouTube. I've seen them on Johnny Carson and on gospel shows and TNN. I watch all of it. I sing the songs. And then Miles and I dance along and I try to wink at him, maybe point my finger suggestively as I say, "Mmm poppa mmmm poppa mmmm poppa mow-wow," but he doesn't swoon! It must be my hair. It's either not gray enough, not big enough or else my pants are too loose.

Anyway, I'll be spending the rest of the week singing folksy songs from the 70s, watching some grainy YouTube videos. I'll be taking careful notes on how I should dress if I want to be a superstar or crazy fangirl. I might emerge a different person. No promises

Shower Curtain

Does this happen to anyone else? I have a plastic shower curtain liner, and this part goes inside the tub. When I am in the shower, it billows and blows and sticks to my legs. I hate it! This morning, I became so enraged I actually screamed and yelled at the shower curtain.

I don't know what else I can do to this thing. It has suckers on the ends that I affix to the wall at either end of the shower. It has weights in the bottom that theoretically hold it down. But nothing works! It blows all over me. I was trying to shave my legs. It was clingier than Miles when he needs a nap.

I was seconds away from ripping it off the curtain rod and just taking a shower with the cloth, outer part of the curtain. I might have to take baths until I can either calm down or figure out a solution.

NATIONAL CHAMPS!

I have to take a time out (or back in?) to give a shout out to my PSUWRFC ladies. I was so proud watching the game online. I even stayed up past my bed time. Way past. It was so worth it to feel again that excitement, knowing your team is the best in the country. And what a clinic they put on today! This was the last hurdle the team had to leap: back to back national championships. Now that that's out of the way, what will the next step be for Penn State Rugby??

I can't wait to find out! Agh. I am just so proud right now.

Rebirth

*UPDATED: I fixed the broken link!

So a lot has been going on over here at Team Lev Headquarters. I have decided not to go back to teaching next year. I am going to focus on writing and, to make up the difference in income, I had to seek out an endeavor that was lucrative and yet allowed me to work in short bursts when Miles was either in a good mood or asleep.

So, on the employment front, I started doing transcription. As it turns out, I don't have the time right now to really pursue the types of writing activities that would be lucrative enough to cover my nut. But I do have short bursts of time to type what people are saying. I have some wicked fast typing skills (mostly from years of typing my own research interviews) and I had a really good friend (the owner of Yarnia!) who sort of shepherded me through the process of getting some gigs.

Then I had to take some tests from various companies. And I failed one. Let me tell you how well I handled that! Me! Type A, control freak, perfection nazi. I failed a damn test. It was like my world exploded. I pretty much ate 11.5 cupcakes and buried my head in the sand. (actually, I ate 11.5 cupcakes as part of a spring cupcake party...more on that later I guess) As it turns out, my problem was technological and not physical. I just didn't know the Word shortcuts necessary to type fast and accurately as people are talking. But I learned them!

And then I passed a couple of tests and got paid $75 to transcribe a test file, which I also passed (take that, shitty-paying magazine gig!). And now I'm doing some captioning and transcribing and it's been great. I stick Miles in the jumperoo and type for 20 minutes while he pushes buttons with his face and jumps up and down. Or then he falls asleep and I do some more work. It's all been pretty snazzy.

On the other issue, my writing, I have really been working to sort of streamline what I want to do as a writer. I have been, you might have noticed, very transformed by the birth of my son. It has affected everything about me and I find he's all I want to write about. Him and mothering in general and birthing in general. So I am reinventing myself as a mom/birth writing specialist. I don't see my writing about ecological sustainability as separate from this, so I'm still doing those gigs, too. I mean, who wants their baby to eat bleach or succumb to CO poisoning? So I keep writing about the earth.

Which brings me to my very exciting piece of news. I totally revamped my website, with help from my brother-in-law, and included a blog on there. Check it out here: http://www.katyranklev.com. I will, from now on, do most of my blogging over there on my own site and I'll pretty much be only writing about mothering and birthing. Am I a mommy blogger now? Probably. And I'm down with that.

