the annals of pregnancy, part six

38 weeks pregnant. Nothing new to report, I just feel like I should report something in these final weeks. Everyone asks how I'm doing and I feel kind of strange saying that I generally feel fine—very pregnant and enormous, but fine. I sort of feel like I should come up with something to complain about.

I especially feel this way at my (now weekly) doctor appointments, where the first question I get is: "how are you feeling?" and I say: "fine, nothing new to report," and then she immediately asks: "any bleeding, gush of fluid, or contractions?" And I am left to wonder on what planet feeling "fine" would include bleeding, gushing fluid, or contractions. The first time this happened I think I cracked some joke, but I have since resigned myself to the fact that my doctor has script and she sticks to it no matter what. 

Actually, having nearly reached the end of pregnancy, I think my doctor is going to end up being my biggest complaint about the whole process. She routinely keeps me waiting in the exam room for 45+ minutes—not a big deal if I saw her once a year, but supremely annoying when I now see her once a week. She has also conveniently forgotten all about our breastfeeding conversation and has since reminded me about picking up my breast pump and how I won't be able to go back on hormonal birth control because it can interfere with lactation. Sigh. The good news is that she doesn't deliver babies anymore so I won't need to deal with her in the hospital. I feel like switching to another doctor at this point would be dumb, but I definitely intend to see someone else after the baby is born. 

(As an aside: it's really too bad that this has been a lackluster medical experience for me, because I have always detested going to the doctor and I put off even routine visits for far, far longer than is recommended. And I should note that this drives Josh insane, because when there is something actually wrong with me he has to be the one who insists that I see a doctor. An extreme example: when I broke my wrist earlier this year he had to convince me that no, I couldn't just take a shower and go to work and wait to see if it was still bothering me in a few hours. He pointed out that if I was crying in pain I should probably go get an x-ray just to be sure.)

Medical annoyances notwithstanding: we now own all the equipment necessary to keep an infant alive, so that's good news. I'm sure the extras that keep an infant happy will be added as we go, but keeping him alive is pretty much the only bar I intend to hold myself to for a while. 

Oh, another bar has been met: I have been asked to stay on permanently at my job! (I was initially hired for a limited term, which was slated to end December 31—four days after the baby is due).  I don't love my job, but I do really like my paycheck, so it's nice to have that to come back to. Even better, I found out I won't actually need to miss my paycheck at all: the very cryptic maternity leave policies have been explained to me in actual English and it turns out I get double the amount of paid leave than I originally thought. Hooray! A month ago I thought I might have no paid leave at all, so this is quite welcome news. I know the Swedes still have it better, but I am pleased.  

But I forgot, I was supposed to be complaining! I have a feeling I'll have plenty to gripe about soon enough—I am dreading giving birth, and considering how much I dislike doctors I anticipate lots of opportunities for that dread to be realized. 

the annals of pregnancy, part five

I have no interest in breastfeeding—never have, never will. I have my reasons, and since they are both my reasons and my boobs, I feel very little need to explain myself. Yes, I understand that lots of moms love it and that babies love it and that it prevents cancer and makes unicorns appear, but I will be very frank: I do not care. A central tenet of human freedom, I believe, is that everyone should feel free to do as she wishes with her own breasts. I think people should breastfeed wherever they want whenever they want! Your nipples, your choice! And I will reserve the right to not breastfeed at all. 

I am not dumb enough to imagine that people would find my decision laudable, but I had hoped they would not feel the need to comment on it. I had especially hoped that my doctor would refrain from weighing in on this decision, but alas, my hopes have been dashed. Yesterday I made the great mistake of telling her that the breast pump prescription she gave me, without asking, was not necessary. The result was an extremely unfruitful conversation that resulted in her suggesting: 1) many unproven things about the benefits of breastfeeding vs. formula feeding, 2) that formula is prohibitively expensive and I probably can't afford it, and 3) that a great compromise would be to just pump exclusively. 

