Stayed in Denver today and did not make it to Boulder.  But it’s all good.  Spent the evening without kids. Good food, good company, good cards. Oh, and SNOW!!!!

Tomorrow, massages.

Ahhhhhh.

Having a wonderful, relaxing, enoyable, chilly time in Denver with my friends and their almost-three year old daughter.  We are all exhausted from the travel, the slight time change, the all-day noshing, some imbibing… the things that make up a good vacation.  And a good life.  There is ever so much for which I am grateful.

Tomorrow, Boulder! Then a childless dinner in a restaurant that is NOT child friendly.

Wish you were here!

I watched The Business of Being Born last night.  Every woman that is pregnant or may become pregnant should see this documentary.  Seriously.  Here is an excellent article on the film.

What this documentary is NOT about is suggesting all births should be done at home in a pool of water.  It is also NOT about saying there is no place for C-sections.  What it IS about is having truly informed consent about your own birthing experience.

CS and I went through lamaze classes and initally intended to have a vaginal delivery with all the drugs legally allowed.  Then through the course, I began to realize that those drugs, though sometimes necessary, are very serious and can themselves have permanent devastating effects to mother and/or baby.

So then CS and I (really the decision was mine) decided to go natural and try NOT to have the pain meds (epidural, etc.) unless I was truly NEEDING them.

Then we discovered Sun was breech and my placenta was “old” and there was NO WAY my pregnancy would go 40 weeks safely.  So a C-section was planned for 3 weeks before my official due date.  And two weeks before that, my water broke and my doctor performed a C-section six hours later.  Not emergency.  But still horrifying.

I WAS NOT prepared for having my arms strapped down like Jesus on the cross.  I WAS NOT prepared for the nurses counting scalpels and sponges to be sure all were accounted for once I was sewn up.  I WAS NOT prepared to have the Spinal without having my husband present to comfort me.  I WAS NOT prepared for the continous shaking I encoutered from the anesthesia.  I was never so scared in all my life.  And I WAS NOT prepared not to have Sun placed on my chest but instead whisked away for five hours before I would hold her for the first time.

But do not get me wrong, Sun’s birth went just as planned and as well as to be expected.  From being wheeled into and out of the OR, it lasted 20 minutes.

And a lot of what I was not prepared for was because I didn’t ask more questions.  I, honestly, chose to pretend Sun would arrive like a pizza–quick and effortless.  I refused to prepare myself for major surgery whilst wide awake.

The Business of Being Born highlights shocking statistics–in America, in 1900 more than 95% of births were at home.  By 1955, less than 1% were done at home and that statistic remains the same now.  In European countries, 1/3 (30%!) of births are currently done at home.  And yet the infant mortality rate is HIGHER in America than these same European countries.  What’s going on here?

It seems as though there are several things going on:

1. OBs are trained surgeons.  “Normal” pregnancys don’t warrant an OB. So, to make themselves necessary, they “require” the birth to be in a hospital.
2. Once in a hospital, that hospital wants mothers in and out of the beds ASAP.  So, if that birth doesn’t come soon enough, start the pitocin to induce labor.  Pitocin makes the contractions more painful.  Because it is more painful, now comes the epidural.  When enough time has passed and still no delivery, because you’ve started all these drugs, mother is now exhausted and baby is in potential trauma.  Time for an episiotomy or forceps.  Or, time for a C-section.
3. Doctors and insurers realize that patients think C-sections under the above scenario was “necessary” and are less likely to sue.
4. C-sections have become a status symbol among Hollywood (ala Brittany Spears and Posh Spice).

The point that got to me is that women have been conditioned to believe they cannot manage birthing their babies any longer without intervention.  And those that decide to do home births are considered granola-hippies.  Doctors and insurers (mainly of the male variety) facilitate this low opinion women have of their abilities because it is easier for THEM and means in the end more money earned by the doctor and less risk of lawsuits by the insurers.

Why isn’t this about the mother?  The baby?  Why aren’t mothers and feminists all over this issue?  If a mother fully understands the manipulation and reasoning of her doctor and insurer and decides she wants a C section, that is her choice.  But I will tell you, you tell your typical doctor you want a natural birth or a home birth, and he (or she) will try to talk you out of it.  And it disturbs me that this talking out of is NOT likely to be for your best interest.

