BabyCenter.com, Kellymom.com, the Dr Sears site, the What To Expect When you're expecting books, the Baby Whisperer books, The Happiest Fetus/Baby/Toddler/Future Rodeo Clown On The Block books, Fertility Friend, Pregnancy Friend, pregnancy and parenting forums - all of it. I was addicted to it. If it purported to guide me through the dark forest of birth and babies, I attached myself to it like glue. And even when it became clear that all the websites and boks and forums were making me more anxious, not less anxious, I clung to them still. I clung to them all the way through a partum anxiety disorder, post-partum depression and regular old new mom panic. And indeed I panicked, because these things fuel panic. They feed on panic. Panic is what keeps them in business: panic over fertility, panic over pregnancy, panic over childbirth, panic over new parenthood. If none of us were panicking, none of us would scroll manically through BabyCenter's calendars, frantically trying to find out whether the fact the little Engelbert can't pronounce 'hermeneutics' at 14 months means that he has a learning disability. If none of us did that, or the like, at other sites and with other books, etc, none of this would be a business. Also, probably, many of us would need less Ativan.
Which is why I think that this new site - Let's Panic About Babies - actually provides a maternal health (certainly a mental health) service. A new project by bloggers Alice Bradley and Eden Marriott Kennedy -- better known in the blogosphere as Finslippy and Fussy -- it is, as Rita Arens of Surrender, Dorothy (and fellow CE) says, "a sinfully funny site about new parenthood." But it's more than funny (though funny it is: as Liz Gumbinner of Cool Mom Picks said, rightly, it's what would happen if the What To Expect books were reimagined by the Onion): it's sanity-saving.
Because it pokes fun at the panic-inducing earnestness of the big parenting and pregnancy resource sites and the like, it breathes a welcome - necessary, even - breath of irreverence to the whole parenting enterprise. It tells us, it's normal to panic. And it's silly. So LAUGH the next time you find yourself freaking out over green poo or your child's failure to find joy in the Latin edition of the Cat In The Hat. Go ahead, freak out, and seek out advice. But know that you're a freak and that most other moms are freaks and take whatever advice you find with a grain of salt. And? LAUGH.
Laughter, after all, is pretty good medicine. And odds are that you can take some of the piss out of your anxiety if you can laugh, a little, at it. So, yeah: Let's Panic might not be a replacement for Xanax, but it's a pretty good start.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother and Their Bad Mother and everywhere in between.
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Because, seriously. Like I was going to let a little post-partum recovery - and an infant - get in the way of my annual pilgrimage to be with my virtual soul-sisters? Hellz no. I was going, and Jasper was coming with me.
And he did, indeed, come with me. He flew with me from Toronto to San Francisco. He rode the weird little shuttle bus to the party at Guy Kawasaki's house with me and some of his virtual aunties and at least one virtual uncle. He shat on this lady, who was very gracious about it. He sat in on the MommyBlogging session, and got his picture taken by the New York Times. He accompanied me to the session at which I was a speaker, and - when his appetite struck mid-session - got nursed at the front of the room while someone held a microphone for me. He stared a lot at this lady - who can blame him? - and got rocked a lot by this guy - who has formidable arms - and basically just made himself right at home. He was eight weeks old.
It was awesome. It was also terrifying.
I did it because I wanted to go, and because I couldn't go without bringing him. There's an argument to be made that the most healthful decision for me would have been to not go - I was still recovering from his traumatic birth - but my only real concern was whether it was a healthful decision for him to go, and our pediatrician said sure, why not, so we did. And as it turned out, the trip was totally fine for him, and really quite discombobulating for me. I didn't tear anything anew, or drop a uterus or anything, but it was mentally extremely challenging - I was in the throes of and taking medication for post-partum depression - and I felt it. Oh, boy, but I felt it. You can read about it here. It was hard.
I was asked many times, during and after the fact, whether I was glad that I'd done it, glad that I'd made the trip, and would I do it again? And then Shannon wrote a post the other day asking, elliptically, the exact the same thing. The truthful answer was, is, yes and no. Yes, I was glad that I'd made the trip. Very glad, despite how hard it was. Would I do it again? Harder to answer, but if you'd caught me in any of the moments when I was sobbing in a corner, overwhelmed by hormones and maternal anxiety, I'd have said no. But as it happened, I went on to take Jasper to three more conferences in the 8 months after BlogHer, so. Clearly the answer was not a wholesale no. Would I tell another mom to go, or not go? Neither. Only you can tell you whether you're up for it, whether it's worth it. (For my money, if you want to go badly, it is worth it. I'd rather face the challenge and deal with whatever struggles than cope with the regret. Then again, I'm also the one who cried like a baby the whole weekend, so.)
(Also, keep in mind that I was there with a newborn. In some ways, a newborn is easier than a bigger baby because they're so, you know, portable and sleepy and stuff. But you're more vulnerable. Bigger babies demand more attention because they're more squirmy and wakeful, but you'll be less hormonal and prone to random bursts of sobbing.)
So, let's say that you do want to go with your very little person. Here are my tips on how to take a baby to BlogHer and preserve your mental health:
1) If you can, room with somebody that you trust and who is sympathetic to babies. Someone who you know will be happy to watch over little Sigfreid or Brunhilde while you take a bath or weep in the corner.
2.) Travel in a pack - yes, even from the moment you leave home (there's gotta be other BlogHers flying out of wherever you're flying out of - try to arrange flight seating in advance) - with supportive women (and other women with babies are always a boon.) If you can make sure that wherever you go there's a pair of eager, trusted arms ready to hold baby and give you a break, you will feel much more comfortable and safe.
