explanation

i live in a bible belt. i won't say which denominations are popular but several are pretty hardcore.

spanking kids is still considered normal here. i was spanked as a kid, even though i don't feel that it helped me at all; in fact, i think it delayed my development. (i am afraid of authority and i'm nonconfrontational to the point of having to be passive-aggressive at times although i've really improved in the last few years.) i could be reasoned with although no one ever took the time to do this.

i'm not criticizing my parents, though. they did what was popular at the time. besides, their brand of spanking was 'lite' compared to the abuse my dad took when he was a kid. incidentally, my parents now say that, if they were to parent all over again, they would not spank.

i do not believe in spanking. i'm into attachment parenting, peaceful parenting, or whatever you want to call it. to me, it's just common sense - to read a baby's/child's cues and to respond appropriately - but apparently i'm in the minority. anyway, whatever. i don't mean to start a debate on that point. i know this is a loaded topic.

my cousin - the one whose baby was due two days apart from my first baby (whom i subsequently miscarried) - posted something on FB about reading the book 'To Train Up a Child' by Debi and Michael Pearl, part of the cohort of 'christian baby trainers' (a kind of christian author who is in favour of rigid schedules, cry-it-out, spanking, etc. - not all christians are like this - see the Sears books on parenting, for instance).

i'm on an anti-pearl FB group because their book amounts to no more than a child abuse manual. if you believe in hitting an infant, go read and follow that book. yep, it's that bad. they are crazies. and their book has sold over a million copies. scary.

here are a few quotations:

-On p.79 they recommend whipping a 7 month old for screaming: A seven-month-old boy had, upon failing to get his way, stiffened clenched his fists, bared his toothless gums and called down damnation on the whole place. At a time like that, the angry expression on a baby’s face can resemble that of one instigating a riot. The young mother, wanting to do the right thing, stood there in helpless consternation, apologetically shrugged her shoulders and said, “What can I do?” My incredulous nine-year-old whipped back, “Switch him.” The mother responded, “I can’t, he’s too little.” With the wisdom of a veteran who had been on the little end of the switch, my daughter answered, “If he is old enough to pitch a fit, he is old enough to be spanked.”

-On p.56 Debi Pearl trades blows with a 2 year old: This time, her bottom came off the couch as she drew back to return the blow; and I heard a little karate like wheeze come from somewhere deep inside.

-The Pearls recommend pulling a nursing infant’s hair (p.7): One particularly painful experience of nursing mothers is the biting baby. My wife did not waste time finding a cure. When the baby bit, she pulled hair (an alternative has to be sought for baldheaded babies).

(thank you to Why Not Train a Child for the quotations.)

my cousin is hugely into this kind of thing. she quotes scripture on it and her interpretations would do the pharisees proud. i know all the references. i grew up in a church like hers. i used to believe in all of that discourse. i don't anymore. i even spent a chapter of my thesis critiquing my culture's beliefs about corporal punishment.

i went in to my bedroom, held my sleeping daughter, and cried. i vowed to her that i will never, ever treat her with anything less than respect and love. i will be hugely firm and consistent with her. i will do my best to teach her how to mother her own children.

i had to say something to my cousin. other people were reading what she said about the book and i had to at least try to protect the innocent children out there whose caregivers might actually read that book because of seeing it on FB. i gave examples of the abusive techniques espoused by the pearls. i called that book out as a child abuse manual and i cited references.

my words incited a FB war. i got laughed at and i was quoted-scripture-at and i was accused (most ironically) of misquoting and misinterpreting. i haven't returned to the conversation to see what else people said. it makes me feel frantic that people would beat their innocent children and babies.

and the implications about myself as a parent ... sigh. apparently i am a terrible parent because i don't believe in spanking my baby for not 'obeying' me (e.g., playing with her food, trying to get out of naps. hello, she is EIGHT MONTHS OLD!). i'm not parenting in a godly manner. and so on.

today my cousin posted more nonsense, including a video of a male preacher going on about spanking. her comment: if you don't spank your kids, you hate them.

i am so sad that anyone would think that about me because i don't believe in spanking. i cherish my precious daughter. she is my gift and my best thing. i love her so much that i'm willing to take the time to guide her with patience and creativity. i want her to grow up to become a vocal, unique, creative, smart, inquisitive, kind, powerful woman. dh and i will NOT raise her to cower in fear of authority (despite how she would have been raised in our culture in the past). and she is going to turn out great and we will be proud of her.

i've ceased to ask where the justice is in all of this. the word 'justice' can't appear logically in any conversation (or monologue, in this case) about infertility, as we all know. i've wanted a baby for a long time. my cousin has a bunch. her last baby is the one i should have had.yep, that's how i feel about it. he should have been mine. she is raising him up in The Way of the Lord. i'm afraid for him and for his siblings and for all other children who are raised to be terrified of their parents and of adults in general. because that's supposed to reflect 'fear of the Lord.' (oh, the painful literalism of the interpretation nearly kills me.)

be afraid. be very afraid.

i hold my daughter even closer and i pray she will never fall prey to the christian baby trainers.

on beating the snot out of a baby/kid

Dr Sears says, "Beware the Christian baby-trainers." Was he ever right.

