bear – ing n 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
Because the topic's on my mind!
Readers: You know you love your kids' names and you think you did a brilliant job picking them out and if you had the chance you'd bore people explaining exactly how and why you picked them. Use the combox to brag about why you picked your children's names to be just what they are. Family names? Honored saints or heroes? Like particular etymologies? Unisex? Trendy, quirky, or downright unusual?
I'll start in the combox.
I just learned that MathSciNet has a "collaboration distance finder" with a button for Paul Erdos, enabling anyone to figure out his or her Erdos Number (think "six degrees of Kevin Bacon," only for scientists and mathematicians collaborating on papers rather than actors appearing in movies together.).
I don't appear in MathSciNet's database, but my late academic advisor does, and I have appeared as co-author with him on a paper, so I was able to figure mine out. At most, it's 5.
As far as I know I don't have a finite Bacon Number.
Clockwise from top: pepperoni-and-cheese; braised ginger pork and pineapple with hoisin sauce, sweet red pepper, green onion, and mozzarella; white pizza with fresh garlic, red pepper flakes, fresh rosemary, black pepper, and parmesan.
No more leftovers! Except I have some extra pork and pineapple, so maybe I'll make another pizza for lunch.
In honor of everybody else's New Year's resolutions, I stayed away from the YMCA for a week. Last night for Milo's swim lesson we found a parking spot, so perhaps it's already slowed down, or perhaps the fresh snow kept the crowds down, or perhaps the resolution people are on a MWF schedule.
I took a leisurely half-hour swim (baby went nuts when I tried breaststroke, so I stuck with front crawl) and reflected on the first-ever experience of regularly exercising through my whole pregnancy.
Over the 14 or 15 months before getting pregnant, I had worked up to a solid 3x/week gym routine of two swims and one treadmill run per week. One visit during a school day, the kids staying in the child care; one visit on the weekend; and one whole-family visit in the evening with Mark, often on swim lesson night. My fitness level was probably the best it's ever been. I have visible swimmer's muscles in my arms and back now and have probably more upper body strength than I've ever had, including when I was lifting weights (which are not nearly as much fun as swimming). I ran my first 5K just before getting pregnant (28:24) and my second 5K right after finding out I was pregnant (28:27).
When I got pregnant, remembering the exhaustion of first trimester, I resolved that whatever else happened, I would at least show up at the gym those three times a week. If I had to drag myself up the stairs on all fours, I'd still get in the water twice a week, I'd still step on the treadmill. Then if I wanted to get right back out of the pool and spend 40 minutes in the hot shower instead, I could; if I wanted to spend my whole "run" walking at 1.5 mph while watching a syndicated Simpsons episode on the little treadmill TV, I could. But I would keep getting into that pool. I would keep stepping onto the treadmill. Every week. I thought: If nothing else, I will keep the "going to the gym" habit.
I did better than that, though. The exercise tended to knock me out — I usually needed a nap afterwards if it wasn't already bedtime — but I had enough energy to complete the workout, and it usually felt great. I remember a few times when it felt like swimming through syrup, but not more than a few.
I found some honest-to-goodness technical workout clothes cut for pregnancy. Not so lucky with the swimsuit: there being no good maternity swimsuits anywhere, I went for my first two-piece. Let me tell you something. When you let the naked belly hang out, it multiplies the "Wow! You must be due soon!" frequency by about fifteen. At first I felt extremely exposed, but after a while I got used to it. The bottom of the two-piece is starting to feel a little small by now, though, so I try to get into the water before too many people can see me. I'm not about to buy another one with 3 weeks to go.
I kept running until about 23 or 24 weeks, when the jostling got too hard on my belly. Switched to a fast walk with the incline turned up. From time to time I would have a session where I couldn't go fast at all — I waddled two miles an hour, telling myself I was exercising my habit at least, and that the weight-bearing exercise would be good for my pelvic floor, hips and spine. Other times I felt almost ready to run again and had to hold myself back from trying.
