My ovaries, my self

I'm feeling very grumpy and claustrophobic today. El Presidente is kicking out the U.S. ambassador, alleging coup plots from every corner, doing his damnest to bring the Georgian/Russian war to the Caribbean and saying to hell with all gringos. Our house in Houston might not have a roof on it tomorrow afternoon. AND my doctor reprimanded me for eating too much in the last month.

So the doctor told me, in front of my husband and a visiting medical student, that judging from a 5-kilo weight gain in the last 4 weeks, I was eating too much and helpfully recommended that instead of ducking into the ice cream shop every time I have a craving to eat a banana. My obsessive eating tends towards gobbling down entire bags of jalapeno chips or chunks of cheddar at 10pm but whatever.

Then the assembled group-apparently it take a village of wise men to usher a woman through pregnancy and make sure she's doing it right- debated whether I can travel on a plane for a trip I would like to make around the end of October or about 6 weeks before d-day. A whole doomsday scenario unfolded in which labor begins mid-flight and brings down the wrath of airline officials and embassy officials on all the irresponsible men who allowed a woman to travel in such a delicate state.

I just barely refrained from ending the conversation with an abrupt Look I'll sign a piece of paper promising to not blame you if anything should happen as a result of my stubborn willfulness.

No such paper will be necessary, though signatures- not A signature but signatureS -will be required if I decide to go ahead and get my tubes tied right after delivery. Apparently in Venezuela, my husband has ultimate authority over whether I have kids again or not. The act of marrying him, it would seem, gives him ultimate oversight over my innards.

God's proclamations and an easily undone civil contract aside, I dare say I have a more personal and permanent relationship with my ovaries than he does and therefore immediately chafe at the idea that altering them in anyway requires someone else's signature.

Posting of a reader's comment to earlier breastfeeding entry

Below is a comment one of this blog's fine readers posted in response to my entry about breastfeeding. Unless you're really zealous about keeping up with my blog (which I would love to think some of you are) you would likely miss it and that would be a shame. I've only made two changes, substituting where she wrote her daughter's name with the words "my daughter."

So does breastfeeding make our children smarter, healthier? Who the hell knows, but I certainly like to think so. I will tackle healthier first. I breast fed my daughter for the first year of her life. She is now over two and has been sick one time. Could be a coincidence, yes, but I will certainly take all the credit for that and will pat myself on the back and feel a great sense of pleasure that perhaps my sacrifice was worth it and really did help my little one to be so healthy.

All of those early days of chapped nipples and the months of waking through the night for feedings and the eternity of locking myself in a closet at work with a breastpump and the funny days traveling through airport security with a breastpump with most security guys either asking what it is or just blushing trying not to look at my insanely large, milk filled chest.

I remember one day in particular, I flew one morning to South Texas for a meeting. Arrived, went to my meeting then back to the airport that afternoon to return home. My breast were simply going to explode. I got through security and went to the end of the terminal hoping to find a more secluded restroom. No one there, great. I closed myself in a stall with a little battery charged pump that was really just useful in emergencies. It buzzed away as it worked (I can almost feel that odd let down sensation just talking about it). Then the door squeaks as someone enters and as my machine buzzed away loudly I could hardly handle the mixture of humor and embarrassment as it must have sounded like a woman in the stall with a vibrator. I still wonder what was going on in the mind of the woman that came through those doors. Anyways, it is hard not to believe that it made a difference.

If you asked my husband he would say that natural childbirth was the key. He swears every wonderful quality about her is all attributed to the natural childbirth. Which I have to say just makes swell will happiness because when I first told him how I planned to give birth naturally in water he was basically terrified! And how I find a new love for him when I catch him having a conversation, with "the guys" of all people about the benefits of natural child birth. Really he will tell just about anyone how much he believes in natural childbirth. It always seems out of character for him to actively engage in such a conversation and I really do love it!The health theory I can't help but believe. Our science has just not been able to duplicate the immunity boosting power of our breasts.

Does breastfeeding make our babies smarter? I tend to think my daughter is incredibly intelligent and really amazes me constantly with her development. But I am not sure I attribute this to breastfeeding. I think this part has more to do with how we raise her than the breastfeeding. My instinct tells me that the correlation between the two is just that mothers who choose to breastfeed also tend to be the ones that take a more active, educated role in raising their children and just happen to be the personalities that will make more personal sacrifices for the good of this child.Oh, I can hear it now. The rumblings bruised egos.