Another statistic, doctors across the board think home births are “bad,” but almost NONE of them have attended one to know what the real experience is.

It’s clear I have a lot to say on this topic.  And this post is long enough so I am stopping here.  GO WATCH THIS FILM and give me your thoughts.

Sun found her father’s small stash of cigars.  Most were given to him the day she was born.  She brought the Ziploc bag to Nola, who, in turn, thought to herself, “Why, yes, thank you.”  Nola then sat on her darkened front porch and enjoyed the autumnal weather and a cigar.

The next evening, Pete began preparing dinner in Nola’s kitchen, grillades and grits.  Nola sat on the front porch sipping a sazarac watching Sun walk up and down her next door neighbor’s walkway enjoying the high hedges.  She spied the half-smoked cigar from the night before, grabbed a lighter from inside and lit up.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

She noticed that all of the neighbors’ houses were dark and quiet.  It wasn’t yet six o’clock at night and this elderly neighborhood was already sealed in for the night.  All, she realized, but one.  The yellow house nearby, whose owner she had met during Gustav (and whose name Nola, ashamedly, has already forgotten), was ablaze with lights and activity.  The front door was open, and nicely dressed women and children were spilling out of the house and into their cars.  Nola assumed a baby shower was ending.  Soon, this yellow house, too, was darkened and the shades drawn tight.

And as Nola sat on her front porch keeping watch over Sun, awaiting the return of her husband from work, hearing Pete pounding away at the grillades in her kitchen, enjoying the very domesticity of her life, she did just what she could to capture the quiet peace of the moment.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

When I am full of angst, sorrow or sadness, I am filled with words.  I could write all day long.  It’s an extension of wallowing.  And I LOVE a good wallow.

But when things go well, when I am happy and not worrying, my words leave me.  I can describe misery and the pangs of suffering; I can detail the ache of a heart or the feelings of inadequacy relating to infertility.  But the quiet moments of happiness?  The gushy love for my young child?  The comfort of knowing I am more in love with my husband now than I ever have been?  Those are hard words to capture.

Angst, sorrow and sadness are good, I believe.  It is through the heartache that we learn and grow.  That’s why there are so many words for me during such times.  It’s a development of another layer to one’s self.

Slowly, I am discovering that one can learn and grow while experiencing joy and peace and love just the same.  The lessons may be different, but isn’t learning the depth of one’s heart just as valuable as learning the depth of one’s despairs?

I have been tagged by Wet Bank Guy.  He likes meme’s about as much as any man.  But he obliged and thus I will too.

First The Rules.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So, six random things you don’t already know about me. Hmm. Well, you know so much already.

1. I was never a Brownie or a Girl Scout or cross-walk guard.  I was in NO clubs throughout all of my school years.  Except Guitar.
2. When I signed up for Guitar, I assumed my big brother would let me take his nice Fender to school. I assumed very wrong.  So my mom bought me a big, clunky, “country/western” looking guitar (yanno, with 2 f-holes instead of the standard round sound hole) with a soft case at a garage sale.  I. Was. Mortified.  And soon I gave up guitar.  I still strum, Down, Down, Up. Up, Down, Up.
3. My best friend in grammar school was on all the sports teams and in the Glee Club.  I never went to any of her after-school events.
4. The brother of my best friend from grammar school married my sister.
5. Before my sister dated her now husband, he and I and his sister build a mad card house out of a UNO deck.
6. I was a good student but not a superstar student.  My all-time BEST course in high school was Chemistry. Yup.  And in college, Logic (no duh), and in law school, Civil Procedure.  In all three courses, I scored the highest grade possible (and in Logic, due to bonus questions, I scored even higher).

So, to keep this thing local, I am tagging fellow NOLA bloggers.

1. Charlotte.  She’s a minx and I want to know the good stuff about her.
2. Pete.  He swears he’ll never do a meme, but if all NOLA bloggers do it, I think I can shame him into this one.
3. Pistolette.  She’s a rockstar that has the nerve to live the way I ideally want to live.
4. Ryan.  To get his mind off the details of his upcoming nuptials.
5. Sphinx Ink. Because she has been waaay too quiet lately.
6. Mike.  To maintain the male-female ratio and to see if he’ll play along (I hope you do)!

I think this will teach Wet Bank Guy to ask more about me again!

