A World of Pain!

Last week I was prescribed a steroid to bring my sinus inflammation down. As my nose dried out, I’d hear these little dolphin-like clicking noises emanating from my head’s nooks and crannies, as pressure released. The thing was, these sinus shifts brought on intense headaches for most of the day, hence my hiatus from posting.

In general we’ve been talking a lot about pain around here. Yesterday, the baby was dancing on S’s bladder, and, in her words, scratching her inside with his fingernails. Yikes! And more pain’s only on the way. S compared the birth to a “ship in a bottle problem.” We got him in there – all two pounds and growing – now how do we get him out? She sees pictures of newborns and doesn’t believe something that big could come out of her. That makes two of us.

Our midwives suggested we learn something called The Bradley Method. A book is on the way to enlighten us. All I know is it involves a lot of coaching on my part, so there goes my plan to hide in the bar during the birth. We were also told to take a class, but most of them are expensive and meet for several hours over the course of eight weeks, which neither of us have the inclination for. Besides, though most books rave about classes, we haven’t found anyone who actually thought they were that necessary.

So we decided just to take a one-shot afternoon seminar, taught by a yoga teacher we’ve both had before (and liked), about using yogic techniques during labor. Besides doing a lot of omming, S’ll learn about postures she can take to ease the pain of contractions and facilitate the birth, while I’ll learn how to hold and physically support her, and also spots to massage and rub.

Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky with a short labor and a baby that just slides right out. Ha! Though S had a dream about that last night. Well, one can always dream, and hope…

Sex during Pregnancy

Ever since we found out the baby’s a boy, I’ve wanted to look S in the eye during sex and whisper, “How’s it feel having two penises inside of you?”

Gross, I know. But I haven’t had the chance, because we haven’t successfully had sex this entire pregnancy.

The last time we had a really good romp in the sack was my birthday, in mid-September, when we thought S was just feeling a little under-the-weather. Then the fatigue of the first trimester kicked in, and with it an aversion to touching. Even my smell turned her off, as her super-sensitive nose found my musky armpits and red wine breath repulsive. This came as a shock to me too.

After the fatigue, the aches and pains began: the sore legs, tender breasts, and tummy stretching. She started coming home tired, in need of a footrest or light yoga session, and then crashing quickly after dinner. Sex has been the last thing she’s in the mood for.

But I know, I know. She’s carrying our child. I shouldn’t be ganging up on her, blaming her for our flatlined sex life. Especially because I’m a part of the equation as well.

I’m a sensitive guy, and it takes me a while to get used to new things. While her changing body’s both exciting and beautiful, I haven’t always found it sexy.

In fact, sometimes I’ve thought it downright strange, like my lithe, petite wife’s been replaced by a heavier, clunkier woman. Even her bigger breasts – exciting in theory – threw me off. Instead of oogling and groping them like a horny teenager, I treated them more the way a scientist might a new phenomenon: noting changes in color, size, and feel, and then comparing notes with S. And maybe it was just a defense mechanism to being called stinky, but I swore she was the one who smelled different – more earthy and pungent. My desire shrunk in those first few months too. I wanted my old wife back!

Now I’ve gotten used to her new shape, but I find myself facing irrational fears whenever the desire for sex pops up. I worry that her water’s going to break while we’re doing it, or that I might slip and give her my full weight, squashing the baby. And I can’t stop thinking that we’re not alone, that there’s this other person inside of her witnessing our lovemaking, and somehow even taking part in it. The body must produce chemicals during sex that would permeate into the baby, right? It’s creepy.

And also completely ridiculous, but once those thoughts get in there they play on repeat, distracting me from the business at hand.

Despite all these obstacles, we have managed to get it on three times since my birthday, but I have to be honest: I haven’t performed to the best of my abilities. Men are like machines. The more we’re used the better we run, and the longer we’re able to sustain operation. You take a long enough break and the first joy ride’s bound to be a quick one.

So on Valentine’s Day, instead of wine and chocolate and sex on slippery sheets, we’ll be heading out to our favorite burger joint for an early dinner of comfort food, and then home for a movie. Then we’ll settle down in bed, me propped up because I can’t seem to shake a sinus cold, S nestled in a bunker of pillows as she tries to keep comfortable, both our heads full of fantasies for the summer, when the baby’ll be too young to know what all those noises are coming from mommy and daddy’s room.

I’m sure we’ll be able to find plenty of opportunities to get busy with a newborn, right? Right?

Just patronize me, and say yes.

Looking Back

I ran into a friend on the subway the other day, and he asked how S was doing. I told him about how she’s “popped out” and how when the baby moves he causes her stomach to jiggle. If I put an ear up to her I can hear him in there thumping around, and I swear I even pick up a heartbeat every now and then.

