Monkey is showing interest in chess these days. Which is fun, because JD and I met playing chess ridiculous number of years and an ocean ago. We made a mistake of showing her how to set up a full board a couple of years back, from which she concluded that that there was the object of the game-- to put all the pieces in the correct spots. So we had to wait it out, and these days she is more willing to learn about what the pieces do and how they can interact. We are just starting, but last week, while I was on the couch, and she was on the floor with my old tournament roll up board and a white knight, we tried the how many squares can you make it to on the board without ever stepping on the same square twice problem. We used game pieces from a board game to mark the squares she visited already, and with some help, she got 53. Not bad. Not bad at all. Yesterday we worked on bishops and their interactions.
It's fun to see her notice patterns. I am a patterns girl myself. Patterns and numbers. I see them, I notice them, I like them. In grief, I think patterns and numbers can help, some. The dates, monthaversaries, anniversaries, they can provide structure, they can provide outlets. But sometimes, they can also drive you a little mad, or fill you with anxiety, or both.
Niobe has been telling me for well over a year now that not having dates to focus on can be a calming thing. Never have I appreciated her point more than this weekend, when I came to a sudden realization that, should I still be, you know, pregnant with a live baby then, the DBD (dead baby day), 34 weeks 4 days, the gestational date at which A died, mapped onto this pregnancy? It will fall on July 31st. Also known as 18 months.
I don't know what to do with this realization. I don't know what I would want to do on that day, if I get a choice. I don't know whether I would want to have a monitoring appointment then, or, perhaps, a lobotomy. I just don't know.
What would you do? If you had a subsequent pregnancy already, did you mark the day or did you let it slip? Did it coincide with anything else for you?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The first one to tell me I am nesting gets it
I am off restricted movement and off the sauce terbutaline.
BPP yesterday went well. Cervix is still looking to be about 4 centimeters long and posterior. Dr. Best also expressed his deep and abiding dislike of terbutaline, for all the reasons I already saw last weekend while PubMeding the thing from my couch. There are no studies to show that it prolongs pregnancy, while there are plenty of studies that show it causing hyperglycemic reactions and raising heart rate in the mother (check and check), and, more disturbingly, some reports of impact on fetal hearts with prolonged use, as well as some small studies of neural impact in rodents. The last, luckily for us, preferentially impacting females, and at what I think is a much higher dose than what I was taking. Of course I wasn't taking it for pre-term labor (since I am not, at least for now, in PTL), but rather for symptomatic relief, and I think I had taken a total of three pills since Tuesday afternoon. But I am not to use it anymore. I can use Tylenol, Benadryl, or Tylenol PM (which is just Tylenol with Benadryl). Lovely and appetizing choices all.
After Dr. Best mentioned that while it is pretty clear now that terbutaline is not doing "what we thought it was doing," it is still a standard of care in many places, and that in most community hospitals if you come in with contractions, you are likely to get about three shots of it before you ever see a doctor, JD spent the evening pondering how come doctors do not have professional responsibility standards that would require them to keep up with research and changing knowledge.
I spent my evening contemplating the other thing Dr. Best said-- that after tomorrow, which would mark 32 weeks, were I to go into actual labor, he would only attempt to slow it down (with magnesium, yum!) enough to get steroids into me. After tomorrow, people. Nevertheless, I am surprisingly calm about that, likely, I think, due to the fact that the baby is supposedly pushing 4 lbs by now. Probably also a little because, as scary as that would be, it would mark the end of my exhaustingly solitary shift as the Protector. I am still trying to formulate my thoughts on that. Hopefully in a few days.
We also finally have guidelines for when to go in that I feel are concrete enough to be useful. Any time we want to check on the baby (said for the upteenth time, but finally seemed to have registered with JD who has felt a little guilty for going in so many times with what has so far always, thankfully, turned out to be false alarms. I have never felt guilty about it, though I have, on occasion, felt a little silly after an innocuous explanation for my scare of the day had been revealed), and if contractions feel qualitatively different. This last bit is good because the four or five an hour guideline is utterly useless to me, seeing as if I get going, I contract every three to four minutes. I do that when I am in labor for real too, so it's not that surprising, but it does make decision making much more difficult than it is meant to be in these cases. I am also not officially under house arrest anymore, but rest and hydration are my main weapons for when contractions do show, so it is all relative.
I was all happy last night when 11pm rolled around and there had been no contractions. I was getting cocky thinking they have left me alone. But they eventually showed up, and, annoying fuckers that they are, stayed the night. I didn't take anything overnight because I had to get up early and help get JD and Monkey out of the house for the two hour car trip to an all-day Bar Mitzva festivity in a neighboring state. They were gone by 7:30am, and nearly two liters of soda water and an hour and a half later, so were the contractions. Finally.
