ElementalMom

I‘m due to have this baby any time now.

It’s obvious if you know me and know my dates. I’ve been telling people “I’m having a Gemini”, so that’s a clear clue. And of course, I’m huge, so that’s a dead giveaway.

If even one more person asks me “haven’t you had that baby yet?” I’m gonna stick ‘em in the eye with a fork. Cause clearly, they aren’t actually using their eyes for, y’know, observation or anything. And that’s just the people I see in person. The oh-so-subtle “oh, I was just thinking of you and thought I’d call…” phone calls aren’t much better. I’ve put myself on self-imposed phone rest (like bed rest, but better), and made Jason answer the dratted thing.

I was pondering, this morning, as I awoke having yet again not gone into labor in the night, what it is that makes people get in such a hurry at the end of a pregnancy. It’s like at 36-37 weeks, the baby has to stay in, then at 38-39, everyone starts freaking out and being impatient. “Is it there yet? Is it there yet? Have you had it yet?” It sounds like little kids at Christmas. Or at the end of a road trip. Or… and it struck me… like people who are excited about an event, but have no actual work to perform to ensure said event comes off.

Think about it. Adults who are responsible for filling the gas tank, doing the auto maintenance, doing the trip planning, doing the driving, parceling out the snacks… they never ask “are we there yet?”… they just stare out the windows. Adults who are fully engaged with the holiday madness of shopping, party-having, cooking, planning, etc, always are startled by how fast the calendar moves, and wish for an additional week or two.

So here’s my solution. People who ask me if I’ve had that baby yet? Clearly, they haven’t enough to do. The next person who asks me that question gets invited to bring a casserole, do a load of dishes or laundry, handle the grocery shopping, or rub my feet (since helping actually gestate this little punkin is physiologically impossible). I figure if I start involving the rushers in the process, they’ll realize there’s so much going on, that clearly, they need to either pitch in fully, or maybe plan themselves a road trip.

Tags: Birth, Musings, Pregnancy

I spent another half an hour on the phone with HR. They’ve upped they ante.

The rules, if you’ll recall from part I of this rant, are that if you’re disabled during the focal review period, you are ineligible for raises, etc, until you come back, at manager’s discretion. I happen to think this is ridiculous, since the timing of my pregnancy is random (basically), and it’s discriminatory to hold a penalty over my head because I happen to have gotten pregnant when I did. People who take vacation time are not penalized, and it’s a similar situation. But because the state feels that pregnancy equals disability, and since disability is seldom of finite duration (unlike maternity, sigh), they feel the need to protect themselves. I understand it within the disability context, but I find it to be highly irritating in this circumstance.

So… I figured out during my last two pregnancies that if I were to go on disability (maternity), then go off and go onto vacation for the focal review period, then to go back on maternity (disability), it’d preserve my general sense of fairness, dot all the correct “i’s”, and be done with the charade.

However, the charade has escalated. No one can tell me when, precisely, the “focal review period” is. No one has dates. Nowhere on the HR website, nowhere in the manual they have for the phone center folks, nowhere, are there actual dates that define the “focal review period”. Everyone’s sure it’s in June or July. No one can say precisely when. But everyone can see clearly that if I’m on disability (maternity), I miss out, and it creates more paperwork and hassle for my manager, and some financial loss for me, potentially.

Seriously uncool.

The gentleman I just got off the phone with took 20 minutes trying to find the information. Finally, he asked me why I cared. So I explained. He could tell me that if I was out on leave for more than 1/4 of the total focal review period, I was ineligible, but he was, again, completely unable to define “focal review period” as a set of calendar dates.

So everyone’s clear that there are penalties and I will suffer them, but absolutely no one can tell me what the rules we’re playing by are. Frankly, I’m beginning to feel ever-so-slightly oppressed.

The gentleman, whose curiosity is piqued, promises to call me back tomorrow, “after he’s jumped on the focal guys”. I’m looking forward to finding a nice, simple answer. Normally, this kind of sparring intrigues me, but at this point, I’m baffled at the inconsistency. I am very lucky, in that my manager rocks, and I’m not actually worried about the penalties of the situation. It’s more a “fighting the principle of the thing” than an actual fight for my check, but frankly, it’s unfair to put myself and my manager in that position. I’m dependent on the kindliness, reasonability, and sense of fair play that my manager has, which is not a luxury everyone has. What about women who get pregnant and work for rules-based creatures? How do they fare? And again, I’d have known none of this, but for my prior two pregnancies. The information is not at all forthcoming.

