Getting Schooled

1-15-10

Is being busy being pregnant a worthy excuse? Not really, but I shall play the pregnant card as my reason for not updating the PPC2 lo these many weeks. Not that I haven’t been thinking about it or taking ever opportunity to flog myself for being so lax.

The typical scenario goes like this: I pull up ye olde Finder (yep, I’m a Mac user but not an insufferable one convinced of superior computing powers) to open a document. Peabody Project.doc looks me in the eye. Shit, how long has it been now? I really need to write something. But first I have to (insert lame unimportant work shit) and then update m my Facebook status and read that one thing about the thing on that one website. Another scenario involves me waking up in the middle of the night. I lie awake writing a blog entry and vowing to put it to paper the next morning. And I don’t.

An incomplete list of topics that have bubbled to the service in the past month and a half:

• Circumcision decision: For cultural (Mr. Crud is a member of the tribe) and health reasons, we have decided to circumcise the theoretically male Purvis. (Nope, we still haven’t opened the envelope to the frustration of our parents—and occasionally Mr. Crud—and the surprise of all who learn of the envelope system.) But what form the procedure takes has been a point of contention and negotiation. Mr. Crud would like a more traditional bris to be held 8 days after Purvis’ birth in our home. I have other, non-traditional ideas. We’ve talked to our doctor, who herself had to make this decision as she is a gentile married to a Jew. We talked to each other. While tears have been shed and uncomfortable silences endured, I think we’re coming to a mutually agreeable decision. Then again, Purvis may just be a girl in which case this was a great exercise in parenting, right?
• Dreaming of Purvis: In my dreams she is always an adorable little girl who can already talk and start telling me about all the things I did wrong while I was pregnant. Methinks this is not premonition speaking but rather my unconscious mind. I still haven’t dreamed that I gave birth to a cat or small animal. “Maybe we should say that we’re hoping for a dog,” I say to Mr. Crud. “Two birds with one stone.” “I was hoping for a slender cat,” he says. Our new line is that we are having a baby because we wanted a dog but weren’t sure if we were up to the responsibility of taking care of one. I plan to use this with the nurses as a humor litmus test.
• The early bird gets their crib on time, and then there’s us: During the winter break, Mr. Crud and I get serious about baby shit. We look at cribs, we work the Baby Bargains book so hard the pages curl. We learn the harsh truth that ordering a crib 5 weeks before your due date causes raised eyebrows in the baby boutique community. “They take 8-10 weeks to come in,” the clerk says. We agonize. We return to Babies R Us in hopes of finding something good enough that is also in stock. Every BRU crib seems to appear on Baby Bargains’ This-Crib-Will-Kill-Your-Baby list. We get depressed. Friends reassure us that we won’t need the crib for the first months of Purvis’ life anyway since we plan to sleep with him/her in a bassinet in our room. We feel a little better. We order the crib. Mr. Crud still harbors hope that things may come in early. “You never know,” he says. “Yeah, but Purvis could come early too,” I say.

The thought that Purvis could arrive before the 40-week mark didn’t really hit me until last weekend when Mr. Crud and I attend “Childbirth A – Z,” the hospital’s cram session for everything birth. As we go around the room, introducing ourselves we are relieved to find that we are not alone. Due dates in late January account for half of the crowd.

“I thought we were far behind,” Mr. Crud says. “We’re February 1.”

We commiserate about the holidays messing with our childbirth preparation. The teacher claps her hands together. “Some of you could be giving birth anytime now.”

Oh boy. Oh shit. I spend the rest of the weekend scrutinizing every Braxton Hicks. Could this be the one?

Mr. Crud and I are the only couple who do not know the sex of their baby. I wonder if this crowd would appreciate Mr. Crud’s sociology humor: “We don’t know the sex yet, but we’re going to gender it male.” Dr. Awesome laughed at least. We are also the only couple who have already hired and met with a doula. About a quarter of the 10 couples don’t even know what a doula is.

“I guess we’re the hippies of the group,” he says.

I am surprised and pleased to note that the other couples seem to be about our age. (Unless I am delusional about what 37-year-olds look like.) I had assumed we would be the oldy oldersons of the childbirth classes although I’ve yet to be the memaw of any of the mommy groups of which I’ve been a part. I guess all those articles about motherhood coming later to a large portion of the population aren’t whistling Dixie. The other couples also seem to be of a similar social milieu: educated and middle class, and mostly white except for the sore thumbs of the group, a Pakistani engineer couple, Hamim and Azana. I can’t calculate how many minutes Hamim and Azana add to our childbirth class with their constant and frequently repetitive questions, but I’d wager to guess at least 45.

The first question comes early. “Are you going to talk about epidurals?” Azana asks.

“Yes, and when do you know you need one?” Hamim adds.

Our fearless, willowy childbirth class teacher Aurelia nods. “Those come tomorrow in the interventions part of the class.”

This doesn’t stop Hamim and Azana from interjecting more questions about epidurals and whatever other tangential topic crosses their minds throughout the day. Yes friends, I have found my bete noirs.

Aurelia suggests that we test our powers to breathe through discomfort by holding a bag of ice.

“Ice? Where do we get this ice?” Hamim asks.

“You know, ice. From your freezer or a convenience store.”

