bearing blog

bearing blog


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].

  • Single fathers: “Image is everything.”

    One of the themes of motherhood that I often muse on is the utility of image: what version of yourself to project? is it a substitute for authenticity, or a means of moving towards a different, also authentic,but chosen, self? how does it affect your kids’ view of themselves and of their parents? how does our choice of images to project affect our confidence moving in the world? how does it affect discourse and the self-images of others who encounter it?

    I suspect that the severe case of imposter syndrome that I contracted in graduate school, and that I think largely immunized me against Good Mother Imposter Syndrome, is the origin of this interest in image.

    But I have not spent much time thinking about image and fathers. Today Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit posted an excerpt from a reader email that I thought was worth reposting in its entirety.

    I have noticed your attention paid to the trials and tribulations of the single father. I am currently in the process of divorce and have been separated for more than a year. I have four daughters – ages 6 through 15. I have a great relationship with all of them. My wife is currently prohibited from having possession of them by court order – so I have them full time. Here are some tips for your single father readership:

    1) be pro-active in setting up play dates and activities. Yes- this means making calls to other parents.

    2) when dropping off kids at parties or play dates, go to the door and meet the other parents. When parents are dropping off their kids to you, go out to the car and say hello. Invite them inside.

    3) take every opportunity to show people you are an involved father who pays attention and cares. This doesn’t mean one should become a phony and a “daddy bragger”, but it does mean you have to make sure people are aware you are a good person and a good dad. The single father image to some is not positive. Additionally, the ex-wife (and her friends and family) has possibly (definitely) been trashing you at every turn.

    4) as part of your own positive image campaign, you need to bring up “domestic” type stuff when speaking to other parents. For example, I like to cook – so when a daughter has a friend over, I will tell the other parents not only what I made, but how I made it – and why I chose that meal. Also, conversations about new carpets or flooring etc can show you are not the single father Neanderthal walking around the house in a “beater T” and boxers.

    5) don’t hesitate to tell other parents about your activities with your own children. I have enrolled all my daughters in kick boxing classes – and I encourage them to bring their friends for the free-trial classes. Part of this process involves explaining to the other parent what the class entails. I show videos of my kids riding unicycles.

    6) when meeting other parents, get their cell numbers and emphasize that parents need to be in communication, as kids are prone to “mislead” parents on what the “real” plans are

    Bottom line is that the image of absentee single father with empty pizza boxes strewn about and bimbos coming and going needs to be reversed. No one needs to be a phony, but image is everything – and the average single father is usually starting at a deficit. If you are doing good things as a father, people need to know about it. I am mostly introverted, but realized if I wanted my daughters to have a good home life with friends being allowed to come over – and stay over – that I had to get the underlying reality out there. I had to become a part-time extrovert.

    Lastly, if other parents don’t allow the sleepover at your house (especially with daughters), don’t take it personally. While this can be annoying and upsetting, I don’t consider it a terrible outlook by the other parent. Having four daughters, I have the same concerns other parents would. That said, the further I get my story out there, the less I run into this issue…to the point that I have not come across this issue in months.

    Anyway, I didn’t want to take up all your time on an isolated topic, but felt my experience was worth mentioning.

    Food for discussion, no? Thoughts?

     

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    4 comments on Single fathers: “Image is everything.”

  • Symmetry.

    Big brother, little brother:

    This is the second pair of brothers in our family.

    It’s true that I hoped along the way for my daughter to have a sister. Now, I am also pleased by the shape we have: two sons, one daughter, then two more sons. I enjoyed having a pair of little boys the first time around, and I am looking forward to having it again.

    I find myself flashing back to two little boys in the sand at the playground, two little boys at the table during the older’s first school lessons, two little boys eating ice cream at bedtime, two little boys cuddled on the couch watching cartoons. Even now, I can look around and see two big boys jockeying for keyboard space to play Minecraft, two big boys unloading the dishwasher (not without some argument), two big boys running from the minivan into the church to serve Mass, two big boys riding the ski lift up the local hill under the winter evening floodlights.

    It won’t look the same this time around. I’m so eager to see it develop.