3.) EXPECT to feel uncomfortable and unsafe and overwhelmed at times. Your body is flooded with new mom hormones, and you have your baby with you, and ALL THOSE PEOPLE and ALL THAT NOISE - it's going to feel threatening and oppressive at times. Know that and plan for it. Promise yourself that you'll take yourself and little Engelbert away from the thrum whenever you start to get twitchy.
4.) Take breaks. Take LOTS of breaks. Do not plan on doing everything or seeing everybody. You will need quiet time. Baby needs quiet time. So bail on a few session in favor of in-room naps, and feel free to leave the MamaPopRocks! Sparklecorn Extravaganza early.
5.) Leave the computer in your room - or even at home - and use the extra space in your bag for extra diapers and wipes and clothes and blankies. If the gods are willing to summon epic shits when you walk out your front door at home, what do you think they have planned for you when you wander into lunch with a thousand bloggers? Yeah. Expect the apocalyptic shit. (Mine came at Guy Kawasaki's house. By his pool. I cried.)
6.) Say yes when people ask to hold little Helga. And don't be afraid to ask - that person behind you at the coffee urn would probably love to hold her while you stir your decaf. Let her.
7.) Bjorns and slings and strollers, oh my. Whatever your baby is comfortable in, bring it. And use it. Jasper was slung through many a party, and it's pretty cool to be able to feel your baby snoozing against your chest while you sip (go easy) a Chardonnay with your friends.
8.) What I said in #3, above? Double it. You will be stressed out. BlogHer is stressful even if you've nothing to manage but yourself and your Ativan, so when you've got baby along, and you're mothering AND BlogHering all at the same time? DOUBLE stressful. Triple even. Expect it. But also expect that if you know that this is worth it to you, you'll manage, and be glad.
9.) Come find me. I'll hold your baby for you. And better, I'll whisper all about how I know exactly, exactly, how you feel. Because I've been there.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother and Their Bad Mother and everywhere in between.
]]>Wait, what? Not those last two? Obviously, you're not Canadian, or haven't brought your lactating boobs to Canada. Because apparently, breast pumps and breast milk are, according to Canadian authorities, suspicious items that you can't just waltz across the border with. God, no. What if you were going to make a lacto-bomb with that stuff? The terrorists would win.
]]>Wait, what? Not those last two? Obviously, you're not Canadian, or haven't brought your lactating boobs to Canada. Because apparently, breast pumps and breast milk are, according to Canadian authorities, suspicious items that you can't just waltz across the border with. God, no. What if you were going to make a lacto-bomb with that stuff? The terrorists would win.
This is what one Canadian mom discovered last month when she went on a business trip without her baby. Because she was still nursing, she pumped while she was away. So far, so straightfoward. But then she made the mistake of trying to fly home with her breastmilk and her pump. The Canadian airport authorities didn't like that. Because, you know, that stuff is potentially dangerous. "Biohazard" is, apparently, the word they used. So they made her subject it to examination and then check it with checked baggage, where, predictably, it kind of exploded all over her underthings and went to waste. All because that shit might be dangerous.
Really? Really? Breastmilk as a potential biohazard; breast pumps as potentially dangerous? Doesn't that sound more Bush-era American than any-era Canadian?
Apparently not.
Canadian rules about travelling with nursing devices and breastmilk are stricter than those in the U.S.. From Babycenter.ca:
According to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), passengers are permitted to bring liquids, like breastmilk on airplanes, but it is limited, even for breastmilk. As of June 2008, you must carry your breastmilk in containers not bigger than 100 ml (3.4 oz) and you can carry as many as will fit in a one litre/quart clear plastic bag. One bag of liquid is allowed per passenger. However, when
you are travelling WITH your baby, breast milk, baby formula, and
anything else needed for your baby are exempt from this rule but you
must declare what liquids you are bringing for your child.The U.S. rules are different, however. The US Transportation Security Administration allows nursing mothers flying without their babies to bring breast milk in greater quantities than for other liquids as long as you declare for inspection at the security checkpoint. Hopefully, the Canadian rules will changed to something similar in the near future. Until then, it's best to check with CATSA before you go so you understand the rules before you fly with your breast milk.
Okay, seriously: why is anyone worried about this? Why can't a nursing mother, travelling WITHOUT her baby, bring along her pump and whatever milk she has pumped and carry it onto the plane and just manage it herself? Why is the default assumption biohazard? And why should a breastpump be looked upon with any suspicion whatsoever?
Being without pump or baby is brutal for a nursing mother. BRUTAL. Any travel restrictions that promote this are cruel. And similarly cruel are restrictions that would have nursing moms toss away any breastmilk that they do pump while travelling. If you're a mom who struggles with milk production, whatever ounces of milk one can save are worth their weight in gold. NOT biohazards.
GAH.
It's hard enough to be a nursing mom without having to deal with social phobias concerning boobs and boob-fluids. And really, we're kind of damned if we do - getting asked to cover up if we travel with nursing babies - and damned if we don't - having our breastpumps seized as potential weapons of mass lactative destruction.
Seriously. You'd think that people have issues about boobs or something.
Catherine Connors blogs as Her Bad Mother and as Their Bad Mother, and when she says that she's bad, she's not joking.
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In a New York Times article this week, Denise Grady writes about the terrible fate that awaits women with unwanted pregnancies in Tanzania:
A handwritten ledger at the hospital tells a grim story. For the month of January, 17 of the 31 minor surgical procedures here were done to
repair the results of “incomplete abortions.” A few may have been miscarriages, but most were botched operations by untrained, clumsy hands.Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus. Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.
I'm old enough to remember Roe vs. Wade, which means that I'm also old enough to remember stories about bent clothes hangers and gin baths, horrors that were before my time, but not before my mother's time, nor my grandmother's time. I'm old enough to remember that outlawing abortion - and jailing abortion doctors - doesn't reduce the demand for abortions so much as it increases the rate of mutilation and death of women - young women, not-so-young women, single women, married women, mothers.
