A brand new day April 26, 2008

I didn’t know how I would feel come the first Cycle Day 1 of potential procreation. What’s been confusing, lately, has been not the fear of fertility doom and gloom, which I’m familiar with and with which I pretty much know how to deal, but the fear of an actual child resulting from our efforts. Even forgetting the possibility of special needs, which leaves me quaking in my boots, it is unlikely that another child could possibly be as easy as Gatito. I mean, sleeping 12 hours/night at 7 weeks? Potty trained, nights included, before 2.5? Long attention span and ability to entertain himself from the age of two months? No, whatever delights a potential second child will have, it’s hard to believe he or she will be as easy to parent as Gatito has been.

Nonetheless, I greeted the arrival of my period this morning with optimism. I’m ready to get this show on the road. Now can somebody please tell me approximately how many days before ovulation an ultrasound will be able to detect the side on which the follicle is growing? I left a message last week, but my doctor is ridiculously hard to get on the phone. Also, I assume they need to use the super-powerful machine, not the portable one they wheel from exam room to exam room?

I’ll leave you with another A/Gatito story:

A, for reasons unknown, was eating a cheese stick wrapped in a piece of bread.
“Come here, Daddy,” Gatito said sweetly.
A approaches.
“A little closer,” he encouraged. “Sit down.
A sits.
“Let’s share this plate,” he offered, showing A his own plate with his own, now grubby stick of cheese. “Put that down here.”
A put the cheese n’ bread on the plate and Gatito unwrapped, took the cheese, and offered A his own grubby cheese return.

We are accustomed to the appropriation of our food, but the pre-meditated stealthiness is something new! Makes me nervous.

A big brother who talks April 25, 2008

Last night, as A was putting Gatito to bed, I overheard this:

A: Would you like a baby brother?
(All boys in this generation of our extended family so we can’t even imagine having a girl!)

Gatito: Will he talk?

A: Eventually, but not at first.

Gatito: I want a big brother who talks!

A: That’s going to be… unlikely.

***

(We’re so confused as to whether we want to try another child that we’re trying to make Gatito decide. Now there’s some good parenting and decision-making.)

Conflicted (Things I am worried about) April 22, 2008

Infertility

Ectopic pregnancy

Miscarriage

Stillbirth

Feeling dizzy/ill/uncomfortable/delicate/nervous for nine months

Giving up our simple, easy life

Missing Gatito

Having a child with special needs

Making any changes to a life that is awfully close to perfect just as it is

The Feminine Mistake April 18, 2008

I wasn’t going to write about this, out of fear of polarizing my readers, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts, has changed my life. This piece is a good summary, if you want to go read that first and come back. Please know that I am not sitting in judgment of other people’s life choices. I am writing this because the book had an impact on me and I want to talk about it.

I feel the need to start by saying that there is much not to like about this book: The author is, on many occasions, disrespectful in her descriptions of women who don’t work. She describes too many jobs as fascinating (really– how many jobs are?) and she believes that any stay-at-home moms who say they are happy are lying, pretty much. I also found it amusing that she made the hashed over statement that stay-at-home moms bore their husbands because they have nothing to talk about. That is so stupid to me, because the absolute last thing A wants to talk about is my job, and the subject we discuss most frequently and happily is the minute details of Gatito’s life. And by the way… couldn’t a stay-at-home mom (with kids beyond the infant/toddler stage) simply read the newspaper daily for a ready supply of discussion topics? Ms. Bennett also has this gratuitously nasty passage where she makes fun of stay-at-home moms who spend too much time cleaning their homes and making every detail perfect, while she lets her daughter keep her room messy and believes it inspires her creativity. Then there are a few ridiculous anecdotes like one about the grown kids of a mother who did not work being too lazy to work themselves because they are following her example. I believe that some of these things are pure distractions that suck the power away from her main message.

Nevertheless, there were many aspects that really hit home with me, and enabled me to change the way I think about my life and my work:

