They Ran Out of Hot Water Bottles?

Ewww.  Just–ewww.  Look, if my bed is too cold in a hotel, there’s really nothing stopping me from plugging in the iron and running it over the sheets a few times before I hop in, okay?  I do not need perfect strangers–wrapped in flannel, no less–rolling around in there before I go to bed!

It’s enough that I have to suspend my disbelief regarding the cleanliness of the bedspread, without actually witnessing random bodies BETWEEN THE SHEETS THAT I WILL BE INHABITING!

Gah!  There isn’t enough flannel in the world to prevent me from getting icked out about that.

No, Thank You.

Well, we got a week of daycare in before The Girl caught her first cold.  Naturally I got it as well, and apparently I generated antibodies which The Girl sucked right out of me.  So she was only sniffly for about three days, while I’ve been on a ten day snotfest.  Awesome.  And for the record, putting saline drops up the nostrils of a 3-month-old really sucks.

While I’m on the whole “Having children will kill you–let me count the ways” kick, I thought I’d just mention this little story, in which a 59-year-old woman is pregnant with her second(!!!!!) child.  She had the first one at 57.

To which I can only say, oh HELL no.  I’ve already noticed a difference in my body’s ability to bounce back from childbirth after an 8 year gap.  I can only imagine that if I gave birth at 59 I’d need one of those MedAlert necklaces so that I could press the button for help in getting off the floor after a diaper change.  Yeesh.  Plus, the child would learn to drive when I was 75!  I vividly remember my grandfather white-knuckling it with me at about the same age–I believe there was whiskey involved when we got home–and he was fairly patient about these things.

What goes through someone’s head in a case like this?  “Oh, drat!  I forgot to have babies!  Well luckily for me I’m retired, and that AARP membership will get me some great discounts on diapers–let’s pop out a couple of babies!  Woohoo!”

Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should, you know?

Wii Fit Plus – Not for the Sensitive

Okay.  I have about 10 lbs of pregnancy weight to lose, and if I’m honest, I was about 10 lbs over my ideal weight before I got pregnant.  So I asked for Wii Fit for Christmas, figuring it would be a fun way to get some sort of exercise in during the colder months, because I don’t have the solid hour-a-day to devote to a regular fitness DVD.

What I’m saying is, I knew I was a total pudge BEFORE I got on the balance board, okay?  So I was prepared to see the actual weight/BMI numbers be above what I wanted them to be.

However, watching my Mii onscreen balloon up to a tiny Mii-sphere was really just adding insult to injury.  Particularly when The Boy got on there and his Mii turned into a tiny stick person, and then Hublet’s Mii stayed exactly the same.  It’s like we’re the three Mii bears:  one too fat, one too skinny, and one just right.

So every night I am subjected to the sight of my rotund Mii waddling out to the Mii plaza, a sight which regularly evokes hilarity in both Hublet and The Boy.  Yeah, ha-ha-ha.  Urg.

And if that’s not enough, I get sarcastically chastised by the Wii Fit if I skip a day.  It’s all, “So, too busy to exercise yesterday, Mommy?”  And I’m all, “Hey, buster!  You try mobilizing the family at the butt-crack of dawn, working 8 hours, expressing enough breast milk for a small army, rushing home, feeding yourself and giving hublet a break from the baby, bathing the baby, trying to stay awake long enough to get everything ready for the next day, and attempting to spend 30 minutes pretending to hula hoop, snowball fight, or do rhythmic Kung Fu!  Lay off me, you sarcastic plastic bastard, or I’ll rhythmically Kung Fu your ass through a window!”

So that’s what I’ve been reduced to – backtalking a cartoon of a balance board and being laughed at by my family.  Sigh.  At least the exercises are fun.

Back in the Saddle

Well, so to speak.  After a December in which it only took me a week to get the tree decorated (the process went something like this:  feed The Girl, change The Girl, pray that The Girl would nap, then toss random decorations on tree in passing while trying to grab a bite to eat or do laundry during said nap) and we decided not to travel in favor of having all the grandparents at our house, I am now officially back at work and suffering from the kind of sleep deprivation that makes it difficult to remember my own name, much less write about genetic research.  Arg.

