Anxiety Is Not Just Me

I recently came across a passage from one of my favorite pregnancy/parenting books that I thought I would post as a way to suggest the title to anyone in search of such. The book is from the hips: a comprehensive, open-minded, uncensored, totally honest guide to pregnancy, birth, and becoming a parent by rebecca odes and ceridwen morris. (They used all lower case on the cover for title and author.) Here is the passage:

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the anxiety trap?

In her book A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear, author/psychotherapist Janna Malamud Smith suggests that our society actually cultivates mothers' anxiety. Anxiety serves a purpose, she says, making mothers focus all their energies on worrying about their children instead of advocating for universal healthcare or otherwise making a nuisance of themselves. In other words, anxiety preserves the status quo. And when mothers bear so much of the burden of responsibility for their kids' welfare, they also bear the biggest burden if their children get sick or hurt or die. So they're trapped into obsessive vigilance--for fear of the ultimate punishment. Where does the basic desire to protect our children end, and the culturally induced paranoia begin? It's hard to say. We can't necessarily avoid the worries, but being aware of the forces at work may help to put them in perspective.

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In addition to this particular passage that seems to speak to me now with my 9-month-old soundly asleep for her afternoon nap, this book works well as a basic guidebook during pregnancy and the first months. The book that I would happily talk you out of buying: that tome that just about anyone can name, What to Expect When Are Expecting by Heidi Murkoff. It is filled with just the anxiety and fear-inducing stuff that Malamud Smith warns about.

Now, it is time for me to get out there and advocate for stroller accessible public transportation in Boston. And univeral healthcare. And such.

Thanksgiving '08

This year I decided to cook my family's Thanksgiving meal. This may just be the first time that we have stayed home without guests or extended family. Of course it was the first time that Miss IzaB. joined our family gathering.

Thanksgiving is an American holiday. You come to appreciate this when you are married to a non-American. (Well, technically now he is a citizen.) Outside the U.S. turkey and mashed potatoes do not conjure ineffable childhood associations of excitement, wonder, and the comfortable bewilderment of a family gathered to feast late in the afternoon. Thanksgiving foods, quite bluntly, are bland. True, the butter factor does add a savory afterglow. Yet even when the turkey is exceptional, it is decidedly not sexy. At all. Nor are you after second helpings.

So I decided to explain to my non-American this way: it is like a dinner party you through just for your family. You know, you clean the house--even running the vacuum beneath the couch cushions. You plan the menu and write up a shopping list, starting at least a few days in advance. You buy all the best ingredients and cart them home. You set the table with the best stuff you have in the house, transforming your everyday dining table into an image of domestic order and splendor you hardly recognize. There has to be some form of bubbly drink, sparkling water with a lemon afloat will serve just fine. There should be courses: soup, main, and dessert, at least.

You are required to shower and take off your sweatpants. (Well, sweatpants might pass as long as from the table up you are not in leisure wear.) Remember, this is a dinner party and you want to show up looking like you appreciate all the effort being exerted in your honor. Sure you only had to travel a flight of stairs, but your journey to the table has really been taken together through the past year since the last time you shared a Thanksgiving meal.

You are carefully pleasant to one another, as well as gently direct if need be. You talk about something other than: what you had for lunch, your gastrointestinal health, and what you are doing tomorrow.

You exhibit outright delight in the food that you and your loved ones, your generous hosts, have lovingly prepared.

This, then, is the way I might have explained what Thanksgiving dinner should be if I had had the wherewithal to compose such an analogy extemporaneously at the dinner table. As it was, I managed a table cloth and three humble courses. I whittled my parent's traditional feast down to the Thanksgiving essentials. The side dishes of butternut squash and candied yams become my first course: a soup culled from the New York Times. (See below.) It was healthy. Then I served turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and brussel spouts. Pumpkin pie from Athan's bakery followed. Notice: no mashed potatoes. (And my family will notice, no dumplings. Without dumplings, what is the point of mashed potatoes?) Later my husband would pronounce this omission a mistake. I was fine with it.