• I think I have written here before about my feeling that the burden of supporting a family is too much for one person to have to shoulder. Ms. Bennetts points out that when both people work, it often enables them to work more reasonable hours, rather than having one person kill themselves trying to advance and earn more money. It made me realize that it is in part because we both work that we are both able to be home between 5:30 and 6:00 every night. Neither of us are exactly shooting to the top, but we’re both doing pretty well, slowly advancing our careers. Knowing A, I can definitely see that if he was the only one working, it would be a lot crazier hours as he would feel compelled to work harder and advance faster. My working has enabled us to both make that tradeoff and enjoy a reasonable work/life balance.
• Ms. Bennetts thinks that men respect their wives more when they work. What I have seen in my community is that men like to know that their wives are home with the kids when they are little and that they get that it’s hard work and are grateful that they don’t have to do it. But when the kids get to be school-aged, they start to wonder what their wives are doing all day, and they start to resent it. I know one banker from the Wall St. firm that just collapsed who is pressuring his wife to go back to work. She is resisting under the argument that she didn’t choose their lavish lifestyle (apparently she would have been happy living a more modest life), but since he chose it, she is neither willing to relinquish her luxuries nor work to help support them. And last weekend, I overheard another woman complaining that her daughter’s husband (my generation) is demanding that his wife get at least a part-time job, accusing her of spending their children’s future. I never had the chance to play this scenario out, but I do think that it’s likely A would have become resentful of bearing all the financial responsibility for the family if I didn’t work, particularly as kids got older. As it is, I think he’s proud and respectful of my accomplishments in the office.
• She writes a lot about women who think their husbands could never ever leave them, even though it has happened to others they know. Stories like Alyssa wrote about here. I actually got through most of the book thinking how silly it is for women to believe that their marriages couldn’t possibly break up before I realized that that was what I still believed about my own marriage! I have thought that A could fall ill or die (I have morbid freakouts about car accidents every time I send him on an errand, for instance) or simply lose his job, but I never even considered the possibility that we could get divorced, even as I was reading about other women who couldn’t believe it could happen to them.
• I also realized how unusual it is to have a husband that is an equal participant in child-rearing. Even Ms. Bennetts’ husband had to be trained and harassed a little into taking on household responsibilities and she still has more than half of these. Meanwhile, A does at least half– probably more– of the stuff around the house, from taking out the garbage to cleaning the kitchen nightly and straightening the house (we pay someone to clean once/week– a real sanity saver) whereas I pretty much just do weekend laundry (Tata does weekday laundry). And since A is Gatito’s parent of choice more often than not, A ends up taking on more parenting responsibility than I do, too. (I have been telling A how much I appreciate him and he has been refusing to believe that anything he does is out of the ordinary, which is probably for the best.)
• I thought it was interesting to consider the length of a career. From college graduation through retirement, I am likely to spend about 45 years of my life working. Assuming a four-year age difference between Gatito and a potential sibling, and assuming the most needy years (from a time-intensive perspective) of a child are through age 12 (I picked this age fairly arbitrarily), that is 16 years of a juggling act– just a third of a whole career.
• The author writes about women who don’t work because the cost of childcare eats up a substantial portion (sometimes all) of their earnings. But she points out that when viewed in the context of a decades-long career, these years of breaking even should actually be seen as an investment in future earnings potential. When I first went back to work after having Gatito, over half of my take-home pay went to his nanny. But with my new job, which I wouldn’t have gotten without the experience of my prior job, it now amounts to… egads, I just did the math… it is still 45% of my take-home salary. I thought I was doing better than that. Never mind, moving on. But seriously, eventually I won’t need a full-time nanny, so say in another six years (assuming I am able to have a second child in the next year) this figure could drop to 25% or even less if I continue to advance.
• Ms. Bennetts also points out that many women hit one bump in the road in their career and use motherhood as an excuse to opt out. E.g., they work a crazy job with a terrible boss or they just don’t like what they do and rather than looking for a way to address the situation or find a new job, as a man would have to do, they drop out. This is interesting to me because I have to admit, in addition to wanting more time with Gatito, the idea of not having to deal with the hassles of work is appealing. But I’ve realized that finding a path through various obstacles is important and is good for me.

Unfortunately, I think the author’s aggressive style makes it hard for someone who has made a different choice to read. In the article I linked to above, she writes:

Equally encouraging [sarcasm] was the woman who, after being introduced to me at a cocktail party, made a horrible face when the hostess told her about The Feminine Mistake. “I don’t think I want to read it,” she said, pursing her lips as if she’d just sucked a lemon. “The last thing I need is a whole book telling me why I should feel even more guilty about my life than I already do.”

I can certainly understand how that woman feels, because I think the tone of the book comes off as very judgmental and one-sided. There are just too many distractions in there that take away from the main message that “a man is not a financial plan.” I will freely admit that there is no way in hell you’d catch me reading a book that will criticize my working and add to my guilt about leaving my child, so I can easily understand why stay-at-home moms wouldn’t want to read this.

Ultimately, though, as I said, this book changed my life: I have spent the 2.5 years since Gatito was born fantasizing about not having to work, or about starting some kind of consulting thing that would allow me to work part-time and mentally treating my job as a necessary evil. In addition to validating my choice/reality, The Feminine Mistake has allowed me to feel at peace with and even inspired by my career. If you are a working mom looking for a little validation/ encouragement/ inspiration or you are about to be a mom and are struggling with the work/stay home decision, I do recommend giving this book a read. If you’re not working, I think it would be a little (a lot) hard to take, but I would be very interested in hearing your opinions and whether or not it changed your views on or plans for working.