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  • The miracle of birth (repost).

    This post originally appeared in a slightly different form in August 2006, a couple of weeks after my third child was born.

    + + +

    An item at the Minnesota State Fair: There’s a new, expanded “Miracle of Birth Center.” This is the barn full of hugely pregnant and/or lactating livestock, also incubating poultry eggs. It’s always packed full of people hoping they’ll be there at the very moment that some lamb or piglet or calf will emerge from its mother. Just in case you aren’t that lucky, there are televisions suspended from the ceiling everywhere, endlessly replaying videos of “pre-recorded live births.” (Live in the sense of being filmed while it was actually happening, as opposed to watching a video of a video? Or live in the sense that the animal being born isn’t already dead?)

    Watching people struggle through the hot, crowded barn, jostling their strollers around each other and lifting small children up to see the baby aminals, I was really, really, really glad that I am no longer pregnant. Getting a glance at the animals themselves: I was even more glad that I am not, say, a sow. You think a hospital bed is a bad place to give birth? Try a farrowing pen.

    This “miracle of birth” thing is hard to wrap my mind around. Many of the people at the fair (not, I admit, myself) are farming families. I doubt that a litter of piglets really seems like a “miracle” to a family who’s raised pigs for four or five generations. What do the farm families think of the city kids, four years old and still pushed around in their strollers, being lifted up by Dad to ooh and aah at the miracle of chickens hatching just as chickens have hatched ever since there were, well, chickens? Couldn’t they have called it “The perfectly ordinary natural everyday event of birth?”

    And yet… A familiar sensation got my attention. “I need to nurse the baby,” I shouted at Mark over the din, and pointing; “I’ll be out there.” I pushed my way out into a light drizzle and found a spot on a wet picnic bench. I dug down into my raincoat and extracted a red and bunched-up baby girl from the sling and tickled her ear to wake her up. She made a face and immediately began to root, searching with wide-open mouth and her squeezed-shut eyes. Her latch is much smoother now, and I had no trouble getting her started.

    I’m about to engage in a maternal cliche, here, so bear with me.

    It does seem miraculous when it’s a little person. And yet it is ordinary. (For those of us who conceive and birth without much trouble or fanfare, anyway.) I marvel at her eyes, simply at how they are put together, their pure white moistness, their dark blue irises, their inky pupils, their smooth orbits, the folded fleshiness of their lids and creases, their nearly invisible lashes. This grew in my body, all by itself? This perfection? And not just eyes but all the other parts. Her tiny breasts exuded a few drops of milk last week: a common postnatal event, a hormonal residue of her time in the womb with me. But in twenty or thirty years, maybe less, maybe more, perhaps she will make milk again, for someone else. Her powers are dormant, but their promise is already here.

    This meta-miracle, this miracle that is even more miraculous because it happens every day — its awe and wonder comes because we humans are really some kind of amphibian, neither angels nor beasts, fully at home neither in the world or in the spirit. How absurd it seems that a little soul could come to life within my body and be forced forth in blood and water. How bizarre.

    Even though it is completely normal, it never fails to surprise us. I used to think that the surprise came from our cultural tendency to keep birth hidden away in hospitals, controlled by drugs and machines, and all that. But I’ve never given birth in a hospital, three times [five by now!] I’ve done it at home; and my surprise at the incongruity hasn’t lessened, but has increased. The more I see it and feel it and live it, the more of a surprise it is. All of which convinces me more and more that this failure to comprehend, this mystery, is not cultural, but something inherent in our nature. We are more than beasts, and that is why it seems strange that we are born like them.

    [That full term baby girl, seven and a half years ago, much chubbier than her youngest brother:]

     

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    5 comments on The miracle of birth (repost).

  • Day 3.

    I find myself with surprisingly little free time to type postpartum updates. Young Simon has proved to be a high-maintenance individual compared to his siblings, not without a taste for drama.

