rivka

When you're not a first-time mom, midwife visits really sail right past. I think I was in and out of there in fifteen minutes, and I didn't feel particularly rushed.

I met the other new midwife today, a very (!) young Orthodox woman named Bayla. In comparison to the other new midwife, Kate, she seemed more laid back and less by-the-numbers. For example, when I saw Kate at 14 weeks I hadn't started gaining weight yet, and she mentioned that "we like to have you gain 10 pounds by 20 weeks." At the time I was frazzled enough by the spotting and everything that I didn't challenge the idiocy of that statement, although in retrospect I wished I had.

Today, my weight was still right where it's been for the last 10 weeks. Bayla pointed that out, and I explained that I hadn't gained much with Alex (lost 7 pounds, then gained 15) and that I'd still had an 8-pound baby. She asked if I was nauseated and vomiting. I told her I felt fine, but didn't have much of an appetite. She asked me if I thought I was eating well-balanced meals with enough calcium and protein, and when I said yes, she just said "Okay!" and moved on. No mention of "10 pounds by 20 weeks," which at this late date would be impossible anyway.

We listened to Niblet's heartbeat, sounding incredibly strong and sure on the Doppler. Anterior placenta or not, now that my belly has popped the heartbeat is easy to find. I've reached the mathematically cool stage in which the size of my belly (from the pubic bone to the top of the uterus) in centimeters is equal to the number of weeks pregnant I am.

My blood pressure is an impressive 90/66. I'm not spilling any protein or sugar. I don't have any swelling or weird stuff going on. We're going to keep an eye on the pain in my side and back, where my scoliosis scar is. It's been a bit worse since my belly popped, but not at intervention-level yet. Bayla said I could call any time and ask for a referral to physical therapy - I don't have to go through an orthopedist, yay.

There was a med student present for the visit - apparently they rotate through the midwives' office to see some prenatal and well-woman care. What a great idea. It got me thinking about the things, big and small, that I love about the midwifery model. The big things, of course, are the focus on low-intervention births, trusting the birth process, and providing intensive support throughout pregnancy and birth.

But there are little things, too. At my midwives' office, the scale is in the bathroom. Pregnant women weigh ourselves in private, and give the number to the midwife in the consultation room. We also test our own urine for sugar and protein, in private: there are Dixie cups and test strips in the bathroom, and a chart for comparing the test strip result. These are small differences, but they do increase my sense that (a) my dignity is respected, and (b) I am an intelligent person who can be trusted with my own health care.

Alex and I went to "Bug Fest" at the Carrie Murray Nature Center today. We've been a bit disappointed by some of their other events, but oh boy, this was awesome.

The first thing to capture our attention were trays and trays of mounted bug specimens. The collection tended towards the Big And Impressive: stick insects eight inches long, giant scarab beetles, tons of showy South American butterflies. There were plenty of things we'd never seen before - especially not from a close-up, feel-free-to-touch-the-case perspective. My favorite were some three-inch scarab beetles that had huge protruding horns in front, as long as (or longer than) their whole bodies. The guy who owned the collection was there, and he did a great job of answering questions in a way that was neither condescending nor inaccessible.

Alex got her face painted to look like an incredibly elaborate butterfly. It's really striking. She looks gorgeous.

There were also a number of displays of living insects and spiders. At one end of the room were large habitats holding caterpillars, chrysalises, and butterflies. It was really neat to see all stages of the life cycle in one place. Another table had a couple dozen small habitats. We saw different species of preying mantises, lots of beetles, several different kinds of spiders, stick and leaf insects, and a few kinds of roaches, including Madagascar hissing cockroaches. (Ick.)

The last display was set up by a woman who had brought in her own collection. She had two different kinds of caterpillars, including one with striking facial markings on its back (to fool predators) and another that was large and covered with spikes. She brought the caterpillars out and let the kids hold them, which was very exciting. She also had mounted specimens of what they would metamorphose into, which was cool to see. And! She had a habitat with some Vietnamese stick insects, and she brought them out and let us hold them, too. The adult specimen was a good four inches long. It crawled all over Alex's hands and arms. I was fascinated to learn that the stick insect also feels like a stick - rough to the touch. Holding the stick insect was the highlight of the day for me.

There was going to be insect eating later, but we decided to leave before that happened.

I was interested to note that about 80% of the kids there were girls. And these weren't just girls being dragged along to something educational by their parents - several had brought in their pet bugs or specimens they'd caught in their yards, and they were jockeying for a chance to hold the crawly critters and sharing bug facts with great excitement. It seems like people think of bugs as such a stereotypically "boy" interest, but that certainly wasn't in evidence at Bug Fest.

Sadly, we haven't replaced our stolen camera yet. Because some of those pictures would've been really cool.

Via Bitch, Ph.D.:

When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the town charged rape victims for the cost of collecting evidence.

While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams.

In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer, Fannon said.

Fannon is the guy who was hand-picked by Palin to be police chief after she fired the incumbent because, as a member of her staff explained to ABC News, "we needed people with new energy and a new vision."