I like to think I have a unique voice out there. I'm not scared to admit that motherhood is hard and often sucks a fat nut. I'm not afraid to admit it was really unenjoyable for large portions of the first four months. And I know I'm not alone in thinking so and I hope that my voice can somehow offer validation to other moms who share my experiences.

So you'll find me over there, where I publish my other work and will now publish my independent ideas. I've started out with a bunch of posts from this archive.

New stuff to come soon!

See? Isn't it all very exciting?

Ouch.

I went to rugby practice last night! I was nearly as nervous walking to the field as I was the first time I walked to a rugby field...perhaps in some ways this was scarier because I knew what was coming and I went anyway.

I was kind of indifferent about the fitness portion of practice--I've never been what you might call a speed demon. Finishing last on sprint drills was ok with me (though the bent-over wheezing afterward was a teeny bit embarrassing, only because we practiced on Pitt's campus and PEOPLE COULD SEE!).

It was the contact I feared. Oh, the contact. When our captains announced we would work on 2 vs 1 drills, I got sick, nauseous. I had this giant swelling of fear inside me. I really and truly almost cried, I was so scared.

I kept playing out these scenarios in which someone tackled me wrong and I ruptured my uterus. Or else maybe my bladder would migrate and switch places with the uterus again, like it did after my surgery? Or, dear lord, what if I peed my pants or leaked breastmilk during the moment of impact??

I went through a couple rounds of the drill, sort of avoiding contact at all costs. And then KP let me tackle her. I would like to say that suddenly everything was better and that I was instantly the rugby player I was before. That would, of course, be a lie. But I did discover that I wasn't going to crumple like a piece of peanut brittle.

When I was feeling a bit blue about the whole exercise, another wise teammate (back in the game herself after a hiatus...she says her being long of the tooth equals my being saggy of the pelvic floor) told me that everything I did last night was more than I had done before. Isn't that wise?

So I did it. I finished practice and got more exercise in that 90 minutes that I have for months, unless you count squat thrusts holding an 18# baby and a few walks around the block, which really, really, really do not match the intensity of a rugby practice.

Corey asked me later if I had fun while I was there. I don't know if fun is the right word (because most of it was so painful and awful). But I was there, immersed in my friends and teammates and thinking only adult thoughts. Rugby practice had the marvelous affect of giving me tunnel vision, focus. While I was engaged in practice, I was only thinking about practice. My mind didn't have time to worry; I wasn't simultaneously doing laundry and mopping a floor and cooking rice cereal. I was just doing one, super hard thing at a time. So yeah, it was pretty outstanding, despite the agony.

At the end of it all, by some miracle, Miles hadn't gone to bed yet (perhaps his Dad overstimulated him?) so I found myself zooming home, shedding muddy layers in the car. I rushed in the front door, washed my hands, and got to nurse him to sleep. My favorite part of the day.

And then the little pea pod slept straight through the night for the first time! Which was good, because when I heard him meowing this morning, my post-baby body was barely able to drag its bones over to pick him up.

Welcome back to the game, Katy.

Liquids I Was Not Prepared For

I knew to be ready for many things as a mother. I got ready for a lot of things that turned out to be pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But then, my baby spewed forth a handful of liquids I just never, ever expected. These include, but are not limited to:
1. Biscuit juice--the liquid goo that squirts out of Miles' face as he eats one of those teething cookies. The juice is not quite spit, not quite solid food, but filled with enough gluten to make a brown, gluey mess of everything in the house. Biscuit juice is gritty and could be an exfoliant. What I should do is just give my son a few biscuits and stick a cup under his mouth to catch the biscuit juice. I could then sell the juice to either Elmers or Sephora.

2. Laundry Leachate--similar to landfill leachate, only involving streams of milky, barfy liquid that sinks down through the clothes in the wicker hamper and pools on the hardwood floor, sometimes dripping down into the space below the hardwood floor. Anything the leachate touches needs to be doused in Borax-treated soaking water. Often, leachate contains biscuit juice particles.

3. Mucous--I knew my baby would make mucous. I can prove I knew this because I obtained one of those blue squeezy bulbs with which to suck the mucous from his various drain-holes. But I didn't know what the mucous would feel like, sound like, taste like as it sprayed all over my person and my home. (See leachate, above) Let me tell you, nothing beats a morning spent using your legs to pin down all the baby's limbs, your calves holding his head immobile, finagling the damn squeezy bulb up his nose and drawing out the mucous, only to have it slip and plop directly onto your crotch. Of your only clean pants that button.