But you don't need to be of a certain age to see the evidence of Tanzania and other parts of the world, where a variation on our clothes-hanger history is being lived out with sticks and knives right now. Where women are losing their uteruses, or their lives.
Abortion might be deplorable - but what our own history teaches us, and what the now of Tanzania teaches us, is that that very well might be beside the point. Wherever and whenever women get pregnant, they will sometimes - for a variety of reasons - seek to terminate some pregnancies, regardless of whether it is legal to do so. Regardless of whether it is safe to do so.
Whether those women live or die very much depends upon whether there are doctors like George Tiller nearby.
Something to think about.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother - where she's quaffing Tylenol and praying for sleep - and at Their Bad Mother - where she's doing that and wringing her hands over abortion debates. Her Bad Mother, needless to say, is the happier read this week.
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As many of the participants in the Children of the Recession Topic Day - and many bloggers writing elsewhere - many families are cutting back on, and in some cases foregoing, health care in order to keep their heads above financial water. Some families are foregoing health care because their fortunes have sunk so far that those particular buoys are out of reach entirely - they just can't afford health care, dental care and the like. For some families, the impact comes in the form of not being able to afford healthy foods. For some families, it comes in the form of not being able to afford food at all. For others, it comes in the form of simply not being able to start or grow a family: birth rates are down and the rates of abortions and vasectomies are up.
Which, yeah. Our family isn't quite at the stage of going without healthy food - and as Canadians, the whole health care thing is taken care of (GO CANADA!) - but times are really tight, and I have been postponing that dental check-up and the economics of a growing family had more than a little to do with my husband's vasectomy. So I believe it when I read that the recession is directly impacting family health. Child health. Maternal health. HEALTH, period. But I don't know what we can do about it.
Well, that's not entirely true. We can talk about it. Keep the realities of how the recession affects us, and how it affects others, right at the forefront of our discussions. So that we can, maybe, recognize when members of our community - actual or virtual - need help. So that we're not ashamed to ask for help. So that we're all better empowered to give that help, in whatever form. For our own good, for our own good health.
Catherine Connors blogs as Her Bad Mother and Their Bad Mother. She thinks that she has a cavity.
]]>But I still pray. And I'm convinced that prayer has helped me maintain my sanity during some difficult times. Ativan, too, but I'm pretty sure that the prayer helped.
]]>But I still pray. And I'm convinced that prayer has helped me maintain my sanity during some difficult times. Ativan, too, but I'm pretty sure that the prayer helped.
I thought of this the other day when I saw this post - at another site that I write for - on prayers for a healthy pregnancy. My immediate reaction was, who, other than the most pious church-going soul, would think to pray their way to a better pregnancy? And then I thought, oh. I did.
The thing was, I didn't set out to pray my way through my pregnancies. I just did it. I just did it, because prayer - my own, weird take on prayer, anyway (a hodge-podge of rhyming childhood prayers and Hail Marys and Our Fathers) - is a kind of meditation for me. I do it when I'm really anxious or can't sleep or am having panic attacks. I do it when I want to calm myself. As I said, I also take Ativan, but prayer is pretty handy when the panic attack hits on the bus or in the middle of the night and there are no drugs around. Also, during pregnancy, when one is worried about taking drugs.
So, yeah. It all of sudden made perfect sense, the idea of praying one's way to a healthier pregnancy, or indeed to better health in general. Prayer is - or can be - a kind of meditation. And meditation of any sort can be an invaluable aid in keeping oneself mentally and physically grounded. (I should stress, though, that neither prayer nor any other kind of meditation are a substitute for medical treatment. And I would be leary of anyone who suggested that prayer might be sufficient for treating post-partum or any kind of depression. And although prayer and faith and the like can be powerful allies in good health generally, we owe it to women everywhere to keep the critical lens well-focused: women die when they substitute faith for medicine.)
Prayer and meditation can be viewed in the same manner as exercise, when it comes to their relationship to health: they can be a powerful, and perhaps even necessary, complement to a healthy lifestyle.
And if Hail Marys aren't your bag? Just make something up. It's between you and your higher power, or between you and no power at all. Whatever brings you peace and calm - and good health.
(My favorite of the nine prayers cited in the post? A Prayer For The Womb, excerpted from a poem by Tikva Frymer-Kensky:
My eye cannot see you.
My will cannot control you.
But I feel your presence,
and I note your being
and I wish you all blessings,
and I love you.
I think that I sighed out loud when I read that.)
Catherine Connors blogs as Her Bad Mother and as Their Bad Mother. She's been praying to not worry so much about the economy. She's been having to supplement those prayers with an Ativan prescription.
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The longer form of that answer is, I suppose, because it's about boobs, which itself expands into a longer answer still: because it's about boobs, which means that it's about our womanhood, and about the relationship of our motherhood to our womanhood and vice-versa and so it is, to make a very serious understatement, really pretty loaded. It's loaded because it speaks to the biology of motherhood and womanhood, and so to what we often think of as the fundamentals of motherhood and womanhood, and everything in between. We're built to nurse, right? And yet we live in a world where that's sometimes controversial. Are boobs for sex or for nursing or for both? Does one trump the other? Are boobs that don't nurse less womanly than boobs that do? Are boobs that nurse less sexy than boobs that don't? Are you less of a woman, less of a mother if you don't nurse? Are you a boob-flashing harpy if you do? It's confusing in a way that unsettles our ideas and feelings about what it means to be a woman and a mother.
Which is why we shouldn't be surprised when the whole thing messes some of us up.