Okay, I’m being unfair to Hamim. He did, in fact, ask where one could procure ice, but this may be a communication-language issue instead of the engineer couples’ typical MO: they obviously have not cracked the binding on a single pregnancy and birth book before this class. For us and the other couples, a lot of what we are talking about feels like review. I’ve read about the stages of birth, the white hot hell of transition, the ring of fire, and other such fun contortions that my body will find itself going through sometime in the next month. I know about positions to alleviate pain and strategies for coping. (“Yoga breathing! Yoga breathing!!” Mr. Crud will holler in my ear.) Aurelia adds a few tools to our box, but mostly the day feels like reinforcement of the reading I’ve done at home.

The other couples are patient during the first day. We smile when Hamim cracks a joke. We don’t roll our eyes when Azana steers the teacher off-course once again with a question about epidurals. The second day, the muttering and hard glances at our spouses set in.

“So what if the husband wants epidural and the wife does not?” Azana asks. “A friend of mine said that her husband wanted her to get one even though she didn’t. Can husband tell the doctor to give her one?”

The women in the room go wide-eyed. Aurelia takes a deep breath for diplomacy. “We won’t give Mom an epidural if she doesn’t want one. Her partner can ask for one but we’d at least want a nod from Mom.”

“But what if she is crazy with pain and can’t make a decision?” Hamim asks.

“It is still her decision.”

This leads Aurelia into a discussion of how in birth we won’t be magically transformed into different people. “If you don’t like baths now, you probably won’t like a bath when you’re in labor.”

Thus, I’m fairly certain that I won’t be going the epidural route.

“You hate taking aspirin when you have a headache,” Mr. Crud says. “I don’t think you’ll be going for heavy pain medication.”

Agreed. For both of my D & Cs I opted for super strength ibuprofen and anti-anxiety meds rather than deal with anesthesia. My motto tends to be that I can take pain as long as I know that nothing is really wrong with me. The more I learn about epidurals, the more I feel confident that I won’t be calling for the anesthesiologist. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Sure, I’m being a little macho about things, but mainly I am freaked out by a needle being stuck in my back and the possibility of a 2-week epidural headache. I’m not going to say never, but I’m hoping my doula and years of yoga will serve as my meds. I also plan to curse a lot.

After a break, Mr. Crud and I return to the conference room where our class is being held. I notice the name on the office door next to the conference room: Jill, the counselor who talked to us after we lost Primo. I feel slightly odd to be back in the office where both of my D & C’s were performed. It’s no Center for Sadness & Disappointment, but my memories of the Women’s Health Center are tangled. When we walk down the hall I crane my neck to look in every examination room. The site of Dewey’s extraction could be any of them.

“It’s kind of weird being back here,” I say to Mr. Crud.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to mention it,” he says.

Over the last month I’ve had a few moments of sadness over Primo and Dewey. I know that they were embryos, balls of genetic material, but I still mourn them and in a way, feel sorry for them that they didn’t get to grow into Peabody. My miscarriage books say that the birth of a child may bring up these issues. I don’t dread the return of thoughts of Primo and Dewey. I wonder what form these thoughts and emotions will take, the shape of my ghosts. The miscarriage days feel so far gone. It’s hard to believe that it was only a year ago when we were in the late mourning period for Dewey. I still worry for Purvis. I can’t 100% shake the stabs of fear that come when I haven’t felt her squirm or kick at my hip for a long stretch. And I still conjure horror scenarios, but they are a much smaller piece of my baby thoughts than I ever imagined possible. These days I’m thinking about nursery room colors (purple), which outfit Purvis will wear home from the hospital, whether it can even be true that I’m fitting into a 38DD bra (I still keep looking at the tags in disbelief), how long it will take for Purvis to breastfeed away my ample hip-ass-leg region, and when-when-when will we meet this mystery baby. The question of most immediate importance however is about tomorrow’s Breastfeeding Basics workshop: will Hamim, Azana, and their litany of questions be in the house?

RANDOM: Mr. Crud amused himself during the many Hamim Q & A moments by making a track list for Chloasma’s first album, The Bloody Show. Favorite: amniohook.

CULTURAL SENSITIVITY NOTE: Both Mr. Crud and I felt weird about our Hamim-Azana annoyance. Was this cultural? Oh hell yes. At one point, after Aurelia stressed for the hundredth time that doctors would not perform any procedure without the patient’s consent, the epidural discussion degenerated into a disagreement on the American medical system.

“Some things should be imperative then there’s a second level where the patient makes the choice.” Hamim said.

“That’s not how it works.” One of the frustrated fathers-to-be in the room said. “You always have to consent.”

“What if you make the wrong decision?”

“Then you make the wrong decision. That’s life,” Mr. Crud said.

“We could spend all day debating the American medical system, but let’s get back to epidurals,” Aurelia said.

On the drive home we agreed that cultural differences can be annoying. Also that engineers need social skills training. I wondered what Hamim and Azana made of the rest of us in the class. Did they find us incurious? Arrogant? I got the impression that they were so in their own world that they didn’t much think of us at all.

Maybe just maybe I am using Hamim and Azana to avoid having to delve too deeply into the reality of my coming experience. Annoyance is a great distraction from facing a total life transformation.