The first suggestion was disconcerting, since I have read a lot about breastfeeding (in preparation for the onslaught of objections I knew I would face) and I know that what she told me has not been proven by any research. The second suggestion was hilarious—with all the money we're going to spend on childcare, not to mention diapers and clothes, she thinks I should worry about formula?? I understand that formula for an infant costs a couple hundred dollars a month, but how many hours a week do you spend breastfeeding an infant? (One estimate clocks in at 1,800 hours a year, or about 30 hours a week.) I will gladly pay $50 a week not to do something I find extremely unappealing. (I'll take the money out of his college fund, evil mother that I am.)

The third suggestion, that pumping exclusively was a happy compromise I could easily pursue, was pretty surprising. Why on earth would she think that pumping would be more appealing than feeding the baby directly? The whole point is that I don't want to be milked. A milking machine is perhaps only slightly preferable because it won't bite me, but otherwise it seems like a substitution without a difference. 

At the time, I believe my response to these various arguments was, "ummm, ok, I'll think about it." I don't regret this response and plan to use it pretty uniformly going forward, while I simultaneously do whatever I want. I figure they won't go so far as to drug me and put the baby at my boob, so at the end of the day I'll win this battle. 

I do wonder, though: if I had told my doctor I planned not to vaccinate, or not to vaccinate according to schedule, would I have gotten this much horrified pushback? Somehow I doubt it. 

the annals of pregnancy, part four

33 weeks now and officially feeling huge. Whereas until a month or so ago someone might have just thought I was chunky, I am now unquestionably pregnant. The baby moves all the time—on a walk this weekend I tried to explain to Josh what it feels like to walk with something moving inside you. After listening to my explanation he summarized it well: it's like trying to walk with a four pound gyroscope inside you. It's also like trying to sit and sleep and eat with a gyroscope inside you. Uncomfortable. 

My joints hurt, especially getting up in the morning. Standing for long periods is no longer feasible. I have trouble washing the dishes because my belly prevents my short arms from reaching into the sink. Bending down to pick up anything is difficult. Catching sight of myself in a mirror or window is disconcerting. Hard to imagine how enormous I'll feel in another month. Sigh. 

(I am of course very lucky to have no pregnancy complications and therefore no reason to worry about delivering early, but keeping that positive thought constantly in mind is hard.) 

I have failed to purchase any products to ameliorate my various pregnancy ailments. The only thing I bought (besides clothes) was a very highly rated pregnancy pillow, which I have used precisely once. It's so big it doesn't fit in the bed, and the one night I used it I woke up totally drenched in sweat and no less sore than before. After that debacle, I decided to ignore all the ads for belly oil and compression socks and belly bands. Tell me, Dear Readers: do any of these things help? 

The true problem is that I hate buying things. It makes me anxious. Even under normal circumstances I spend an unreasonable amount of time researching products, reading reviews, and comparison shopping to make sure I'm getting a good deal. Then, when the purchase doesn't work out, I am very frustrated. Buying things for pregnancy has not been great, but at least a lot of it is cheap and I know more or less what I need and when. Shopping for an infant I have never met has been is exponentially worse. Everything is expensive and only useful for a limited time! And I have a feeling that about half of what is listed as "essential" is actually totally unnecessary, but I won't know for sure until he's here. But once he's here he's going to need things immediately, so I should probably be buying stuff now! 

Despite getting lots of good advice on what to buy from friends (thank you, friends!), my solution has basically been to give in to paralysis and buy nothing. My parents generously offered to buy us a stroller but after much, much research I could not decide which one to get. Ultimately I just ceded the decision to my mother, and while I was very happy to get the (very fancy) stroller, I was even more thrilled not to have to make the decision. 

My large extended Irish Catholic family has also come in handy (for once) since various aunts and uncles and cousins repeatedly asked me for registry info, which forced me to put together some random list of things that may (perhaps?) be useful. The actual decision about what to purchase is, mercifully, their problem. I have managed to not buy a good amount of essential items this way, which has been very helpful. 

Josh, who is still wearing clothes he bought in high school, as been very little help with this my shopping "problem." If it were up to him, we'd go to Costco a week before the baby is due and get everything at once. Which actually might end up being what we do, since I appear unable to buy anything in advance. 

election eve

Unlike pretty much everyone else I know, I have very few feelings about this election. Not because I don't think it's important, but because I have become incapable of feeling anything about politics. I'm amazed by all the people who have become so energized in their quest to either beat Trump or support him—my response to the past four years has been near-complete political enervation. 

