A side note

This is a non-baby-related post. In fact, this post is on the opposite end of the spectrum from my drooly, adorable son.

A former professor of mine posted a link to this story on facebook: 83-Year-Old Activist Priest Held in Solitary Confinement, which, through the comments, led me to this piece in The New Yorker about the US as a carceral state. Which led me to renew my subscription to that publication - something DH and I had been waffling about.

Though the Occupy protests by the 99% have been heartening, they don't seem to have touched very much on our enormous, expensive, embarrassing prison system - and I haven't heard much about how states like Florida disenfranchise felons for life, which, the way felony convictions get handed out, can effect the electorate fairly drastically.

And frankly... maybe this isn't that unrelated to my kid. Every one of those incarcerated people has a mother.

The Birthening: the prologue

Over the last several years, I have read many, many birth stories, and I know that there is often an unexpected thing that happens during labor and delivery. Birth plans are just plans, and they need to be flexible. My whole approach to labor took that in to account: we took a childbirth class focused on unmedicated childbirth, but I was clear with DH that if things took a long time and I needed to conserve my energy, I was open to the idea of some pain relief that would help me rest.

We didn't even write out a birth plan, actually: we talked the whole enterprise over with the midwives, and everything that really mattered to me was just standard operating procedure. The most crucial aspects of any plan we would have written were the moments just after birth: I wanted immediate skin-to-skin contact with my baby, I wanted the team to wait until his cord had finished pulsing before it was cut, I wanted to try breastfeeding before they gave him any shots or weighed and measured him. The midwife said this is all standard - we would need to write out a special request NOT to have these things happen.

Well, none of those things happened. My son was born in a freezing operating room, via caesarian section, after a failed induction that took over two days. I didn't get to touch him for almost 4 hours except for a quick kiss on the cheek before they whisked him away to the nursery while I was sutured up and rolled back to a recovery room, without him. DH spent some time in the middle of the night pacing the hall between his post-operative wife, his baby in the special care nursery, and all his in-laws in the waiting room, waiting for news. The final process looked nothing like our general plans.

I am 100% OK with all of this.

I used to think that the people who had experiences like mine who said things like "at the end of the day, I have a healthy baby and that's all that matters" were just making themselves feel better about a situation over which they lost control. Maybe they were, but I seriously feel good about the way my son's birth panned out. He's huge and healthy and beautiful, and I never felt like I had lost what small amount of control I ever had over the process. It's just that the plan had to be even more flexible than we realized.

In part because I feel like I owe it to all the bloggers who shared their birth stories, and in part because now, only a week later, certain details are already starting to elude me, I'm planning to write out my son's birth story. It will likely take a little time between feedings (oh man, does this kid like to eat) and naps (his and mine), but I'd like to write it down. Because what happened was basically my nightmare scenario, but it wasn't terrifying at all. Through the whole process, which lasted over three days, I felt supported and listened to, and I felt like all the options were being laid out fairly to me and DH.

And, yes, at the end we have a healthy baby. I think I had to grow up a little and realize that seriously? That is the point of this whole thing.

Before I get in to the long story, however, here are the details: the kiddo (sorry interwebs, you don't get his real name) was born at 1:48am on Thursday, October 20. He was 21.25 inches long and weighed 8 pounds, 15 ounces. The midwife on call noted that this was after he pooped several times immediately after delivery, so she insisted that he was at least a nine-pound baby. And yes, his size was part of the reason we ended up in the operating room.

Oh, and we love him to bits and pieces. I'll have to write a separate post about how my feelings toward newborns have changed, because this particular newborn is just the tops.

God Bless 'Murrica

Since I'm trying to balance long afternoon cravings for chocolate with a very good motivation to eat a healthy diet, this is just terrible news for me. DH's crazy uncle had told me about a rumor that Oreo was coming out with a Triple Double, and now it's been confirmed. They're hitting the shelves this summer.

How can something look so gross and so desirable at the same time? I'm sure that's not just the hormones, right?

At Least We're Number One at Something...

I've been learning about prisons and how they affect people for years now, since my first post-college job at a halfway house for former Illinois State Penitentiary inmates. As DH can attest, there were days in that job that left me completely drained - people come out of prison broken, there's no way around it.

My thesis looks at some of the bigger-picture problems with prisons, but you don't want to read my thesis (definitely not now - the data analysis is a shambles). Instead, you should take a glance at this infographic about the "Land of the Free".

The United States locks up more people per capita - and more people in sheer numbers - than China. Oh, and that fun fact didn't even make it in to the infographic.

Why aren't we protesting in the streets about this? Good question.

Not part of the plan

I'm having some trouble.

Honestly, everything is going quite well in my life: I'm healthy, fed, sheltered, clothed, loved beyond anything I deserve. I wake up in the morning next to my favorite person, spend my days at a job I usually like, occasionally work on a thesis that's still interesting to me, go to my small but more-than-adequate home, pet our purring cat, have dinner with that same favorite person. This usually-dreary month is full of visits from family and good friends, too, and that's nice.

So... what's the problem?

Here's what's up. One of my coworkers had her first baby in December: a bouncing baby girl. The child is hale and hearty, the new mom was recovering well from the birth, the new dad was excited, and all was well.

And then about two weeks ago, the new dad - my coworker's husband - collapsed. He stopped breathing, had no pulse. He was rushed to the hospital and put on a ventilator and sort-of resuscitated, but he had no brain activity. For the last 10 days, doctors had been trying whatever doctors can do, but it looked grim. And then it looked worse. On Saturday she had to make the decision no person should ever have to make, and they turned off the machines.

She became a mother and then a widow in less than two months. Her husband was only 33.

There are quite a few women in my office who are similar to her: late twenties to early thirties, married, and have a kid or two or are mulling the whole enterprise over. When we have discussed the situation, it's been common to let the end of our sentences trail off. We find our eyes wandering to the wedding pictures sitting in their little frames in our offices - just like the one she has - and asking ourselves "what if that was me?"

The deal - the way it works - is that you get married and then you have this person with you until you're keeping tabs on your grandchildren and watching Wheel of Fortune and are probably telling the same stories over and over. The deal does not include one of you being cut down in the prime of life, leaving the other alone to care for your baby. Sorry, but that shit's not what I signed up for.

I'm sure that's not what she signed up for, either. But here she is.

I went out on my lunch break yesterday and got DH a little Valentine's Day present - a week early. As I was walking back to my office, I asked myself, "Why'd you get this so early?" Well, I thought, I had some cash on hand today. And maybe the store wouldn't have it in a week. Or maybe things would get busy and I'd forget.

Sure.

Before the big blizzard last week, one of my other coworkers said she dislikes it when the weather reminds her she's "just a blip". I don't know if it's my rural upbringing or my general comfort level around the great outdoors, or what, but I kind of like the way big natural events make me feel small. This stuff, however, is terrifying.

It's not the smallness factor - I'm good with being an unimportant speck in the universe, for the most part - it's the randomness. We had days to stock up on groceries and rock salt before the big blizzard. But nothing can prepare a person for something like this, and it happened essentially without warning.

So the only option, I suppose, is to hug the ones you love and, when life scares you, get them little gifts a week early.