So stay tuned, mommies and iconoclasts. This could get entertaining.

Tags: Birth, maternity+leave+CA, Pregnancy, Tirades

I blogged a teeny bit about my July 31 miscarriage here. And until I was discussing the due date for the baby I’m carrying now with Mom2, I had forgotten that the baby I miscarried was due right around now.

I miscarried between Rowan and Kestrel too. That one, an eight-weeker and so-called “silent” miscarriage, was horrible, because I still felt broken from the cesarean, and took the miscarriage as a sign that meant I could not do this birth thing that normal women could do. I was an emotional wreck for ages. And that Christmas was kinda sad, because that baby would have been due then. A Christmas baby.

This time, I knew that miscarriages are just a normal part of a breeder’s life, and I wasn’t so freaked out about that; I was just very very sad. This one was not at all “silent”, and therefore I was also physically wrecked for a while. And that baby was due around my birthday. A Birthday baby.

Instead, we caught this one, who is due smack in between Kestrel’s birthday and Rowan’s. There will be a nearly perfect three-year spacing between our kids, which is precisely what Jason was hoping for, but too wise to “plan” for, since we all know that biology does what it does when it cares to. My three kids (how weird is that to type! Much less to think!) will be May-June-July. Late spring/early summer birthdays, perfect for parties, far enough apart that they don’t collide unpleasantly with each other, close enough together that they will all always remember each other.

And that, right there? That says “hand of the Divine” all over it.

See, the two miscarriages? Nice due times and all, easy for me to remember. But as my parenting guru pal Valarie told me once (and it rocked my world)… my children will be in each other’s lives far longer than they’ll be in mine. It’s easy, as a parent, to constantly frame your kids in terms of their relationship with you, but that’s not the primary relationship considering the scope of their lives; the primary relationship is with each other. And somehow, this baby picked a time snuggled right in between its brothers. Jason and I are both winter birthdays, but our children are the bright lights of spring and summer, all clustered together.

It’s another reminder that they are each other’s family, long after Jason and I have moved on to whatever adventure comes next. I know that there are some who feel that trying to ascribe meaning to tragedy is simply the coping mechanism of a gullible brain, and that’s fine, they can think that. But for me, for the rest of my life, when “birthday season” rolls around, I’ll be reminded that pretty much even the most awful events can sometimes end up turning out perfectly.

Tags: Birth, Family, Musings, Pregnancy

So here I am, over halfway. In our culture, for the first baby, you spend all your time panicking about the unknown of it all. In my case, I spent my second pregnancy wholly focused on the event of the birth, which was a planned HBAC, and came with all the challenges inherent to that. But with this baby, I have achieved an odd sort of calm. People keep shaking their heads at me.

It’s uncool, apparently, to be pregnant and non-dramatic about it. Apparently, despite the fact that I feel great, that I’m gaining normally, that baby is kicking around in there, I’ve got my midwife and my birth plans (including a full emergency backup plan) all dialed in, I am supposed to be freaking out about something.

There’s plenty to freak out about, if I felt like it. Birth isn’t all that safe an event, no matter where it happens. I could worry about shoulder dystocia, I could worry about stillbirth, meconium in the water, aspiration, short cord, breech. Last time labor was 38 hours, this one might be longer. Or, it might be supershort! I could fret about the fact that I’m older, so birth defects of some kind are more likely than they were before (although according to the Powers That Be, I’ve been a geriatric mother for five years already, LOL!). It’s true; this baby could have autism, CP, spina bifida, or a whole host of other things that people are born with. We’ll face that if it becomes necessary.

But you know… there’s nothing wrong with a little hope, is there? Must it always be about impending disaster?

It makes me sad that the American Culture of Fear has so pervaded the American Culture of Birth, that the fact that my simple statements that I feel great, baby’s doing great, and the birth is gonna be great, have people thinking I’m somehow naive or oblivious.

I spent Kestrel’s pregnancy reading everything. I mean everything. I am under absolutely no illusions about what could happen. I know that babies die. I know that mothers die. I’ve faced it, internalized it, accepted it, and… here’s the kicker… I am now moving past it.

In 14 weeks or so, I’m having a baby. And like everything else in this life, there are factors I can control, and factors I cannot, and I am going to meet them with the most joy, and the most faith, and the most love, I possibly can. Everything else is a waste of my energy; energy I could put to use growing this baby. So that’s what I’m doing.

Tags: Family, homebirth, Musings, Pregnancy