The Girl is doing well, and The Boy has become her official watchdog.  I finally had to remind him that I had managed to get him to the ripe old age of eight, so maybe I did have a handle on some of this mom stuff.  He looked skeptical and reminded me that he was underweight.  I blame his father for the snarky tendencies.  What?

Now that I have a lunch hour again–a whole hour!  Amazing!–blogging will be more regular.  This depends, of course, on my ability to string two sentences together in a coherent fashion, so don’t hold your breath.

On the Joys (HA) of Breastfeeding

At the risk of inviting the Drive-By Mommy Brigade and the La Leche Militants to start with the pearl-clutching and horrified reactions, I’m just going to come right out and say this:

Breastfeeding sucks.

See, when you’re pregnant, your helpful medical community bombards you with softly-lit, sepia toned brochures featuring blissed-out moms sitting in fields of wildflowers with cute naked babies tastefully obscuring one breast, and helpful one line slogans like,  “It’s the best food for your baby!’  Or, “It’s natural and healthy!”  And, ”It’s a beautiful bonding experience!”  With the implication being that your child will pop out, you’ll hold him or her up in the vicinity of your boob, and voila!  Beautiful, healthy, pain-free bonding time!  The wonders of breast milk will ensure that your baby will never be sick!  Your baby will be four times as smart as those poor formula-fed creatures!  Your baby’s poop won’t stink!  Your baby will exude a healthy glow and be writing sonnets by nine months of age!

But what the helpful medical community leaves out of all of this is that breastfeeding, especially the beginning part, sucks.  Because it does.  It’s hard to do properly.  No matter how good your lactation consultant, it is painful at first.  For the men in the audience (who haven’t fled screaming from the title of this post) who may wonder what I mean by pain, let’s just say that the corrolary to the first few days of breastfeeding would be this:  take a regular emery board,  drag it back and forth across one testicle for 20 minutes, then switch sides.  Then repeat every two hours for DAYS ON END.

In addition, it is nervewracking–unless you have a hospital scale in your home and can weigh your child every few days to be sure he or she is gaining weight–because you’re never entirely sure how much your baby is getting, which leads to obsessive diaper counting.  It also means that you and only you are responsible for every single feeding.  Which, in a breastfed baby, is A LOT OF FEEDINGS.  Like, twelve a day.  So when you breastfeed, you are basically stuck in a chair with a kid on your boob for a month.

Well, unless you pump.  And that is a whole other world of “OH MY GOD THIS SUCKS.”  Although there is a certain weird fascination to watching your nipples get distended to four times their normal length.  And it does promote a certain feeling of sisterhood with dairy cows, for whatever that’s worth.

But beyond all these factors, the worst thing about breastfeeding is that if you can’t do it or choose not to, there is now an entire army’s worth of women and literature out there dedicated to making you feel like a gigantic incompetent loser.  To these women and their brochures I simply say, “Bite me, sister.”  And to any women out there reading who have been on the receiving end of a La Leche harangue (and the real true believers can be quite scary), be assured I don’t think you’re a bad mom, a failure, or that you just haven’t “tried hard enough to do the right thing for your baby.”  Your child will not grow horns or lose 43 I.Q. points if you formula feed.  And I don’t believe that you “bond” more closely by having the nipple through which your child draws sustenance attached to your body rather than held in your hand.

This breastfeeding crap is hard, and I fully expect The Girl to be weaned by six months–and it will probably be more like four months, if my past experience with pumping and work and milk supply are any indication.

That said, I am soldiering on, partly because with the H1N1 epidemic The Girl needs all the immune system help she can get, and partly because I am cheap, and breastfeeding does save some cash on the formula front.  Plus, I’m about to enter the wonderful world of pumping, which means that I will be free of the recliner for at least a couple of feedings a day.  On the other hand, I will be doing the whole “juggling the feeding and the pumping” thing.  Sigh. 

So that’s why you haven’t heard from me.

Fun in the Triage Room

Thursday, October 15, 2:00 a.m.

Me:  Hmmm.  That was a contraction.  I shall time them!  10 minutes apart–well, I’ve got some time.

Thursday, October 15, 3:00 a.m.