4. Fruit juice--did anyone know that fruit juice is sticky and makes a mess? Even when it's super diluted? Why the heck didn't I know this? My floors are covered with dirty spots that were once juice spills and then got dusty or covered in cotton when someone decided to crawl right on through the spills. Then, frequently, I will step barefoot in one of these dead zones and need to use some sort of razor to get the grime from my foot.

5. Dried up barf--no longer a liquid, but a former liquid. Miles has this habit of barfing sort of secretly. When he is playing contentedly under the dining room table, say, then crawls into the living room, we'll notice his face and hands are barfy. Which means he barfed at some point, but didn't tell us! Then we need to hunt the barf. If we are unsuccessful and too much time passes, we have set ourselves up to find a clump of dried up barf, which is not quite as bad as fruit juice tar traps, but still requires a chisel, dish soap, and an old cloth diaper for cleanup. I just always assumed the baby would make a big production of barfing, we'd clean it up, and my worst problem would be the leachate in the hamper...

I'm sure there will be many more surprise liquids I haven't seen just yet, and I already know there are some new habits I am learning (i.e. always wear some sort of shoe or foot protection). In the mean time, I have a kid who has dragged himself through a puddle of something (dishwasher water? Spilled laundry detergent?) and I need to mop him up before he creates a new hazard.

Take Your $75 and Shove It!

Update: I have secured $75 for this month. I will be earning it as a training exercise for a new endeavor. Corey and I have been discussing the conundrum of our finances. We want one of us to be home with Miles, we want each of us to have work/life balance, and we want to have enough money to pay our bills.

If Corey took an accounting job with a for-profit company, he'd make way more money, but we'd never see him. So, I am trying something new. It will still allow me to work from home and will require less immersion than writing, should I succeed in the training.

I don't want to go on and on about details because I might not be a good fit for this new form of self employment! But, suffice it to say that the $75 I could have earned slaving for one magazine article has been recouped in a way that could potentially improve quality of life for Team Lev!

Wish me luck on my training. Join me in feeling smug about the $75, no matter what happens!

Pondering My Bosom

My bosom is on my mind again of late (not that it hasn't been ever-present in my thoughts since July 17). This is because I will be leaving Miles in 2 weeks to attend the AWP conference in Denver. I'm speaking on a panel there! I should be excited! I'm on the program! But yet, I am terrified.

My poor, defenseless baby will be home alone with his father (and Ninny) while I am off gallivanting and pretending to be a grown-up. What will he do when, every few hours, he wants to nurse? I know he'll be getting nourishment from a bottle while I'm gone and won't starve to death. But what about his emotional needs? That boy loves him some nursing time.

He sits down at my breast and pats it with both hands, kneads the extra flesh like a baker. He rubs my bosom, pats it with his little (sometimes-ice-cold) fingers, and looks up into my eyes as if to say, "thank you for letting me be near this wondrous bosom, fountain of all that is delicious and good for me." He makes oinking sounds and slurps.

Then his eyes roll up in his head and he falls asleep.

Will he forget how to do this while I am gone? Will he stop wanting to do this? Worse, will my bosom forget how to offer this experience? I spend many hours each day wondering what will happen to my nipples while I am away (will my hard-earned tough skin chafe while I'm gone?) or whether my milk ducts will explode and I'll die of engorgement.

I think about what bra I should wear while I'm out and about. On one hand, I have no need to wear a bra that flaps open with the flick of a finger. I'll get to keep my shirt securely fastened for, like, 8 hours at a time if I want. But what other choice of lingerie do I really have? It's not like I have a heap of F cup bras sitting around! And, really, F cup is me in denial and not wanting to purchase a better-fitting G cup brazier. I might as well leave my nursing bras at home and just bring a bucket truck.

Sidenote: I was out for a walk today with some friends and I possessed the smallest bosom of our party. Boy, did I feel dainty!