While we had a fine lunch, it still was not a Thanksgiving lunch. Essentials are simply not enough. Roasting a turkey breast is not the same as having a stuffed bird. There is not nearly enough drama in the roasting or in the presentation. You need excess. You need to have a reason to practice restraint. You need to be tempted by that extra slice of pie or else you simply feel full and not satiated. You need at least one person to get huffy and slam a door.

There is always next year. My parents have had almost fifty years to build their Thanksgiving repertoire. I hope my own version will develop the same depth over the years. I'll keep the soup. I like the idea of a soup course to lengthen the time at table. But there will be dumplings and potatoes, and Grandma Schamber's meat dressing too. Not to mention warm rolls and butter. And gravy. You just have to have gravy with lumps. And that is where the dinner party analogy finally breaks down. With your family, you are allowed to have lumps and pour it on thick.

Sweet Potatoe and Butternut Squash Soup:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/health/nutrition/20recipehealth.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
I served it with buttered whole wheat toast cubes and a sprig of thyme.

Notes After Japan

I recently traveled to Japan with my 9-month-old daughter, stepson, and husband.

Of note:

Having arrived home less than 8 hours ago, I have already forgotten the sheer physical angst (yes, physical angst) of an infant in meltdown on a plane. Poor girl. Night and day suddenly become day and night and she is literally turned inside out upside down. Rubbing her blue eyes, rimmed with red and dark half moons beneath. She cries. She can't sleep. She can't nurse. She just cries. Yes, I have forgotten the tears (hers and mine). The amazing thing is how she rebounds. Desperation at noon, flirty smiles for passengers five minutes later.

Having eaten sushi at The Source, the Fish Market in Tokyo, I have to admit: I am more of a Kobe steak girl. I just can't quite bring myself to relish in the cold flesh that is sushi. I don't dislike it. But deep down it oogs me out just a bit. I am okay with a rare, bloody steak. But raw fish somehow just doesn't satiate me. I'll keep trying.

The Japanese are precise, polite, and polite. Yes, polite times two.

I love the bow. It is so much easier than the awkward, "should I kiss one cheek or two--or not kiss at all" question at stake with European friends. It is simple and deeply reverent still. It has room for humor. It can say it all. On the bullet train between Kyoto and Tokyo the conductor would turn to the entire car and bow before exiting. Each time she entered and exited. It injects a bit of Zen into each day. This must be healthy.

On every corner: vending machines with drinks.

I love the bento box. Cubicles of foods I can't name. A surprise in every lacquered square.

FYI: pregnant ladies in Japan eat sushi. (BTW pregnant ladies in France drink red wine and eat unpasteurized cheese.)

Tokyo is clean. Spotless. Shiny, especially at night. And yet you can not find a garbage can to save your life. There are recycling bins. But what to do with a dirty diaper?

Speaking of diaper changes, the Japanese have excellent baby changing facilities in the department stores. The best I have seen.

Places we visited:
Kyoto: Daisen-in Zen Garden at Daitoku-ji and Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavilion);
Nikko: Tosho-gu Shrine and Nikko Edo Village;
Tokyo: Tsukiji Fish Market, Roggongi area, the Imperial Palace, National Diet Building, Ginza area--high end shopping, The Sony building, Akihabara--the several blocks of high-tech wares and anime products galore, and Takeshita-dori (to see the funky teen scene).

We mastered the metro.

Number of times we were stopped because a local Japanese person wanted to take Izabella's picture: once.

The gifts: the giving of gifts, small symbolic items, is automatic. For the Japanese. For us it caused a bit of strife. What to give? To whom? When? Do we unwrap in front of them? But it is a tradition that reinforces gratitude. Words inevitably fail. A small gift can speak your kindest intentions even when your words fumble.

I turned 34 years of age while in Tokyo. I got a kiss and chocolates.

Truth: I did have a gathering moment in a Starbucks. I needed to nurse the baby and was too tired to nurse in the Ergo while walking. You should know: there is no decaf option available for espresso drinks (at the one Starbucks we visited).

Number of times we were interviewed by the local press: once. (We looked clueless and were holding a cute baby = perfect subjects for an evening news spot about tourists.)

We learned that you do not need to tip. We left a small tip after our breakfast the first morning. The patroness literally ran after us on the street to return it. Later we asked a Japanese friend and we were told that there is no habit of tipping in restaurants or even cabs.