Yourami April 17, 2008

I am just back from my first business trip in about five years, and my first nights away from Gatito since he was born. I spent less than 24 hours in Alabama, where I stuck out like a sore thumb, but can I just tell you? I would pick up that accent in two weeks, guarantee you. Then less than 24 hours in Miami, but I *did* get to dip my toes in the ocean. I’d never been there before– it was gorgeous. A has a thing against Florida (I actually think he has never been?) but I would love to go back for a vacation.

I told Gatito I was going to Miami and he said, “You’re going to your ami?” Later, when A told him I was in Miami he said, “No! It’s Mommy’s ami!” He’s funny.

It wasn’t too bad being away from him, mostly because he was home with A, so I didn’t have to worry that he was scared or sad, the way I would if A and I went on vacation and left him. We also were able to talk on the phone and we sent each other cell phone videos a couple of times. Technology is really amazing, isn’t it?

It was great to get home and see him yesterday, though. He and Tata had made me a “Bienvenidos” poster and I got a terrific, huge hug. I’m hoping not to have to travel much in this job– my boss told me once/year before I accepted, but I am starting to see this is probably not going to be the case. I have some choice, but in some cases it will make the difference of how well I can do my job, so we will see.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been, but I have a couple of posts stored up in me, so stay tuned.

Dog person April 9, 2008

I know that we have limited control over our kids’ personalities. I believe that we can influence them to some degree in the daily course of things, and that extreme behavior (e.g., abuse) can cause extreme changes, but I also think we kind of get what we get.

I would not have extended this theory to pets. I always thought that my dad didn’t like cats because his mother hadn’t, carefully ignoring the fact that his sister liked cats just fine. I would think that any child raised in a house with cats, barring any major incidents, would be a cat person.

Do you see where this is going? My child, whose very pseudonym means cat, is not what I would call a fan. While visiting children are desperate to see the kitties, Gatito is constantly ordering away: “Don’t go on my road!” he tells Crazy when he lies down on his road rug. “Get Hippo down!” he demands, when he is joined on the window seat at the kitchen table.

But we went into a pet store this weekend* and the kid was hooked on the dogs. Could hardly drag him out of there. Help! My son is a dog person!**

* Yes, yes, puppy mills, I know. Our cats are rescued and I would never buy any animal when there are so many in need of homes at the shelters. I only went in to entertain the kiddo as we strolled through Manhattan.

** I like dogs okay, but I wouldn’t want the responsibility of caring for one full-time. If my next door neighbor had a dog that I could take for walks or runs once a week, that would be perfect!

100 April 8, 2008

92 years ago, my grandmother made a best friend on the Lower East Side. They remained great friends until my grandmother died about ten years ago.

I was never close with my grandmother, who spent all the years that I knew her caring first for her ailing husband and then for her ailing sister and was left with little energy to devote to her grandkids.

But when A and I moved to Brooklyn ten years ago, we were right down the street from her friend. This woman was never able to have children, though she is close with her sister’s children. We started to visit, and she became, in many ways, like a grandmother to me.

She is in amazing shape. She lives in the same apartment she’s been in for forty years and it has only been for the last couple of years that she’s had someone live there with her, though it is far from round-the-clock care. (The person has never been there when we visit on weekends, for instance.) Her only limitations are that she needs a walker and a hearing aid. She is 110% mentally present, still reads the NY Times every day, and still has strong political opinions. She was an active Commie back in the day, even going on several state tours of the U.S.S.R., and the only fight she and my grandmother ever had was over Communism.

Last weekend, along with family and friends from across the generations (and even the borough president, who dropped by and gave a speech), I had the privilege of attending her 100th birthday party. It is mind-boggling to contemplate all the change that she has seen in a century, through two world wars, the Depression, the rise and fall of Communism, the popularization of cars, the invention of television, computers, and a front-row view from her balcony just across the river of 9/11.

She has also lived through the loss of her entire generation of family and friends– everyone she knew and was once close with– and has effectively been old for three decades. It’s weird to contemplate. People in my family do not tend to live nearly that long, and I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a blessing or a curse. I know, however, that if my grandmother’s friend hadn’t lived this long, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get to know her, and that my life would have been immeasurably poorer for the loss.