Me:  Hublet, I’m thinking we should be able to wait until 5 or so to get The Boy to the neighbor’s house.

Hublet:  Okay.

Thursday, October 15, 3:30 a.m.

Me:  Huh.  These contractions sure are a lot stronger than they were at the beginning of The Boy’s labor.  And I think they’re 6 minutes apart.  And I think I’m having smaller ones between the big ones.

Thursday, October 15, 4: 00 a.m.

Me:  (In shower)  4 minutes apart.  Hublet, call the neighbors and tell them we’ll be there at 4:30.

Thursday, October 15, 4:30 a.m.

Me:  3 minutes?  Are you kidding me?  Drive faster, dear.

Thursday, October 15, 5:00 a.m.

Me:  Hublet, I seem to be having trouble walking to the registration desk.  Help me out.

Thursday, October 15, 5:05 a.m. Triage room.

Me:  It was awfully hard to get undressed – I feel a lot of pressure.  I may need to push.

Triage nurse:  Hold up a minute, let me check you…that’s the head!  Call the doctor!

Me:  So no drugs?  I think I should push.

Nurse:  NO DRUGS!  DON’T PUSH!

Me:  I don’t really have a choice here!

Doctor:  Good grief, that was fast – weren’t you at 10 minutes apart 3 hours ago?  Okay, completely done and the head is at plus 2! 

Me:  Can I push?  I really need to push!

Everyone in the room:  Uh, sure, I guess.

Flailing ensues as nurses try to grab supplies and doctor tries to get gloves on.

Hublet (entering with suitcase):  What?

Me:  OW!  JESUS CHRIST!

The Girl:  WAAAAAAA!

Nurses:  Holy crap.

Doctor:  Well, that was quick.

Hublet:  (cuts cord)  Holy crap.

Me:  Great.  Can I have a Motrin?

Nurse:  You can have a percoset if you want.

Me:  See, that would have been nice before I pushed the baby out.  

The Girl entered the world at 5:11 a.m. on Oct. 15.  She has 10 fingers, 10 toes, one lovely little round head, and no antlers or other obvious radiation or advanced maternal age-related mutations that we can see.  The Boy is very excited to be a big brother, Hublet is holding up quite well, and I’m just pleased that I didn’t actually give birth in the car.  All in all, life is good.

Still Here. Still Pregnant.

And becoming exponentially more irritable every day.  Watching the news is not helping on the irritability front, so I’m trying not to do that, and I have no patience for sports teams right now, either.

Basically, I will be sitting in the den eating salsa and watching “reality” ghost shows until The Girl decides it’s time to show up.

Like this one:  Celebrity Ghost Stories.  It’s got everything I love about cheesy t.v.:  Unintentionally humorous re-enactments, using blurred focus so that it’s REALLY obvious that the celebrity in question is not actually doing the re-enactment!  Overwrought celebrity prose!  Proof positive that perhaps these folks have had too much easy access to pharmaceuticals for far too long!  Awesome.

Or this one, which I’ve just filed under WTF:  Paranormal State.  It’s way too plot-involved to be an actual reality show, in my humble opinion.  It’s more like a low-budget version of Supernatural, which is itself a low-budget t.v. version of a whole lot of low-budget horror movies.  But I watch it anyway, so it must be doing something right…

And then there’s the classic Scariest Places on Earth, which I still love.  I mean, come on, how can you resist?  It’s hosted by Linda Blair with voiceovers from the teeny tiny psychic woman from Poltergeist!

But if you want something a bit more highbrow that still contains the super-cheesy fun elements of classic History Channel television, might I recommend this one:  Clash of the Gods.  Watching Thor battle the serpent of Midgard–with all the opportunity for bad CGI and overwrought tiny hammer-waving that it represents–is totally worth the price of admission.  Seriously.  If Thor’s actual hammer was that small…well, SOMEBODY was overcompentsating in the comic books, is all I have to say about that.  Plus, it features a medievialist blogger that I like as an expert!  Bonus!

In other news, finished reading the entire Twilight series.  Feral Girl, while I understand and empathize with your desire to not suffer through bad literature alone, you owe me big time.  Dear GOD, that was bad.  The entire second book’s plot is based on the fallout from a paper cut, for Chrissakes!  And no, I am not kidding.

