just my luck

So, if you open an umbrella because 1) it's raining, and 2) you completely forgot that it's broken, and the thing that is broken is that it can't be closed, do you then have bad luck forever? If so, then I'm in trouble....

eats

BBB: Bill's beautiful bruschetta

cupcakes kick ass

Sam and his "brother" (AKA, his best friend Kai) sharing a snack, while Summer tries to scam some crumbs. Note that the table & chair set was mine as a kid.

vagina fail

OMG she said vagina in her blog! It must be dirty! Let's read it!

OK, did you get that out of your system yet? It's a body part, for chrissakes, like an elbow or toe nail, or a frenulum (look it up). While there are a wide variety of entertaining uses for the vagina, it evolved to serve one main purpose--birthing babies. Now, if you ladies out there don't happen to be using your vagina for this purpose, fear not. This blog entry is NOT a rant about how the role of vaginas is simply to grow babies, so get working on it. I encourage you to keep on keepin' on with whatever makes you happy and feels good.

No, this is a tragic tale of a childbirth gone awry, inspired by Eve Ensler and FailBlog. An odd combination, don't you think? Perhaps I should share the impetus for this story, lest you question my sanity and whether it's wise for me to be around your children.

Last semester (I live not by seasons or calendar years, but by the semester-based academic calendar) I was privileged enough to see the play "The Vagina Monologues," written by Eve Ensler, at Georgia Tech. It is a series of vignettes, ever evolving and expanding in scope and subject, that speaks to women and girls about the process of growing up into one's body and one's sexuality, whatever that sexual preference might be (or might be for the next few days...). They talk about sex and love and loss and sorrow, all through the perspective of how the vagina is experiencing it.

I must say, it's quite radical and cool to hear women engage in a discourse about what makes their vaginas happy. Isn't the rest of mainstream society really just a discourse about keeping penises happy? The vagina definitely deserved her own play, at least. I was honored to be named a Georgia Tech "Vagina Warrior" for my work in helping to end sexual assault and intimate partner violence on campus and around Atlanta. I have to say the the pleasure of typing out "VAGINA WARRIOR" on my annual report to the school chair and on my curriculum vitae gave me immense pleasure....

But now to the fail part. The "Vagina Monologues" was about women/vaginas as strong and successful, with their bodies giving them pleasure in whatever exploit they choose. What if yours doesn't happen to work that way? What if you experience....vagina fail?

The process of having a child is never easy, but it becomes particularly more complicated when one is trying to have a child later in life (say, after 35). I am one of those persons, and "vagina fail" has become a mantra over the last several years. Here's the timeline:

• March 2004, start trying to get pregnant
• June 2005, actually do get pregnant
• October 2005, not pregnant anymore (you do the math--it sucked--her name was Grayson Josephine D'Unger)
• November 2005, WHAT? Pregnant again????
• August 2006, Sam is born
• March 2008, start trying to get pregnant
• December 2008, pregnant again! Yay!!
• January 2009, not pregnant anymore
• March 2009, start trying to get pregnant
• today, July 23, 2009, STILL NOT PREGNANT

Hoping to squeeze one of these things (babies) out before I turn 40, which is getting imminently closer.

So, my vagina is not cooperating. I thought that we were a team! But difficulty in getting pregnant would not lead me to label my vagina a failure. I did indeed get pregnant and have a beautiful, healthy, large, baby boy on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 8:54 PM. No, here's where the feeling of failure comes in.

I read all the pregnancy, labor, and delivery books. I take a hypno-birthing class (OK, don't laugh, it's about learning deep breathing, relaxation, and meditation to cope with the pain of labor, which, if you haven't gone through it FOR FORTY FIVE HOURS LIKE I DID, is a burning hell). I don't want to be induced--only natural labor induction, like exercise, sex (what you REALLY want to do when you weigh 300 lbs.), and eating a lot of basil.

I knew childbirth wouldn't be easy, but I had these beautiful images of holding yoga poses while the baby slides out into a warm tub, and I am the first to touch him. Soft music, warm scented candles, the whole works.

That began to be stymied when Sam just kept getting bigger, but showed no inclination that he wanted to come out and join the non-womb world. One week late. Two weeks late. I try to ignore the ultrasounds the doctors are pointing to saying, "he's a big one--we guess 10 pounds 4 ounces." I try to kick-start things naturally, to no avail.

Then, the midwife makes the call. You're 14 days late with a big kid and you're running out of fluids in there. We have to induce to assure a vaginal delivery. Damn, damn, damn. This is exactly where I don't want to be- just checking into the hospital and not even in labor. I was hoping to fly in to the maternity ward when I was about 9 cm dilated, hop in a tub, do some squats, and pop out a kid. Hah!