    + + +

    Breastfeeding him has been a bumpy road so far, thanks to what one of my breastfeeding counselor friends (not ChristyP, the other one) tentatively diagnosed over Facebook chat as, technically speaking, “wee baby, ginormous boobie” syndrome. In size he isn’t all that wee — 7 lbs is fairly average — but he is smaller than any baby I have ever nursed, and he is young for his age and (to my eyes) frail and fragile, though the midwives pronounced him healthy and strong considering that he came so early. I feel as though I could break him when I lift him under his arms: he is so light, like a bird.

    Anyway, though I have triple-checked for frenulum and tongue placement issues, and can’t see anything specifically wrong with his latch, it hurts. I don’t think he can get his mouth quite wide enough. We are working on it, pretty intensively, and I have been told to prepare for the possibility that I will just have to manage pain and scrupulously monitor my nipple health until he gets a bit bigger and stronger.

    + + +

    Also, he has been producing copious amounts of meconium at random intervals, necessitating many blanket changes. I will probably switch from blanket wrapping to diapers today, not my preferred choice so early (I like to be free to do lots of skin-to-skin and get an early start on teaching a cue sound for peeing), n but I just need to reduce the complexity of the system here.

    The meconium has just now changed over to yellow, so: milk is on the way.

    + + +

    In further news: postpartum sushi, delivered, gets five stars.

     

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    10 comments on Day 3.

  • Three first-day pics, and the name.

    Under that hat, he has a Mark-shaped head and hairline.

    I fear that “Simon” will be a popular name in his cohort, and unfortunately it sounds a lot like one of H.’s kids’ names, but when we got a good look at him next to our short list he just looked like a Simon and not like the other names. I think it will sound just right next to his neighboring brother Leo, and I like the “n” sound next to our family name’s beginning “arrrr.” He’ll share that with his sister.

    “Felix” because some of us need to be reminded of all the reasons to be happy sometimes. Now I need to decide which one of the sixty-some St. Felixes he should get to find his name day. I suppose I should pick one not so close to Christmas. But now that I think of it, the feast day of Sts. (Simon) Peter and Paul is June 29th, which is pretty darn close to little Simon’s half birthday, so that will do.

    I am still calling him “Baby.” He and I will grow into the name.

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    7 comments on Three first-day pics, and the name.

  • Baby’s here.

    Simon Felix was born at home, 1 pm today, 7 lbs even and about 3 weeks early. We are both doing fine. Details later.

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    8 comments on Baby’s here.

  • Explaining the HMMMMM; link for discussion.

    A couple of days ago, I thought I might be going into labor and we would have a Christmas baby.

    (I will link to a certain commenter who drew that number before me, just as soon as her blog gets updated.)

    (….and it’s up. Congratulations to Darwin and MrsDarwin!)

    Everything at our house ground to a halt and now we are staying home waiting. Could be a day, could be three weeks.

    + + +

    So, instead of baby news, here is a link to a piece about paternity leave by Ta-Nehisi Coates, with the provocative title “Why I’m Against ‘Daddy Days.’” See what you think. I’m always struck by the quality of Coates’ writing, and he usually brings a new-to-me POV whether I wind up agreeing with him or not.

     

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    5 comments on Explaining the HMMMMM; link for discussion.

  • Hmmmmmmm.

    ….she said, significantly.

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    4 comments on Hmmmmmmm.

  • Some new reading to bookmark about alignment and fitness.

    I don’t read a lot of fitness and outdoor activity blogs regularly, but I do follow a couple. One of my favorites is Mama Sweat by Kara Douglass Thom, who writes about living an active life “in the chaos of motherhood.” She has four children, including a pair of twins; she lives in my area, which is handy for me since when the streets here are buried in snow, she is writing about snowshoeing instead of about outdoor bicycling. She is also the author of Hot Sweaty Mamas: Five Secrets to Life as a Fit Mom, a book I am happy to recommend (nifty trivia: she quoted my blog in it!)

    I have always liked Mama Sweat since a friend sent me to it a few years ago, because even though Kara is the type of active person who describes herself as addicted to exercise, and used to run endurance events, her attitude is positive and encouraging, not shaming. You don’t have to be a marathon runner. You don’t have to work out every day. If you have a bunch of kids, it can take creativity, effort, and sacrifice to find a way to make movement part of your life; but it’s worth it to take care of yourself physically and sets a good example for those same kids (especially daughters).