We hauled the stroller all the way there. Times we used it: once.

The shopping in Tokyo: endless. Yet we managed only to buy a few souvenirs for family and nothing for ourselves. It was overwhelming. Besides we had *ahem* over packed for the week. (Our arrival required an entourage to assist with luggage.)

True story: I missed dinner two nights in a row because Iza decided that it was bedtime at 5 or 6 pm local time. (I was so tired that I went to sleep with her both nights.) After missing two dinners, I ate three sandwiches for lunch. Three.

If you leave a disposable plastic baby spoon or cup in a restaurant, you will be chased down and have it returned to you nicely cleaned.

Iza sat up for the first time all on her own. She did it my starting on her belly and pushing back into a seated position. She was quite delighted.

Iza also managed to do the work of breaking a new tooth. Hooray! Total teeth: two.

In the end, regarding Japan....

Conclusion: more, please. The question, when?

Pleasure

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The Pleasure Principle

Little ones are created in pleasure. Our bodies are designed to feel physical and emotional pleasure exactly in the act that has procreative potential. Otherwise, why do it over and over? We are biologically programmed to return again and again to the sex act. We might as well revel in the moment and its fruits, namely, our little ones.

There are some parenting schools of thought that have forgotten the pleasure principle in raising the tiny baby who comes into the world a bundle of nerves, more sentient than conscious. The phrase "schools of thought" should be a red flag. The tendency is to succumb to the intellect in the effort to do the best for the child's sake. Instead of our reason, I think the center of parenting practice in those initial months should be the element of pleasure.

Those hot little infant bodies are designed to nestle on a mama's or tata's chest. A woman's breasts are designed to enable her to lie down and feed her little one in the comfort and relaxation of a shared bed. The complex cocktail of a mama’s hormones released at the birth compels her body to protect and celebrate a little body that is her flesh incarnate. (I was a mama ape as I cradled my baby in my arms and buried my nose deep into her crevices. Her hair, fiercely dark and mohawkish, was oily from my touch.) The baby is not a separate entity delivered by fairy tale stork. It is her and her partner's flesh. The mother recognizes that the being of the child is utterly part of her and entirely new. The baby is perfect because it is a perfect expression of pleasure.

It gives me pleasure to sleep with my baby. The first few weeks she slept skin-to-skin on my chest, our bare flesh touching at our hearts. I did this because she was not able to latch and nursing looked like it might be impossible for us. Those were some of the most difficult times I have ever faced and yet now I grateful that her inability to latch gave me permission to hold her so close. This initial bond made it seem natural to sleep with her and to carry her in a sling as much as possible. The idea of her sleeping in a separate room or even riding for extended periods in a baby carriage created cognitive dissonance. It felt wrong. It felt painful for me. Again, the pleasure principle compelled me to be near her both emotionally, which all new parents share, and also physically, which too many parents deny themselves.

And what about the baby? Was I only giving into my own selfish desires to have her near me? Would she have been better off in a crib? There are schools of thought that say just that. I contend the following: NO ONE KNOWS. Especially the experts. And the little ones aren't talking. They are crying. So I have to follow my instincts. My biology compels me to have her near. It compelled me to hear her cries, those newborn cries that were plaintive and wrenching, as just that, cries that directed my actions to go to her and comfort her when she needed it.

Again yesterday another woman "confessed" to me that she still sleeps with her three-year-old daughter. Her pediatrician husband is embarrassed about it. But she isn't. She said that she looks forward to sleeping with her each night. I have heard several moms confess that they have "given in" and taken a nap with their little one. It is as if they are afraid that they will spoil their children by giving into what biology directs them to do.

All too soon they will sleep alone. Then they will be off to college. I say that part of parenting is giving yourself permission to take pleasure in the nurturing act.

Every child is unique. Every parent and every parenting situation is unique. Thus each household will have its own patterns and make choices that fit their philosophies and lifestyles. There is more than one way to raise a child. Yet I wish that more mommas would give up the crib and settle in for an afternoon nap with a baby who will soon be free to explore the limits of their world with the deep physical knowledge that they have a safe and soft--a pleasurable--place to land. Independence at its deepest is dependence.