Since then I ate, read some blogs, finished loading the dishwasher that was almost ready to go, ran that, did two loads of laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, loaded what dirty dishes remained, washed the few wash-by-hand items, you know, by hand, wiped down my counter, ate again, and am now planning to head upstairs to take a shower and bring down the two semi-scary piles of laundry that have accumulated there since my dances with contractions began. I think this is all due to finally being officially allowed to do stuff. And I would caution those of you who are tempted to offer a different explanation to first review the title of this post.
BPP yesterday went well. Cervix is still looking to be about 4 centimeters long and posterior. Dr. Best also expressed his deep and abiding dislike of terbutaline, for all the reasons I already saw last weekend while PubMeding the thing from my couch. There are no studies to show that it prolongs pregnancy, while there are plenty of studies that show it causing hyperglycemic reactions and raising heart rate in the mother (check and check), and, more disturbingly, some reports of impact on fetal hearts with prolonged use, as well as some small studies of neural impact in rodents. The last, luckily for us, preferentially impacting females, and at what I think is a much higher dose than what I was taking. Of course I wasn't taking it for pre-term labor (since I am not, at least for now, in PTL), but rather for symptomatic relief, and I think I had taken a total of three pills since Tuesday afternoon. But I am not to use it anymore. I can use Tylenol, Benadryl, or Tylenol PM (which is just Tylenol with Benadryl). Lovely and appetizing choices all.
After Dr. Best mentioned that while it is pretty clear now that terbutaline is not doing "what we thought it was doing," it is still a standard of care in many places, and that in most community hospitals if you come in with contractions, you are likely to get about three shots of it before you ever see a doctor, JD spent the evening pondering how come doctors do not have professional responsibility standards that would require them to keep up with research and changing knowledge.
I spent my evening contemplating the other thing Dr. Best said-- that after tomorrow, which would mark 32 weeks, were I to go into actual labor, he would only attempt to slow it down (with magnesium, yum!) enough to get steroids into me. After tomorrow, people. Nevertheless, I am surprisingly calm about that, likely, I think, due to the fact that the baby is supposedly pushing 4 lbs by now. Probably also a little because, as scary as that would be, it would mark the end of my exhaustingly solitary shift as the Protector. I am still trying to formulate my thoughts on that. Hopefully in a few days.
We also finally have guidelines for when to go in that I feel are concrete enough to be useful. Any time we want to check on the baby (said for the upteenth time, but finally seemed to have registered with JD who has felt a little guilty for going in so many times with what has so far always, thankfully, turned out to be false alarms. I have never felt guilty about it, though I have, on occasion, felt a little silly after an innocuous explanation for my scare of the day had been revealed), and if contractions feel qualitatively different. This last bit is good because the four or five an hour guideline is utterly useless to me, seeing as if I get going, I contract every three to four minutes. I do that when I am in labor for real too, so it's not that surprising, but it does make decision making much more difficult than it is meant to be in these cases. I am also not officially under house arrest anymore, but rest and hydration are my main weapons for when contractions do show, so it is all relative.
I was all happy last night when 11pm rolled around and there had been no contractions. I was getting cocky thinking they have left me alone. But they eventually showed up, and, annoying fuckers that they are, stayed the night. I didn't take anything overnight because I had to get up early and help get JD and Monkey out of the house for the two hour car trip to an all-day Bar Mitzva festivity in a neighboring state. They were gone by 7:30am, and nearly two liters of soda water and an hour and a half later, so were the contractions. Finally.
Since then I ate, read some blogs, finished loading the dishwasher that was almost ready to go, ran that, did two loads of laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, loaded what dirty dishes remained, washed the few wash-by-hand items, you know, by hand, wiped down my counter, ate again, and am now planning to head upstairs to take a shower and bring down the two semi-scary piles of laundry that have accumulated there since my dances with contractions began. I think this is all due to finally being officially allowed to do stuff. And I would caution those of you who are tempted to offer a different explanation to first review the title of this post.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Dispatch from couch central
Thank you, all, for your kind words and warm wishes. I have been spending my confinement attempting to figure out just how long I can go without taking my terbutaline (current hypothesis is skipping every third dose-- further confirmation pending), keeping up with blogs, and drinking enough water to enable myself to float to the bathroom-- sadly, and on account of all the water I drink, my most frequent destination.
Oh, and digging through PubMed-- new post, full of links and sciency stuff, but also, hopefully, practical advice about an aspect of managing a subsequent pregnancy, is up at Glow in the Woods.
Oh, and digging through PubMed-- new post, full of links and sciency stuff, but also, hopefully, practical advice about an aspect of managing a subsequent pregnancy, is up at Glow in the Woods.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Modified
My uterus has been acting cranky. It started last month with these long Braxton-Hicks type dealies that would come on and stick around until I found a way to recline. But they didn't seem to be doing anything, and so I was reminded to rest, hydrate, and call if I got more than four or five real ones in an hour. Will do, no problem, see ya later.
