How hospitals can encourage breastfeeding

Give new moms gowns with nursing openings, you flipping idiots.

I've only delivered in one hospital that offered this totally obvious necessity. If your hospital gown doesn't have nursing openings, you have to unsnap it at the shoulder to get at the goods. This is nearly impossible to do while you're holding the baby, painful when you're all beat up (strange how one injury can be so broadly incapacitating), and also leaves you completely exposed for the feeding. I know this doesn't bother some people because they email out pictures of themselves doing it. Whatev, man. But I hate it. So I always have to bring my own nursing pjs and wear a hospital gown over them backwards so that every friend who comes to visit and janitor who comes for my trash doesn't get an eyeful. Sheesh.

Analysis

The first couple of years of CSPP were rough. The truth is I'd secretly been hoping I'd inherited an old family heirloom, low fertility, which would give me a comparatively easy ride through this zany confession I got yanked into. Bad Rebekah. Our first two kids were 18.5 months apart. I know there are people whose spacing is even tighter, and I loved our superior babies, but Concordian Sisters are always doing math in their heads. A kid every 18 months for the next 15 years? What if it's even longer than 15 years?! The meltdowns were melty. Like a Taco Bell commercial, only angrier.

The next few kids had a somewhat wider spread, and I've also mentioned how having older ones around really stabilizes the family unit. I've calmed down. I can't remember when my last full-on meltdown was (Dad could probably tell you). I've recovered my sense of humor enough to say completely insane things around our extended family to lovingly help them get past their shock and prepare for more baby announcements. I'd say I've plateaued.

But if things keep going this way . . . I'm not ruling more meltdowns out of my future. For some reason 35 sticks in my mind as the age past which I'm going to get really unstable again at the prospect of baby after baby after baby. I think members of our extended family can get their minds around the idea of six or seven babies, but 8+ would probably be difficult for them.

Holy cow. 8+? Difficult for them?? A 20-year-old when I'm sixty? 63?! My years are not my own. None of them.

Race strategy

I am a cross country runner. (Eh? Say what? I should conjugate that verb in the past tense due to the technicality that I’ve run a total of about 3 miles in the last 3 years? Well—clearly, you are not One of Us. Once a crazy runner, always a crazy runner. It’s as much a state of mind as it is a mileage log. Particularly during the perpetually parturient phase of one’s life.)

So here’s a little race strategy for you: if you can pull out a huge kick when you emerge from the woods and get that chute in your sights, your race isn’t a great success, even if you win, even if you hit a PR. (Unless the kick results from an unexpected adrenaline spurt that leaves you unconscious or puking after you cross the line. Then it’s ok). If you haven’t run till you thought you’d collapse, and then hit your next mile split, and then run until your reserves were gone, and then run some more, you haven’t raced like you should. There’s pacing involved, but only toward the end of most efficiently expending every last bit of oneself. There are some obvious CSPP parallels here, which you’re all intelligent enough to think out for yourselves, and so I shall segue to what triggered my nostalgia for those good old days of running my guts out.

Did someone say Segway?

I heard a snippet on the radio about one William Borden, heir to the Borden dairy empire in the early 20th century. I think he would’ve made a good cross country runner.

Some other obvious CSPP parallels here too,
but we won't go there now. :P

As the speaker told it:
Borden was attending Yale when he felt called to be a missionary. He surprised many by trading his role in the family fortune for an uncertain future in God’s service. As he wrote in his Bible:

No reserves.

Arriving abroad to begin further studies in preparation for his mission work, he fell ill, but declined the chance to return to the States. He wrote in his Bible:

No retreats.

He died of the illness not long after that, whereupon a third declaration was found in his Bible:

No regrets.

I'm thinking we need team shirts for this race. No reserves. No retreats. No regrets. Hey, it's as good a CSPP rallying cry as any, no? <:-)

Planning for the future: an anger management moment in the works

We're not officially homeschooling just yet, so I'm not frothingly mad just yet, but doing next year's taxes might put me over the edge. Because I happened to notice in the un-fine print of our adoptive state's tax instructions that the "Tuition and Textbook Credit" cannot be taken for "textbooks or other items for home schooling, tutoring, or schooling outside an accredited school."