With such a touchy subject, if anyone actually reads this and for whatever reason couldn't or wouldn't breastfeed, someone is going to get all pissy. We've all seen it before in a hundred other blogs, one person said something and everyone takes it as a personal attack. Yeah yeah, that banter is just an energy drain.

Yes, of course there are plenty of women out there that couldn't breast feed or even chose not to and are perfectly good mothers of happy smart kids. However, I can't stop myself from saying, if you chose not to breastfeed in spite of knowing all of the research supporting it's benefits...I will let you fill in the rest.

Hey, I think this is my first blog entry ever!
August 21, 2008 11:28 AM

Me and my "buddy"

My husband's company has a new first lady and she's apparently "enthusiastic...." This bodes ill for me.


In a fit of benevolence, the expatriate-coordinating team at my husband's company has decided to put together a "buddy system" for us trailing spouses. I prefer to conduct most of my personal relationships electronically. I'm not opposed to an e-mail buddy but that, apparently, isn't what the expat team and first lady have in mind.


The first uncomfortable rumblings that something was afoot came a few weeks ago when I got an e-mail saying "Hi! I'm the new coordinator, we're putting together a buddy system. X has arrived and we would like you to spend the afternoon to show her different stores, where you get your nails done, how you change money etc. She's available this Thurs. or Friday."


I'm supposed to tour super markets with this women and they're telling ME when SHE's available. Was I just volunteered- note the passive rather than active verb tense- for a fucking welcoming committee?


I declined apologetically, citing a looming deadline and some departing guests; legitimately mitigating circumstances that did exist but wouldn't have actually hindered me from complying with the request were I a welcoming person. I also sent what I hoped would be a subtle indication that I would never be adequately prepared to buddy up with someone for the afternoon but would also still fulfill my karmic duty to offer assistance to another human being.

I told coordinator that I'm a member of a baby group with a very large e-mail list and that the group served as an information clearing house for many things like what schools are in which neighborhood, doctor referrals etc. and that if new-arrival spouse were interested to please pass my e-mail along and that I would forward her to the group coordinator.

E-mail, e-mail, e-mail, the word was splattered all over my response.

I thought it was the end but it wasn't. This week there was an e-mail from Ms. coordinator-cum-camp counselor to the collective trailing spouse group for "a meeting" to discuss the burgeoning program. AND just in case any of us were going to make up an excuse not to attend the very last line of the e-mail said "new first lady" is "fully supporting" this effort, full of ideas and "very enthusiastic." I.E to any of you wives out there of men who work for her husband, whose entire livelihoods at this point depend on their whims, get your asses over here now.

I've yet again dodged a bullet. I will be out of the country and unable to attend. Another wife, this one much higher up on the pecking order as defined by her husband's position, will also be unable to attend BUT in her stead started a list of pertinent information with contact numbers, referrals etc for just about everything from doctors to bagel deliveries.

Aha! Here was my chance to yet again stress that an electronic body of knowledge to be passed to all newcomers was the best, least-intrusive option and still allowed adults to then carry on with their lives as adults, meeting others by getting involved with their children's schools, or play groups or by attending the once a year company-sponsored "meet and greet" people, where people can pair off as they so choose.

So, again I sent referral information, stressing how "great" it would be to gather a list with all of our collective knowledge that would pretty much cover the entire city and hand it out to all newcomers. I haven't heard anything back.

I'm still trying to figure out why I find the whole thing so plainly insulting. I'm sure that as is my wont, I'm being ridiculous. Perhaps even with a 15-year plus remove, I'm still so scarred by high school and middle school that I inherently recoil at anything vaguely resembling a pep squad.

I say pep squad because I'm sure the intent of the group isn't for me to say 'Hi! Actually, I still hate not having a car, my first 8 months here were an unmitigated, personal hell, thanks to corrupt personal relationships that people in the company's housing department have with local realtors and oh yeah, even though I'm supposed to as per the e-mail, I'm not going to tell you who my money changer is because, though we all do it, HAVE to do it, it's illegal here, and to reveal our money changer is like revealing a cocaine dealer, I can't just tell you his name, I have to get his permission first and anyways, I don't know you and am not really willing to put stress on that relationship because of you so sorry you and your husband just have to figure that one one your own. But hey I'm your buddy Tallulah :) Call me anytime.

No I dare say that's not the buddy system they have in mind.

The only glow I know is spray on....

