Lactivists Unite?

Yesterday I had the much-beloved glucola screen –yea! I hope I passed it this time because failing means a 3-hour glucose tolerance test and fasting.

Yesterday I also heard about Facebook taking down pictures of nursing mommies. I can’t say I am outraged, but I am confused. Before I jump on the Facebook The Oppressor wagon, I’d really like to see the kinds of pictures that they actually took down. Were they the traditional shots of a latched on baby that show some cleavage and not much else? Or were they shots that actually showed mom’s boobs in all their glory and just happened to include a baby about to eat? I can see the need for Facebook to have a generic rule despite the nature of the picture that is something like “no nipples.” I’m just saying that if you have a rule you need to have a rule. The same principle applies in reverse – if you leave up pictures of women in string bikinis that show “everything but” and take down pictures that show the same amount of boobie with a baby instead of a bustier, then you don’t have a leg to stand on in my book.

I breastfed my daughter for a full 27 months of her life. I never had to buy formula, and I never regretted the decision. I breastfed Natalie in my home, in the mall, at the zoo, on an airplane, in the car (in the parking lot), at church, in a movie theater, and probably lots of other places that I can’t remember. I pumped milk at work for 9 months and also pumped in my car (yes, driving), at a wedding, and in many many bathrooms. (As I’m typing this, I am finding that Microsoft does not seem to recognize “breastfed” as a verb and keeps warning me that I am making fragments…) I am really proud of this, and the experience totally transformed the way I feel about my body. I was lucky, and I was never accosted by the boob police in public. I was (I believe) very discreet and never showed more than a flash of breast, and I never tried any very controversial places like a restaurant or grocery store. Oddly enough, the places that I was most uncomfortable were in the homes of friends and family. Those were the places that I was most often banished to a back room away from polite company. I met the most resistance from people that I knew, not from strangers.

The bottom line - in no way shape or form do I consider breastfeeding to be obscene. It doesn’t have anything to do with pornography, and it isn’t indecent exposure. Still, mommies, have some respect for the people around you. I think it’s like changing a diaper in public - it’s natural and you have to do it sometimes, but it’s just polite to make every reasonable effort to keep your little one’s little ones shielded from public view. Take the same measures with your own body is all I’m saying here.

I'm just here for the free tears

Yesterday I saw a professional counselor for the third and final time. I have struggled with my own demons as long as I can remember, and I think I always thought that if I could just make that phone call to get some help, it would come to an end. In August, I had something I can only describe as an anxiety attack that was so severe that I could not drive myself home. Maybe it was the baby on the way, or maybe it was just my time, but I finally got a list of counselors from my insurance company and tried to make an appointment.

The first strike was that I had to call six before I found one who would see me. The others were either not taking new patients, not seeing patients at all, or had moved their offices across town. These phone calls were next to impossible for someone like me to make, and I’d just like to say that the people who answered the phone did not make them any easier.

I finally found one person who would see me. She was the one who had no information on the internet and was unknown to a friend of mine who is also a counselor. I made my appointment for the next week and when the time came, I went. She had no waiting area, so I had the choice of either standing in the hallway outside her office or sitting in the reception area of a busy lending firm that was apparently accustomed to hosting the unstables that come to see the counselor down the hall. She was 20 minutes late to see me, and when she finally appeared, I got the feeling that she was no more thrilled to see me than I was to be there. I told her about the “attack” and that I thought maybe I was finally dealing with the trauma of my first pregnancy. She was not really listening, I don’t think, and just kept telling me that pregnancy got better in the second trimester (I was 19 weeks at the time.) I was there no more than 30 minutes, including filling out some paperwork, before she dismissed me on time despite starting late. She said we would work on relaxation techniques next time and sent me on my way.

The second appointment was a little bit better. We did some “meditation” and all I could do was cry. She asked what was going on, and re-visited the past pregnancy because that was all I could think to talk about. She told me that she thought maybe I was finally dealing with the trauma of my first pregnancy – what a thought. Anyway, at least she was listening.