Today, for inexplicable reasons, the holiday season began for me.  I even started listening to Christmas carols.  I think it’s that New Orleans had its first legitimate cold snap.  Or that my office is having its Turkey Day this Wednesday so I have had to start looking at recipes.  Or that I sent out invitations to the big family Christmas Eve party that we will be hosting again this year.  Or maybe it was all of these things converging on one day.

I love the winter holiday season: the food, the decorations, the music and television specials, the traditions and familial elements.  I do not like the commercialism of it all, and I HATE that this year it started after Halloween instead of after Thanksgiving.  It’s absurd.

I will again make efforts to do many homemade gifts, mainly in the cooking department.  I am too tired and its too late for me to start knitting like I did last year.  And for the little kids that will get store-bought items, those are already purchased.  So the rest on my list will be taken care of by time spent in my kitchen.  With my new little helper.

This year, though not Sun’s first Christmas, will be for Sun the beginning of the magical quality that the winter season encapsulates.  And I am rather certain that I am far more excited about it than she is.

CS and I have talked several times about having another child. We talked again last night. And we both feel for a multitude of reasons that we are done.   Just for fun, here’s the highlights of our list:

Cons:

1. Sun.  We have a daughter that we give a good amount of attention to.  CS and I have arranged it such that we work from home a bit during the week and with the help of SoMo, Sun does not need to attend daycare.  If we have another, the time we have for Sun will be cut short.  In fact, if we have another, we will HAVE to put both in daycare or have one of us quit our job (and neither of us wants to do that).  And if we have two in daycare, then school, at the same time, we fold into…
2. Money.  The cost is not to be overlooked.  CS and I are comfortable with what we make.  We aren’t rich by any stretch.  But we make enough that we can continue to be comfortable and give to Sun the things we feel are important (like a respectable, though certainly incomplete, college fund).
3. Time.  The other option to money not being an issue is CS and I working our butts off.  Right now, I LOVE working a lighter load.  And CS loves the freedom his job offers.  If we have another child and need more money, it will come from one place only: our efforts.  And if we need to work more to have more money, then we will have less time to spend with the children.
4. Happiness is.  CS and I are happy with our family just as it is.  We LOVE it being the three of us.  We feel it is a perfect fit.  We aren’t stretched too tight and balance each other out with Sun when one is down for the count.  We can travel easily with one child and do countless other things we love with one child that with two would be too burdensome or unpleasant.

Pros:

1. Sun needs a sibling.  CS and I both have siblings.  My siblings kept me sane as I went from a child to an adult.  They will also assist with my parents as they age and need care.  I hate denying Sun the relationship of a sibling.  (But who is to say the siblings will even get along?  So this is a sticky wicket pro).
2. What if Sun is a dud?  This may sound harsh but hear me out.  What if Sun turns out to be a complete flake and disappoints me to the point where I want to wring her neck?  Then I will wish I had another child.  You still doubt me?  Just yesterday I met with a couple seeking advise about their estate planning.  These are good people with good values.  They have two children.  Turns out the daughter is a dud.  I cannot go into detail, but the daughter did unthinkably selfish things with respect to her parents.  So unthinkable they are considering cutting her out of their wills.  And in my opinion, rightly so.  What do CS and I do if this is Sun? Give my estate (hahaha) to charity?  To her cousins?  Wouldn’t we wish we’d had another child to then leave a legacy to (and I really don’t mean money as much as the sense of the continuation of our family).
3. Regret.  This is the real kicker.  The first two “pros” are really hypothetical.  We cannot have another child so that Sun can have a sibling (it isn’t a puppy, for crying out loud) nor because Sun may be a dud (what if Sun is a rockstar and the second child is a dud? Oy.)  But what if in a decade or two CS and I regret not having another child?  This is the one that stumped me.  I really needed to dig deep to see what it is I’d regret.  After much soul searching, I fully realize that my life is, happily, full.  Will it be more full with another baby?  Maybe.  But why go back to the buffet when I have a full plate to begin with?

This isn’t quite the complete list, but it is enough to see that I am happy with things the way they are.  And it is enough to see that the reasons I have for wanting another child are not good enough to have a baby.  When we wanted Sun, there was a complete other list.  A list that had the right reasons for wanting a baby and legitimate concerns about having one.  But now?  Things are different.  Happily different.  And so I am putting to rest this issue of another child.  I have my family.  We are truly and completely whole.  And done.