Among all this anxiety over what will happen to my bosom during this adventure lies the need to express my milk. I am going to have to use that damn breast pump again, many times each day. I spent a long time on the phone and internet securing a plan of action to get my milk back home with me (thanks, TSA!). But the bottom line is that, even though this trip will afford me uninterrupted sleep and the freedom to wear a turtleneck, I just cannot escape the constant presence of breast thoughts.

I'll have my insulated lunch box and ice packs with me at all times, my bag of pump parts, baggies of milk, and always the worry about weather I'll get mugged and someone will steal my liquid gold. I won't need to rush home to a hungry babe, but I'll be waiting in line for the lactation rooms both to relieve my exploding udders and to remind my bosom that it's not off duty yet.

I'm at a stage in my nursing experience where I think the process is awesome and totally rewarding. But I am still slammed to my knees at the tremendous power of Miles' need for me. As much as I want to pretend I am still sort of the same person, can still engage in lively discussions of pedagogy and networking and contract negotiations, it all slides away every few hours when my body reminds me of its main duty right now.

I know I say this many times every day, but I just had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Now, off to ice my armpits. I'm having a supply surplus this evening because someone went to bed early.

Strong Opinions About Writing and Money

I just passed on a writing assignment because it paid crap. Bottom of the barrel crap. My reaction is very visceral and complicated, and I should probably wait to be less angry before writing about this. But I have a lot of feelings to work through.

For starters, I am insulted that the editor was insulted that I should ask for more money. She ranted about her overhead, her limited budgets, her bills to pay and then suggested that my putting a value on my craft, a specific per-word or per-assignment value, was somehow selling out. Why should writing not be a paid skill?

Why should I settle for the joy of having written for this magazine, for the joy I will bring my readers or the joy of seeing my name in ink?

If I applied this same logic, I would have to tell my babysitter she could also earn pennies on the hour for watching my child while I research and write--isn't Miles a joy to behold? And then I could tell the mortgage company I will only pay pennies per month for the space I use to write and the phone company, internet provider, grocery store, etc. because I am pretty cool. Isn't it a joy to support my efforts bringing joy to the world? Let's just set up a barter economy!

The implication here is that because my craft is writing--an art--I should do it for nothing. I should be a starving artist and maybe dumpster dive or go on food stamps to preserve the integrity of my work. Have I sold out in fixing a monetary value to my craft? Is my work less artful because I ask to be compensated for it? So be it.

Sidenote: If writing were not a valuable skill, why do universities charge many thousands of dollars to teach graduate students how to do it better?

There are not many people who can do what I do, and I should be compensated for my time spent doing this complicated activity. This is not opinion. I am continually flabbergasted by people who balk when writers demand a nice wage. If I were a plumber or mechanic, nobody would speak to me harshly or claim I am somehow mentally unwell for asking to be compensated for my work. In my imaginary scenario, I am the plumber. I ask for $40 for repairing a toilet clog. The client balks. I say, "Ok. Fix it yourself then. See ya!"

This morning a magazine offered me $75 to craft a mid-length feature article. The last feature I wrote took me about 20 hours of documented time, including research and drafting. It took me untold hours of shower-time-drafting, before bed pondering, dinner-time aha! moments and other subconscious wordsmithing. Can you imagine doing this for $75? I asked for much more than this. They balked. I said, in essence, "Ok. Write it yourself then." (Actually, I spent a long time thinking of a way to say this politely and came up with, 'I am going to have to pass on this assignment.')

I believe that people think they can offer these piddly amounts of money because people have begun taking this in exchange for writing. Craigslist drips with these sorts of offers because people take them. I hear the following argument all the time: well, I can churn out writing so fast that I end up getting $10 per hour or more!

To this I say, writing should not be churned. $10 per hour still blows.

Many people also imply that any money is better than no money. This bristles my feathers, too. I have a stack of bills on my desk, too, but I would rather pay them with snow-shoveling labor or working at Starbucks or bagging groceries. To do the work of writing for so little money sends the message that this is what writing is worth. The people who take those jobs slowly chip away the bottom of the barrel for the rest of us.

Today, someone knocked a hole in my sub-floor, monetarily speaking. I feel proud that I stepped around the hole. Yeah, I'm out $75 this month. I feel confident that I will find it elsewhere and for less labor.