I was at the beach this weekend. With the kind of confidence and indifference to social standards that comes with age and the forced pragmatism of marriage and motherhood, I proudly displayed my 5-months pregnant and never-quite-recovered- from- the- last- 2- pregnancies body in the type of cute, trendy bikini that has only been designed in the last five years or so as pregnancy became fashionable.

Then I saw the pictures. There were one or 2 perfectly lovely shots that screamed beaming, fertility goddess but the sun, the camera, and my spine had to line up just perfectly to achieve it. Otherwise, the pictures revealed way too intimately what motherhood and aging has wrought on my body.

A more doughy face, lined neckline, increasingly pillowy triceps and by far the worst- completely shapeless, fat-pocked thighs. My first thought, despite years of feminist inculcation and a healthy dose of mostly useless gender theory classes in college-my husband deserves better than this.

Pity set in and I did what I always do when I'm in a bad mood, I tried to pick a fight with my husband. It went something like this.

"Well you noticed me because you thought I was hot, I'm not hot anymore"
"You're beautiful."
"Fine, but I'm not hot anymore and you fell in love with a hot woman."
"I think you're hot."
"I appreciate you saying that but its not possible as I'm quantifiably not hot anymore"
and on it continued with me badgering him, not going to be satisfied until he admitted that yes I cheat on you all the time because you've gotten fat, allowing me to transfer my self-loathing on to him by blaming him for my current, decrepit state.

I said something about the "shallow underpinnings of our relationship" that was based on hot sex with a hot woman and how those underpinnings have been kicked out from under us and so now there's nothing left and what does he have to say about that?

He mumbled something and was soon snoring.

Ok so I'm over it and not hating and blaming anyone but impatient for the weight gaining to end and for the first time in my life very seriously considering plastic surgery.

I'm in the plastic-surgery capital of the world. The women are puffed and buffed to cartoonish proportions, they inspire laughter rather than envy because they're so out of this world BUT it's got me thinking.... Hey just nip here, a tuck there, a lift here. I don't want bigger I just want buoyancy again. And those thighs, can't you just vacuum that shit out??

Here you can get it done at any mall and there's plenty of personal references to make sure you're seeing a real doctor. In a nod to social justice, the services extend all the way to the poor, who can pay on generous installment-plan terms, while middle-class women can win office raffles.

I told another post-baby friend of mine that I was seriously considering partaking in Caracas's services. She immediately knew of what I spoke and said "yeah me too."

Our husbands as handsome as they ever were with maybe just a few more grays, our children, the ones that really glow, with their apple cheeks, their shining eyes and bouncy hair and us, literally deflated.

Life in Caracas....

Ok, ok while I'm still committed to keeping my family's name off the radar, I figured that it was stupid to not refer to Caracas by name as sometimes the city itself and peculiarities of life here is the point.

Kid #1's swim class was cancelled this afternoon. I called the swim teacher several times as it became increasingly clear he wasn't going to show. I was annoyed. I paid him for the month after the first class. Kid was excited asking every five minutes for him. The maid and I both groused that swim teacher could at least call, why don't people ever call, etc.

I got a hold of him finally. A kid, likely meaning teenager or young man, in his family was murdered. A thousand apologies for not calling sooner but would I mind rescheduling for this Friday and oh, please let my friend know that he has to cancel their class as well but will be available Friday if she wants to reschedule.

Um ok, let me make sure I understand, you are unavailable for classes this week until Friday?
Right, exactly.
Ok, thanks. See you then.

Following his lead, not knowing exactly what one says to a relative stranger who says, hey a kid was murdered in my family, can I come Friday, I stuck with the business aspect of the conversation and promised to let my friend know that he's "unavailable."

He sounded no different than the last time we spoke and were discussing whether class would be rained out.

After an hour of splashing in the pool, I came back upstairs. Upon seeing me and the little ones walk through the door, the maids immediately resumed sharing indignities of previous no-shows who inconvenienced them one way or another. A doctor that a day was taken off work to see but never showed up at the clinica, or the telephone guy that never, ever came.

I told them I got a hold of him, some kid in his family was killed, he'll be back Friday.

"ahhhhh yah, aqui uno nunca sabe."

Here, you never know.....

And then we set about cutting up fruits for the kids' snacks.

The tyranny of breast is best....et all

A friend recently was fretting about which kind of breast pump to buy. I won't harp on details but for logistical reasons the heavy duty pump that she has, which is intended to keep professional mothers lactating, has become cumbersome. Hence, which lighter, sleeker model should she get.

I engaged in the conversation, which I've had dozens of times with other mothers in some form or another. But my real response, oh just buy a fucking can of formula.