Then, Tuesday last, just that happened, and off we went, my uterus, its occupant, and I, to the triage floor. Contractions, why yes-- here they are on the monitor. But my cervix was heavy into mixing its metaphors, all of them helpful-- it was, it seems, auditioning for the role of a tight-lipped secret service agent guarding Fort Knox. (Bon, my friend, I want you to know that I would never covet the title that is rightfully yours, and so we, my cervix and I, are staying the hell out of the Miss Cervix Universe '08 pagent.) And so with negative fibronectin test to boot, we all headed home tovigilantly keep watch from lazy about my couch.
Over the next several days only sporadic contractions here and there interrupted my regularly scheduled freakouts. Then on Sunday, seemingly simultaneously with the final whistle that brought the European Cup finals to its just end and ensured a substantial boost to the entire liquor-related sector of the Spanish economy, there came one of them annoying contractions. Not five minutes later our local station cut into the broadcast for some minor announcement like a severe thunderstorm watch for large chunks of the state, and I started to laugh at JD's righteous indignation at having his broadcast interrupted. Only it hurt. To laugh. On account of another damned contraction.
A few more and a phone call later we were on our way to the hospital. Where it turned out that both Dr.Best and my friend the OB (hm, he needs a name, it seems... ok, then, Dr.Friend) were on the floor that day. Reassuring, yes. Cervix doing ok, fibronectin negative, lather, rinse, repeat, go home. Have a number of contractions on Monday. See Dr.Best for the regular office visit Tuesday morning. Find out that the nurse on the floor Sunday forgot to send my urine for culture. Do that Tuesday. Schedule this week's BPP for Wednesday, and then for Fridays from then on. Get reminded to call anytime, if anything at all is funky. Have a great BPP on Wednesday morning, prominently featuring a long-looking cervix and a very active baby.
Leave work Wednesday afternoon because damn, those contractions seem annoying, and where is my couch? Thursday stay at work sort of late, periodically noticing somewhat stronger contractions. Have a nice rest on the couch in the evening. Start noticing new batch of contractions late in the evening. Fall asleep on the couch considering whether or not to call. Wake up and realize that since you were able to sleep, they must have gone away. Crawl upstairs, change into pajamas, get into bed, and realize that you can't sleep because of somewhat frequent and fairly annoying contractions.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
We've got contractions
And how about you?
Call, go in. Arrive around 3 in the morning. Get to learn first hand why residents are not attendings.
The resident I got was very nice. Did all the same things-- fibronectin test, manual check, monitoring, manual check again after the results come back. Only, wow, did it hurt. Wow, wow, wow. Let me just say that I sincerely hope the man gets some more training before he is somebody's doctor for real. Just saying.
But also? I could definitely feel the blasted contractions. And they came every 3-4 minutes. And I asked him, when he told me that once again I could go home and call if things didn't improve by, say Sunday or Monday, I asked him what happens if they don't slow down and I can't get any sleep. Ummm... you can take some things, like Benadril, but you should call first to make sure they are ok with Dr.Best.
So I change back into my own clothes, and am sitting there waiting to be discharged, when the nurse comes to tell me that the attending decided that he doesn't like the look of the contractions on the strip, and they want to keep me another two hours and check again. Ok-dokey. Change back, get the monitors back on, and somehow fall asleep. For almost two hours. Heaven.
I woke up to realize that the contractions were still going at about the same clip, only less strongly, which is probably why I got to sleep. Round 3 of Resident IronGrip all up in my business declared my cervix holding steady, and I was expecting to be sent home any minute with the same nebulous-sounding instructions. Only the intensity on the mo-fos picked right up after the exam, and I was starting to wonder whether I could get away with convincing myself that sleep is not really a necessity.
And then the nurse came and took the strip to show the new attending, fresh at the start of her shift. And then the attending herself came to talk to me, and lo, I was in love for she had non-nebulous things to say. Your cervix seems to be doing fine, she said. But you are contracting every couple of minutes, and we think that's at least uncomfortable. So we want to give you trebutaline (hallelujah!), and what do you do at work? I think you should work from home all next week. Not a strict bedrest, but more like a modified housearrest. Relax as much as possible.
So that is where I am now. Three doses of trebutaline later, I get only an occasional contraction. I do get the promised slight jittering soon after taking a dose. But I took an almost three hour nap this afternoon, and am heading up to bed for the night right soon. And during the day, my couch and I are going to become even closer. Which is kind of frightening given how much time I have been spending with it already.
Before I left the hospital I asked about those manual exams, and bacteria, as in possibility of introduction of the same where it shouldn't go, and antibiotics just in case. I heard back from the office on Thursday that the culture from Tuesday was negative, and given that, they didn't think I needed antibiotics. But it seems after I left, Dr.Attending looked up those urine culture results in detail, and decided that given my history and the ongoing contractions, and the small number of bacteria that did show up on that test, it was best for me to take an antibiotic. So I am.