Whine Me a River

I have started letting Miles "whine it out" when I put him to bed. It occurred to us recently that we feel ok not responding immediately when Miles whines. We know that nothing is wrong because, for four months, we heard what noise he makes when something is wrong. Everyone on our block heard it. For 100 days. Without stopping.

So now, when he makes this whining sound, if we are mid-cup of tea or nose-blowing or almost at the end of an episode of the Office, we feel pretty forgiven for not running at high speed to see what's going on.

When we put him down for bed or for a nap, he often is asleep at the breast or over the shoulder and then, somewhere in the transfer to his bed, he wakes up and starts whining. We pat his back a bit, tell him everything is ok, that it's time for lovely sleep, and if he's not done whining yet, I'm going to go ahead and admit that I walk out the door, close it, and let him whine it out for a few minutes until he falls asleep.

I wonder if this is what people thought was going on when they would suggest I let Miles cry it out earlier in his life? Because this is totally bearable. I suppose it might sound like crying to some folks, who haven't heard what it sounds like when Miles ACTUALLY cries. There aren't even tears involved in this new whining, let alone stiff back arching and vomit-smearing. This is just limp-bodied, face buried in the hands, tired whining. He usually stops within three or four minutes, becomes totally asleep, and everyone wins.

Every now and then, the whining will turn into actual crying and we get our butts in there before it becomes screaming. But we've learned to tell the difference between the two sounds--or rather Miles has learned to make different sounds.

I think that in teaching us the difference between his desperate need for comfort and just plain whining, Miles has actually set himself up for a tougher path as a toddler or teenager. He showed us his good cards right away, so we know exactly what it sounds like when he is having an emergency. Which means we know what it sounds like when there is nothing actually wrong, too. For the rest of his life, he is totally effed if he is seeking any sort of urgent response from whingy little sleepy sounds.

Free of Phlegm

Still isn't too sure about this grass stuff

Thinking about liking the swing

Liking the swing a little bit

Watching Daddy make a weird face

Whip It

*Spoiler Warning*

I was disappointed by Whip It. Perhaps I had unreasonably high expectations because the film got so much hype in Bust magazine, but I just had this overall sense of "this could have been better" when it was finally over. Maybe I was angry that it wasn't a film about rugby?

My main problem with the movie was that it included a love story. Why was this necessary? I realize all the great sports films contain love stories on the side, and I was glad to see that the relationship was truly a side element to the larger theme of developing oneself through team sports. But I just felt like the Oliver thing was a distraction from some of the other really juicy plot elements. Were the conflicts with the mother character, Blue Bonnet pageants and the former best friend not enough? Was the drive to escape the small town not enough? I didn't need Oliver.

I also absolutely hated everything to do with Drew Berrymore in that movie. Her character made no sense. Name me a stoner who has a penchant for violence and unchecked rage! Why wasn't her character just a stoner or just an aggressive bruiser? In rugby, we have both types of person. But I can't think of a combo. Not to mention, Drew Berrymore couldn't act her way out of a pair of rollerskates. If her character threatened to beat up Bliss' mother one more time, I was going to hip check her into oncoming traffic.

I also was upset that many of the roller derby teams had male coaches. Based on my experience obsessively following the Steel City Derby Demons a few years ago and my knowledge gained watching the series Rollergirls, about the actual Austin roller derby circuit, I know that many teams are actually self-coached or coached by former female derby athletes. While it was great to see a male coach of a female team NOT in a romantic relationship with his players, I would have loved to see a female controlling the strategic reins of the team. Women need to see role models in coaching positions--the movie was based on a fictitious novel, so why not just make the coach character a woman?

Finally, I was disappointed with the characters' response to the male coach. When Bliss is first learning to skate, her coach takes her aside and tells her to basically get tougher; this is a contact sport. She becomes enormously upset and Maggie Mayhem has to intervene and soften the blow, tell her not to take it personally. Scenes like this are, I think, part of the reason women do tend to take constructive criticism personally. He was not being mean and he was not getting personal--this was not in-your-face, angry coaching. He was offering Bliss a real bit of information that was going to improve her game. I wish the writer or director would have just let Bliss absorb this message, learn from it, and then go on to improve her aggressive athleticism.