People, apparently, who don't want the poor overburdened taxpayer to have to pay for the police to do their damn jobs. At least, not when it came to dealing with some slut who went and got herself raped - because apparently burglary victims got their evidence collected for free.

Remember how, on Tuesday, I was a little worried that I hadn't yet started to show?

Yesterday my belly ached. Not cramps or stabbing pain or anything, just a fretful ache and a tender, oversensitive feeling. And this morning? I tried to put on the jeans I wore on Tuesday and found that the button and buttonhole were a good two inches apart.

Looks like I popped.

Today is Alex's first day of school. It doesn't seem that momentous, because she spent the summer going to "camp" at the same place, but I think there actually are program changes. For example, she had to sign herself into class this morning by making a mark next to her name on a whiteboard. And this is the year they start the traditional nursery school thing of having daily jobs, like "line leader," "door holder," "fish feeder," "calendar person." Alex is starting to be very, very conscious of herself as a big kid (hilariously, she refers to the kids in the two-year-old room, the one she just left, as "babies"), so I think she'll love the extra responsibility.

She's a Yellowbird this year. It was fun to walk into the classroom and see most of the kids wearing yellow clothes for the first day of school. (The Redbirds, who were lined up in the hall when we arrived, had 100% participation... but then, there are a lot more red clothes out there.) Alex wore a bright yellow dress with white polka dots, and practically flew into the classroom. She looked so adorable and happy that I forgave her for wanting to wear a dress I had to iron.

I don't really know her primary teacher that well, but my impression is that she is no-nonsense and loved. We met for a 15-minute conference on Thursday, and two things pleased me: (1) when I told her that Alex never naps, she immediately said, "We'll put her cot in the Manipulatives corner, where she'll be right next to shelves with puzzles and small toys." (2) "If she comes in wearing shoes she can't run or jump in, I'm sending her home. Other teachers say that, but I will do it."

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You know, sometimes I think I'm a good, creative, resourceful parent, and sometimes I am just awestruck by how dumb I am. See, getting out the door in the morning is a constant battle for us. Our normal pattern on school days has been that Alex wakes up, we cuddle or read a bit if there's time, she eats breakfast in her pajamas while watching her one video of the day (while I shower and/or eat breakfast), and then I scramble to get her dressed and sunscreened and shod and out the door, at the last minute. The last bit with the ramped-up pace sometimes works, but more often she goofs off (running away from me, hiding her head so I can't put a shirt over it) or complains (I want to wear something else... I want to find a toy to take to school... I want a home lunch today...) and I wind up losing my patience. Every. School. Day.

So this morning, right after she woke up, I got her dressed. I sunscreened her and put on her sandals before I made her breakfast. She didn't fight me because she was sleepy and wanted orange juice and a video. When she was done with her breakfast, all we had to do was walk out the door. It was totally yell-free.

Easy, right? Obvious solution, right? So how come it took me literally months and months of being a shouty, time-pressured, frustrated, impatient mother in the mornings, before I hit on this idea? Instead I kept fixating on "I need to wake her up earlier," which never works, because (a) it means I have to get up earlier myself, and hello, pregnant, and (b) when I wake her up she is sluggish and needs to be cuddled and read to and so forth before she's up for going downstairs.

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I leave you with a final Alex quote, from yesterday:

"I want to sit next to you on the radiator." She looks up at me confidingly. "Don't you like to have part of the radiator in your buttcrack?"

(For those of you unaccustomed to old-fashioned heating systems, our radiators look like this).

I hang out with really intelligent, clueful people. Which is excellent.

The problem is that it distorts my sense of my wider social environment, and then threads like this one come as a nasty surprise.

james_nicoll linked to the Con Anti-Harassment Project (Read their FAQ), which aims to encourage SF and media cons to develop clearly-articulated sexual harassment policies. And within, no kidding, three comments, we hit "lol, women who go to cons are too fat and ugly to harass."

And it goes on from there, although that's probably the pinnacle. The rest of the predictable responses just make me tired: cons will become a Kafkaesque nightmare in which anyone and anything can be threatened with punishment; aren't the poor defenseless accused the real victims; if women would only call the cops/respond with physical violence, there wouldn't be any problems and we wouldn't have to think about this stuff, so why have a con policy.

This is where I feel as though I should insert a brilliant incisive feminist rant that simultaneously heartens the embattled, illuminates the clueless, and crushes the assholes utterly. But you know what? I'm too tired and disgusted to manage it.

If a community is threatened by the very proposition that women's bodies are their own, and not to be infringed upon - if simply spelling out the right to be sexually left alone is seen as a dangerous impingment on community enjoyment - then what the fuck am I even doing there?

Sincere thanks to everyone who weighed in on Alex's question. It struck me as such an unusual question - not "what happened" but "who else thinks about what happened" - that I really wanted to get an answer for her. I wanted her to get a glimpse of the whole world of intellectual curiosity out there. So thanks especially to those of you who mentioned the other aspects of dinosaurs that you think about.

It's a weirdly meta question for a three-year-old, isn't it? I clarified it with her a couple of times, to make sure that she wasn't just asking for a recap of the meaning of "extinct" or the asteroid explanation. No. She really did want to know whether other people thought about the topic. I read her every response, and she enjoyed them.