Yuck.

I already have this New Year’s Eve planned.  I am going to express enough milk to get The Girl through a day or two, and then I am going to put The Boy to bed, sit down with Hublet and an entire bottle (or more) of champagne, and play a drinking game of my own devising entitled, “Thank God 2009 is OVER.”  The rules are simple:  every time you think of a stress-inducing event from the previous year, chug. 

It could take a case of champagne to get through, now that I think about it.

So the radio silence this week has been caused by The Boy’s acquiring some sort of virus.  He hasn’t been too bothered, and in fact was pleased by one aspect of being sick–it meant that when I took him in for his 8-year-old checkup he didn’t have to get the flu shot.

The doctor said it was either some random thing or a very mild case of flu, so I’m just trying not to breathe while inside the house for the next few days.  I would much rather The Boy spend a couple of days sofa-bound prior to the Blessed Event rather than afterward, but on the other hand the prospect of giving birth with the flu doesn’t really appeal to me. 

And speaking of things that don’t appeal…I’ve been following the Polanski/Letterman/yucky people threads on the intarwebs and I must say that it has all left me with an unpleasant yucky feeling, and one that apparently isn’t obvious.

Lost in all of the “the rich get treated differently,” “rape-rape,” “hollywood is moral because it has compassion,” “is it harrassment or not,” “but he isn’t a politician”  parsing of the standards to which we should hold people is this question:  if we’re spending all of our time defining standards downward in order to spare someone we may like personally, haven’t we then lost our standards?

Polanski is in a realm of his own.  In the immortal words of Dolly Parton, “turn that rooster into a hen.”  That’s all I have to say about that, notwithstanding Harvey Weinstein’s inability to understand that compassion by itself isn’t the same as morality. 

The Letterman issue is where I get puzzled about the parsing.  See, if we have standards, then that means that NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE, or HOW FUNNY YOU MAY BE, or HOW CONSENSUAL THE CHEATING WAS, or HOW MUCH OF A VICTIM OF EXTORTION YOU ARE, or HOW THIS IS A PRIVATE AFFAIR, if you cheat on your wife (or your girlfriend of approxmiately eight million years) you still are wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  And kind of a yucky person, to boot.

Yes, human beings are fallible.  Yes, forgiveness is possible and that issue is between Letterman and his wife and/or Letterman and God, though I doubt he’s the type to believe in any authority he doesn’t see in the mirror on a daily basis.

But going on t.v. and admitting you were wrong doesn’t make the behavior excusable or okay.  And it certainly doesn’t make it okay because you’re an entertainer as opposed to a cleric or a moralizer. 

Wrong is wrong.  Sorry if that harshes your mellow.

A Future Note to my Son

In light of all the current hoo-ha regarding a certain has-been film director, and the perplexing apologias for his behavior, I’m writing this down now, so that when the time comes for this particular heart-to-heart I will have the text ready.  Feel free to pity The Boy in advance for having to listen to this particular diatribe from his somewhat blunt and outspoken mother.  Text is below the cut, to shield delicate eyes from repeated use of the “p-word.”

Things I will not be doing anytime soon

Visiting Aspen.  And no, not because it’s just another overpriced yuppie tourist trap.  I would like to see Colorado and points West someday.

I will not be visiting Aspen because their public authorities recommend that, when you are confronted by one of the many black bears who have figured out that leftover KFC takeout is tastier than nuts, berries, and carrion, you should:

a)  Throw a rock at the bear.

b)  Make yourself look “big;” and

c)  Stand your ground if it charges you.

Um, no.  If I am confronted by a bear, I plan to shoot it repeatedly with a very powerful gun.  Sorry, bear, but my ancestors didn’t spend milennia clawing their way up the food chain to be usurped by a bunch of citified Ursa.  I’m on top and my boomstick and I plan to stay there.

But since I don’t pack heat while vacationing, and since I think that randomly opening fire on wildlife is verboten in Aspen in any case, I shall leave that no doubt lovely town to those who believe that they can dissuade a hungry bear with rocks and good posture.  Good luck with that!  Love, BAW.