There are people out there - including relatives of mine, I'm sorry to say - who still believe in beating your kids to show your dominance over them.

And they imply that I'm disobeying God for not doing the same.

I can't elaborate right now because I am too upset.

no longer keeping mum?

for a variety of reasons, i have kept mum (sorry, bad pun) about our IF situation. shame is one of them and i don't really want to get into that in this post, simply for lack of time. another compelling reason is that, in our faith-based community, we would be judged like crazy for having done IVF. another, quite frankly, is that i don't want to be asked about it every two seconds or to be considered the token IVF spokesperson (i don't know any real-life friends or family members who've needed IVF).

however, the trend in the IF blogosphere lately has been to 'come out'(for lack of a better term).

i've been trying, for a few weeks now, to write a commentary on this trend but i haven't been able to get around to it. however, i wanted to share the links on this topic that caught my interest (sadly, this blog appears to have been deleted):

I AM THE FACE movement

What IF?: A portrait of infertility (this is a moving video)

This Woman has a Secret

people with infertility are being IGNORED (a message from RESOLVE)

what we have here is a failure to communicate (great last sentence)

i won't stay silent forever. to me, this is Ninja's story now. when she is old enough, i will tell her everything. she can choose to keep mum or to tell. by then, i will be old enough that perhaps people's opinions won't matter so much to me anymore.

dear baby

Dear Ninja,

I don't think I've ever taken you for granted, not when I first dreamed of you years ago, not when you were swimming in my ocean, not now when you cause me sleepless nights.

I feel cursed because I can't relive the first months I've had with you in my arms. Despite soaking in every moment, it wasn't enough.

People whose babies come along easily do not know what I mean. They look forward to reliving their experiences through the next baby. If they miss a day, it's okay, it doesn't matter because another one will come along.

There's a good chance that there will be no next baby. You are the baby. You are so wonderful, I want another one of you. But the doctor who helped us make you told me that I have only a 15-25% chance with a double transfer.

"Could be 15, could be 25. It's hard to say. It's a crapshoot. All the labs in the city are having problems with FETs. I don't know what our stats will be for this year," he said.

Your dad was taking care of you in the other room; you were crying because you were supposed to sleep and you didn't want to. Your dad says your problem is that we love you too much and that, as a result, you can't bear to be away from us; that's why you can't sleep.

I was shattered. I thought surely our chance would be at least 30%. Even a 'normal' couple gets a 20% chance every cycle. I must have heard wrong. I asked again and the answer stayed the same. (For even the one below-average embryo we transferred a few years ago, I heard 13%.)

Just to attempt this, I have to save at least $2000 for the procedure (plus money for a week's worth of travel for the three of us), wean you, go through more blood tests and ultrasounds, take a week off to fly to the big city, and then endure a dreaded two week wait to find out if we are successful.

The worst part is the weaning. If I were a normal person, I'd let you breastfeed until you decided to wean. I already don't know how I'm going to stop you from nursing, especially at night. And it is a special part of our relationship, no matter how hard it is. Should I stop breastfeeding for a baby who likely will not happen? I'd be short-changing you.

***

What if you ask me for a sibling and I can't give you one?

***

Being pregnant with you was so wonderful. What if it never happens again?

All my regrets from being pregnant. I didn't get maternity pictures done. I was too afraid that photos of my burgeoning belly would jinx everything.

***

Today I was wearing a maternity top I bought a few weeks ago. It works for nursing and it was on sale and so I thought, "In case I do get pregnant again, I'll pull this out in the future, as well." I can't think like that. I took the shirt off.

Went out. Reminders everywhere. Maternity clothes. Creed's song 'Arms Wide Open.'

You and I are supposed to go see my friend tomorrow who is due any day and I don't want to; I don't want to see her belly and hear her complain about her discomfort.

I held you and kissed you at every opportunity. That's nothing new. I do that every day. I tried to be even more conscious about it, though: holding you, kissing you, and knowing that every day with you might be the last one.

Every day is the last, in a sense. Today, for instance, was the only September 15th 2010 in my life that I will ever hold my seven-month-old baby in my arms.