    I read her blog for ideas and inspiration, especially in the area of including kids in activity, something I don’t do as much as I ought to. She has some really cute articles about her kids running 5ks and doing yoga with her. (But then, I guess one way I motivate myself to move is by using exercise to give me some of the “alone in a crowd time” that I naturally crave. I suppose that is part of my personal style as a Fit Enough Mom, and maybe I shouldn’t second-guess it too much since it works pretty well.)

    Some time ago Kara had to shake up her routine due to musculoskeletal pain, and had to cut back on the running and the really intense workouts in favor of a regimen of alignment exercises. This post on what she learned from her “exercise detox” is a great summary, and I think I am going to bookmark it as well as the links she recommends from Katy Says “Alignment Matters!”

    I came away with a bigger appreciation for movement and the distinction between movement and exercise, health and fitness. Movement… is the meal. The work necessary to keep muscles at an optimal length and joints mobile are the vitamins. Exercise is the dessert…

    if you had told me 15 years ago I would be swapping 15-mile runs and 80-mile bike rides for walking, Pilates, yoga and alignment videos I would not have believed it (nor would I believed it if you had told me then I’d someday be the mother of four). One thing Katy says… is: “Exercise does not need to be hard or vigorous, it just needs to be different.” I’m one of those people who likes being sore, which might be one reason I gravitated toward the hard and vigorous. But now I’ve discovered that moving muscles in ways they are unaccustomed–even stretching–is a challenge…

    I like what I’m doing for now. I spent more than 20 years putting my body through incredibly tough challenges. I can say with satisfaction that I pushed my body beyond what I ever thought it was capable. Those experiences were incredible and I am amazed at what my body has accomplished. When you go to those extremes you start believing that “hard” is what you have to do in order to be satisfied. I don’t believe that anymore. My body doesn’t need hard to be and stay healthy, it just needs different movement to adapt and activity to maintain cell-turnover.

    Read the whole thing.

    It should make good reading for my postpartum recovery period, while I am itching to get back up and moving again.

    As a matter of fact, this might be a good time to create a new category of fitness and outdoor blogs (especially of the “fit it into your real life” subgenre) in my feed reader. I never really have done that, but it probably would make fine reading to keep myself thinking about how to make sure movement stays in my weekly priorities, even as we shift things around to make our new life with five kids.

     

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    3 comments on Some new reading to bookmark about alignment and fitness.

  • Losing sleep.

    Last night I was up on and off with contractions that started out annoying and escalated to downright painful. It was not fun.  It is too early; although I could be off by a week or so, my best estimate is that I am 35 weeks tomorrow.  

    And so I had to "try to relax" at the same time as I counted them and fretted.  Ten in an hour from 11:10 p.m. to 12:10 a.m., but intermittent (five minutes apart, then 12, then seven, that sort of thing).  I took a hot bath, drank a lot of water with cranberry juice splashed in it, asked Mark to lay out clothes and shoes for the kids just in case we had to pull them out of their beds for a hospital run.  

    Plus, the three-year-old had turned off the heat and the house had gone down to 65.  We found the problem and turned it back on before bedtime, but it was still chilly.  I was shivering with cold, but even though I knew that the temperature was the most likely cause of the shivering, I kept worrying that it was a sign of preterm labor.

    We called the midwife and reported the contraction pattern, and she judged it not regular enough to warrant intervention ("but I should call if it gets more intense.")

    Why does this kind of thing always happen in the wee hours?  Everything is dark and surreal, and the idea of bundling four children into the snowy night peculiarly unpleasant, and it is so much harder to calm down.  I eventually fell asleep around 12:30, but woke again at 2:00 a.m. with more contractions and a sense of things having shifted around in my pelvis, creating an unfamiliar pressure that worried me more.  I checked the clock, fretted, and then decided to get up.  

    "You okay?" said Mark sleepily?

    "Yeah… I'm having some more.  I think I'm going to get up and walk around a little."

