i haven't been posting recently because a nasty cold has been kicking my family's collective ass.
#emetophobia warning
#unsanitary warning
kids under age 2 can't be given any kind of cold medicines, so it breaks my heart that this poor sweetheart has to suffer her full symptoms while i can ease my own with otc medicines. she is too old to tolerate the nasal aspirator (a plastic squeezy bulb you use to suck boogers out of babies' noses) but too young to understand how to blow her nose. when her congestion is really bad she can wake up vomiting from having swallowed too much mucus, and the only thing we can do is comfort her, clean her up and and give extra cuddles 😟😟😟
she and i are over the peak of our colds now but i still get intense hyperempathy about her suffering without cold medicine, because my parents couldn't afford to buy otc cold medicines for any of us during my childhood.
A friend of ours who’s 9 weeks pregnant just found out via blood test that she’s having a girl.
My wife messaged me: “I’m trying to be happy for her.”
It’s just so hard. It’s hard for her, because it’s not like she chooses to feel this way. She’s actively trying not to. She knows it’s not fair. She’s pledged to do everything she can never to make our son feel like she’s disappointed that he’s a boy. It’s not her fault that most of the men in her life have either let her down or hurt her, or that the thought of parenting a little girl in a way that her mother was never able to parent her seems like it might give her the chance to heal a deep and fundamental wound. Just deciding not to feel something doesn’t work. She feels it; she just does. She’s felt it off and on since we found out back in February, sometimes more acutely and sometimes less. But it’s always there to one degree or another.
And likewise, it’s not fair for me to be angry with her for feeling that way. It’s not fair that the men in my life have overwhelmingly been kind, gentle, loving, and honorable people, and that none of them have ever hurt me. It’s not fair of me to want her to just get over it.
But I do feel angry -- not entirely with her, but more generally on his behalf. He didn’t choose to have a Y chromosome, or to be born into a viciously sexist society, or to be born to a mother who -- for valid reasons -- trusts women more than men. He hasn’t done anything! He hasn’t even taken his first breath yet, and already he’s being shunted into a category that will favor him in many ways but will be a source of pain and disappointment to one of the two people who will love him most. It hurts to think about it.
I try to step back and think... Y’know, if he doesn’t like books, if he isn’t curious, if he’s bluff and boisterous instead of quiet and empathetic and sensitive, I’ll be disappointed about that too. And I’ll get over it, of course, and I’ll honor him for whoever he turns out to be, but there will be a little part of me who yearns for the sweet mellow little nerdling I’ve always dreamed of. And that’s kinda like this, right? All parents have expectations for their kids. They all have to let them go in order to let their kids become who they are.
But I guess for me the waveform hasn’t collapsed yet. He’s still in that state of perfect potentiality, where he could be everything I could ever want him to be. As far as I’m concerned, he’s just right. For her... He’s already a step away from that. He’s already something to get used to, a barrier to surmount, a disappointment to swallow.
And that hurts, and it makes me angry, and it makes me sad.
Sometimes when I have to wipe food off my kid’s face just before we enter a store or something and she asks me why, I tell her “So everyone can see how lovely you are,” because it’s a bit harder to explain to my three-year-old that I really don’t want strangers to suspect that she is abused and report me to DFS based on crumbs, but today I said that and she said “I don’t want to be lovely,” and I felt really proud.
your kid is so big, i remember when she was all new and wrinkly. I can't believe how long ive been following you!
I knowwwwww, likewise! Every day I look at this kid and I’m like “But you were just born.” She told me the name of that song she was playing was “Bluezocker Shooman,” fyi, and said at bedtime that she wanted to read The Seventeen Rabbit. :3
Tough Little Boys by Gary Allan is Kole’s song as a father.
Well I never once
Backed down from a punch
Well I'd take it square on the chin
Well I found out fast
A bully's just that
You've got to stand up to him
So I didn't cry when I got a black eye
As bad as it hurt, I just grinned
But when tough little boys grow up to be dads
They turn into big babies again.
Scared me to death
When you took your first steps
And I'd fall every time you fell down
Your first day of school, I cried like a fool
And I followed your school bus to town
Well I didn't cry, when Old Yeller died
At least not in front of my friends
But when tough little boys grow up to be dads
They turn into big babies again
Well I'm a grown man
And as strong as I am
Sometimes it's hard to believe
That one little girl, with little blonde curls
Can totally terrify me
If you were to ask
My wife would just laugh
She'd say "I know all about men
How when tough little boys grow up to be dads
They turn into big babies again"
Well I know one day, I'll give you away
And I'm gonna stand there and smile
And when I get home, and I'm all alone
Well, I'll sit in your room for a while
Well I didn't cry when Old Yeller died
At least not in front of my friends
But when tough little boys grow up to be dads
They turn into big babies again
When tough little boys grow up to be dads
They turn into big babies again.