I know I don't want Trump to win, but I don't know if it matters. Does anything matter? Can anything repair the disdain and fear and anger and resentment in politics? Pretty much no matter what happens tomorrow, half the country will have roundly rejected everything about the other half. So aren't we just going to keep having these useless contests for the foreseeable, endless, draining future? I just can't manage to convince myself that the outcome of tomorrow's election will solve anything at all. 

To be fair, though, I've never been all that interested in politics to begin with—I generally agree with Hobbes that the point of the commonwealth is to provide its citizens with a secure and peaceful state within which to pursue other interests. In my ideal democracy, the vast majority of people would vote every 2 years and stay generally informed but otherwise devote their time and effort and ingenuity to other, entirely non-political, things. 

But now there are no non-political things. Novels, food, sports, fashion, medicine, sex—everything you do or say, or put on your body or in your body, is a political statement. Judging by twitter most people seem to think this makes things more interesting—why just cook food when you can cook political food!—but it makes me want to lie down and give up. All I want to know is how to make babka, and I do not care one iota what you think about police reform. 

If I were incapable of rational thought and only acted on my feelings, I'm quite certain I wouldn't vote at all. The political theorist in me (she's still in there, somewhere) is curious whether this utter lack of feeling is what saves democracies, or what makes them devolve into tyranny. Can democracies survive when everyone has such deep feelings about politics? When who you vote for doesn't just indicate what you think about one or two particular policies but instead reflects the very content of your character and, potentially, the state of your soul? On the other hand, can democracies survive when a portion of the population is SO SICK of politics that they are willing to give up their say in the process just so everyone will just please please please talk about something else? 

Is there a political theorist somewhere who answers these questions for me? If so, please advise. I am in need of guidance. 

the annals of pregnancy, part three

In my family we have a joke: when someone asks you how something went, like a job interview or a date, or even just your day at work, and you don't really want to talk about it, you can shrug and say, "I played and played and played." The joke is about me as a little girl—when my parents would ask me at dinner how school went that day, I would shrug and say, "I played and played and played." According to my parents, I said this every day. Getting more details out of me was difficult. 

I'm pretty sure I just didn't have more details to share. Seems reasonable to me that kindergarten wasn't that interesting, but I guess my sister had a lot more to report? In any case, it was probably the first sign of a clear character trait: I'm not good at sharing personal information. From the mundane, like what I did in school that day, to the profound, like the fact that I'm going to have a baby.

Despite being pregnant during a global pandemic, moving, and having a fairly stressful job, the biggest source of anxiety for me during my pregnancy (so far) has been having to tell people I'm pregnant. I agonized over telling my parents, my friends, my boss, my coworkers. At least a couple people who know me well joked that they were glad I told them I was pregnant before the baby was born. And honestly, if it wasn't considered extremely weird, I might have been tempted to do just that.   

While I was agonizing over all of this sharing, I also spent some time agonizing over why I am so strange. Sharing personal information appears to be a source of joy for most people. Gender reveal parties are a cultural phenomenon! Baby showers are definitely a thing. The entire industry of social media revolves around the sharing of personal information! 

The weird part is that I don't mind people knowing I'm pregnant—I just don't want to have to tell them. And now that almost no one sees me below the shoulders, sharing this information without words is quite hard to achieve. Blurting out news over Zoom is my personal nightmare, and that's pretty much the only method of communication these days. 

I'm sure there's some deep psychological reason for this strangeness that would be revealed by $20K worth of therapy, which I would gladly do if I had the money or the time. (Seriously, I think therapy would be fascinating.) Whatever the reason, though, it clearly runs in the family, because my mother has a great story about going into my Dad's office when she was 7 months pregnant with me and finding out he hadn't told anyone they were expecting another kid. My parents met at work, so all his coworkers knew my mother, and they were pretty surprised he hadn't said anything. (My mother, who loves to share personal information, was pretty mad.) It's kind of comforting to know that I am, at least, not alone in my strangeness. 

annals of pregnancy, part two

Back in April, I had a very vivid dream where I suddenly began to expand—much like Violet Beauregarde when she blows up into a giant blueberry. In my dream, I remember being pretty freaked out as my body suddenly no longer fit into its former dimensions, and very frustrated when my none of my clothes fit. 