This post is dedicated to XBoxForNappyRash, who is currently going through the ordeal that is Fertility Treatment.

About a month ago, I got a call from a friend telling me she was pregnant.  I went into automatic mode and said all the right things.  But just beneath the surface, I was jealous.  Not jealous that my friends were going to have a baby and we weren’t (a painful jealousy I have also experienced).  No, this time I was jealous over the pregnancy itself.  This couple decided they wanted a baby.  The woman got off the pill and voilà.  Pregnant in no time.

Today, another friend told me she is pregnant.  She tells me she’s lukewarm about it.  I know that’s a lie, that deep down she really wants this baby and she’s just got the jitters.  But here’s that green-headed monster in my heart again lurching:  Jealousy.  This couple decided that “if it happened, it happened, if not, two kids are fine.”  And of course it happened.  What would stop it?  That’s what happens when you are fertile.  Mr. Sperm (aka Spencer) meet Ms. Egg (aka Ellie).  Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.

Fertile people will NEVER know what it feels like to want a baby so badly and have nature tell you no.  And once-infertile people will never NOT know what that feels like; we are part of a club of which we wish not to be a member.

If CS and I decide tonight that we want another baby, there is no,”if it happens, it happens, if not, Sun in enough.”  I know this because that’s what we are doing now–nothing.  Nothing is stopping me from getting pregnant other than my own chemical makeup.  If we decide positively we want another baby, I KNOW my body will not give me one without intervention.  And maybe even then I won’t get pregnant.

I hate to still feel shitty every time a friend tells me they are pregnant.  It was bad enough when I was dealing with the pills and needles and negative pregnancy tests.  But I thought once I had Sun and felt whole again that that hole in my heart would heal and close.  But I am learning that it may never close.  I may always feel a pang of angst at others’ happy news.

I always come around and am truly happy for my friends.  I just hate that I have this sorrow that is now, apparently, a permanent fixture in my heart.  CS feels none of these negative feelings about our friends getting pregnant so easily.  Maybe because the fertility problem was mine.  Maybe because he’s a male and hardwired differently than me.  Or maybe the sorrow never ran as deep for him as for me.

Regardless, I spent the better part of today feeling good and sorry for myself.  Poor little Nola can’t get pregnant like a “normal” woman.  Poor little Nola will only have one child unless she spends thousands of dollars and endures a battery of emotional and physical treatments.  Poor little Nola won’t have a daughter who will have a sibling.  Poor little Nola has put all her eggs (no pun intended) in one basket and oh what pressure that will be on Sun.

But I am done with the pity party.  I will NOT make my friend’s pregnancy about my infertility; I will NOT allow myself not to appreciate the gifts my life has.  I will NOT allow any hole in my heart to short-change me on sharing joyous news with friends.

I realize I may always have sorrow over the infertility path I walked down.  But in the end, we all have our own crosses to bear.  And I will not let my cross overshadow the many lights in my life.

Before I had Sun, I worried about money all the time. ALL. THE. TIME.  How could we save enough for retirement?  Get out of debt?  Travel and enjoy life?  Ever afford a child?

Now, with Sun and a tanking economy, money is tighter in my life than it has been in a decade.  And I worry not.  It’s the weirdest thing of all about having a child.

Now I KNOW we’ll have what we need, NEED, to accomplish our goals.  We WILL pay the bills, save for retirement and even Sun’s education.  And we will do whatever it may take to get there.  But the worry? It just isn’t there.  Deep down, I know CS and I will make it work, with either working harder for more money needed or living leaner with less.  Will we travel less? Eat out less? Hell, yes, we will.  But will we enjoy life less? Absolutely not.

I so enjoy seeing the world, and New Orleans in particular, through Sun’s new eyes.  I WANT her to grow up thinking Mardi Gras, neutral grounds, snow balls, gumbo, Jazz Fest, the French Quarter, above-ground cemeteries with its All Souls Day traditions, all the unique NOLA things, I want her to think that’s just normal and other cities have it all wrong not to do as NOLA does.

And growing up in New Orleans doesn’t take a lot of money.  It just takes a lot of heart.  So BRING IT bad economy.  I’m not scared.