I'm pregnant for the third time. I will breastfeed this last child but not because I'm looking forward to all those special, bonding moments that apparently only a birth mother and child can share through the unique intimacy of breastfeeding (too bad, so sad I guess for all you adoptive, non-lactating mothers out there.)

No, remembering the demands of breastfeeding actually made me think, "Great, here we go again" as I contemplated that second blue line for the third time in four years. But I do believe in its immunity-boosting effects, -if not claims that it will also create intellectually-superior children who will be free from the scourge of childhood obesity- so I will do it.

That said, I also don't think its the magical elixir that mothers of my generation, or at least my demographic, have elevated it to be. There are entirely too many healthy, intelligent adults out there who still manage to love their mothers despite being bottle fed powder and water that prove otherwise. With this last child I will not go to any great lengths to ensure that it "never" tastes a drop of formula, nor commiserate with or regale other mothers with the superhuman efforts it took to do so.

Of course, as is de rigeur among the privileged set, I not only insisted on breastfeeding but was also slightly pleased that to do so seemed like a cool, political choice. You know, like owning a Prius or buying produce at farmer's markets instead of Albertson's.


I approached pregnancy with the same intellectual zeal as a thesis. I read the same books as everyone else and was wise to all the ways that a misogynist society, insensitive medical establishment and greedy food corporations were conspiring against using the boob for food.


I demanded that the maternity-ward nurses bring my children to me whenever a nipple was needed, making it clear that absolutely no formula should dribble across their newborn lips. I pulled out the boob no matter where we were, slightly upset that noone ever challenged me on it, denying me the lactivist soapbox I was so ready to assume.

And then somewhere along the way, perhaps after listening to and applauding the hundredth mother boasting to what extreme lengths she went to keeping her child chemical free, starting during her organic, Tylenol-free pregnancy, through to the 24-hour excruciating drug-free birth to its all organic nursery that I started to feel like the Rush Limbaugh of mothers.

It felt like a chain saw cutting through your vagina and now you have massive internal bruising?? You know they have drugs to help you with that.

The kid went straight from the boob to a cup?? Cool, I'm sure daddy is really grateful for that.

That's an organic crib set? No, I can't even pretend to think anything other than damn girl you probably overpaid for that.

This obsession, near fetishization of "parenting styles," analyzing everything that goes into a child's mouth, everything that its developing mind watches, planning its nearly every social interaction for maximum social benefit, where is this coming from?

Does it cut across demographics? Does it really produce better adults? Are children benefiting or does it just make the otherwise totally mundane business of shepherding babies to adulthood more interesting for those doing it?

Rejection, rejection, and more rejections.

Well not even rejected. Ignored, is more accurate, and far worse.

So I do my research, I get myself on the press list, I attend mostly boring, hours long presentations, write what I think is a crystal-clear pitch for a story and then I wait and wait.

And unfortunately nothing comes back.

I check e-mails at 7 pm or 10pm, ostensibly to see if whatever friend has replied to whatever issue I've manufactured to keep my inbox lighting up, but really hoping that Editor X of middling-reputation newspaper Y has accepted my blind pitch.

But so far they haven't and I just feel like a huge loser whose professional life is ticking steadily backwards.

Editors did at one time respond, when I was a nearly completely untested aspiring reporter in the Middle East many moons, children and husband ago. I had very few clips to my name, no resume prepared but somehow convinced people that I could get the job done. This despite the fact that I didn't have even high school or college newspaper experience, didn't know what a fucking byline was, much less have one. But blind newspaper queries, internships intended for earnest, J-school graduates, I nailed them.

Nearly a decade later, I'm in a rut with noone to blame but myself. And believe me I have tried to blame others, the brunt of that blame tending to fall on my mostly blameless husband.

To be clear, its not as if I'm doing nothing. I write the occasional story for my former employer, all of which have been very well received. I've scored some very important interviews for a small, niche energy news service. It serves to keep my byline fresh, my clips varied and hopefully employable whenever I get back to the real world, but it is continuation of the same.

I'll be applying for jobs that I was eligible for five years ago. No real breakthrough into anything new. No example of my working shining through on its own, blazing a new path to opportunity.

I have plenty of time on my hands, having outsourced nearly all household duties to others. No longer constrained by a 9-5 job (ahhhh constraining but yet so comfortable), unable to blame the kids for siphoning all my time, I can theoretically pursue whatever I want.

But with the confines of a job stripped away, I'm forced to confront that I'm constrained by nothing but personal drive and talent.