I look forward to my exercise sessions now maybe more than ever. "Running" is still what I call it, what I do on the treadmill, though by now entirely inaccurate. I put on the headphones and let everything else disappear; if something starts to hurt, I turn it down, if I'm feeling good and untaxed, I turn it up. The pool is heaven: I can't just jump in anymore, have to wade down the ramp into the shallow end, and the feeling as the water embraces me at the waist and lifts the burden from my back and hips… mmm. Getting out isn't quite so great: wading back up the way I came, I almost sob when I come up out of the water and the belly hangs dripping from my frame again; but there's that hot, powerful, institutional shower to look forward to, and I enjoy every minute of that, let me tell you. I stand under the water, curtained away, and feel the baby shift and react, maybe to the rain-on-the-roof sound of the shower pounding down on my belly, maybe to the change in my posture as I turn and feel the heat on my muscles. He knows something's going on out there.
Sometimes, stroking across the pool, looking out the window-wall in front of the treadmill at the gathering darkness, I try to figure out how we're going to keep this happening after the baby comes. They won't let me use the treadmill with the baby in a sling, and of course swimming is impossible. I mentally juggle our schedule, consider the other children's swim lessons, try to remember how Mark and I managed it each time we had a child who wouldn't stay in the YMCA child care. We took turns, then: I had my half-hour, he had his half-hour, one of us stayed with the kids in the "kids' gym." I guess we'll do that again. Maybe Mark will sit by the pool and hold the baby while I swim, staying near in case the baby needs to nurse. Maybe I will walk on the track with the baby in the sling, on the days I go to the Y in the middle of the day. Eventually I stop trying to figure it out. We will see when we get there.
I have gained 40 pounds in this pregnancy. This is on par with what I have gained in previous pregnancies; it is exactly the weight I lost in 2008. It seems strange to see that old number in a new context, and to reflect on the difference between carrying a baby, and just carrying around more of myself. I'd be lying if I wrote I wasn't really curious what the number will be six weeks after I give birth. And I'm curious, too, about what I will be doing when I get to the gym, those first few times with new babe in tow.
Count your blessings and read this piece by Roger Ebert, whose surgeries have left him unable to speak, drink, or eat.
I dreamed. I was reading Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, and there's a passage where the hero, lazing on his river boat on a hot summer day, pulls up a string from the water with a bottle of orange soda attached to it and drinks. I tasted that pop so clearly I can taste it today. Later he's served a beer in a frosted mug. I don't drink beer, but the frosted mug evoked for me a long-buried memory of my father and I driving in his old Plymouth to the A&W Root Beer stand (gravel driveways, carhop service, window trays) and his voice saying "…and a five-cent beer for the boy." The smoke from his Lucky Strike in the car. The heavy summer heat.
For nights I would wake up already focused on that small but heavy glass mug with the ice sliding from it, and the first sip of root beer. I took that sip over and over. The ice slid down across my fingers again and again. But never again.
One day in the hospital my brother-in-law Johnny Hammel and his wife Eunice came to visit. They are two of my favorite people. They're Jehovah's Witnesses, and know I'm not. I mention that because they interpreted my story in terms of their faith. I described my fantasies about root beer. I could smell it, taste it, feel it. I desired it. I said I'd remembered so clearly that day with my father for the first time in 60 years.
"You never thought about it before?" Johnny asked.
"Not once."
"Could be, when the Lord took away your drinking, he gave you back that memory."
Whether my higher power was the Lord or Cormac McCarthy, those were the words I needed to hear. And from that time I began to replace what I had lost with what I remembered.
In the last few weeks, the dreams about misplacing or dropping the baby have subsided. I've replaced them almost entirely with dreams about birth itself.
In one, I was trying to give labor support to an unknown other woman, apparently in the Lake Street K-Mart (its shelves empty of goods, its aisles empty of shoppers); but I wasn't doing a very good job of it, didn't know what to say to help or encourage her.
In another, I dreamed (disturbingly realistically) that my water broke onto the bathroom floor, and as I waited for contractions to begin I rushed around my house preparing it for the birth, making the beds and such, and couldn't get Mark to help me.