He said, “That’s crazy man, that she’s so far along. It feels like yesterday we were celebrating the news.”

It’s true time has flown by, but my friend and I both clearly remembered celebrating that night. And I realized then how many moments I’ll remember from this past year.

Last February 12th, S and I walked downtown through a gentle snowfall to Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. The snowflakes were so big I could see their crystalline structure when they landed on the sleeve of my coat. Downtown was muted and empty, but the City Clerk’s Office was crowded and overheated – today’s the last day you can get a marriage license to use on Valentine’s Day. We were asked a few times if we planned on coming back on the 14th, because after the ceremony we could our picture taken with the Borough President, but we didn’t have a plan for when exactly we would tie the knot.

Even getting the marriage license was a spur of the moment decision. S woke me up that morning and said, “Come on, today’s the day we get this ball rolling.” She held out the treat of Jacques Torres hot chocolates as a motivation to get me out of the house. (I like looking at snow, but not walking in it – I don’t have good snow boots for that reason.) With our license secured in her jacket pocket, we sipped chocolate and watched snow fall on the Manhattan Bridge, before trudging and (on my part) sliding our way back home.

It was a beautiful day. More so even in retrospect, because we had no idea that it would be the start to a year of changes, with more soon to come.

State of the Economy

This morning S had to drink a small bottle of gross stuff that delivered fifty grams of glucose to her bloodstream in one quick punch. She said it tasted something like bug-juice, only a lot sweeter. After chugging it down she went off to the midwives to get a blood test for gestational diabetes. We await the results.

I was concerned that the rush of sugar might make her feel weird, or nauseous, or light-headed, and I urged her to take a cab. She pooh-poohed me, arguing that the subway was faster and safer and that I had an exaggerated idea about how the drink was going to affect her, which I did, it really didn’t bother her much at all. But ultimately she thought that a cab was a waste of money.

In our relationship as a whole, and the pregnancy in particular, we argue the most about money. (He writes, listening to the president talking about the government’s budget crisis on television.) She didn’t want to go on an expensive honeymoon because she thought we couldn’t afford it. I waged a long campaign, wooing her to agree to a more extravagant vacation than we’ve ever had. More recently, I won her blessing on a belated boy’s night out to celebrate the baby and our marriage. While she hasn’t gone to get a massage even though she would love to have one, because it feels like “frivolous spending.”

I’ve encouraged her to get a rub-down every few weeks. “What’s a couple of hundred bucks over the course of a few months?” I argue. We live frugally on a day to day basis, why not spend money on things that bring you deep pleasure — going out to the theater, or seeing a concert, or getting a massage.

These are all frou-frou past times, I know, but I’m also the one bleeding a thousand dollars a month for an MFA (the most impractical degree ever), digging himself deeper into debt with loans (I still haven’t paid off the ones from college), and who seems to have developed an allergy for anything like a paycheck (I haven’t worked in 2 years). Sure, my tutoring brings in good pocket money, but there’s no long term interest in tutoring on my part, and come the fall I’m excited about being a parent, not about finding any sort of part-time work to help make ends meet. The idea that my writing might become financially viable, that I might sell my novel or write essays for my favorite publications, is a pipe-dream. I’m the most selfish of spenders right now, bleeding money, motivated only by what I want to do (rather than what I should or need to do), and urging others to do the same, as long as it isn’t irresponsible (though many might say that I am being irresponsible).

For now, I spend most of my days scribbling away, and my nights at home, regenerating and quiet (and saving money), testing the mettle of one of America’s most fundamental myths: that if you work hard enough, sweating away on what you love, no matter what else others may think or how financially viable it is, good things will come. It’s happened before in my life, I think. It can’t be wasted work. It can’t be.

But still I’m twisted between bourgeois “carpe diem” ideals and the good ole’ working class thriftiness I was raised with. As always, the middle path is hard to find.

Oh, How Times Have Changed

The pub was noisy and smelled like stale beer. Around nine thirty, just as the crowd was thickening, a couple came in with their little baby.

A year ago I would have thought them bad parents. Babies don’t belong in bars!

Two years ago, I would have went off about all the breeders in this neighborhood, and how babies ruin your life and there’s already so many of them, who needs more.

Last night I raised my glass and said, “Good for them!”

Levity

I tutor a tenth grader, and the other day he asked how pregnancy has changed my life.

“It’s changed it a lot,” I said, thinking of how my relationship with S has changed, and our house looks different, and the new priorities, concerns and worries we have. He wasn’t satisfied with this vague answer, so I pulled a teacher trick and asked, “How do you think it might change a guy?”