Now my biggest problem is explaining to her that many people in our social circle - particularly her friends at school - don't have an LJ, and therefore haven't weighed in on her question.

So that we don't end on such a rarified note, let me share with you an unexpected simile she came up with in one of our other scientific conversations of the day: "So the colon is like a waiting room for poop, and the bladder is like a waiting room for pee."

That's my kid.

Alex would like to know: "Who else thinks about how did the dinosaurs die?"

If you are someone who has, at times, thought about how the dinosaurs died, it would be nice if you could leave a comment that has a picture of your face so that I can show Alex who you are.

Michael got in to see his father last night. He apparently looks like hell, and is continuing to run fevers they're not fully able to control, but he was conscious and in his right mind. And very, very surprised to see Michael walk into the room.

In an exceedingly typical Michael's-father move, he suggested that Michael should have waited a few days to visit, so he'd be back on his feet and able to do things. Uh huh.

So he's not dead, which is what both of us had been thinking during the long stretch of no news. But he's still pretty sick.

This is a different hospital from the last one where we visited Michael's father in the ICU. They apparently have liberalized visiting rules, so Michael will be able to see a fair amount of his father today. Yay.

Alex and I are doing fine. She painted a get-well picture for her Poppy, and another one that's a coming-home picture for Michael.

This is probably a shocking confession coming from an American - especially one who lived in the midwest for five years - but until today I had never been to a state or county fair. I didn't grow up in a fair-going family, and I don't tend to like thrill rides, so I never really saw the point.

But, you know. We looked at the Maryland State Fair website, and it was impossible to deny that Alex would love it. Plus, it was on the light rail, so we wouldn't even have to drive. So we went for it. It turned out to be a great experience for all three of us.

Rides are expensive. We went on three rides, and it cost a total of $30. Alex rode the flying elephants with Michael (and loved it) and the carousel with me (mixed reaction - the carousel at the zoo is better). Then all three of us rode the 100-foot-high ferris wheel. I had never been on such an enormous ferris wheel before. It was amazing. Not only could you see the whole fair, you could also see a large portion of the surrounding countryside. Alex was technically five inches too short to ride, but fortunately the guy running the ferris wheel didn't give a damn.

The coolest stuff was happening in the Cow Palace, though. They had a Birthing Center set up in one corner. We were looking at chicks hatching in an incubator when a University of Maryland animal science student let me know that a cow was giving birth right then. So we made our way over to a large pen with bleacher seating surrounding it, and damned if there wasn't an animal tech narrating, "Okay, I can see the calf's nose..." We found seats, and ten or fifteen minutes later there was a wet, bedraggled calf lying on the straw. It was amazing. You could come up to within five feet of the mother and baby, and you could see everything. (I heard many hesitant conversations around me in which parents tried to explain the concept of "the afterbirth" to their kids. Because it was hanging out of the back end of the cow, that's why.) We watched the mother licking and licking the calf as it struggled to stand. Nearby were pens with an extremely pregnant cow and a day-old calf and its mother. I had never seen an animal giving birth before. What a neat experience!

Not far from the birthing center was a milking demonstration. For a dollar, Alex got to spend a couple of minutes hand-milking a Guernsey cow. A group of very kind, very elderly farmers ran the booth. They had one stool set up on each side, so two people at a time got to squirt some milk into a pail. We'd talked about "milk comes from cows" before, and the fact that all mammals make milk for their babies to drink, and then in the birthing center I showed her the cow's udder and explained that it was full of milk for the baby calf to drink. But still, until she pulled on the udder and actual milk that looks like what we actually drink came out, I think Alex had no real understanding of milk production. She was amazed.

On the way out, they gave her a frosty 8oz bottle of milk to drink. I thought that was a nice touch.

We spent a bunch of time by the horse ring, too. What I liked about the fair was the close-up immediacy of the animal areas. Animals at the fair are there to be shown, and the animal areas are set up for the convenience of the people showing animals. There was very little in the way of fences and barriers to keep the public at a distance. So when we wandered into the horse section, horses were ridden by just a couple feet away from us. We leaned up against the fence of the practice corral, watching the riders, for a while, and eventually sat down near the show ring and watched some teenaged girls jumping. It was a good time.

There were pig races. It was every bit as corny as it sounds, and yet kind of fun.

Also? There was a food booth run by the Maryland Watermen's Association, and so I had a soft-shell crab sandwich for lunch. Add your own lettuce-tomato-mayonnaise, and the tomatoes had obviously been grown on someone's farm rather than coming from the supermarket. They were INCREDIBLE. I put some on my sandwich and another pile next to my sandwich, and the lady running the booth just beamed at me and didn't say a word.

I just got a peek into the Home Arts building, because I was the only one in the family who was interested. If I'd had more time, I would have loved to look at all the needlework. I was surprised to see a cross-stitch that I recognized - it was the project I did before my current one. I had no idea that you could enter something you made from a kit, in a fair contest. I would've expected that they would require original designs, or something.

So: the fair was a great time. Consider me a convert.