My third and fourth pregnancies were fraught with odd anxieties in a way that my first and second ones never were. (#3 was worse than #4 has been, at least so far). You would think that I would be less, not more, anxious as I gain experience with birthing, especially since my labors have been on the whole healthy and uncomplicated. I have a theory about this. I grew up in a family with two children, my brother and me, and I didn't know many people who came from families much larger than that. The "normal" number of kids to have seemed for most of my life to be two… or maybe three.
I think maybe deep down it feels like an indulgence to have three and then four. As if I don't deserve to have "so many," and especially to have healthy and happy children. I have more than a few good friends by now who either came from families of five or more children, or who have had 5 or more children themselves, or sometimes both — so you would think I would have formed a new idea of normal. I have, in my head, but I don't think it's trickled down to my gut yet.
Can all this joy really be my lot? It is apparently tough to admit it.
At least that's what The Mom says, and she says she heard it from somebody else, which is good enough for me.
If you're reading this, the combox is your chance. Come on out and introduce yourself.
You're not a Twin Cities foodie unless you've had some bánh mì, the deli sandwich that is found in many Vietnamese restaurants around town. I love the stuff but don't often get it, as
(a) no one in my family will share one with me
(b) if there's anything anymore that will entice me to eat a 14-inch fat-and-meat-packed sandwich whole in about 8 minutes, bánh mì is it, as I have found to my detriment (and great enjoyment) a few times since becoming a post-glutton, and
(c) I have generally assumed that I have to go out to find a good one.
Maybe I have one fewer reason – here is a recipe for pork bánh mì that looks entirely do-able. It strikes me that a Bánh Mì party, with plenty of marinated, roasted pulled pork, store-bought baguettes (don't waste 'em on the kids: buy hot dog buns!) and dishes of sliced vegetables and other condiments, would be an easy self-serve buffet for a crowd. Some rice, perhaps, for the odd person with celiac sprue. There's one at most of my parties (and he is rather odd on occasion, heh). A more exhaustive description of the necessary condiments, as well as recipes for some different types of bánh mì, can be found here.
Now… what to have on the side? A mischievous little part of me is jumping up and down, waving its arms and shouting, "Tater Tots!" Other, more mature parts are thinking, "Citrus fruit salad… vegetable soup in a clear broth, perhaps with a little coconut milk… or maybe a big spinach salad… a big pile of salt-and-vinegar kettle chips…"
"…or maybe some Tater Tots…"
UPDATE. The Wikipedia article in the first link has given me an idea for lunch… hmm… I happen to have some braunschweiger in the fridge… and cilantro… and sweet pickled cabbage I made for New Year's… no baguettes, but I do have some good crusty sourdough bread… sriracha and fish sauce and pickled jalapeños, check check check…
Remember that news story just after Christmas, with the birthing mother and baby both nearly dying and being revived? Christy sent me a link indicating that a poorly administered epidural was probably at fault:
So, according to Dr. Martin, Tracy is an example of how things can go suddenly and horribly wrong for no discernable reason in a healthy woman having a normal labor. All I can say is that Dr. Martin must have slept through the class on epidural complications. Tracy’s story is the classic sequence that follows what anesthesiologists term an “unexpectedly high blockade,” meaning the anesthesiologist injected the epidural anesthetic into the wrong space and it migrated upward, paralyzing breathing muscles and in some cases, stopping the heart. High blockade happens rarely, and even more rarely does it result in full respiratory and cardiac arrest—one database analysis of 11,000 obstetric epidural blocks reported a rate of 1 in 1400 women experiencing a high block and 1 in 5500 requiring intubation, and no woman experienced cardiac arrest. It does happen, though, and I am willing to bet that high blockade and its sequelae happened to Tracy.
I was particularly interested to read this just now because of a conversation I had on Saturday evening. We were dinner guests, and the women were swapping childbirth stories. One woman described her experience with her first epidural during childbirth: it was an awful experience, she said, because the epidural paralyzed her arms as well as numbing her lower body. She didn't find out until giving birth (with an epidural) a subsequent time, at a different hospital, that this shouldn't have happened, and the staff at that second birth told her she was lucky she hadn't had worse problems. I'm guessing that this was a less serious example of the same complication.