Katherine Stone of Post-Partum Progress held an online rally for moms' mental health this past Mother's Day weekend (in which yours truly was a participant), and breastfeeding was one of the issues that came up in the various 'Letters To New Moms.' Which was interesting to me, because I'd never really thought about the relationship of breastfeeding to post-partum depression. Which itself was also interesting, seeing as how the challenges of breastfeeding are something that I always include of my descriptions of what I call The Dark Days of PPD after the births of both my children. Pain and anxiety around breastfeeding were absolutely a factor in my depression. I'd just never really explicitly articulated that to myself.
Therese Borchard, who writes Beyond Blue at Beliefnet, articulates it perfectly in her Letter to New Moms:
I tried so hard to do the right thing for everyone else but me. I weaned myself off of my antidepressant because I wanted to breastfeed, to give my infant the best possible start … the golden
stuff right out of the boob. So my lactating breasts and I were on
call, with no substitute available, for months and months and more
months … long enough for me to make the walk of shame from the
maternity ward to the psych ward.
I don’t think I closed my eyes for longer than three hours for
four years. And I am still paying the price for that carelessness: my severe mood disorder, my pituitary tumor, my hormonal imbalance … all of them, I believe, resulted from my mission to be the self-sufficient martyr mom.
I too refused to take anti-depressants, the first time around. Even thought my doctor told me that they were safe for breastfeeding, I wasn't taking any chances: my boob juice was going to be pure. And so I slogged through the difficult first weeks of breastfeeding (my god, the pain) in a fog of depression with nothing but a few phone calls with a psychiatric nurse and umpteen visits with a lactation consultant (and the world's most supportive husband, which is probably worth an infinite supply of Ativan) to pull me through. It was hard. It was really hard. I'm glad that I breastfed my daughter, but if I could do those weeks and months differently, I totally would. I don't know whether that would mean stopping nursing, or just supplementing, or being willing to take the meds. I just know that I wish I'd done something more to cut through the dark.
Therese offers the advice that I wish had been put forward more forcefully to me: "If you need to, by all means supplement your breastfeeding so that you can take a break, so you can get eight hours of sleep at least once a week."
(For the record, I tried this the second time around, with my son, after my excellent psychiatrist exhorted me to not be afraid to put him down already, but he refused the bottle. Which I took as a sign from the gods that I was meant to be tormented.)
(Do not, however, let this stop you from trying. Jasper eventually took a bottle, and I eventually slept. 10 months later, but still. Never say never.)
I'll always insist that breast is best. But that only holds in the arena of infant nutrition, and sometimes, you have give a little in one arena to keep a hold of things in another. Bottle-feeding and formula might not be as super-awesome-fantastic as breastmilk, but they're certainly pretty good, and if it comes to a toss-up between giving your child the best nutrition and losing your mind, or giving your child excellent nutrition and maintaining your sanity, well, the choice should be pretty straightforward. You can't take care of that baby if you're sobbing, helpless, in a corner. Better to get some rest and slip her an occasional - even a frequent - bottle than to sacrifice yourself at the altar of Breast Is Best.
Breast is best, but healthy, happy moms are better.
Catherine Connors blogs as Her Bad Mother and now, also, as Their Bad Mother at Beliefnet. She's worried that her excessively breastfed children might be forming a militia. A PRINCESS militia. AWESOME.
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I only heard this story for the first time last year. I knew my own birth story, of course. She'd told me countless times about how she hadn't known that she was in labor with me (a 'silent labor,' she said the doctors called it), about how my dad had gotten suspicious when she became unusually cranky one afternoon and called the doctor and described her state and then spent hours with his hands on her belly, timing the contractions by what he felt rather than by what she felt. She told me about how it really felt, for her, as if they'd brought me into this world together. She hadn't been alone during my birth. She'd been surrounded by love. I never knew that there'd been a birth before mine, and that she clung to the happy story of my birth as though to a life-raft, something to keep her afloat whenever she felt swamped by the dark waves of the memory of that other birth.
She told me that story when she finally told me that I had - that I have - a brother, somewhere, a brother who was given up for adoption. She told me that story, and it broke my heart. Then she started her own blog, and told the story to everyone else, and, I'm sure, broke more than a few more hearts:
As soon as I began to show, my parents sent me to a home for unwed mothers... I tried to kill myself while I was there. The pain and loneliness were unbearable. Neither Mom nor Dad ever visited me there; it was too painful for them. Several young women carrying 'illegitimate' babies came and went during my three months there. All cried themselves to sleep
every night...I went into labor in on a beautiful July afternoon in 1963. The staff told me to call them when my pains were five minutes apart. I didn't have my mother or a husband there to support me, so I walked the gardens for five hours, by myself, because I didn't know what else to do. I was scared. When the pains started getting closer, the Home called my parents and then called a cab to take me to the hospital. I went to the hospital all alone. I delivered my beautiful son all alone.
I was told that, because I was giving my son up for adoption, I shouldn't see him because it would make it harder for me. I saw him. His perfect little face will be forever imprinted on my mind and the intense love I felt for my baby has never gone.
Every birth story is beautiful. The story of my mother's first birth is beautiful, in its way: her bravery is beautiful. Her love for the son that she had to give up is beautiful. Her bravery and her love and her strength and her survival: these are beautiful. But her story is also, obviously, full of fear and pain and no amount of romantic gloss can change that.
There are, however, beautiful birth-to-adoption stories. Andee - a proud birth mother - wrote about being accompanied, in childbirth, by the parents who would adopt her daughter:
I wanted Dustin and Andrea there to see their daughter born. They stood up by my head and watched as Avery was born. It was the most spiritual experience I have ever had in my life.
It all happened so fast.
I remember looking over at Dustin and Andrea as they walked in. Within minutes Dr. Terry held up a beautiful baby girl, and she started crying...
I sat in awe and stared at her. She had ten fingers. Ten toes. She had 2 arms and 2 legs. What a miracle she was.