The third was a disaster – late again, and I had no idea what to tell her. The only question she asked me was how my week had been. I couldn’t really think of much to say, so there was silence most of the time. She called me a perfectionist (as in “stop being a perfectionist”) when I explained that I hadn’t been able to clear my mind to do the meditation crap on my own.
I guess I expected her to have some supernatural ability to see that the things I was telling her were just the surface – that I really wanted and needed help with much deeper things. That seems a little unrealistic in retrospect, considering I have 25 years or so experience at convincing people that I am perfectly fine and no one has been able to figure it out yet. Anyway, she didn’t get it either and I don’t see the point of paying her to listen to me ramble about my week when I can do it for free on the internet without getting asinine feedback (or at least without feeling compelled to respond to any of it.)

Gentle nudges

Yesterday was the day from down under. Thing after thing went wrong at work, and the biggest problems were happening in Georgia, where I have no way of fixing them. I am already confused about what my job will look like after the new baby comes, but yesterday another option was thrown into the mix. I am very reluctant to make any decisions now, but my department is restructuring and 4 months is a little too long to bide my time without any job definition, I think. I got so stressed out about it that I put baby Isaac on the waiting list for Natalie’s daycare last night. The first opening they had was for June 1, so I guess I still have some problems there. I’m out of time for writing, so this will all have to wait for another day.

Adventures in Aggieland

First, you have to check this out – people are still crazy.

Second, my family completed the first of 3 consecutive trips to College Station to watch Aggie football live this past weekend. We left the house at 2:30 and made it home at 11:00. It was only in the high 80’s outside, so it was OK as outdoor sports go. Natalie spent all day Friday in anticipation of the event and had to wear her Aggie shirt and suck on only her Aggie pacifier (a.k.a. “plug”). She woke up from her nap and the casual observer may have thought we were going to Mickey Mouse’s Birthday Extravaganza based on her reaction to realizing that it was time to go. I spent a long time wondering why a 2-year-old would be so excited about an hour car ride followed by 2 hours of sitting around a grill followed by 4 hours of staring at a football field followed by another 2 hour car ride (this time with traffic.) On Sunday, even after the reality of the event must have sunken in, she would still only wear Aggie gear and use the Aggie plug. Why? How can this be exciting to her? It occurred to me that maybe this is what cheerleaders look like at 2 and I entered momentary panic. Then, on Sunday night, I was reminded of the secret - the devoted adoration that can only come from a daughter for the daddy that is wrapped completely around her fingers (and who happens to believe that the solar system revolves around Kyle Field).

Big Mac in the Oven?

Today I am uncomfortable with my body, and I believe it is a crime that people have made me feel this way. Three people in the last 3 days have told me that I look really big for my stage in pregnancy. Maybe I should just post a picture and let the internets vote on my relative pregnant lack of hotness? Or maybe I should NOT encourage the craziness that has lead people to believe it is OK to tell a woman she looks fat if she is pregnant.
And by the way, this should be the 9 months of my life when I am completely exempt from any fat judgment whatsoever- including judgments that I am such a fatty that I have somehow made my unborn child into a giant by proximity

You know, I've never been good at "Keep in Touch"

June, July, August, heck, some stuff happened in there. I just left a lunch with a friend who I haven’t seen in YEARS and after he told me the sagas of love and loss for his family, all I could think of to say was that my parents had some landscaping done. Seriously. And I’m having a boy. Frankly, I don’t know what I am going to do with a boy, but I’m getting one, and everyone seems to think it’s great that I will be completing my Norman Rockwell family portrait. I was actually dreaming of something more like Little Women without the death, but I can think of some good things about having a boy. Is it wrong that I am relieved that Natalie will be my one and only princess and won’t have to share that pet name with a sister? Is it normal to feel depressed that I will have to give away all the little dresses that she wore instead of seeing them again on another little girl? Am I the only person that can’t figure out whether I am happy or sad about this?

Oh! I did find time to read Harry Potter when the new book came out. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. I meant to re-read the ending, but I haven’t found that time again since. I have way too busy fueling my own anxiety over being pregnant.

