month two

In a couple days the baby will be 8 weeks old. I assume some day I will stop thinking about his age in weeks? It might be a while. 

The only thing he really cares about is food, so that's no change from last month. A big, big change is that he no longer sleeps during the day unless I force him to by putting him in his crib and swaddling him. Until about midway through week 6 he slept most of the day anywhere I put him—his swing, the stroller, his pack and play, my arms—but now he will stay awake indefinitely until he ends up screaming bloody murder. And it turns out, if babies don't sleep during the day they don't sleep at night, either. It took a couple days for me to figure out he had stopped napping, and then it took a couple days for him to figure out how to nap, and that week was pretty brutal. Very little sleep was had by all. 

During this week I broke down and bought a couple advice books on babies and sleeping—I thought that a nap schedule would emerge organically when he was like 3 months old, I didn't realize that he would suddenly go on a sleep strike at six weeks and make himself (and me) inconsolable. I read these books, and on the margins they were helpful. (It would never have occurred to me to put the baby down for a nap an hour or so after he woke up, or to put him to bed at 5:30pm, for example.) On the whole, though, I read 300+ pages and all the useful useful stuff could have been relayed to me in about 10. 

We're doing somewhat better now with the napping, but my position on advice remains unchanged: I don't like it. I particularly dislike advice books. The authors are all so certain and they contradict each other constantly. And they all go too far—instead of just validating the problem (that yes, you are not crazy, babies don't sleep automatically during the day and you have to help them) and giving you a few tips on what to do, they all promise you a solution. To a woman who is very sleep deprived, it is cruel to promise that your baby will sleep for 8 hours at a stretch if you just follow this specific program in minute, painstaking detail. Life is not that simple. And you will not be able to follow any specific program in detail because every baby (and perhaps more importantly, every parent) is different. Ultimately, you're really just going to have to use your best judgment. 

But no one would pay money for a book that just told you to use your best judgment, so here we are. I've been thinking a lot about Agnes Callard through this experience, because she writes all the time about how much she hates advice. I couldn't find the specific article but I'm pretty sure that somewhere she says she finds unsolicited advice to be a kind of aggression. I wouldn't go quite that far, since sometimes people really do know more than you and can help. My philosophy is better summed up by this quote: I don't think anyone can, or should want, to be told how to live. I have previously succumbed to the desire to be told how to live and I have deeply regretted it every single time. 

Someone giving you advice on how to get a baby to sleep is hardly advice on how to live, of course, but I do think that once you start organizing your life according to someone else's experience you're on a slippery slope. Being totally inflexible when someone is trying to help you is also no good, of course. It's a fine line. And I guess I'll have lots of chances to practice walking this line, since there is endless advice on parenting and I know nothing about being a parent. I will probably break down once again and buy more advice books when we reach the next stage of inconsolable crying, but until then I'll try and remember to just use my best judgment. It's free, at least. 

month one

The baby is nearly one month old, which seems like a milestone worth celebrating. Mostly for us, not him—we've made it this far and everyone is still alive and sane, hooray. 

I've never been a baby person, so it's hardly a surprise to me that this stage of parenthood is pretty boring. He's cute, of course, but most of the time—when he's not sleeping—he's either really annoying or very gross, often both at the same time. He's definitely more alert than he was a couple weeks ago, which makes him seem more like a person and less like a feeding/pooping machine, but he's still pretty blob-like at this point. 

So far, he likes anything with lots of motion: his swing on the highest setting; a very bumpy stroller ride over ice and snow; a trip in the car. He also likes food, his number one request. He loathes diaper changes with a vociferous passion. He doesn't mind taking a bath, but really hates getting out of it. He has shown no understanding that the dog is a dog, but he doesn't seem to mind having his face, hands, and feet licked by her. Pooping and farting are by far the two hardest parts of his day. 