They then laid Avery on my chest. I held on to her. I couldn't stop crying, or staring at her. Dustin and Andrea cut the chord and the nurse wrapped her in a blanket. I immediately pulled her to my chest. I couldn't stop staring at her. Her beautiful eyes.
I didn't ever want let her go.
But Andee did let her go, into an open adoption with the parents Andee had chosen for her, and she has, she says, never regretted it. My mother's story is one of fear and pain; Andee's is one of joy and love. Both are stories worth sharing.
Maybe, this Mother's Day, you'll share yours?
Too many mothers have stories of births that are full of pain and fear - full of pain and fear that are much, much greater than that experienced by my mother. Too many mothers lose their babies. Too many mothers lose their lives. As Jaelithe wrote at Momocrats the other day, every minute, somewhere in the world, another woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth. Which is why Momocrats is promoting - with CARE and The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, "partners in the campaign to prevent maternal mortality by providing expectant mothers around the world with access to basic prenatal care and childbirth support from a properly trained doctor, midwife or attendant" - a new public awareness campaign called Mother's Day Every Day.
The idea is simple: to just get the word out about this campaign by asking women to share their birth or adoption stories. Participation is simple: "to participate, this week, before Mother's Day, write or re-post a birth or adoption story that has personal meaning for you on your blog. Then ask your readers to visit the Mother's Day Every Day website, and provide a link to MothersDayEveryDay.org."
My mother shared her story. You can find mine here. You can find a whole bunch of awesome, moving adoption stories at The R House. And there are some amazing birth stories here. And then there's this birth story, and this one (which also has something to do with adoption, end of the day), and this one, which isn't a birth but is a story about making someone a mother.
In the end, these stories are just about that: how we became and are becoming mothers. Please consider sharing yours.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother. Her baby likes to make out with his reflection in the mirror.
]]>When I was a child, you told me that if I unscrewed my belly-button, my bum would fall off, and I believed you. You told me that if I lied, the bottom of my tongue would turn black, and I believed you. You told me that I was found in a cabbage patch, that fairies lived in my grandmother's forsythia bush and that cats came from heaven: I believed you, I believed you, I believed you.
]]>When I was a child, you told me that if I unscrewed my belly-button, my bum would fall off, and I believed you. You told me that if I lied, the bottom of my tongue would turn black, and I believed you. You told me that I was found in a cabbage patch, that fairies lived in my grandmother's forsythia bush and that cats came from heaven: I believed you, I believed you, I believed you.
You told me these things, and I believed you, and you told me that you loved me, and I believed you, even though I knew, deep down, that these were different kinds of believing. And so when you told me that you loved me, I said that I believed you and that I believed you more than when I believed you about the fairies. There's belief, and then there's belief, and there's a very great difference between believing in love and believing in fairies. I believed that I understood both, and most of all, that I understood you.
But you told me that I couldn't understand you - not that part of you, not yet. You told me that I couldn't possibly know how much you loved me, that you loved me beyond my imagining, that your love for me was something that I wouldn't understand until I knew the experience of such love for myself. You told me that my love for you was not this kind of love. This, I did not believe. I thought that a mother's love was knowable, predictable, measurable. I thought that a mother's love - your love - was simply a reflection of my love for you, a secure love, a safe love, a love that could be forgotten, sometimes - didn't you stop loving me in those moments when you were angry, as I stopped loving you, threw off your love like an old, scratchy coat, when I was angry with you? (No, no, you always said. Not possible. I might not like you right now, you would say, but I still love you. I can never not love you. I didn't believe you) - a love that could be taken for granted. You told me that I didn't understand the weight of your love, its indisputable, inevitable, unavoidable, infinite heft. I didn't believe you.
I believe you now.
I believe you now because now, I know this love. I know this love -
know it in my soul - because now, I have children of my own. And I love my children - I know this - more than they will ever, more than they can ever, love me. And I know that they may never understand this - how my love for them is in some ways unrequited, how my love for them is always in some ways an experience of loss (oh, how they grow, ever bigger, ever stronger, ever closer to leaving me), how my love for them is fierce and passionate and indestructible and infinite, how my love for them is so different in so many ways from their love for me - until they have children of their own.
And that's okay. My love for them doesn't need reciprocation in kind. It needs only them. I know that you know this, because that's how you love - how you have always loved - me. I know that you know this love, because you taught me this love.
And I love you - indisputably, inevitably, unavoidably - for that.
Always your daughter,
Catherine
Hey! It's almost Mother's Day! Why not write a letter to you own mother? Leave your link below so that we can do a Mother's Day Letter To Our Mothers letter-reading tour...
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother, where she sometimes blogs about her mother, the original bad mother. Okay, maybe a lot, but her mom is awesome. (You want her mom? You can find her at her own blog, where she now stakes out bad grandma territory.
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You know the signs. You've got to have it. You want it all the time. You don't know how to live without it. You get all shaky when you can't get your fix. Never mind the dangers of dependency on mother's little helpers like Ativan or Xanax or vodka or coffee; those are kids' stuff compared to the Internet. The Internet will eat you alive and spit you out and wipe you up with a dirty baby wipe. And there's no methadone for this monkey, so. This addiction is bad news. Everyone says so.
Which, please.
I understand where the folks who are sounding the alarm are coming from. Rachel Mosteller of Parenting.com was anxious about how much time she was spending with her laptop open, relative to the amount of time spent with her kids (she notes that in almost all the photos of her children in babyhood, she's got a laptop open. Hell, at least she's in the pictures, which is more than I can say for myself.) So she quit blogging, and made an effort to power down. I get that. I've had moments of feeling oppressed by the Internet, and have come close to quitting blogging. So I understand. Who among us mothers - us technophiliac mothers - hasn't felt as though we maybe depend upon the Internet a little too much? Sure, maybe we love it a little too much, sometimes.