Sleep deprived April 7, 2008

I will just say… it does not take much to send me into sleep-deprived paranoia. I slept restlessly for a few hours last night because I had to pee so badly, but I kept putting it off because I was too tired to get up. Finally, after several dreams of sitting on a toilet (every time this happens I marvel at the fact that I did not actually wet the bed), I lurched tiptoed sleepily down the hall to the bathroom… only to wake the kid.

ARGH! Gatito started crying and begging, “Please!” until A got up and brought him into bed with us. I don’t know how co-sleeping parents do it. It was nice to have him snuggling in my armpit for a while, but we didn’t get a restful sleep and he woke up an hour earlier than usual. I already hadn’t been feeling great the night before, but by morning I was a wreck.

Today at work, after a few hours of feeling dizzy, I started to think that the only time I ever feel dizzy is when I am pregnant. The timing doesn’t make any sense. For one thing, we’ve been using protection and for another I just had my period last week. If somehow that was not my period, it was a lot of blood that would not be a good sign for a pregnancy.

But once the idea took hold, I couldn’t let it go, so off I went to the drugstore. Unable to wait till I got back, I peed in the bathroom at the Chinese restaurant next door, then carried the pee stick back to the car and peered at it at stop lights all the way back to the office. It was a snowy white negative. Whew. Just tired and maybe a little sick. Does make me wonder how the heck I think I could manage the sleep deprivation of a newborn, though, if I’m lucky enough to have another child, but not lucky enough to get one that’s as good a sleeper as Gatito was!

Business school lessons April 6, 2008

When I started business school seven years ago, I, like some of my classmates, was there to get the credentials required to further my chosen career. I had lost my job in the dot-com bust and every job I was interested in said “MBA required.” Other classmates were coming from jobs outside the business world, most frequently from engineering, and saw an MBA as a way to change and grow their career opportunities. Many people were there to escape jobs they hated in consulting, banking, or marketing. And for every person looking to get out of those fields, the most common paths for MBA grads, there were five looking to get into them.

We were all doomed, I realized, right from the beginning.

This weekend I went to my five year business school reunion, and I found that things had worked out pretty much as expected. Most people there felt the way I do about my job: they like it okay, but it’s just a job: they’re not especially excited to get out of bed every morning. The notable exception was my classmate who followed his passion and became an indie film producer. He hasn’t made any money yet, but his film was just purchased by MTV, so he is headed in the right direction.

(I am proud to say that he claims that my support of his career choice when we were in business school was very influential! He also says that I look even better now than I did then, so it was fun talking to him all the way around.)

So here is what I would say to anyone considering business school: It’s a great thing to do if you want to continue your career or are looking for an entree into corporations, consulting, or banking, and it will help you make anywhere from decent to unbelievable money. But following your passion, if you have one, is a more likely route to happiness.

Because I never found a true passion, I am saved from career regrets. I only kinda sorta had interests in graphic design and film editing, for instance. I’m not ecstatic about going to work every day, but I have learned to be grateful to have job that is intellectually challenging, pays decently (though a pittance when compared with some of my classmates in finance), and leaves me enough time for my true loves: Gatito and A. (Cheeseball sentiment, but true through and through.)

As it turns out… April 2, 2008

As it turns out, the flood of second pregnancy announcements is starting to get to me, particularly the ones with the September due dates. I am back to the place where I resent people who never had a lick of trouble. It is like they are on one side of this giant invisible fence and I am on another. During the ectopic saga, one friend, who is pregnant with her second, actually asked me why they could not simply move the embryo from the tube to the uterus. Ach. That some people can get through pregnancy while maintaining such ignorance, maintaining this sense that problems with reproduction are for other people, is really galling at the moment.

If I could just know that I will not be able to have another child, I think I would be okay with that now. Gatito is healthy and smart and gorgeous and amazing, and we could have a really nice life just the three of us. He’s an easy-going, relatively low maintenance (for a two-year-old) child and life is pretty simple and happy right now. We could be– no, we are– a fabulously happy family of three. The problem is that once I launch back into trying to conceive next month, I know I will lose this perspective to the desperate, emotional desire for another baby. If I just stopped right now, I could save myself a lot of potential angst and just continue to focus on enjoying the family I have now.

In freakout mode again today, as I considered the timing implications, I realized that I’m so set on trying in May that my stomach got all knotted when I realized that, depending on what the ultrasound says, I may not even be able to try until June. And that’s assuming that my ovaries neatly alternate ovulating which, who knows? I’m considering going in for an ultrasound next week instead. If I’m actually ovulating on the opposite side from last time, I don’t see why I’d need to wait for a second period. (I would ask the doctor’s opinion, of course.) I don’t know if I’m mentally ready, but perhaps that, too, is for the best.