But then something happens. As I sit in the waiting room, waiting to check into my bed for the night, my labor kicks in. I had been having fairly uncomfortable and very regular (every 10 minutes) contractions for 24 hours, but they decided to kick it up a notch IN THE WAITING ROOM. So now I'm not a woman waiting to be induced, I'm a woman who is in labor. GET ME A F&$%@ ROOM!!! Having pretty hard contractions in front of the flotsam and jetsam of other people's families in the waiting room is NOT my idea of a calm, natural birth. What should have actually happened is that they should have sent us home. This was active labor, but it was early active labor. I was only dilated to about 3 cm, so I had a ways to go. I should have gone home, labored in my own tub, my own shower, on my own bed, and walked around my own neighborhood. Instead, my job now seems to have shifted to convincing the nurses that I'm progressing "fast enough," whatever the hell that means. My midwife and doula are trying to hold them at bay, as the nurses offer drugs and epidurals and labor stimulants. IT WILL INTERFERE WITH MY GODDAMN YOGA POSITIONS!!! There is nothing like a laboring woman to clear a room with her anger....

They persuade me to try pitoscin, which is the anti-christ of labor inducing drugs. Contractions come faster and harder, though (in my experience) they don't seem to work as effectively. This is when most people pick up the white flag, surrender, and get that spine-numbing epidural put in their back. I resist. Four hours on pitoscin, no pain killers, and little progression. ENOUGH I say (and by "say," I mean while shouting expletives at the nurses). They turned that horrible stuff off and I went back to "normal" labor--starts out slower to ease you in, then gradually progresses. In this phase, I dilate to 5 or 6 cm.

Tis not enough for the nurse nazis. "Let's break your water." Wow, that sounds like fun. Please do. It comes out looking like I'm about to birth Kermit the Frog--in other words, green. This is a good reason to freak out if you were, say, 36 weeks pregnant and in labor. This means that meconium (AKA your baby's first poop) is in your amniotic fluid. Gross. Not only gross, but it *can* be a sign of fetal distress. But, if you happen to be 42 weeks pregnant, it just means your baby is ready to get the hell out and poop in his diapers. This would have been helpful information BEFORE they broke my water.

Now the legal stuff kicks in. Meconium in fluids = potential fetal distress. If we (the hospital) don't intervene, we could get our asses sued if this baby comes out with problems. What does that mean for you, the woman who has been in labor for about 40 hours? It means your bathes are gone. Your yoga positions are finished, unless you happen to know a yoga position that is just lying flat on your back. They hook me up to a garden hose to flush out all this crap (yes, it's as fun as it sounds, and more!), and I have to lay there. This is not how women were meant to have babies. Even if you are not a proponent of natural child birth, I'm assuming that you at least agree with the laws of physics, gravity being one of them.

The shit hits the fan. I am in massive pain. Massive is not a massive enough word for it, but I can't think of anything else. If I were in this pain and could be moving around (which is what my body was SCREAMING for me to do) or in the tub, that would be one thing. But I am in pain and immobile. The worst of both worlds. But beyond the pain, now I'm scared. I was in control before, but now I'm not. I'm losing it. I try--I really do. But I can't take it anymore. I submit. I get the epidural. Actually, I request the epidural but, due to some anesthesia-related emergency in the hospital (i.e., it's cocktail hour), I have to wait an hour. One hour in the most hellish pain you can imagine. And now I'm really pissed and scared.

The epidural comes. Sweet relief. I am disappointed that this baby will not be a natural birth, but I can at least calm down now, get my emotional state back in order for what's to come. Or so I naively thought. I relax for 15 minutes or so, but then I want to shift to a new position. It's a pretty light epidural--still have some sensation--but I do need a little assistance from the midwife to shift into a new position. She helps me, then something happens. Monitors start beeping. Red lights keep flashing. Is it a fire drill? What the hell? In this new position, Sam's heart rate starts crashing. It goes down to 60 beats per minute for almost 4 minutes. This is brain damage territory. A crash cart arrives. Doctors and nurses I've never seen. Bill is in hospital scrubs faster than a lawyer can yell "lawsuit!" I think he might have a heart attack. I think I've already had a heart attack. They work on me--not sure what's happening. Beeps start to slow down. The red light is off. Calm. He's stabilized. My brain is not, but that's not really the concern at the moment. I hope that's the end.

It's not. It happens again. And again. Three times and the doctor is pressing for a c-section. The midwife checks me. I am now UN-dilating. WTF? Sam's head is wedged at an angle and causing too much pressure. If I could move, I could move him around. BUT NOW I'M STUCK IN BED. This can't be happening. I read about this. I did everything right. The midwife says that I'll probably just keep doing this until it becomes an emergency. I give up. I can't do it anymore. It's been two days. Get him out of me. Please. C-section happens.

Can Eve Ensler write about this? 

frankenpig

What happens when I'm left in charge of fixing dog-eaten toys.
He looks angry, doesn't he?

religion & animals

Have to run to FASET orientation (freshmen orientation for incoming fall 2009 students), but Bill sent me this quotation last night and I love it, so I just thought I'd share.

"I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."
— Abraham Lincoln

channeling sarah vowell....