Overall what I'm most amazed by is that every single person currently living on the planet was born so helpless and needy. Just think about it: every single human spent years having their poopy butt wiped by annoyed adults! None of us gets to skip this stage, either: I bet even Jesus had the occasional gross diaper. I knew this intellectually, of course, before I had an infant, but the reality of it has only just hit home. I'm really enjoying imagining random people as helpless babies. Baby Mitch McConnell, for example, with a massive poop diaper, crying for his milk at 2am. How delicious. 

As for me: I am tired, which is obviously due to lack of sleep but may also have something to do with boredom. Having a baby in January in Michigan means you don't get out much; having a baby in January in Michigan during a pandemic means you really don't get out much. I'm trying to embrace this hibernation season. 

My one daily activity not directly related to keeping myself or the baby alive is taking long walks along the Huron river. I've started going every day, snow or shine, dog and baby in tow. It seemed only fitting that I should finally read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek while doing this—and it's a good book to read while caring for an infant, since there is no plot and you can pick it up from anywhere. It's always interesting to finally start reading a book that has been described to you many times by many different people: I'm always surprised at what people fail to mention. Everyone told me that Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was about nature, which of course it is, but no one told me it's really about God. It's not at all what I expected. 

Induction & birth

I feel compelled to write about this now, before my brain very wisely erases these memories. And I'm sure the memories will fade, because if they didn't we would all be only children. To be clear: this post is really just for me, so that I don't forget what happened. I can't imagine anyone else would be interested in all of these details. 

At 39 weeks pregnant, my doctor recommended scheduling an induction for the next week, if I hadn't already gone into labor on my own by then. Going to 41 weeks, she said, could be dangerous for the baby. I was fine with this, and very tired of being pregnant, so we scheduled the induction. I also asked her in that appointment if she had a sense how big the baby would be, and she said she could guess but it would really just be a guess and therefore not very useful. I had a feeling that she dodged the question.

I was hoping to go into labor on my own, but besides increasing discomfort, fatigue, and the inability walk farther than a block, nothing happened. So when we arrived at the hospital for the induction a few days after Christmas I was very ready to have the baby, though definitely apprehensive about what would happen. 

As it turns out, very little happened for the first two days. When I got to the hospital they hooked me up to two monitors: one for the baby, one for contractions. The baby was fine, and I was having some small but regular contractions already. The doctors seemed surprised that I wasn't able to feel them, but not concerned. They proceeded to give me a few different drugs to trigger labor and inserted a Foley bulb to dilate my cervix (which I won't describe here in detail, but I can assure you was extremely unpleasant).  At the end of about 40 hours, I had had multiple rounds of drugs and was 5 centimeters dilated, but I appeared to be no closer to having a baby. I was still having contractions but I couldn't feel them at all. 

I definitely started out knowing that an induction can take a lot of time—two days is not uncommon. But as we approached the end of two days I was extremely frustrated. It's the only time in my life that I've wanted to be in pain. I had spent two days hanging out in a hospital room, hooked up to an IV, pumped full of drugs, monitored constantly, letting dozens of strangers stick their fingers in me, and nothing was happening. It began to feel like they would keep doing this indefinitely—like we could stay in this loop for a week and I would get no closer to actually being in labor. 

In the hospital, you see your nurse regularly but the doctors only stop by on occasion—and usually it's a resident, the attending physician will only come by if some procedure needs to happen. I had seen an attending physician only once, when she came by to insert the Foley tube. When we reached the point where nothing seemed to be working anymore, I asked my nurse if I could see the attending again to get her opinion on what to do next. When she came, she did an exam and my water broke. 

This is when things finally (finally!) started to get painful—turns out amniotic fluid does a lot to cushion the feeling of having a baby's head in your pelvis. But pain, as it turned out, didn't mean that anything productive was happening. At midnight on Wednesday, about 10 hours after my water broke and over 48 hours since I had been admitted, I was still having regular contractions but I wasn't able to feel them. I also still hadn't dilated beyond 5 centimeters. 