My wife came in when I was doing the dishes and asked me, "When I'm pregnant, before my belly gets really huge, and the cat sits on me and purrs, do you think our kid will hear it and associate it with peace and affection?" I said I'd bet they would, since the sound would correlate with her heart rate and blood pressure and cortisol levels going down. The kid'll come out preprogrammed to be soothed by our cat. Not that a cat's purr isn't inherently soothing anyway, of course. I asked her, "Are you still thinking late spring, early summer, after the semester is over, would be a good time to start trying?" She said that sounded pretty good to her. She thinks she'll probably have to turn down any classes she might be offered for that fall, since she won't know whether or not she'll have morning sickness that could prevent her from teaching, but she says she's okay with that, even though the thought of not teaching makes her sad. I'll just feel really bad if she gives up a whole semester and then she doesn't even get pregnant during that whole stretch. But I guess we'll see how it goes. The basal body thermometer came today, and I asked what we should do with it. She put it away in the closet, so I guess she's not quite ready to start charting her temperatures yet, but man. I really think this is happening. She's had a rough couple of days, due to her mom breaking an agreement that was really important to her and then trying to play it off like she was being oversensitive. My wife had to write her mom an email full of hard truths, and she was worried it would permanently harm their relationship. But her mom called her this morning and they had a light, easy conversation, avoiding all the painful stuff, and then my wife sat down at the table and ate the latkes I made for breakfast, and told me her heart felt lighter than it had in years. I think the ways in which she's not her mom are really starting to sink in, and I think it's giving her a hell of a lot more confidence about the idea of being a parent without recapitulating all her mom's mistakes. I love seeing that transformation take place. It gives me so much hope. Goddamn, I'm a lucky sod.
Just asked her if I could go tomorrow. She's totally cool with it. She made some apologetic noises about not really being into going herself -- "I promise I don't find the idea of coparenting with you boring! Just the idea of talking to lawyers about all the complicated legal details!" -- which I'd expected and don't mind in the slightest. But she didn't get all upset or anxious or anything! Just was like, "Yeah! You should totally go. Sounds great! Thanks for handling the boring stuff so I don't have to!" and then started telling me excitedly how she discovered she was able to parboil the snail's steppingstone carrot discs in the microwave, segueing into a discussion of the cherubim costume she's planning (with at least two packs of Nightvale Tattoos) for this year's Dances of Vice Halloween Party. (She was originally gonna go as Cosima from Orphan Black, with me as Felix, but decided that it wouldn't quite fit with the theme.)
Planning Biological Parenthood Meeting at LGBT Center
I... I guess this is a wannabe parenting blog again? Man, I don't even know anymore. I'm sure there will be more mezzos or recorder blather along directly.
But when I first started this thing, back in December 2012 (!!!), it was because my wife's Thursday night teaching gig had just ended. I'd been going to the monthly Planning Biological Parenthood meetings at the LGBT center that whole semester on the sly, (since they let out long enough before her class was over that I could go to them and still get home before her) and finding them inexpressibly therapeutic. I really, really enjoyed those meetings. I learned all sorts of stuff. More than that, I got to talk about what was on my mind and hear the stories of a bunch of other women in the same place as me (or, more often, somewhat further along; though that was reassuring too, in a way, jealous as I was). But I felt like I couldn't tell her about it, because she was so ferociously resistant to even considering the kid question, while at the time it was practically all I could think about. (As she's gotten less resistant, I've gotten much less fixated on it and able to let it ride more easily in the back of my mind for long stretches.)
She stopped working at the end of that year until the following fall, and hasn't had an evening class to teach since then, so I haven't been able to sneak out to any more meetings. I still haven't told her, and don't intend to. I don't think there's anything to be gained by confessing that I was going to the meetings for six months behind her back. But I just got the following email:
"This Thursday, Sept. 11th, we will be joined by Brian Esser, Esq. Brian will answer your questions about the legal implications of known versus anonymous donors, donor agreements, second-parent adoptions and co-maternity or cooperative pregnancy. For more information about Brian, take a look here - http://www.esserlawoffice.com/
Upcoming groups will host discussions on sperm donor decisions, insemination options, how to manage the two week waiting period, being the “other mother”, and much more."
I really, really, really wanna go. Should I tell her about it? Should I offer to go on my own? I doubt she'd be up to going herself, since she's got a ton of grading and lesson planning to do for her two classes on Friday. But I worry that even though we've been talking about this stuff much more freely and frequently than before, taking a concrete step like this would be pushing her too far. On the other hand, the whole sperm bank versus known donor thing is very much on my mind right now, and it would be really helpful to be able to clear up some of the legal issues involved with both. I worry that bringing it up will throw her into a panic again, like it used to whenever I brought up anything relating to parenthood two years ago. Maybe that's ridiculous and I'm just being skittish. Yesterday she spontaneously went into raptures about that baby again, texting me (with a heart emoji!) that she kept daydreaming about her, and afterwards, when I came home last night, bringing up out of the blue how wonderfully alive and present and happy that little being had been, and how it was such a blissful thing to be able to hold her.
I'm so grateful to see her fully and enthusiastically on board with the idea of having a kid that I'm afraid of bursting the bubble by bringing up any suggestions on how to proceed. But I also know that even when she's technically willing (and even eager) to do a thing, she'll often let the start date drift indefinitely without taking action, and then the more inertia builds up, the more she starts fearing and dreading any change in the status quo. So I don't know if I should push or hang back. I don't know if this is something she needs to arrive at by herself or if it's something I need to put the groundwork in place for as much as I can, so that it's as unintimidating as possible. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