I just finished reading Sarah Vowell's Take the Cannoli, which I read (out of chronological order) after finishing Assassination Vacation and The Wordy Shipmates. For those of you who are not familiar with her work, she is a witty and sarcastic essayist, in the same vein as David Sedaris, Ira Glass, or anyone whom you might have heard on "This American Life." In short, Vowell channels almost any writer who has appeared on the Stuff White People Like list (this is a wonderful parody of race and class stereotypes, and Sedaris happens to be #25, sandwiched between "wine" and "Manhattan, and now Brooklyn too").

I could never hope to be as skilled a writer as Vowell, but I can certainly read her work and see glimmers of my own writing, or at least glimmers of my own neuroses. In talking about one of her writer friends, she says, "He's mad for ellipses. I tell him, yeah, I have similar affection for the parenthesis (but I always take most of my parentheses out, so as not to call undue attention to the glaring fact that I cannot think in complete sentences, that I think only in short fragments or long, run-on thought relays that the literati call stream of consciousness but I like to think of as disdain for the finality of the period)."- Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli, pp. 202 - 203.

I couldn't have said it better myself (though I could have tried, and did contemplate actually trying, but then thought better of it and ate a Popsicles. Hey, is that a......).

zzzzz......

Sam makes it 1 mile before falling asleep, on route home from Grandma & Poppy's.

other people's children...

Since I spend a lot of time complaining about my own child (whom I love dearly, BTW), I thought I'd take a moment to complain about other people's children. Or, more accurately, the crappy job that some other people do at raising their children. I fall solidly in the middle of the spectrum that ranges from "all children are awesome" to "only my child is awesome." There are moments when spending time with someone else's wonderfully behaved child--as they always are with strangers--is much more pleasant than spending time with my own child, whose new favorite activity is pooping on the floor in secret places, preferably so we can find it with our bare toes, as Bill did the other night. Makes you want to go off birth control right now, doesn't it? But there are other times when I look at children, particularly the really ill-behaved ones, and think "What possessed you to procreate? Seriously?!"

So I'm attending an expo geared towards "going green," staffing a table for Compassionate Kids, Inc., which is a wonderful non-profit that teaches children to have compassion for the earth, people, and animals. Really, what better mission can one have in this world? I'm on the board of directors, so please donate large sums of money. I digress. This is an expo with businesses, non-profits, government organizations, and a host of other interested parties, including kids' organizations such as CK. One would expect for children to be there, and there were some. What was amazing is what some parents felt it was perfectly appropriate to let their children do, including tearing around the exhibit floor, running into other people's booths, and disappearing for long periods of time leaving moi in charge of their children (might I note that I do not know these people or their children, nor were they there to assist with staffing the Compassionate Kids booth). At one point, I'm left staffing the CK booth, watching a 4 year old whom I know only by first name, and am faced with the choice of staying at the booth to guard our stuff (read: my iPhone) and letting this kid pee on the floor, or leaving the booth and taking this child to go potty. Of course I chose the latter, as it is not this child's fault that he was abandoned for over a 1/2 an hour with a stranger, but I was tempted to say "Wait until your father gets back." Knowing the short time span between "I have to go potty" and "I just went potty--in my pants," he never would have made it.

About a week later, I witnessed two women drop off a small child, I would estimate 2 - 2 1/2 years old, in a public playground and then disappear for 15 - 20 minutes. They reappeared with food and drinks in hand, chatting happily, as if they had not just committed felony child abandonment. This child was left unsupervised on a playground with a WIDE variety of neck-breaking implements for almost 1/2 an hour so these well-dressed, upper middle class, probably-have-a- nanny women could grab a bite and discuss the merits of various graduate programs for one of their older daughters. How this woman could have a child who could live to be old enough for graduate school is beyond me. The most disturbing thing was how little it bothered the little boy. He was clearly used to being left alone. Even when the mother and her companion returned, she never turned an eye to the child, instead sitting and chatting it up with her friend while drinking her $5.00 skinny latte. That is what broke my heart. This beautifully groomed, Polo-wearing, $40 haircut-sporting 2 year old was practically invisible to these women. It made me think...why did you bother? Just get a new purse next time. It's much cheaper and doesn't leave stretch marks.

Both of these experiences left me pondering what kind of parent I am. Too permissive? Too disciplinarian? Or, worst of all (and I fear that this is what I am), some wildly vacillating blend of the two, being too strict until it just gets too stressful, then giving up and saying "Fine, run with the scissors. You'll probably end up selling the story and it will become a best selling memoir in which you muse about your mother's failings" (note the Augusten Burroughs reference). On top of that, I'm reading a book called Positive Discipline, in hopes of picking up some tips other than 1) yelling, 2) retreating to the bathroom to cry, and/or 3) instituting a permanent time out until the kid leaves for college, and this has done nothing but make me feel inadequate. I find it impossible to institute any of these techniques when my kid has bolted out the door naked, laughing like a hyena as he heads directly out into the street. Calling a family meeting just doesn't seem to work in those instances. What do people think of me when they see him do that? Probably "there goes another well-dressed, upper middle class, probably-have-a-nanny woman who can't keep control of her child."

does something smell in here?

View from the passenger seat, on route to Grandma and Poppy's house.