    Downstairs in the dark house I wandered around with a glass of water, and finally decided that half the problem was that I was so anxious about the contractions, so I sat down in front of the computer and started surfing Reddit to get my mind off of them.  It worked wonderfully; I kept having contractions, but they stopped hurting, so I stayed where I was.

    About 4 a.m. Mark came down to check on me, and after we talked a little while I agreed to go back to bed.  And I fell asleep and didn't wake up till nine.  And now they are gone, leaving nothing but the sense of having lost sleep.

    I have a theory that the baby dropped some last night, which of course I've been hoping for and looking forward to, and the scary pelvic pressure is just the sensation of my uterus stretching where it hadn't stretched before, and the contractions were there to drop the baby (or in response to him dropping, whatever).  It still wasn't fun.  

    I hope I can get a nap this afternoon.  Chances are good, I think.

    But first to Mass and then to brunch out with my family to celebrate our anniversary.

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    3 comments on Losing sleep.

  • The 34-week selfie.

    This is mainly for future reference.

    1211130840-00 

    And, I admit, because I like this shirt more than the one from about 6 years ago that I was wearing in the last post.  

    Also, that maternity sweater I had on was too short.  And will you please tell me how that even HAPPENS when I am under five feet tall and short-waisted besides?

     

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    4 comments on The 34-week selfie.

  • Six weeks or so.

    One of my midwives came to my house for a prenatal today. Mark wasn’t able to come to the last couple of them, so he made sure to come home from work for this one, which was nice.

    Things are looking very good. My blood pressure is great, something that I am trying not to take for granted. The baby is head down and has got his body out of the posterior position; he still hasn’t rotated his head properly or tucked his chin yet, so he hasn’t descended much. Accordingly I am measuring a precocious 40 cm.

    (H. and me on Monday, matching.)

    I described having difficulty sleeping and was advised to drink tea made from hops. (“Wouldn’t a nice IPA work?” I asked. Indeed it will, but I guess it is more advisable to binge on hops via a herbal infusion.) I described having difficulty consuming green vegetables and was advised to blend extra spinach into my V-8. “A pregnancy speedball,” says Mark. “You could put hops and liverwurst in it too.”

    All I want to eat are liverwurst sandwiches and ice-cold grapes and apples. And ice cream.

    + + +

    While we were going over the birth supply list it occurred to me what we home birthers should be saying to the hospital birthers that is the equivalent of “But if you give birth at home, who cleans up the mess?”

    It is this:

    “But if you give birth in the hospital, who will make all the frozen herbal compresses?”

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    I had a lot of anxiety prior to my last two births, throughout the whole of the pregnancies. I have not had much this time around, but I can’t escape it entirely. Now that we are coming down to the last six weeks or so, the “I am going to have to do this thing again and it might really suck” is starting to throb in the back of my mind.

    The midwife says cheerfully, “Well, you are committed, and it’s going to happen and you’re going to do it, so you might as well not worry about it now.”

    Mark says, “Wait till after Christmas to think about it. It will still be there to think about after the holiday is over.”

    Then I start worrying about when I am going to find time to put up a Christmas tree.

    + + +

    I am grateful to my oldest child for having basically figured out how to keep up with his schoolwork with only minimal interaction from me. I am grateful to my second child for making bread, shoveling snow, and cleaning the kitchen as well as having an insatiable appetite for science and history documentaries. I am grateful to my third child for being able to read well enough that she can do lots of math independently via khanacademy.org and lots of other studying via Quizlet. I am grateful to my fourth child for entertaining himself happily with Legos and toy cars and blocks for hours on end.

    Sometimes it all comes together really well, and when that happens, I get to take naps. This has been a slow season for schoolwork. Mark sternly instructed me to prioritize gestating over formal schooling, and i have obediently focused on eating, sleeping, and pelvic exercises while letting a lot of other things slide. I think we are hitting the minimum, though, and I am really pleased by how well my eldest has stepped up to the plate and independently kept up with his subjects. It maybe will turn out to be a good dry run for the start of high school work next year.

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    5 comments on Six weeks or so.

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