Many of these issues were handled fantastically in the series Rollergirls. The show featured women who were tremendous athletes, bruisers, stoners, just plain bitchy, super competitive, had the sport change their lives and alter their romantic relationships, etc. There were tattoos and disappointed mothers and lives adjusted to not only accommodate roller derby, but to revolve around that activity as the central focus. That series, I felt, did women's team sports everywhere a great justice. I wish it had gotten more attention. Stick it on your Netflix, queue. You'll be happy you did!

Anyway, there were some things about Whip It that made me really happy. For starters, I liked that the mean, dominant team won in the end. They were a competitive bunch of winners and it would have been a way crappier movie if the Hurl Scouts won the big tournament. I like when women are shown in roles that are ruthless and super competitive, because women are capable of being both.

I also liked that the villain character (even though I hate Juliette Lewis and will always picture her as mentally disabled a la The Other Sister) wasn't evil, just sort of bitchy and really wanted to win. I didn't understand why Bliss called her out for "outing" Bliss's real age--the film showed scenes of her telling her own team her age and Posh's parents are the ones who told Bliss's parents. What was that about, Bliss? I like that Carla Tate, I mean Iron Maven, pretty much just said she wanted to eff with Bliss's head and then just beat her where it mattered--on the track.

In the end, the film made headway in that it showed the transformative power of team sports, specifically full-contact team sports, for women. I just had an overall sense that it could have been better, perhaps with a different director behind the camera.

Pesky Front Garden

For three summers now, I have fretted about my front lawn. Each year, I say ENOUGH! I will just plant food out there and be done with it. I suck at everything else. Then I cave and try to plant batches of flowers, which I neglect or hate or can't really afford. I've managed to kill a handful of hostas that were allegedly going to grow wild and look good year round.

I killed perfectly lovely fire bush.

I may have killed the lavender plant my friend stuck in the yard for me.

There are perhaps six tulips that have survived to grow again this year, and they look sprouty and lovely among the grass and weeds taking over the front bed.

This is the year where I say enough for real and I am planting food out there. Judge away, neighbors!

It was so gorgeous outside that I figured even my sick baby could benefit from helping me in the garden a little bit:

Look at his sad little water eyes! He breaks my heart.

I trucked him up front while I got the soil ready. Perhaps you can see in the background the brick border buried under gross grass and weeds? It looks like that year round, so we just hoed some compost into the soil and planted the vining peas along the trellis. Miles obviously just supervised and offered instructions.

Provided I can revive the lavender, I'll have that up there along with other herbs. I'm sticking mint, sage, basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary in my front plot. Those are things I know how to grow, they are things that are useful, and they fit our budget for landscaping. Plus, most of them are perennial!

I know, you are thinking, but mint is invasive! It will take over your whole front lawn and eat the neighbor children! To this I say, good! Less for Corey to not mow, more for me to make tea.

Where Does All This Guilt Come From??

One thing that has surprised me about parenting is the amount of guilt involved in seemingly innocent decisions. Choose wrong, and you are forever on the wrong side of some binary. You have to face every food decision, every outfit choice, every toy purchase with conviction, because at every turn there is someone (real or perceived) asking you to defend that choice.

For instance, Miles is sick right now. I have been putting off calling the pediatrician because I don't want to be one of those moms who calls the pediatrician all the time. We have taken him in probably four times in his life so far for illness, and each time were told he'd be fine. Nothing to worry about!

I feel this huge force pressuring me not to call the pediatrician because then I'll be one of "those people." There is this discussion on my mom's email list right now about the evils of pediatricians, how they are pawns for the pharmaceutical companies, little better than drug pushers with lollipops. I also know quite a few hypochondriacs who know their physicians better than they know some relatives. Why not pay them for the peace of mind that everything is ok?

In general, we choose to let him cough and snot and poop and grump for awhile. Watchful waiting, etc. Except that on Saturday, his cough turned into really raspy breathing and his eyes just poured junk. I wanted to take him to one of those pharmacy clinics, but settled for paging the pediatrician.