Damn, this is long. I should've stuck with the short version, I think: Contractions, frequent, not productive, trebutaline to go, antibiotics too, couch comfy, still need sleep.
Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.
Then, Tuesday last, just that happened, and off we went, my uterus, its occupant, and I, to the triage floor. Contractions, why yes-- here they are on the monitor. But my cervix was heavy into mixing its metaphors, all of them helpful-- it was, it seems, auditioning for the role of a tight-lipped secret service agent guarding Fort Knox. (Bon, my friend, I want you to know that I would never covet the title that is rightfully yours, and so we, my cervix and I, are staying the hell out of the Miss Cervix Universe '08 pagent.) And so with negative fibronectin test to boot, we all headed home to
Over the next several days only sporadic contractions here and there interrupted my regularly scheduled freakouts. Then on Sunday, seemingly simultaneously with the final whistle that brought the European Cup finals to its just end and ensured a substantial boost to the entire liquor-related sector of the Spanish economy, there came one of them annoying contractions. Not five minutes later our local station cut into the broadcast for some minor announcement like a severe thunderstorm watch for large chunks of the state, and I started to laugh at JD's righteous indignation at having his broadcast interrupted. Only it hurt. To laugh. On account of another damned contraction.
A few more and a phone call later we were on our way to the hospital. Where it turned out that both Dr.Best and my friend the OB (hm, he needs a name, it seems... ok, then, Dr.Friend) were on the floor that day. Reassuring, yes. Cervix doing ok, fibronectin negative, lather, rinse, repeat, go home. Have a number of contractions on Monday. See Dr.Best for the regular office visit Tuesday morning. Find out that the nurse on the floor Sunday forgot to send my urine for culture. Do that Tuesday. Schedule this week's BPP for Wednesday, and then for Fridays from then on. Get reminded to call anytime, if anything at all is funky. Have a great BPP on Wednesday morning, prominently featuring a long-looking cervix and a very active baby.
Leave work Wednesday afternoon because damn, those contractions seem annoying, and where is my couch? Thursday stay at work sort of late, periodically noticing somewhat stronger contractions. Have a nice rest on the couch in the evening. Start noticing new batch of contractions late in the evening. Fall asleep on the couch considering whether or not to call. Wake up and realize that since you were able to sleep, they must have gone away. Crawl upstairs, change into pajamas, get into bed, and realize that you can't sleep because of somewhat frequent and fairly annoying contractions.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
We've got contractions
And how about you?
Call, go in. Arrive around 3 in the morning. Get to learn first hand why residents are not attendings.
The resident I got was very nice. Did all the same things-- fibronectin test, manual check, monitoring, manual check again after the results come back. Only, wow, did it hurt. Wow, wow, wow. Let me just say that I sincerely hope the man gets some more training before he is somebody's doctor for real. Just saying.
But also? I could definitely feel the blasted contractions. And they came every 3-4 minutes. And I asked him, when he told me that once again I could go home and call if things didn't improve by, say Sunday or Monday, I asked him what happens if they don't slow down and I can't get any sleep. Ummm... you can take some things, like Benadril, but you should call first to make sure they are ok with Dr.Best.
So I change back into my own clothes, and am sitting there waiting to be discharged, when the nurse comes to tell me that the attending decided that he doesn't like the look of the contractions on the strip, and they want to keep me another two hours and check again. Ok-dokey. Change back, get the monitors back on, and somehow fall asleep. For almost two hours. Heaven.
I woke up to realize that the contractions were still going at about the same clip, only less strongly, which is probably why I got to sleep. Round 3 of Resident IronGrip all up in my business declared my cervix holding steady, and I was expecting to be sent home any minute with the same nebulous-sounding instructions. Only the intensity on the mo-fos picked right up after the exam, and I was starting to wonder whether I could get away with convincing myself that sleep is not really a necessity.
And then the nurse came and took the strip to show the new attending, fresh at the start of her shift. And then the attending herself came to talk to me, and lo, I was in love for she had non-nebulous things to say. Your cervix seems to be doing fine, she said. But you are contracting every couple of minutes, and we think that's at least uncomfortable. So we want to give you trebutaline (hallelujah!), and what do you do at work? I think you should work from home all next week. Not a strict bedrest, but more like a modified house
So that is where I am now. Three doses of trebutaline later, I get only an occasional contraction. I do get the promised slight jittering soon after taking a dose. But I took an almost three hour nap this afternoon, and am heading up to bed for the night right soon. And during the day, my couch and I are going to become even closer. Which is kind of frightening given how much time I have been spending with it already.
Before I left the hospital I asked about those manual exams, and bacteria, as in possibility of introduction of the same where it shouldn't go, and antibiotics just in case. I heard back from the office on Thursday that the culture from Tuesday was negative, and given that, they didn't think I needed antibiotics. But it seems after I left, Dr.Attending looked up those urine culture results in detail, and decided that given my history and the ongoing contractions, and the small number of bacteria that did show up on that test, it was best for me to take an antibiotic. So I am.