It's also important to note that I hadn't really slept since I arrived—even though I wasn't in any pain initially and I wasn't close to going into labor, in the hospital someone is in your room every couple hours around the clock. If they're not giving you meds they're adjusting the fetal monitor or checking your vitals. The labor and delivery beds are also spectacularly uncomfortable—they are meant to be for giving birth, not for sleeping on when 9 months pregnant. 

So by midnight on Wednesday I was sleep deprived, in a lot of pain, and not even really in labor yet. The doctors decided two things at this point: 1) the baby was large and in a very strange position, and 2) it was possible all the contractions I had been having were too minor to be "productive."

For the first problem, they suggested I contort myself into a bunch of different positions to try and move the baby around—these were varying degrees of painful and didn't seem to do much. For the second problem, they decided to insert a monitor into my uterus to measure the strength of my contractions. If my contractions were as unproductive as they seemed, they would increase the amount of drugs they were giving me. 

That monitor, an intrauterine pressure catheter, is ultimately what broke me. It was excruciatingly painful when it was inserted, and they had to do it twice because there was some issue with placement the first time. And then they told me it would need to stay in until I delivered. And of course, no one seemed to think I was going to deliver anytime soon. 

I basically had a panic attack after that. I don't know if it was an actual panic attack, but it's definitely the closest to one I've ever been. Josh wisely decided at this point that this whole plan was no longer working, and called the nurse back in to insist that we needed to consider other options because even if the baby was still doing ok at this point I, clearly, was not. The baby had to come out, and soon. 

To their credit, during all my days and nights in the hospital all the doctors and nurses who I saw were great, and the team that night was no exception. They were not trying to torture me, even though it felt like it. Everyone was extremely understanding and in no way made me feel bad for losing my shit. They all came back in and very kindly talked me through my options, including explaining in detail the steps that they would take to ensure that I did not, in fact, spend the rest of my life in the hospital trying to go into labor. 

So we struck a deal: I would get a epidural, which I needed for a c-section anyway, and they would get 5 hours to monitor my contractions with the torture device. By morning we'd have a better sense of how to proceed. 

The epidural was amazing, and in my next life I want to be an anesthesiologist. I felt a lot better after that and managed to get some rest, which made me feel more like I was still a human being and not just a pregnant animal. In the morning, the doctors returned to deliver news I was not at all surprised by: nothing had changed. My contractions were not very strong, I was still 5 centimeters dilated, and the baby was still in his strange contorted position. The only new development was that the baby's heart rate was starting to dip slightly, which gave them some concern. So they gave me the option of continuing with the meds and seeing if anything changed, or doing a c-section. I chose the c-section. 

Even with an amazing epidural, the c-section was so, so, so painful. I do NOT understand how all those people on instagram pictures of themselves smiling with the baby while they're still on the operating table. I was writhing in pain the entire time, so much that they had to hold my legs down to stop me from moving. I actually begged the anesthesiologist to give me more morphine at the end, which she unfortunately declined to do. The only good part was that when they took the baby out, the doctors told me I made the right decision: not only was he really big, but he had a very cone-shaped head and a 5 centimeter edema on the end of it (I had been 5 centimeters dilated, remember). He had not enjoyed the induction process either. 

Josh got to hold him while I endured the unbelievable pain of being sewed back up, and it was a joy to see him. More joy became possible as I moved into the recovery room and back into my hospital room, where they got rid of the torturous labor and delivery bed and gave me very comfy post-surgical recovery bed. The baby was healthy, I was recovering well, and 48 hours later, we were finally allowed to leave. 

Despite truly excellent medical care and a great team of doctors and nurses, I'm not sure I'll ever recover from the trauma of this experience. Were I to have another kid (doubtful at this point) I would never, ever, EVER consent to an induction. I'm also not sure I could do another c-section: just thinking about the pain makes me tear up. And there's no guarantee that waiting a few extra weeks to go into labor naturally would have helped either: the baby would have been even bigger by then, and he still would have been in his weird contorted position.  

My unimaginative conclusion: childbirth is pretty awful. 

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.