As I waited for Dr. H. to return the page, I chided myself for overreacting and paging my doctor on a Saturday. I did this a lot more after we had a chat and decided Miles was probably just suffering from a bad cold.

Then, this morning, he coughed to persistently and wheezed so mightily I decided the guilt of being one of "those people" was less horrible than the guilt of being one of those people who lets her baby succumb to pneumonia or similar, so I put the pediatrician on speed dial and called every 4 minutes until I got through (it's rough on a Monday morning!).

As it turns out, he has an ear infection. "On a scale of one to ten, with ten being worst, this is about a 4.5," our doctor said. What does this mean? It meant, first, that I wasn't one of "those moms" and that it was ok to call the doctor! One layer of guilt eliminated! But it also meant another choice to analyze: He wrote me a prescription for antibiotics, but left it up to me whether I filled it. Oh great!

If I give him the meds, I could be setting him up for a resistance to antibiotics. I might be one of "those moms" who is all drug crazy and just medicates every single problem. If I don't, he'll get better on his own eventually, but he will suffer through several more days of discomfort, crappy breathing, and shitty sleep. I'll be one of "those moms" and give up my own rest to spend the night soothing my poor.

Surprisingly, I came to a conclusion on this one relatively quickly. Corey is picking up the amoxicillin right this minute. Which leaves me free to fret about all sorts of other decisions.

Time Change

I have located perhaps the lone benefit to having a baby who refuses to maintain any sort of routine: spring forward day means nothing to my family. For the first time in my life, I remain completely unaffected by the change to daylight saving time. Am I tired today? Of course! But that's because I was up every 3 hours overnight, same as I've been every night for the past ten.

The "good" thing about Miles is that he doesn't give a crap what time it is or what is on schedule for the day. If he's tired, he wants to be asleep and if he is not tired, by God--he will be awake. He has no regard for weekend vs week day, company vs just family, time to watch Lost vs sing Music Together songs. Every few hours, that boy will be awake and then, once he has licked everything in the room, pooped, and jumped around for awhile, he will become asleep.

Most days, I find it very difficult to surrender to the unschedulability of this life. I find I can accomplish things, like going to the store or cleaning the bathtub, only when they are not attached to specific time frames. As soon as any sort of deadline or coordination is involved, forget about it. There is an equal chance I can be available or that I'll be counting to ten in the hallway before I try to nurse the crying baby to sleep for the fourth time that hour.

This represents such an utter and complete reversal of the life I once knew, where I could map out a day coordinated to the very minute, with things like "relax" and "eat cereal" penciled into the agenda at set times. I have had to change my way of thinking to focus on specific objectives, prioritized by importance, rather than view my day as chopped into specific slots. Heck, I used to mentally prepare for an entire week as a unit. Now, I can't do that any more and I'm learning to let go of the urge to try.

It's strange, though, that as we approached this clock changing weekend I realized time matters not one lick. It's totally arbitrary. Do you know how trippy that is for me? Yesterday, Corey and I just went about our day, went to bed as soon as Miles did, and knew he would wake up when he woke up. Our Sunday would be what it was going to be. It was strangely calming to just be in the moment because there was no alternative. It's hard to explain, but evening became just evening time, rather than the set of hours between 6pm and our 9pm bedtime...

For most of my life, I have dreaded daylight saving day because it meant I lost an hour of sleep. I'd inevitably have to be up for work or errand-running or have been out late the night before (or maybe I spent the evening before mentally reciting my schedule for the next week to make sure I hadn't left a single moment unaccounted for). I can't get over the fact that this year was so different.

Want to know when MW was up for the day today? 8:30am EDT. Want to know why that doesn't matter? Because he was also up from 12:00am-1:00am and 4:30-5:30, snotting and coughing and generally breaking my heart with his little chest cold.

Everyone assures me that I will be able to rejoin the world that rotates around a clock, one day be able to again say, "Sure! Let's have lunch at 12:30!" Today is the first day in a long time where I don't care--maybe my rigidly scheduled life wasn't that great anyway. It was like this shattering, delirious revelation. We'll eat when we're hungry, sleep when the baby sleeps, and spend the time in between doing what we need to get done.

In this case, what we need to get done is a top-to-bottom scrub of our snot-covered germ den, but that's a story for another day.