He wondered if I had a new sense of connection to people, knowing now that we all grow in our mother’s womb, and a greater love for humanity, and hope for the future.

I had to tell him that honestly, that wasn’t the case.

Though I thought that was sweet question to ask, and a lot more interesting than the people whose response to the pregnancy is to gush about how happy we must be, as if being pregnant is like being on a paxil.

Sure, we’ve had our quiet bits basking in the glow, just like we’ve had jolts of excitement and moments of philosophical musing, but S and I are pretty practical people. We tend to keep our eyes focused on the day to day, the immediate reality that there’s a baby growing inside of her who will need our care and support in about three months, which we need to prepare for.

I’ve spent more time thinking about what it will be like having the three of us home during the summer and whether or not we’ll get on one another’s nerves than I have pondering my shared connection with humankind.

After a few messes – uh, senior year in college anyone? – this is how I’ve learned to cope with transitions. I look for problems and I solve them, one by one. If it’s nothing I need to worry about today, then I don’t. If there’s a snag that’s out of my hands, then I let it go. I’m usually well-prepared and cool under pressure, grounded. But as the posts on this blog attest, I also get stuck among the trees, obsessing over small details, analyzing the minute, making lists, setting schedules, losing the ability to rise up and see the forest, the big picture view.

Sometimes, I think I need to let myself go a little. Jettison the worry and the routines that I’ve developed to deal with it. Step away from the computer. Put the calendar down. Try to fly a little, so that I can see the forest. Look ahead to where the road is going, instead of down at my feet.

This is at odds to what comes natural for me. I feel I should be more serious over the next few months, preparing for baby while working to complete my thesis. I’m on a deadline here, people! But as I’ve written before, often the best things in my creative work and my life happen when I go towards the tension, not away from it. Engaging in what feels wrong gives me a new perspective, which ends up feeling all right.

In other words, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Sleep Notes

We’re grateful that, for the most part – knock on wood – the baby’s energy level match our own.

He wiggles around when S is happy and full of food (two states which seem directly connected), and stirs when there’s loud noises, like me reading this post out loud right now. More importantly, he sleeps on our schedule, which is unusual – our books say that most fetuses are active at night. Every morning before the alarm goes off and after the cat has woken us up for his breakfast, S and I lay entwined together, coming in and out of sleep as the room lightens. Some mornings, like today, I’ve felt the baby moving around inside of her, maybe stretching as he wakes up.

I’m glad he doesn’t bother her at night, as she’s having enough trouble as it is. She’s reached the stage in the pregnancy where she can’t sleep very long on her back, so spends most of the night on her side, using all the pillows in the house except mine to prop herself into a comfortable position. We’re hoping that this sleep pattern continues throughout the pregnancy, and, hope of hopes, into infancy.

As for me, I’ve resolved to help S get to sleep by giving her a little back rub each night. It’s the least I can do, especially since my son’s being so considerate.

Are We There Yet?

On Sunday morning S turned to the baby growth calendar (it tells us what’s happening in there) and realized she hadn’t looked at it in a couple of weeks, and I couldn’t remember the last time I flipped it open. During our first trimester we got a thrill every weekend finding out about the baby’s changes, but since the twenty week ultrasound, things have calmed down on the development front.

Aside from some minor adjustments – last week, for example, he developed fingerprints and was finally able to stick his thumb all the way in his mouth – the baby looks like a smaller version of what he’ll look like when he’s born. For the rest of the pregnancy he’ll bake, growing bigger. About a quarter pound a week bigger.

He’s moved way beyond an invisible presence in S’s tummy. He spent a lot of The Wrestler squirming and kicking, maybe trying some moves of his own. And when I put my mouth up to S’s belly and talk to him, he responds. Twice now I’ve said “punch your mother” in a scary monster voice and he’s followed my instructions to a T. Already we’re bonding.

Our excitement about the baby’s physiological changes has been replaced by an excitement just to have him here. In other words, we’re over this whole pregnancy thing. Last night S wished that she could somehow unzip herself so that we could meet him and play a little, and then stuff him back in when we were ready for dinner. Wouldn’t that be a great way to ease into parenting? (Nature, get on that.)

To add to our impatience, S is suffering from some intense growing pains, as her stomach now pokes way out. She grew so much today that her navel hurts and looks almost bruised – it’s on its way to becoming an outie. Her lower back aches from the added weight, and sciatic pains come on at the end of the day. According to one book, this is just a “hint of the discomfort to come.” There’s still three months to go after all.

We’re nervous and excited, but mostly we’re impatient to get this show on the road!