This was several weeks before I knew I was pregnant, but looking back now, I must have subconsciously suspected something. That same week I also had a very vivid dream that I visited Emily Hale and we drank fancy cocktails in a swanky jazz club that was also (somehow?) a student-run cafe. She later assured me that, sadly, no such place exists. I guess in my subconscious the pandemic and my pregnancy manifested in sad but vivid dreams about expanding waistlines, cocktails, and faraway friends. 

In retrospect, I have been sort of surprised how I have not expanded like Violet Beauregarde turning into a blueberry. I mean, I am definitely unable to wear my pre-pregnancy jeans anymore, but for the first 4 months I didn't have much problem fitting into them. I'm sure this is different for everyone, right? Also, when it's your body changing day-to-day the changes probably seem subtle when to other people you look obviously pregnant. I don't know. I keep thinking that one day I'll wake up and suddenly be enormous. I'm not looking forward to it. 

My most glaring pregnancy symptom has actually a lack of interest in food—until a couple weeks ago I found it almost impossible to finish a full portion of anything, and early on I had to force myself to eat. This is not—to put it mildly—normal behavior for me. I'm not too far off from my third trimester now, and I feel like I'm just now back to my pre-pregnancy appetite. 

I confessed in my last post that I had more than a few cocktails early on, before I knew I was pregnant. I will confess here that I have not been very strict in following the food guidelines that everyone (society? marketing? blogs? I don't honestly know where these rules come from) insists are required. I still drink coffee daily, I still have an occasional glass of wine, I just this afternoon ate a turkey sandwich. I did give up eating canned tuna, but that was mostly because up until very recently it would have absolutely made me gag. The single piece of guidance my doctor gave me was to avoid eating or drinking anything unpasteurized, which I have done, since it seems prudent. And I figured if she had only one warning, I should take it seriously. 

I'm not particularly proud of any of this—or of my pre-pregnancy diet, either. There is nothing virtuous about eating cold cuts. It's just...what I've done.  

A friend of mine in grad school worked at the popular campus bar, and during his training he shared this fun factoid with me: it's illegal to refuse to serve a pregnant woman alcohol. I remember being so surprised! Not that a pregnant woman would want alcohol (seems logical to me) but rather that the government has not yet made it illegal for her to drink it. The overwhelming message I've received—since long before I ever became pregnant myself—is that pregnant women are to be treated as vessels for their unborn children. Telling pregnant women what to do with their bodies seems to be as normal as telling them what to do with their infants, and serving an infant alcohol would, of course, be illegal. I remain glad that the distinction between a pregnant woman and her child has not entirely collapsed. 

the annals of pregnancy, part one

It's worth noting up front that most of my pregnancy-related thoughts have nothing to do with COVID, except for the fact that it is very awesome not to have to wear work appropriate pants while pregnant. Every woman should be able to wear sweatpants and leggings without judgment every day of her pregnancy.

So far, what I've been most surprised by is people who have asked me if I got pregnant by accident. (Not a large number, but more than one.) If they thought about it for a minute, wouldn't they realize how unlikely it is that a 35-year-old woman who has been married for 5 years would get accidentally pregnant? I suppose it's possible, but really pretty unlikely, right? I can't figure out if people are asking because they think it's crazy to have a baby now, in the middle of a global health crisis, or if it has something to do with me having a baby? Probably some combination of both. I don't take it personally. 

Strangely, while the pregnancy wasn't an accident, it does kind of feel that way. I was (and still am) surprised to be pregnant—since my teens I've had a condition that my doctors always insisted would make it difficult for me to have children. So when someone asks me if the baby was an accident, I almost want to say yes—it does feel that way! I was so sure it would take many months or years to get pregnant, if it happened at all, that other than going off birth control I didn't really pay much attention—there were no prenatal vitamins, no ovulation tests, not even the slightest attempt to stop drinking. (And I do hope the baby likes bourbon because there were more than a few pandemic cocktails early on there.)

