In-Lawlessness

My in-laws have discovered Skype.  I suggest you purchase stock.

Yesterday in our Mother's Day Skype session, My Husband and I were making nice with his mom, dad and two oldest brothers.  Holden (blond, handsome, angry, oldest) behaved himself very well.   Dorian (dark, artistic, stubborn, middlest) sat down, grinned at us and I and asked if I was menstruating.  He found this to be a clever, funny way to see if I was pregnant yet. 

I gaped, My Husband's mother gave Dorian a dirty look and repeated a number of times that "No one here talks about that; we don't discuss that at all," and My Husband shook his head and said told his brother that's a completely inappropriate thing to say.   Dorian said, "I'm joking," and My Husband replied, "It doesn't matter; that's so over the line."   Dorian huffed, "Fine then," and left.   We didn't see him again the rest of the conversation.

My mother-in-law continued to assure us they never discuss my fertility, which obviously means they do but she knows we find it to be a private topic unfit for general family conversation.  She and Holden talk about it on a regular basis...when My Husband left for Iraq she went fishing for information and told me over the phone they'd been trying to figure out when my cycle was to see if it was plausible My Husband knocked me up before deploying.  My reaction was one of alarm and she hasn't brought it up since.

The conversation went on pretty normally from there.  Afterward My Husband told me he was not happy with Dorian's remarks or the fact he's likely to stew about My Husband's sharp response and add it to his running list of Life Grievances.  Dorian's a grudgey sort.

For some reason the amount of serotonin in my brain was higher than usual and I was able to look at the bright side of this conversation: My Husband's mother was taking pains to keep us happy.  If the same sort of thing had happened a few years ago, she would have told My Husband he was overreacting and that Dorian didn't mean anything by it.  The look she gave him and the lack of reprimand toward us was a pretty positive step.  I think she's starting to realize her best bet for happily married children and pretty, polite, well-adjusted grandchildren is My Husband and me.

I've told you before Holden and Dorian have their own issues and show no signs of getting married in the next few years.  The only daughter, India, has a husband and a little girl but she bears the brunt of the family's judgement.  Everything from her parenting skills to her career to her finances comes under fire.  And her daughter gets a bit more bratty every day.  Comes from being the sole grandchild/niece of a very possessive family.

So it seems My Husband's mother has finally placed her bet on the right team, so to speak, and wants to stay on our good side.  As I'm sure there will be more juvenile behavior from his siblings in the future, I hope it stays that way. 

Post-Pill

So it's been about 30 days since I took myself off birth control in our first round of attempts to get pregnant.  According to everything I've charted in the months before this, I was due for my period on Friday the 22.  Since it's been a no show, My Husband and I decided to take a test and see if we are going to have a baby.

After a very busy day (including an FRG meeting, for which I am the new co-leader), we came home and I took a First Response (6 days before your missed period, it says!).  After three minutes of waiting, our microwave timer dinged and we took a look at the results.  Two pink lines: pregnant.  One pink line: not pregnant.

One pink line.  I am not pregnant.

Now, I didn't actually want to get pregnant in April.  Nine months from April is December, which would mean a child in the year 2011.  Even though 2012 is only a month away from then, for some reason I feel more comfortable with that timetable.

But still, it would have been a relief to know I could get pregnant.  I have no reason to suspect I'll have trouble conceiving...my mother, my aunt and both grandmothers had no problems.  I'm healthy, young, I have been taking my prenatals for months and my hips are pretty ridiculous.

And My Husband has been so sweet and excited about this.  He mentions being pregnant without any prodding, he's comfortable talking about our future son or daughter and asked me to take the pregnancy test when we were both home so he could know the results immediately.

So I'm slightly disappointed.  I don't think we have a good shot at conceiving in May since My Husband will be in the field Monday-Friday and only come home on weekends.  It may be good to give myself a few months to get my body back on track and figure out how my system reacts without the added hormones.

I wonder if every woman is just a little disappointed at a negative pregnancy test, even if it's the last thing you want in the world.  It makes sense that our brains would be hardwired to procreate.

So the adventure continues.