But addiction?
Mosteller says yes. And she cites experts that support this view. "These moms," she says, "are contributing to a growing global addiction. There's a
movement among psychiatrists to recognize Internet addiction as an
official mental disorder (just like alcohol dependency)."
"These moms" are, apparently, new moms. Moms who are desperate for an outlet, for a break from baby, for resources, for some approximation of community support at a time when they need it desperately. Moms who feel like they might be going crazy. Moms who are - for all relevant purposes - alone, and who are anxious. Moms who need a network. The Internet provides networks - and an outlet, and resources, and the opportunity for a break that can be had with baby at your side, and community. Those things can be lifesaving. They were for me, just as they have been for many other women (Ayelet Waldman, for one. Heather Armstrong, for two. All the women that Katherine Stone is gathering together for an online rally in support of moms' mental health, for dozens more. A probably a gajillion other mom-bloggers that you can think of. We're here for our sanity, people.)
So while I do get the concern - my baby smashed my laptop the other day and I have seriously gone through tremors and cold sweats and shakes while figuring out how to ohmygod get my ass back online, like, yesterday - and do think that anyone who is worried about addictive behavior should maybe keep an eye on it, I think that the goods outweigh the potential harms here. Way outweigh the potential harms.
But then again, I'm the Internet equivalent of a speedfreak, so what do I know?
What do you think?
Catherine Connors blogs as Her Bad Mother, where she's been struggling - and failing - to come to terms with the fact that she's got her boobs back. She wanted them back, for sure, but still: at what cost?
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Err... what?
]]>Err... what?
That`s what one environmentalist is calling for today: no more reproductive sex. Because, stop a pregnancy, save the world!
Look, I understand that overpopulation is a huge problem for the sustainability of life on the planet. I mean, the math is pretty simple: small planet + too many people - sufficient resources = trouble. So it would seem that part of the solution is a no-brainer, even for an innumerate dolt like me: planet - (x)people = more resources = greater sustainability = good. But still, I get uncomfortable when people start throwing the family-planning slash hurrah-for-childlessness argument around in the context of saving the environment. Not because I don`t think that the threat of overpopulation is overblown, but because a) the argument too often slides into anti-child absurdity (the childfree movement, in my opinion, too often uses environmentalism as a prop for what is basically just a dislike of children. People are welcome to dislike children, but turning it into a movement and insisting upon the nobility of the cause because there`s an environmental angle to be spun just strikes me as a little disturbing), and b) there are a few slippery slope edges on which that argument teeters dangerously.
As Hans Tammermagi admits in the article linked above, the problem of overpopulation is most pressing in what used to be called `less developed` countries. So me quaffing birth control pills and snarking about the Duggars isn`t going to make much of a difference, because the `developed` world doesn`t have exploding birth rates: big families are something of an anomaly in the US and Canada, where birth rates tend to be in the decline. Granted, as some have argued, a child raised in the affluent West is going to leave a much bigger eco-footprint than is any child born and raised in an economically impoverished community, but it remains that the population booms are happening in non-Western communities, and if it`s sheer numbers we`re worried about, then curtailing Western population rates isn`t going to have much effect. Which leads us in two problematic directions: 1) that people in countries where big families are the cultural norm be pressured to change that norm (which might seem reasonable, framed in a certain light, but from the perspective of cultural imperialism and what-not, it`s kinda discomfiting), and 2) if the eco-footprint of persons in the quote-unquote developed world is - as we know it is - so much a part of the problem, isn`t curtailing the birth of children in that world the least efficient way of addressing that problem? If one Western child equals the footprint of, say, 50 Darfurian children, but the footprint of one Al Gore equals that of (figuring conservatively) 100,000 Darfurian, then, um, doesn`t the math point us in another direction? Like, we either work aggressively toward reducing our own eco-footprints, or we eat Al Gore. Or something.
As I said in a post a year or two ago, in response to a story about the eco-consciousness of the childfree movement, the temptation is think along Swiftian lines: why not eat the rich instead of hating on babies? Or kill everyone over the age of 30, a la Logan`s Run? Or just legalize euthanasia already, and maybe gently suggest to all the AARPers that, you know, they could really get in good with Al Gore if they just went gently into that good night. He, of course, would lead the way, good environmentalist that he is.
But stop having sex? Where`s the fun in that?
(Psst... Want more positive ways to celebrate Earth Day? Check out BlogHers Act Canada`s list of Earth Day must-do`s. And then maybe consider taking a carbon-free trip around the world! Al Gore would approve!)
Catherine blogs at Her Bad Mother, where she's just recovered from a near-fatal impulse to quit blogging. It was close one, that one. Won`t happen again.
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The Daily Mail reported this week that Gwyneth had recently been waxing ridiculous on GOOP about the dangers of shampoo. She had, they said, been talking nonsense and had, accordingly, "been branded ‘loopy’ by scientists after warning that products such as shampoo could be linked to cancer." Celebuzz took the same tone -"perhaps Paltrow should turn her concern to more pressing issues facing the world's children. Such as the negative effects of naming them Moses and Apple" - as did CelebSlam - "Gwyneth may actually be right. Overexposing yourself to particular items can sometimes cause people to come down with serious mental disorders. And in Gwyneth's case, it's pretty apparent what she's developed: Vanity" - and GabbyBabble - "So who do you believe, the experts who are doctors and professors or Gwyneth who did her own “research?”"
Which, I get it. As I said above, I find Gwyneth pretty irritating. And on the face of it, 'Gwyneth wages war on shampoo' seems pretty ridiculous. So why not mock her?