Being told at 17 that I was possibly infertile was, for me, less traumatizing than you might suppose. At that age having a baby seemed like the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me. And as I got older and that changed, I had already accepted that childlessness was one possible life outcome, much like it was possible I would never get married. I knew people who were single or childless and neither of these outcomes seemed to me like a true impediment to happiness or a full life. 

But here I am, unquestionably pregnant. I'm both glad I took the warnings of my doctors seriously— infertility issues are fairly common, after all, and more people should probably be prepared for them—and I'm also very relieved that I didn't take their warnings too seriously, otherwise I might very well have ended up accidentally pregnant long before I was ready. (I did sometimes wonder why I needed to also worry about birth control when everyone insisted I was unlikely to conceive without extensive medical intervention.) 

Yesterday was the baby's first sonogram, and it was amazing to see his little face, his tiny hands and feet, even the blood flowing in and out of his heart. I am truly amazed at what medicine can show us about a baby still in the womb, and I remain simultaneously confounded by how much of medicine appears to be guesswork. I have a lot of respect for medical science—hooray for vaccines and antibiotics and immunotherapy and all that jazz!—but doctors rarely acknowledge that while diagnostics may work very well in the aggregate, individual cases do not seem to be quite so easy to predict. I'm sure my particular case will remain a mystery forever—if only because the doctors ended up being wrong. 

slick mirror

Over the summer, when we were still allowed to leave the house, I was working in a very hip bookstore in my very literary college town, and there was one book that stayed at the top of our bestseller list for multiple weeks: Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino.

At the time I had never heard of Tolentino, but she is a writer at the New Yorker who is also an alum of the MFA program at the university where I currently work. In other words: she is a Big Deal here. An essayist for the instagram generation: mid-30s, stylish, slightly awkward, smart. She came to give a reading at the bookstore which produced a sold-out crowd, and I heard gushing reviews of her performance for weeks after. I was surprised to learn that her book was a series of essays: these are not typically bestsellers.

Essays are my favorite genre of writing. They are by nature concise and provide direct access to the mind of a writer: you don't just get a story or description or facts, you also get an argument. When they are good, even the most dispassionate, academic essays (e.g., Marilynne Robinson's), are personal, in that they demonstrate how the writer thinks about the world.

All this to say: I was excited to read Tolentino's work. Unfortunately, I ended up hating it more than I thought possible. I disliked the book so much I found it difficult to explain why without sounding unhinged. Somehow, she manages to make even the most fascinating personal experiences stultifyingly boring. Imagine something incredible happened to you: like, you cured cancer! And in an essay about that experience, you focused primarily on why you needed to wear a lab coat to work. Worse, Tolentino confuses the most basic terms and ideas—I remain genuinely concerned that she does not understand the difference between a marriage and a wedding, despite writing an entire essay on the topic. 

And reading the reviews made me feel insane, because every single one was unequivocally positive. Tolentino is the voice of her generation! A visionary! A genius! This view included every major book review outlet and all of my coworkers at the bookstore. Hating the book began to feel downright heretical. When a customer would ask for my opinion before buying it, I would lie and say I hadn't read it. My coworkers, with whom I had discussed the book extensively, found this hilarious. 

After selling hundreds of copies and reading dozens of glowing reviews, I started to worry that I was the problem. Tolentino had clearly touched a nerve, and maybe this was a sign that her work was actually brilliant? Were banality and confusion her whole point, and I was missing the joke? Aren't love and hatred closely intertwined? If the book was truly bad, wouldn't indifference be a more reasonable response? 