Damn, this is long. I should've stuck with the short version, I think: Contractions, frequent, not productive, trebutaline to go, antibiotics too, couch comfy, still need sleep.
Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Agency
If you listen to scientists, particularly biologists, talk about their work, you might be surprised to discover the rich secret life of things you rarely give any mind to. DNA doesn't like to be single-stranded, you see. Some proteins just hate being in solution or else they refuse to form crystals. And do you know how hard it can be to put together a buffer that will make your particular PCR reaction happy?
This is called anthropomorphizing, ascribing human form or attributes to non-humans, and is something scientists are very fond of doing. Of course when experts do it, they understand what the other actually means. These phrases are a shorthand for "the laws of physics and chemistry make it energetically favorable for X to do Y." It also, IMHO, makes for a much more enjoyable conversation. But that could just be me.
When I switched from bench science to research and practice of science education, it quickly became clear to me that anthropomorphizing was a very dangerous thing to do around novices. There is a certain mystery to the systems that can't be directly observed, and there is a certain amount of intellectual inertia at play for students entering a required freshman class. These two things combined can result in a student remembering his TA emphasizing that DNA molecules prefer to be double-stranded, but being entirely unable to explain why that is based on the structure of said molecule.
I have been mindful of that in my teaching ever since. In making my curriculum materials, I emphasize the basic underlying reasoning. If I do slip up in class and use an anthropomorphism, I stop myself immediately and ask the class to say what it is I actually meant there. Clarity. I seek clarity and I seek to impart clarity.
This is what came to mind for me when I realized I was feeling uncomfortable with talking about the baby doing things that result in me freaking out and needing medically-enabled reassurance. You know, not kicking as much as I would like, flipping to a head up, face in position one day (causing me to look smaller in the midsection and lose my mind with worry until the emergency ultrasound that explained it), things like that. Or the contractions, which are not even technically his fault, except they do seem to correlate with the days he spends head down.
Earlier on in my misadventures in worrying, in fact right around that first trip to the labor floor, I asked B how to say "little shit" in Hebrew (harah katan, in case you are wondering). I thought it would be clever to call him that when I freaked out, you know, after it was clear that nothing bad has happened. I even did that a couple-three times.
And then I realized that it didn't feel right. I wanted to make jokes. I wanted to be able to say that I will duck his allowance for this or that infraction (as if! there are no allowances in my house, at least not yet). But I can't. I.just.can't.
As near as I can tell, I am seeking clarity again. For myself and all around me. When A died, a seven-year-old son of a friend of ours asked his mother what happened, and then asked how come the baby was playing with the cord-- didn't he know long rope-like things were dangerous to play with? This past winter it came out (and was dealt with) that Monkey was a little upset at A for pulling his cord.
If this baby doesn't make it, if anything goes wrong, I don't want to have to remember myself or anyone else faulting him, even in jest. Whatever he is doing, he is not doing it on purpose. There is no intent. There is no agency. I am being protective, over-protective even. Not his fault. Wasn't his brother's fault. I still can't visualize the good outcome to this pregnancy. The bad? It's familiar, and terrifying.
I have apparently appointed myself (or have accepted the mantle of) the protector. I will talk about that soon-- there is much to say. But for now, the relevant point is that this is also something I am apparently keen to protect my son from-- any implication of culpability in the eventual outcome, whatever it is, or even in any individual freakout I engage in along the way.
I have been thinking, though, that with this, as with everything else grief-related I have found so far, there is always more. More than one reason, more than one level, just more. I did make one joke, after I stopped shaking following that emergency ultrasound that showed the baby assuming the weird position. I called JD to tell him, and in the nervous energy between us, we spontaneously created a joke the punchline of which is that as the punishment for his in-utero antics, upon his live birth, we would subject him to what amounts to a standard Jewish religious rite.
I thought it was funny because, see, nothing extra would actually be happening to him. We are just, for now, calling it the punishment. Ha-ha, isn't it clever?
My friend Natalie called me when I was on my way to that ultrasound, so she knew what I was worried about, and she called later to check on me. I told her it was all ok, and told her our new joke. She laughed for a minute straight. Another friend I told the next day laughed too, this full, deep, appreciative laugh.
I get how and why the joke works-- I constructed it after all. What I was trying to figure out was why it didn't seem nearly as funny to me. It's the levels thing, those damned levels. The joke, see, it's predicated upon this baby being born alive. His brother did not get that rite. His brother couldn't be subjected to any of the other punishments we could conceivably joke about either.
My boys, right now, are both just babies. Babies who, by definition, lack agency. And here I am, with this enormous love for both of them, teetering on the long brink where everything will be decided-- do they both stay babies? Do we get to raise one of them? They can't do anything about it, either of them.