Beware the Ides of March

I had to cancel the last leg of Levapolooza. That's what I have been calling this week, which was supposed to include a visit from Corey's parents, overlapped by a visit from Corey's brother, finished by a visit to NJ to say farewell to Corey's childhood home and introduce Miles to the fine arts of good bread and road rage.

Levapolooza quickly turned into just a visit from Jordie as Mom-mom went down with sciatica and, yesterday, Miles woke up with a head full of sick. The poor kid just can't seem to catch a break, healthwise. We spent 6 days working through some pretty torturous teething issues, which had MW waking up every hour or two in pain and riding out a low grade fever. The day the tooth finally broke through the gum, he wound up with a head full of snot.

All of this is to also indicate that I have not had more than 2 hours' sleep in a row for 8 days now. Perhaps Wednesday night I got 3 hours in a row? At this point, who can remember. I certainly didn't remember to brush my teeth today. Or change my underwear. I would say I am walking wounded, but I am not walking at all. The sleep deprivation finally caught up with me and I find myself flat on my back, unable to move. When I try, I am overcome with nausea and dizziness.

Corey had to stay home from work today to take care of us. I got toast with butter in bed. Miles got salted steam, the blue nose snot-sucker, and a squirt of saline. All certainly much less fun than a visit to Mom-mom, Peppy, and Aunt Dina.

I find it very sad that these woes should befall us just as the world is waking up from its lengthy, white nightmare. Just as I find myself able to escape the house and the neighborhood, just as we find plants poking through the soil and head outside without jackets, we are struck down. Beware the Ides of March, the Bard warns us. Beware indeed.

Pittsburgh Gets ICAN chapter

A press release to share:

The International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) now has an on-the-ground presence in the Pittsburgh region. As the cesarean-section rate climbs past 31% (according to 2007 data from the Center for Disease Control), ICAN provides peer-based support for women interested in recovery and prevention. ICAN aims to provide factual information and evidence-based information regarding choices in childbirth.

The group’s next meeting will be held Tuesday, March 30, 2010 from 6:30-8:30pmin the office of Patrick Thornton, 1900 Murray Ave, in Squirrel Hill. Contact Amy Farr, 724-297-3221 or icanofsouthwesternpa@gmail.com for more information or search for the group via facebook.

ICAN is a worldwide nonprofit organization devoted to improving maternal-child health by preventing unnecessary cesareans through education, providing support for cesarean recovery, and promoting Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC). Their website (www.ican-online.org) offers community forums and informational webinars covering topics ranging from scar care to homebirth preparation. For more information or to join, visit www.ican-online.org.

Bubble Up

My cousin had her baby on Friday. I found out she went into labor in the morning and waited by the phone all day, anxious to hear news of her progress. I was totally unprepared for how M's experience would stir up undealt-with emotions from my own birth experience. When, as it turns out, her labor mirrored mine down to almost every last detail, I went a little crazy.

Every text message or relative seemed to deliver worse news: medical interventions, dangerously low heart rate, cord wrapped around the baby's torso (this was not something I experienced with Miles), and an eventual emergency c-section. My response to her delivery was so complex: I was a little jealous of my cousin because she got to the stage of pushing, but then was totally not jealous that she pushed for three hours before the doctor "called it" and rushed her to the OR. I was delighted to hear I have a new baby cousin, with red hair no less! But I was truly sad thinking about the way he entered the world. I am not saying that my cousin was devastated by what happened to her at all. I was devastated just thinking about that whole process.

I am heartbroken that another mom had to have major abdominal surgery, had to have her organs moved around and placed on her chest, that another mom can't get out of bed for a week (at least!) to tend to the needs of her crying newborn and change diapers in the middle of the night. My heart just aches for all these damaged bodies with staples in their skin. My cousin is allergic to Demoral...they had to find a nursing-friendly alternative pain medication to ease the burning she felt around her incision. I can't imagine that.

What is going on that more than 30% of babies are born until extreme conditions like this? Why do I feel so powerless when faced with news of such happenings? I need to work through these feelings and find an outlet for my political childbirth energy. This month's ICAN meeting (the first I'll get to attend!) can't come soon enough.