Ultimately, I think not. What drove me nuts was not the book itself, but the gushing response from people who should know better. And today, many months later, I finally, finally found a negative review! Just reading it made me calm. In a way, I'm grateful to Tolentino for writing such a terrible book, if only to give me the experience of feeling so strongly contrarian about it. Loving something everyone else loves is a nice feeling, but finding the one other person who hates something as much as you do is truly wonderful. 

cast update

Had lunch with a friend today. Ordered squash soup. Managed to spill a whole spoonful on my cast, and now there is an orange stain right smack dab in the center of my cast. And there is squash caked into the fiberglass weave. This is triggering my non-existent OCD! I just tried to use a toothbrush to scrub it clean and that definitely did not work. Now I am paranoid I got my cast wet and the cotton layer under the cast isn't going to dry and my skin will get infected and eventually turn gangrenous and my hand will fall off!

UUUGHH. THIRTEEN DAYS TO GO. THIRTEEN DAYS IS FOREVER.

The friend I had lunch with told me that as a kid she broke her leg during the summer and she somehow managed to get poison ivy under her cast! I told her that sounded like pure hell, and she assured me it was pure hell.

And my coworker (who rides horses) told me she's broken 10+ bones over the course of her life. Once, she broke her left arm and her right wrist at the same time! I was very tempted to ask her how she went to the bathroom with both arms casted, but I definitely don't know her well enough for that. (I'm trying to curb the inappropriate questions at work.)

I am also trying to focus on what doesn't suck, so instead of obsessing over the squash stain, I am reminding myself that: 1. I do not currently have poison ivy under my cast, and 2. My left arm is totally fine. I am so grateful for these things, and also I would really, really like my cast off. NOW PLEASE. 

wrist update

The specialist says the wrist is broken. I am in a cast for 4 weeks. The cast is purple (my favorite color). This is a very small consolation.

A greater consolation: the cast, unlike the splint they gave me at urgent care, keeps my thumb and fingers free. So I can pinch things! It's glorious.

Also: I no longer have to shake anyone's hand, a custom I have never enjoyed. So many damp palms in the world.

In closing, my suggestion to you all is that, if you need to fall, make sure you keep your hands and arms out of the way.

pity the one-handed

I fractured my wrist yesterday. I slipped on some ice while walking my dog and landed on my right hand. As far as they can tell from the x-rays—and still I'm shocked how much the doctor at urgent care couldn't tell me—it's only a minor hairline fracture. But it still hurts like hell and my right hand is in a hard splint, which means I'm typing this one-handed. (And very, very, sloooowly.)

It's a huge bummer. So I just wanted to share with you, Dear Readers, some things that are very hard to do with one hand (especially your non-dominant hand) so you can appreciate how nice it is to have two:

• Squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush
• Flossing
• Putting your hair in a ponytail
• Putting on a bra that has hooks
• Tying your shoes
• Applying deodorant (one underarm is easy, the other is real hard)
• Applying eyeliner
• Cutting your fingernails
• Putting on earring that require backings
• Cooking anything more complicated than canned soup
• Twisting off the lid of a jar
• Picking up dog poop (don't miss this one, but sometimes it's required)
• Washing dishes (same as previous)

Props to Josh for waiting with me at urgent care for two hours and also assisting me with everything on this list. There's nothing like being injured to remind you to appreciate your spouse.

I am going to see an orthopedic hand and wrist specialist tomorrow, and I'm hoping they tell me it's miraculously cured. This seems to be an actual possibility, since no two doctors ever give me the same information about anything. I wish I had friends who are (medical) doctors, so they could explain to me how medicine, which is clearly an art, has somehow managed to pass itself off as a science. 

famous friends

Though I started it a decade ago, I am now finally almost finished (re)reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It is so, so good, and I have many Thoughts about it. But mostly I find myself thinking one very silly thought: how much I hope that that Hilary Mantel and Marilynne Robinson are friends.

They probably aren't, since Mantel has said she doesn't have many friends, but I can't help but wish it anyway. It's a wonderful time to be alive when there are two excellent writers obsessed with history and the reformation—and writing popular books about it! I like to imagine they have a whatsapp chat full of references to obscure early modern texts and jokes about various Cromwells.

In reality, they probably dislike each other. Don't we usually find people too similar to us to be grating? And I'm sure they aren't on whatsapp at all—they're too productive. But I will continue to hope they're friends. And that some day they invite me to have dinner with them, where I will be too awestruck to say anything.