Baby Talk

My Husband and I are talking about getting pregnant.  As is customary for me, as soon as we began discussing it seriously I raced out to the library to get books about pregnancy.  I’ve always depended deeply on the research and opinions of experts (or at least people who have experienced an event I have not) and let’s face it…knowledge is reassuring.  Libraries even smell like safety. 

So far, I’ve read the following:

·         Before Your Pregnancy: a 90-Day Guide for Couples on How to Prepare for a Healthy Conception by Amy Ogle & Lisa Mazzullo

·         What to Expect Before You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff with Sharon Mazel

·         Perfect Hormone Balance for Fertility: The Ultimate Guide to Getting Pregnant by Robert Greene

·         Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf

·         Vaginas: an Owner’s Manual by Dr. Carol Livoti & Elizabeth Topp

I found Before Your Pregnancy and Perfect Hormone Balance to be informative but a little preachy about organic foods and living.  The latter has this whole section on “biomutagens” that reads like your baby will develop horns and a tail if you use hairspray or nail polish while pregnant.  I did learn why you should cut caffeine; not only can it constrict your blood vessels and diminish flow to the baby, but your baby can come out addicted to caffeine!  So they cry and cry because they want caffeine but they have no idea what it is.  That stuff’s like crack.

What to Expect has been the Bible for pregnancy for years.  It had some useful tidbits, but half the time I felt like I was being spoken to by that youth group pastor who’s trying desperately to be cool: “Now that you’re talking baby, will you have to say ‘later’ to your morning lattes—and ‘nighty-night’ to your nightcaps (p30)?”  Ummm…yes?  “Been trying for a few months to hit baby bingo, but without success (p120)?”  It’s like every sentence ends with a pause for a recorded laugh track.

Naomi Wolf’s Misconceptions was one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read.  It chronicles her issues of losing her sense of self after becoming a mother, her traumatic and detached Cesarean section and her post-partum depression.  She also harps on American culture and its response to motherhood, race and wealth.  Don’t get me wrong, all of her points are necessary to get a full spectrum of conception and birth in the United States (I’m sure she’s frightened plenty of women into opting out of motherhood) and it wasn’t information I found in any of my other books. 

For example, did you know it’s customary for doctors to slice the perineum (the space between the vulva and the anus) down to the muscle in order to make a wider outlet for the baby during labor?  It’s called an episiotomy.  They do it to prevent a tear during birth, even though most tears are superficial and much less drastic than the surgical cut.  Most of the time an episiotomy results in increased post-partum pain and bleeding, trouble defecating and severe issues with sexual function for up to SEVEN years (p170).  Wolf instead suggests women demand massage of the perineum with something like olive oil and a slow labor to permit the perineum to stretch accordingly.  In her book she mentions some celebratory midwives who ‘caught’ (a midwife’s term for delivering a baby) “an 11lb, 4oz baby girl over an intact perineum (p171)!”

I didn’t know any of this, and you can bet because of her book I’ll be doing A LOT more research.  But chapter after chapter of heartache and milk stains and lack of appropriate health care and support was extremely wearisome.  I guess it’s just one of those things…you have to take the bad with the good.

I loved Vaginas.  I really did.  It’s written by an Ob/Gyn and her daughter in a gossipy yet informative manner.  Kind of like your favorite teacher from high school who does lessons about phenethylamine by handing out chocolate.  I liked it so much I even read parts of it aloud to My Husband (he probably appreciated it less).  Considering most of my “sexual education” consisted of a seventh-grade video in which dozens of speedoed and swim-capped men flounder erratically in a swimming pool toward a sole serene woman in an inner tube, it was kind of nice to really start to understand the inner workings of my body. 

(To be fair, my mother showed my sisters and me a video about puberty around the same time.  I had gotten the original “talk” from her years before…I was six years old…because a local boy my age had been molested by his dentist and I asked her curiously one evening what rape was.  All I remember from these discussions was thinking the whole idea of coming-of-age and conception was disgusting and I wanted nothing to do with it).

So my research continues.  I have a few more books I’d like to look up, but the REAL verdict about a baby is still to come.  I’ll never find that on a library shelf.