We had been discussing in a previous post whether the risk to babies is greater or lesser in home births in the U.S. (studies from other countries being more or less applicable) — I'll tell you one thing, I am pretty well convinced that mothers at least are safer at home.
ADDED — Christy posted a comment in the previous post, where I asked what sources she was using in her classes with med students to demonstrate the safety of homebirth. The main article she cited, "Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America" (Johnson KC et al, Brit. Med. J. 2005;330:1416) has the full text online for free.
One detail from that study which I found extremely interesting: 19% of planned low-risk hospital births turn out as Cesarean sections; 3.7% of planned low-risk home births turn out as a Cesarean section in a hospital. Among those who planned a home birth and then transferred to hospital — one would surmise this to be a group for which things are not going smoothly, and for whom one might expect the risk to be higher — the risk of Cesarean section is 30%, only fifty percent higher than the low-risk hospital group. I find this a pretty damning indictment of hospital Cesarean policy. I reiterate that the biggest advantage to home birth is the avoidance of unnecessary Cesarean section.
On my post about reasons for homebirth, Jamie posted two links to studies (Canada; the Netherlands) about homebirth safety, and I commented that I suspected studies of homebirth safety in, say, the Netherlands don't translate very well to the realities of homebirth in the U.S. (even though I feel very safe birthing at home here, in my current circumstances).
A reader emails:
About the dutch study…I don't think that you can quite compare the safety of a home birth in the Netherlands to a home birth in the States.
I'm an American living in the Netherlands, and I've given birth 4 times over here, twice at home (#1 and #4…#2 was born at a birthing center because the midwife and back-up were busy with another delivery, and #3 was born in the hospital because I was over-due, very uncomfortable, and impatient). The support for home births is amazing, and the health care is excellent, yet natural. They don't run unnecessary tests, just a standard blood test to check the rh factor and iron level, a 12 week ultrasound, and an optional 20 week ultrasound. (I was pregnant for the first 6 months of one of my pregnancies while we were in Maryland, and the standard exams and screenings were much more elaborate and unpleasant.)
I felt very safe laboring at home here in Holland, knowing that if needed, an ambulance can be at the door within 10 minutes. The midwives are trained well, and they have contact with the mother's doctor and with the hospitals in the area. (When one of my children had breathing trouble just after he was born, there was quick communication between midwife and our doctor, and he rushed right to our house.) Everything is covered by insurance, and a nurse stays with the mother and baby for a week, 8 hours per day, keeping a close eye on mother (making sure that she has no infections or too much blood loss, and checking baby's weight and temperature daily and encouraging the breastfeeding relationship, if desired). The nurse also does the cooking, laundry, light cleaning, and watches older children while mother and baby rest.
If I were to give birth in the States, I think I would opt for a birthing center. I really love home birthing, but I'm not sure I would feel as safe birthing at home in the States.
Interesting! The two systems are not, it seems, very similar.
I would think that communication between midwife and doctor, and the establishment of a norm where a doctor can come to your midwife-attended homebirth if necessary, makes a pretty big difference. Because I live in an urban area, I also have the assurance that an ambulance can be called to arrive within ten minutes, but I'm not guaranteed that the EMTs or doctors who would treat us would be cooperative with the midwife. Insurance coverage of homebirth midwifery is spotty — we will be able to pay our midwife out of a tax-free flexible spending account which is part of our healthcare benefits package, but it is excluded from our insurance coverage otherwise.
That visiting nurse thing sounds, um, incredibly expensive. Perhaps if we stopped wasting money on unnecessary cesarean sections we could afford that sort of thing over here… Although it's hard to imagine American professional nurses ever taking on babysitting and cleaning as part of their duties. It's not generally considered part of the job description. (As for me, I don't think I'd want a non-family caregiver of any kind in my house for that long, unless I was suffering from excess blood loss or something. I prefer to be back on my feet pretty quickly…)
A roundup of patterns for making play food out of felt. Pizzas, waffle cones, saltines, ravioli, Chinese-takeout box, banana and more.
I have goals — I always have goals — but this year I find I don't have any New Year's Resolutions. I'm reluctant to make any with a new baby coming along in January. How about you?
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