Well, it was only a few weeks ago that I wrote about my own fears about shampoo. Because other moms that I trust are worried about it, and because, um, the Washington Post is worried about it. Because it might contain carcinogens. CANCER-CAUSING AGENTS. That's scary, people. I don't care if you need to factor in scientific fallibility and all that stuff about how we don't know this and we don't know that and, now, the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow is prattling on about it. IT'S STILL SCARY. Even if there's only a 1% chance that certain brands of shampoo might cause my baby to sprout tumors, that's 1% more than I'm willing to tolerate.
So maybe Gwyneth Paltrow is out of touch and maybe she's prone to spouting off on stuff that she doesn't really know about and maybe that makes her an easy target for mockery. Maybe. But she's still a mom who worries about her kids and about the environment and about whether or not she should just be chucking it in and heading off-grid to make her own (no doubt destined-for-sale-at-Bergdorfs) soap.
Which makes her just a little bit like you and me, don't you think? If for that reason alone, I'm willing to cut her some slack on this one.
Catherine blogs at Her Bad Mother, where she's been holding her mom's hand as she enters the world of blogging and - for kicks! - has been trying to convince other bloggers to join her on a trip around the world! You want in?
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Which is basically what some people who should know about these things are saying these days.
It all started with that article in the Atlantic last summer - "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" (see what they did there? STOOPID. Ha ha ha. Google humor! Very cerebral!) - in which the author speculated as to the long-term cognitive consequences of our dependence upon the Internet. Then, just last week, a leading neurologist suggested that excessive use of online media could "permanently alter our brains and trigger neurological disorders." And today,on Salon, Rebecca Traister wrote about her decision to wean herself from her addiction to the Internet by downloading a program - tellingly called "Freedom" - to her computer to force her to take breaks from Internetting. She didn't say explicitly that she feared that her brain was melting, but it was strongly implied:
Even as a comparative Luddite, I find myself bewitched, bewildered and deeply bothered by the number of minutes, hours, days I spend circling the online drain. As anyone who spends most working days staring at a computer screen knows, there is no such thing as sitting idle anymore. Those little desk toys they used to sell -- the plastic bird who teeters and totters until its beak finally dunks into the water glass -- are relics at this point. Like the notion of being unreachable at certain hours of the day or night, they are laughable reminders of a world long gone. Who would have the patience to wait for the beak to hit water? We'd all be hitting "reload."
Instead of watching plastic balances, we stare idly into a scrim of ever-updating images, words, videos, letter threads, some that calm us, some that raise our blood pressure, until finally the day is over, and we go home, log on, and do it again. Or at least I do.
(Implied: HALP MY BRAIN IS MELTING.)
I read this and I thought two things: 1) I don't need software to enforce downtime from the Internet - I have hardware for that, and they are 10 months and 3 years old, respectively, and 2) uh-oh, mah brain, it is in trouble. Because even though my children force me give me ample reason to shut the laptop for extended periods of time, I still spend a lot of time on the Internet. A lot. Much of my professional life is here, and it runs 24-7. Much of my social life is here, too.
But it's not so much the online writing and socializing that has me worried. I have, after all, argued here before that blogging saved my life - if we understand 'life' as 'mental health' - and that mothers in particular are better off health-wise for having the Internet. It's that in the course of all that writing and socializing, I've come to depend upon havign immediate and unfettered access to information - information that I used to use my brain to find and process and apply to my work and social intercourse. Today, for example, I couldn't remember the title of the Jules Verne novel about travel that isn't Around The World In 80 Days. So I googled Jules Verne travel balloon, and got my answer. Which, awesome, right? Wrong. That book was on my bookshelf, not ten feet away. I forgot that it was there, because instead of plumbing my memory for details of my relationship with that work (did I use it in a lecture? write a paper about it? discuss it with academic colleagues over coffee? read it on vacation, over a latte?) I just defaulted to ask the Internet. I didn't use my brain; I used Google.
Which, some say, is just the first and most dangerous step on the road to brain meltage. That neurologist that I mentioned earlier, Susan Greenfield, said, in an interview, that "the brain is susceptible to being reshaped by our experiences." She then cited a recent study in which "London cabbies who memorized the streets of the capital displayed significant growth in the hippocampus--an area of the brain connected with memory." Using GoogleMaps, presumably, does not facilitate growth of the hippocampus. I'm the sort of person, now, who uses GoogleMaps. Is my hippocampus going to be stunted? According to Susan Greenfield, maybe.
Obviously, if my hippocampus shrivels, it won't be specifically because I'm a mom-blogger. Blogging isn't the source of the problem. But is it possible that - because so much of my Internet-information-trawling is done in the service of blogging - it's not helping?
I hope not. Because if it comes down to Hippocampus versus Blog, I'm not sure who's going to win.
I should maybe start stocking up on Gingko Biloba right about now.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother, where one of her posts earned her BlogHer of the Week honors! And now she's travelling around the world! Like Jules Verne would have wanted her to!
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What Newsweek is interested in, specifically, is the Duggar family's adherence to the principles of the Quiverfull movement, which they describe as:
... a pro-life-purist lifestyle... where women forgo all birth-control options, viewing contraception as a form of abortion and considering even natural family planning an attempt to control a realm—fertility—that should be entrusted to divine providence. At the heart of this reality-show depiction of "extreme motherhood" is a growing conservative Christian emphasis on the importance of women submitting to their husbands and fathers, an antifeminist backlash that holds that gender equality is contrary to God's law and that women's highest calling is as wives and "prolific" mothers.
(Quiverfull takes its name from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full
of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their
enemies in the gate." Nothing like a good military metaphor to undergird one's family planning! WAIT: wrong. Family unplanning.)
(No, I take that back. This is totally family planning. This is family planning as army building, which: DAMN.)