And maybe that is another level. I felt such overwhelming gratitude that this baby didn't die before or during my sister's wedding. I felt so relieved, but also grateful. And having nowhere in particular to direct that gratitude, I think I felt grateful to him. But he didn't do that either, he had no active part in surviving so far. Maybe what I am doing here in focusing on agency is reminding myself that if he makes it, it won't be because he did anything to cause it either. That he didn't do anything better than his brother did.
Whew. Who needs therapy when you've got a blog?
This is called anthropomorphizing, ascribing human form or attributes to non-humans, and is something scientists are very fond of doing. Of course when experts do it, they understand what the other actually means. These phrases are a shorthand for "the laws of physics and chemistry make it energetically favorable for X to do Y." It also, IMHO, makes for a much more enjoyable conversation. But that could just be me.
When I switched from bench science to research and practice of science education, it quickly became clear to me that anthropomorphizing was a very dangerous thing to do around novices. There is a certain mystery to the systems that can't be directly observed, and there is a certain amount of intellectual inertia at play for students entering a required freshman class. These two things combined can result in a student remembering his TA emphasizing that DNA molecules prefer to be double-stranded, but being entirely unable to explain why that is based on the structure of said molecule.
I have been mindful of that in my teaching ever since. In making my curriculum materials, I emphasize the basic underlying reasoning. If I do slip up in class and use an anthropomorphism, I stop myself immediately and ask the class to say what it is I actually meant there. Clarity. I seek clarity and I seek to impart clarity.
This is what came to mind for me when I realized I was feeling uncomfortable with talking about the baby doing things that result in me freaking out and needing medically-enabled reassurance. You know, not kicking as much as I would like, flipping to a head up, face in position one day (causing me to look smaller in the midsection and lose my mind with worry until the emergency ultrasound that explained it), things like that. Or the contractions, which are not even technically his fault, except they do seem to correlate with the days he spends head down.
Earlier on in my misadventures in worrying, in fact right around that first trip to the labor floor, I asked B how to say "little shit" in Hebrew (harah katan, in case you are wondering). I thought it would be clever to call him that when I freaked out, you know, after it was clear that nothing bad has happened. I even did that a couple-three times.
And then I realized that it didn't feel right. I wanted to make jokes. I wanted to be able to say that I will duck his allowance for this or that infraction (as if! there are no allowances in my house, at least not yet). But I can't. I.just.can't.
As near as I can tell, I am seeking clarity again. For myself and all around me. When A died, a seven-year-old son of a friend of ours asked his mother what happened, and then asked how come the baby was playing with the cord-- didn't he know long rope-like things were dangerous to play with? This past winter it came out (and was dealt with) that Monkey was a little upset at A for pulling his cord.
If this baby doesn't make it, if anything goes wrong, I don't want to have to remember myself or anyone else faulting him, even in jest. Whatever he is doing, he is not doing it on purpose. There is no intent. There is no agency. I am being protective, over-protective even. Not his fault. Wasn't his brother's fault. I still can't visualize the good outcome to this pregnancy. The bad? It's familiar, and terrifying.
I have apparently appointed myself (or have accepted the mantle of) the protector. I will talk about that soon-- there is much to say. But for now, the relevant point is that this is also something I am apparently keen to protect my son from-- any implication of culpability in the eventual outcome, whatever it is, or even in any individual freakout I engage in along the way.
I have been thinking, though, that with this, as with everything else grief-related I have found so far, there is always more. More than one reason, more than one level, just more. I did make one joke, after I stopped shaking following that emergency ultrasound that showed the baby assuming the weird position. I called JD to tell him, and in the nervous energy between us, we spontaneously created a joke the punchline of which is that as the punishment for his in-utero antics, upon his live birth, we would subject him to what amounts to a standard Jewish religious rite.
I thought it was funny because, see, nothing extra would actually be happening to him. We are just, for now, calling it the punishment. Ha-ha, isn't it clever?
My friend Natalie called me when I was on my way to that ultrasound, so she knew what I was worried about, and she called later to check on me. I told her it was all ok, and told her our new joke. She laughed for a minute straight. Another friend I told the next day laughed too, this full, deep, appreciative laugh.
I get how and why the joke works-- I constructed it after all. What I was trying to figure out was why it didn't seem nearly as funny to me. It's the levels thing, those damned levels. The joke, see, it's predicated upon this baby being born alive. His brother did not get that rite. His brother couldn't be subjected to any of the other punishments we could conceivably joke about either.
My boys, right now, are both just babies. Babies who, by definition, lack agency. And here I am, with this enormous love for both of them, teetering on the long brink where everything will be decided-- do they both stay babies? Do we get to raise one of them? They can't do anything about it, either of them.