S's belly at 24 weeks

After the Birth

I’m both amazed and grossed out that S’s body builds an entire organ to sustain the fetus which will then be spat out of her vagina. When else does a person eject an entire organ? Even the name afterbirth has ominous overtones, like it’s the dark side of the miracle of life. I love it.

But I’ve never thought much about what it does, or how it works. Some quick wikipediaing reveals that placenta is from the Latin for cake, because it looks like a pancake drizzled in gore. Arteries carry the baby’s blood up the umbilical cord and into one side of the placenta, where it absorbs nutrition from the mother’s blood and discharges waste. On the other side, the mother’s blood leaves nutrients and picks up waste. The two bloods never meet. The placenta is the wall or filter between mother and fetus, cloaking the new life from detection by the mother’s immune system, which would attack it.

In the United States, the placenta is often destroyed at the hospital, I presume by burning. But I’ve been playing with the idea of bringing it home.

In non-Western cultures, it’s not uncommon to put the placenta to use. In China, the placenta is boiled. The mother drinks the broth to enhance her milk production.

I’m not interested in eating it though. I’d like to bury it.

This is also tradition in many cultures. The Ibo of Nigeria believe the placenta is the baby’s twin, with its own spirit, and give it a full burial. In Mexican and Nepalese belief it is the baby’s friend, and so also buried. The Maori of New Zealand bury it in order to establish a connection between the earth, specifically the land of the tribe, and the child.

I see the placenta as something that my wife’s body has made, and I don’t like the idea that it’ll be burned or discarded like a piece of crap. It served a purpose, it did a job, and it was intimately connected with our child and sustaining his life. There’s something symbolically significant about burying the placenta in our backyard. Not because it establishes a connection to the small bit of land behind our brownstone, but because one day the material that makes up our child will return to the earth, as all of our bodies will.

My wife is wary of this, which I think is funny, seeing as she used to have a box in her dorm room of all the hair she brushed off her head massed into a big ball. She wonders if I’ll feel differently once I actually see the bloody thing plop onto the birthing center floor, and we’re not even sure if we’ll be allowed to take it.

But I think I want it. To bring home, to love and care for, with our child, so that when our son grows up he can show his friends, “That’s me as a baby, and that shriveled up purple prune looking thing there, well, that was my best friend.” Kidding kidding. I want to dig a deep hole and have a drink and think about life and death and having children and our general lack of control over what our fate is in this universe, and then cover it in dirt. Why the hell not do something special with it, something crazy, like having a placenta party.

Come on – how many times in my life am I going to have placenta around!

Baby Bargains

The recession’s made it hip to be thrifty, but some of us were raised that way. S and I both grew up in houses where leaving lights on was a capital crime, dressing for school meant selecting from a small rotation of outfits, and eating at one of those fancy restaurants with more than one fork was an annual event. To this day, we’re not big shoppers. In fact, unless we’re in the right mood or really need something, we see shopping as a chore. But having a baby requires getting a lot of stuff.

We want our child to have the best and safest products available, but price is a factor. The money I bring in from tutoring is variable, and goes right back out to cover my tuition, so we’re making do on one salary. But so far, things have been working out just fine.

Partly we have our friend Miss Cheapist to thank for that. She turned us on to neighborhood parenting listservs. I’m sure a lot of cities have these. We live near Park Slope, Brooklyn’s (in)famous baby stroller strip, and the Park Slope Parents listserv is a bonanza of cheap and free items. Yesterday, I picked up over a dozen bottles with accoutrements and cleaning supplies, a beat-up but fine baby bathtub (the exact one we wanted no less), and never-used crib biting guards, all for forty bucks. I’m estimating we saved at least sixty dollars. The secret to finding a bargain on the listserv is speed, staying on top of your email so you can be the first responder. (And don’t get the daily digest – by the time that comes out everything’s been spoken for.)

We’ve also been fortunate to have generous friends. Our neighbor, who was pregnant about six months before S was, lent and gave her all sorts of maternity wear (some of which she inherited from pregnant buddies). S’s hardly needed to buy a thing. Friends who have older kids have given us baby stuff now that they’re done with it. Second hand stuff keeps both the economic and the environmental impact of having a baby low, and it has a good vibe to it too, knowing that some other tot used and enjoyed what our kid will have. We’ve found that many parents, as soon as they hear we’re having a child, want to offer us things or try to think of friends who can help us. I’m sure it helps them empty out their closets too, so it’s a good deal all around.

I always thought and feared that it would be super expensive to have a baby – it was part of the host of factors that made me think becoming a father was going to ruin my life. But keeping the little guy on budget and extending our cheapism to include another member of the family has been fun. Money, like every problem I thought was a deal breaker, has turned out to be manageable.