When I was pregnant before, I had preeclampsia. There, I said it. If you’ve never known someone who went through that nightmare, read some stories here. My story is not that bad, as these things go. The thing is, I didn’t know I had a problem until I was in the recovery room after delivering my baby and couldn’t hold my head up or stop vomiting. The first 20 weeks of my pregnancy were spent trying to come to terms with being pregnant and having one continuous “threatened miscarriage” because my hormones were out of whack. Then – literally at 4 a.m. on the day after I was released from the hospital for the last time – my dear friend and my husband’s male other half, Russell, was killed in a mugging. The next 10 weeks or so are all a blur in which we tried to come to terms with all that grief and shock. I remember that I felt bad, but it’s difficult to separate depression from normal pregnancy feelings from the unnatural exhaustion caused by preeeclampsia. Then another friend delivered a baby at 26 weeks (she was 2 weeks ahead of me) and he only lived a month. I remember that I couldn’t wear shoes anymore because my feet were so thick that nothing in any size would go on. I know that my OB sent me to a cardiologist and put me on blood pressure medication, but I didn’t understand what it was for. I had complained that my heart felt like it was racing, and so I thought he was trying to help with that. The medicine made me foggy and even more tired, so I thought I was choosing between the racing heart and the foggy feeling, and I chose the racing heart because at least I could drive to work that way. I honestly had no idea that what I had was serious or that I was in any danger of early delivery. I read about pre-e in the pregnancy books. They listed the symptoms and – check, check, double-check- that was me. They didn’t say much that concerned me. I recently read in my old journal that the doctor had recommended that I leave work at 26 weeks, but I think I believed he was just trying to accommodate me because I felt so bad. I thought I was toughing it out and I just needed to get over feeling bad for myself. Then, at just under 37 weeks, I went to my company’s Thanksgiving luncheon and then to my weekly OB appointment. I took work with me. The doctor took my blood pressure, looked at my feet and smiled a very wary, ominous, smile. He said, “Well, you’re going to have this baby tomorrow. You can just go on over to the hospital now, and they will get you started. I will come by and check on you tonight, and we will have induction tomorrow. Maybe you will have labor tonight. You are essentially full term, the baby is big, and there is a chance that if I send you home, you will have a stroke.” He said it very kindly, but just like that. I began to cry right there. He took me to his office, and I remember sitting in his big leather chair calling my family to tell them I was going to the hospital and trying to keep from soaking his telephone. That’s about the last thing I remember clearly from that day.

So, without telling the whole birth story, I basically had 24+ hours of heavily monitored, drug-induced labor that ended in an emergency c-section. My blood pressure was so high after delivery that they put me on magnesium and sent me to a special high-care room. I don’t remember the first day of my child’s life, because that is what magnesium does, and afterward I was so relieved to have it over that I never looked back…until now, of course, when I became curious about whether this was a fluke or something I had to look forward to living again. Now I know that I have a very good chance of developing the same problems because the last time it all started so early in my pregnancy. To be totally honest, I am terrified. Every day, when I feel my heart racing and my shoes pinching, I remember having this feeling before. Things I have long forgotten are becoming clear again, and I am starting to make sense of what happened with the last pregnancy. At the same time, I am making my anxious self nuts worrying about what might happen.

I need a nap

Based on the theme of this blog, you might be temtped to believe that I sleep all the time, or that I am chronically sleep-deprived. I am not. It's just that I think about sleep all the time. If anyone asked me what I want at any given time, there is probably a 60% chance that I would say a nap. It doesn't matter how much or how little I sleep - I always want to sleep more.

For now, I have an excuse. I have a 2-year old daughter who is potty training (not that well), a full time job where I work with crazy people masquerading as normal business-folk, and a baby on the way. Sleep is precious and rare, and even when I am in bed with all the stars properly aligned, it just doesn't always come. Did I mention that I have a husband? I do, but since pre-season NFL means that there is football on every single day, and Ti-Vo means that we "don't have to miss a single minute," I might as well have an extra venus fly trap.

So, I wrote some nice posts about a 4 months ago when I set out to start this blog, but I never got around to actually starting it and posting them. I'll put the better ones up as I go along.