And maybe that is another level. I felt such overwhelming gratitude that this baby didn't die before or during my sister's wedding. I felt so relieved, but also grateful. And having nowhere in particular to direct that gratitude, I think I felt grateful to him. But he didn't do that either, he had no active part in surviving so far. Maybe what I am doing here in focusing on agency is reminding myself that if he makes it, it won't be because he did anything to cause it either. That he didn't do anything better than his brother did.
Whew. Who needs therapy when you've got a blog?
Monday, June 30, 2008
A short and belated observation about people who have no shame
People who are about to get married by a rabbi, especially if it is by their own rabbi, in their own synagogue (as was the case for my sister and my now brother-in-law), often present themselves on Shabbat previous to the nuptuals (which generally works out to be Saturday morning before their Sunday ceremony) for an aufruf-- being called up to the Torah to recite the blessings before and after reading of the same, and/or, for the more adventurous, to actually read a Torah portion.
After that is accomplished, congregation sings congratulatory songs, and everyone pelts the happy couple with (soft) candy, thoughtfully provided either by the synagogue or by the family. Children then race up to collect the bounty, and a rabbi says some nice things and blesses the couple. Most Saturday mornings, especially if it is a largish congregation, there is also a Bar or Bat Mitzva happening. Which means that the teenager at the center of it also eventually gets pelted with candy and then, surrounded by his or her family, blessed.
Here's what I noticed on the morning of my sister's aufruf-- the rabbi, in blessing the couple, wished them many a good thing, including all sorts of signifiers of a long happily married life, but did not in any way mention children. The same rabbi, however, when blessing the Bat Mitzva girl, mentioned the "may you one day stand with your beloved under a wedding canopy" thing. So it's not that they are opposed to mentioning that next life stage. Is it, then, that they feel that getting married is a less iffy proposition than having children is? Or that they don't want to imply that children should necessarily be on the agenda? Or that they don't have to be on the agenda right away? Whatever it was, I appreciated that. I am pretty sure the young couple did too.
To be fair, the rabbi who officiated at the wedding the next day did mention children ("when you are ready"), but I felt that was ok since she spent the previous many minutes talking about the many things that make the newlyweds good together and for each other, knows them very well, and, it could be deduced, knows that they do, some day, want children.
The subject of this post, though? People who have no shame? That, my dears, would, somewhat predictably, be both sets of parents and, maybe less predictably, one other person. The parents, in their toasts. Our parents (mom, to be more precise) wished them children, though almost as an afterthought at the end of their toast, and his parents (mom, again) wished them many children, much more prominently in the toast. It's ok-- you can let out your collective groan now. Some of us did, in real time.
Care to guess who that one other person is? Ok, how about this-- I will tell you, only a few lines down. And then I will rely on the honor system for you to tell me in the comments whether you guessed it. Ok? ok.
Ready?
It was Monkey. She found a couple of our friends signing the guest book, and wanted to know what they were up to, and whether she was allowed to do that too. Here for your weekday amusement is her note, taking off the idiosyncratic family salutation and fixing her guess-and-go spelling, though it wasn't too bad:
Good luck with your happy life and your children.
Like I said, no shame.
After that is accomplished, congregation sings congratulatory songs, and everyone pelts the happy couple with (soft) candy, thoughtfully provided either by the synagogue or by the family. Children then race up to collect the bounty, and a rabbi says some nice things and blesses the couple. Most Saturday mornings, especially if it is a largish congregation, there is also a Bar or Bat Mitzva happening. Which means that the teenager at the center of it also eventually gets pelted with candy and then, surrounded by his or her family, blessed.
Here's what I noticed on the morning of my sister's aufruf-- the rabbi, in blessing the couple, wished them many a good thing, including all sorts of signifiers of a long happily married life, but did not in any way mention children. The same rabbi, however, when blessing the Bat Mitzva girl, mentioned the "may you one day stand with your beloved under a wedding canopy" thing. So it's not that they are opposed to mentioning that next life stage. Is it, then, that they feel that getting married is a less iffy proposition than having children is? Or that they don't want to imply that children should necessarily be on the agenda? Or that they don't have to be on the agenda right away? Whatever it was, I appreciated that. I am pretty sure the young couple did too.
To be fair, the rabbi who officiated at the wedding the next day did mention children ("when you are ready"), but I felt that was ok since she spent the previous many minutes talking about the many things that make the newlyweds good together and for each other, knows them very well, and, it could be deduced, knows that they do, some day, want children.
The subject of this post, though? People who have no shame? That, my dears, would, somewhat predictably, be both sets of parents and, maybe less predictably, one other person. The parents, in their toasts. Our parents (mom, to be more precise) wished them children, though almost as an afterthought at the end of their toast, and his parents (mom, again) wished them many children, much more prominently in the toast. It's ok-- you can let out your collective groan now. Some of us did, in real time.
Care to guess who that one other person is? Ok, how about this-- I will tell you, only a few lines down. And then I will rely on the honor system for you to tell me in the comments whether you guessed it. Ok? ok.