Love,

Mama

writing, birthing, infertility...woman's work

Mel over at the Stirrup Queens wrote a great post comparing infertility to writing/publishing.

To paraphrase: the author John le Carre compares writing to childbirth and, because I'm too tired to elaborate (but I'm sure you can imagine), there are many problems with doing so. Mel ties it up nicely at the end of the post by saying: "Perhaps I am simply bitter because in his analogy, it sounds like having a child is just something you decide to do (such as … oh, writing a book) and we all know that it isn’t quite that simple. Nor is the loss of life quite akin to a few deleted paragraphs." Hear, hear!

By the way: I, being a nerd, had to comment that "it is typical of male writers to compare writing to childbirth. (E.g., Philip Sydney, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope.) Historically, this is a common analogy for men to use even though they have no first-hand experience in the matter." I did graduate work on this topic and, I tell ya, was I ever thrilled to be able to pull out what I learned and apply it to 'the real world.' heehee

Back to the topic at hand. Mel's words resounded in my head. I spent a year of my life writing a thesis on a topic near and dear to my heart. I was pregnant for the last push of writing/defence and it was odd and wonderful to live out the centuries-old analogy between writing/creating and gestation/childbirth.

Everyone says my thesis is immediately publishable (there is nothing out there like it and I know it is good) – and I’m too afraid to do anything with it.

What if 'everyone' is wrong and I fail? A sound rejection would be a BFN, of sorts, and although that would be crushing, at least it wouldn't be as soul-destroying (to me, anyway) as a post-IVF miscarriage.

Plus, time is an issue. My manuscript, while perfectly fine as a thesis, needs major renovations to turn it into a publishable book. That requires blocks of time. On deck is the perennial question: when would I, a woman and a mother, find time to write? (Enter the chorus: commenters such as Christine de Pisan, Virgina Woolf, Tillie Olsen, and millions of other women who have longed to write and create yet are bound to housework and jobs and social obligations.)

I wanted this binding, no pun intended. I knew that having a baby would banish my free time. That came true and I am not sorry. I worked hard to get to where I am and I cherish every day I have with my child. Right now, she is my main act of creation.

Yet, to be pragmatic, I ask myself: when can I get this done? Perhaps I need to wait. But I can't wait too long otherwise my document will have to be overhauled to include new research out there on my topic. I spent so much time on my book. Everything I had went into those words and into getting pregnant. It really is now or never.

When to do this? One of my sisters-in-law said: NAPTIME!

Ha ha ha. Ninja does not do this thing called naps. The most I can get out of her is a 40-minute snooze. By the time I wait 5 minutes to see if she is really asleep, get something to eat, answer the phone, etc., she is awake and she requires my full attention.

Working into the night: also not an option (at least, not yet). Ninja is up often to nurse and it takes hours to get her into bed in the first place.

Baby-sitters are also out of the question, at this point. Ninja is still almost exclusively breastfed and she will not take a bottle. (She is intrigued by the sippy cup but she loses patience with it.)

It is important that I make the effort to publish - my academic work is very important to me. I see I will have to be creative with making time for my project. It's true: a woman's work is never done.

hearing the word 'mom'

Yesterday my baby started calling me Mom. Well, it was more like mahm-mahm-mahm-mahm.

She has been able to say the 'ma' syllable for some time but yesterday was the first time I knew she was connecting it with my body.

Big smile on both our faces. :) I cried a little bit and told her I'd waited a long time for that moment.

update

I haven't updated in a while, for reasons about which I'm still musing.

My daughter is doing well. She is sitting, crawling, and she has even pulled herself up to standing. She is cutting four teeth at once. Her hair needs its first trim. She can hardly bear to be away from me. She hears thunder and thinks it's her daddy walking around in the other room.

To any other (fertile) person, I think she'd be a cross to bear. Does that sound harsh? I don't see her that way but I think a 'fertile' parent would. Her sleep issues are beyond ridiculous (e.g., today she had one 45-minute nap - that's it - and it takes hours to put her to bed, plus she is up at least 5 times/night to nurse). I think she is a lucky little lady to be born to me because, with all I've gone through to get her, I dwell only on her comically beautiful smile.

further proof that the world is unfair

Around 10 years ago, my cousin and her husband were expecting their first child but he was lost - stillborn at 6 months - and my cousin had to have a hysterectomy, to boot. They are living childfree.

Couple of days ago, cousin's husband is in a parking lot and he helps deliver a stranger's baby in the backseat of a car.

Cosmically unfunny. People are writing funny comments all over his Facebook and I just cringed.