(No, seriously. [Quiverfull leaders] [according to Newsweek] urge women toward militant fecundity in the service of religious rebirth: creating what they bluntly refer to as an army of devout children to wage spiritual battle against God's enemies. As Quiverfull author Rachel Scott writes in her 2004 movement book, "Birthing God's Mighty Warriors," "Children are our ammunition in the spiritual realm to whip the enemy! These special arrows were handcrafted by the warrior himself and were carefully fashioned to achieve the purpose of annihilating the enemy." What was that I said? DAMN.)
*DEEP BREATH*
I'm not going to tackle the issues relating to Quiverfull as a social movement that may or may not oppress women (for the record? I think that it does) here. It's a big subject - a massive subject - and one that I'm not up for tackling. What I do want to tackle here: the nitty-gritty business of what having a gajillion children - and by gajillion I don't mean 4 or 5 or 6; I mean Duggar quantities - does to a woman's body. Is using one's body as God's bow sustainable in terms of good maternal health?
The Friendly Atheist interviewed Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, who noted that women - not surprisingly - get worn down, physically, from the work of bearing and caring for so many children.In response to a reader question about the physical and emotional toll of this 'extreme motherhood,' she said this:
Emotionally and physically, many women — particularly those who have left the movement — say the lifestyle is one of relentless work and exhaustion... There does seem to be a high incidence of reproductive problems among some mothers, though of course this could be due to the fact that the mothers are having far more children, and far later into life, than many other women.
... Many women have spoken of extremely difficult pregnancies — a number of whom are put on strict bed rest — and labors. Additionally, there is often a focus on natural and even unassisted home births among Quiverfull moms. This isn’t a requirement of the Quiverfull conviction, but like many related facets of the movement, it’s an idea many women are exposed to through movement literature. In a very extreme case in Australia, a Quiverfull mother died following the teachings of one fringe home-birth advocate. Though that seems to have been an anomalous case, home births, and continuing conceptions despite poor health do make for some serious health risks for some mothers.
And what about the impact on a woman's health from simply having so many kids? Healthy Living Buzz at Cafe Mom asked that question a couple of months ago, and the response (from registered OB nurses) was this:
Medically speaking, with each pregnancy, you have an increased risk for post partum bleeding because your uterus doesn't want to contract down to normal size. It's been stretched for so long and so often, it tries to be stubborn. Another risk is for the bladder to prolapse, meaning it drops downward and can come out of the vaginal canal. To fix it, they have a new procedure that's fairly easy, but a lot of GYNs don't like to do it until you are done having babies.
Your BLADDER CAN FALL OUT??? Gah. (I knew that, actually. Still: GAH.) So, women shouldn't have too many babies, right?
Medical professionals don't think it's anyone's business to tell
someone to stop having babies at a certain age. Yes, by 42 or 43 years old, it is considered advanced maternal age (AMA), and with that comes some risks. Again, there are risks of bleeding, and the risks of fetal growing, mental retardation or growth issues in utero. Also, the mother is more at risk for gestational diabetes and pregnancy induced hypertension just because her body isn't as young anymore to handle the workload of pregnancy... (BUT) For some women, it would be unsafe after their second baby to get pregnant again, and they are advised not to. Some women like Michelle can keep going and medically not have any problems.
Okay then. Having quivers full o' babies is maybe not the best thing for your bladder, and will probably exhaust you physically, and is probably not recommended once you get well into advanced maternal age, but otherwise - and if your insurance covers uterine prolapse repair surgery - it's not the worst thing in the world for your health.
Submitting yourself entirely to a man and subjecting yourself to a lifetime of feminine servitude that amounts to "relentless work and exhaustion" on the other hand? You'll maybe need a few extra vitamins and a solidly premodern disposition for that. But that's a topic for another day.
Catherine Connors blogs at Her Bad Mother, where's she's recently been saying things about birth and babies and - yes - abortion that would probably make Michelle Duggar's head blow off.
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Some of the information that floats my way is, of course, the kind of common-sense, duh-I-knew-that stuff that doesn't make me want to run screaming for the hills so much as it does fill me with an overwhelming sense of fatigue. Macaroni and cheese from the box isn't healthy? Goldfish crackers should be avoided? Okay, fine. I might not like it, but I can accept it and move on to the hard work of convincing my children that brown rice is as tasty as Kraft Dinner, and that they didn't really like Goldfish crackers anyway (actually, Time magazine's recommended alternative to Goldfish crackers, graham crackers, aren't such a hard sell, except for the part where my daughter gets mad that they aren't being turned into S'mores.)
But what about information like this: some of the ingredients in common children's bath products - shampoo, soap, bubble bath - contain carcinogens. Which, again: I sort of knew that mass-produced soap products contained dodgy ingredients (Green Mom Finds was founded to put exactly this type of information in front of moms and provide them with alternatives, and I've paid attention when they've wagged their virtual fingers at Johnson's & Johnson's) but still. CANCER-causing ingredients? Have I been killing my children softly with all that No More Tears shampoo? How does information like that NOT send a mother into a panic?
Obviously, the thing to do is to just start buying the all-natural products - we already use Burt's Bees sometimes - but that stuff's expensive. Which, fine, I'm willing to pay a little more to keep my children safe, but isn't it a little bit troubling that keeping our children safe is kind of a luxury? In this economy, a lot of families can't afford to buy the safe stuff, because it is, simply, much more expensive than the regular ol' carcinogenic off-the-counter stuff. So, family health: now a luxury? Or is there some way around this problem that I'm just not getting?
In the meantime, anybody got a good make-your-own-soap recipe? You know, for when I hit the back-country?
Catherine blogs at Her Bad Mother, where, when she's not obsessively reflecting over what it means to mother in public, she's determined to make sure that everybody understands that once you become a parent, you won't give a hoot about not getting to go to Paris for the weekend. It's the naps that you'll want. Trust her.
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