Ready?
It was Monkey. She found a couple of our friends signing the guest book, and wanted to know what they were up to, and whether she was allowed to do that too. Here for your weekday amusement is her note, taking off the idiosyncratic family salutation and fixing her guess-and-go spelling, though it wasn't too bad:
Good luck with your happy life and your children.
Like I said, no shame.
Friday, June 27, 2008
MotherTalk Book Review: More Than it Hurts You
The nice thing about this book is that it gets better. For me that was almost exactly half way through the 400 page tome, when the t has been crossed, but the is have not yet been dotted, when the story finally moved out of the too-carefully constructed set-up phase and into the acting, reacting, and interacting phase. More Than it Hurts You by Darin Strauss is a multi-threaded novel ostensibly about what constitutes the truth, at what level, and how hard are different people willing to look for it. The topic, even the subject matter are compelling and certainly worth the investigation. Unfortunately, the treatment of the material by the author left me wishing for a more thoughtful, more delicate, less heavy-handed approach.
The Publisher's Weekly review that accompanied the call for reviewers stated that in this novel "[t]he stereotypes are intentionally heavy-handed..." And are they ever. I am not sure that people like Josh Goldin actually exist-- shallow by choice, observant but not thoughtful. I can't call him a protagonist, although I suppose we are meant to. Is he compelling? Sympathetic? At times, yes. But mostly he is flat. Except for when he exhibits emotional awareness he should not by rights possess. I was, in fact, puzzled and almost offended when Josh, walking through the hospital to see his son decides that he can handle it, if worst came to worst, but that it was intolerably sad that so many people in the world would never meet Zack. Intolerable sadness of the world not knowing your child is one of the real, very real emotions of bereaved parents. But to me Josh getting to that place that fast and before he knew how dire (or not) his son's condition really was felt like cheating, like skipping a whole boatload of steps.
Likewise, Dori, Josh's wife, is drawn with two notes. Her backstory, I suppose, is meant to explain to us how she turned out this way. But it doesn't, not really, because nobody can be this squashed based on those events alone. Zack, their baby, is described in the most generic baby terms for most of the book, until, at the age of just over 18 month he is suddenly ascribed things resembling thoughts. Even in his parents' thought bubbles he is seen as mostly a lovable vulnerable lump. I know it has been a while since I have had an actual living baby under my care, but I do still remember definite streaks of personality, of determination, of expressed likes and dislikes, of behaviors, fercryingoutloud, that Monkey exhibited from much earlier than that. I am certain that when I thought of her then, I thought of those things, of her, not of generic baby descriptors.
To me, however, the most annoying character in the novel is the narrator, who, omniscient as he is, I must take to be the author himself. While possessed of excellent eye and, often, sharp wit and slicing metaphors, the narrator is heavy-handed. Not content to paint the picture for the readers and let us draw our own conclusions, often the narrator shoves his conclusions, his unassailable by virtue of his omniscience explanations for people's behavior down our throats. Really, Mr. Strauss, after you spend half a page describing a man's thought process to me, I am capable of calling it rationalization myself. Having you spend another sentence telling me so feels no less insulting and patronizing than the way your fictional reporter treats one of your fictional characters.
One character in the novel does speak to me, though. Dr. Darlene Stokes is, I feel, the most realistic character in the bunch, and most familiar to me. Though I did not rise from that little, nor climbed that high, I share Dr. Stokes' dislike for workplace politics, her social awkwardness, her reliance on objective truth, her drive to know, her passion for observing and analyzing society around her, her inability to lie to her child. This is another reason, I think, for my dislike of the narrator. Narrator explicitly wishing she would shut up in a socially acceptable manner on a date, as well as other similarly condescending notes, just didn't sit well with me.
I originally asked to review this book because, in the wake of the Texas child removal case, there was a rather intense discussion of the institution of the Child Protection Services among a number of people I know in real life. However, CPS doesn't figure nearly as centrally in the book as you would think, and is drawn in fairly neutral tones. I would, I think, have liked more on the inner workings of the system. I would have liked to see the CPS point person in the book actually get a speaking part, for example.
Finally, the book could've really used a copy editor. Was Darlene born in '66 or '68? Was that thing found on the third visit or the fourth? And was that one thing or both? And really, how hard is it to check that June 12th was not a Wednesday in any year the book could've possibly been set in? Likewise, repeating small observations in only slightly varied contexts in chapters positioned close together makes the observations far less astute. A copy editor is all I am saying.
Overall, this is not a bad summer read. It may, paradoxically, be an even better book club selection. Not because the evening can be spent discussing brilliance of the work, but because it can be spent discussing the many issues raised in the book (albeit via those heavy-handed stereotypes)-- race relations, media influence, authority vs. family, various corporate cultures. There is a certainly a lot there, so don't forget your mixed drinks.
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