But the credit can be taken, if the dependents in question are attending an "accredited school," for "...extracurricular activities: sporting events, speech activities, music or dramatic events, driver's education (if paid to a school), awards banquets, homecoming, prom (clothing does not qualify), and other school related social events, etc."

For a tax-related governmental publication, this seems unusually clear: Homer and Shakespeare, if taught at home, do not qualify for an educational tax credit, whereas prom does. Prom. Freakin' prom.

Saints Perpetua and Felicity

To live is Christ and to die is gain, but it is more than life that the martyrs count as loss. God grant us and all Christian mothers the faithfulness of his saints Perpetua and Felicity.

All praise for Saint Felicity, whose pains the crowd distressed
Who trusted her sweet infant to her true Mother's breast
All praise for Saint Perpetua, who arrogated not
Her precious child, but clung to Christ and won the life He bought.

Trust not in doctors, they are but mortal . . .

"When I was 18, I went to evil medical school . . ."

This ties in nicely with the previous post, I think.

The conversation I had with my doctor, whom I really like, during my prenatal check this morning went something like this:

Doctor (D): Wow! Less than one week out!

Me: That's right.

D: Are you ready to be done?

Me: Um . . . well . . . who's to say?

D: Ha, ha! So, when would you like to schedule your induction?

Me: Ah . . . what?

D: I'm going to be leaving for vacation next week, on the 13th. I'd like to deliver you myself, you know? So when would you like to schedule? In case you don't pop before then?

Me: Ah . . . well . . .

D: Tell you what, I'll go ahead and see what the hospital has open and we'll go from there!

(she leaves)

D: Well, the hospital is all booked on inductions except for one slot next Tuesday morning. I went ahead and scheduled you for then.

Me: That's the day before I'm due.

D: That's right.

Me: I . . . I'm sorry, but I'm very hesitant to be induced that early.

D: . . .

From there we had a tense, though polite conversation about my thoughts, blah, blah, blah. It was a lot of fun. We ultimately decided to let things progress as they will until at least 41 weeks, whereupon one of the "associates" will induce if necessary. I'm sorry for myself, as of all the doctors I've had I like this one the most. I'm sorry for the doctor, as I'm pretty sure she has the best of intentions, and really does want to deliver her own patients instead of handing them over to the "associates." But . . . seriously?

Let the good times roll.

You don't say

I enjoyed this book excerpt, even with its free handling of topics made taboo by my Victorian sensibilities. Check it out.

And to whom it may concern: I still feel terrible about swilling all that cutesy garbage your way before your First Kid was born. I'm glad you still talk to me. ;)

Probing the Sulvan brain

You are hereby warned that the CSPP hardline comes up in this post. If you're not going to like it, you have no one but yourself to blame if you read it.

Pam expressed interest a while back in how the other half (that is, 99%) lives. I don't love talking about it. Guilt is forgiven and shame is covered, but regret never goes away this side of the eschaton. So I offer this not primarily to satisfy Pam's sick curiosity ;), but because it may be of use to someone who is like I have been at various points along the line. Conversion is slow going, and not that cool.

I planned my family when I was in third grade. I wanted three kids. That's just how I thought. My parents talked about wanting 3-5 kids and having it work out just right (they got two, then twins, then took measures). I grew up in a very pious house, an LCMS pastor's family, where you decided. I had no idea there was any other way. My mom talked about having been on the pill before I was born. Picking your family=normal. Like putting on socks before shoes.

I think when we got married we wanted two kids, or that's what we said or I thought about or something. We also planned to name them Wurlitzer and Square Root (strangely prophetic), but that's neither here nor there. We talked about contraception, kind of as an intellectual exercise, but ultimately concluded that if NFP were ok (the pope being the only measure we had for the topic) you couldn't really make a case for disallowing other methods. I was on the pill because that's what you do when you get married.

Didn't I ever squirm? you pious souls ask. Didn't I know deep down that this was wrong? No. No wondering, not once, not the least little bit. Some laws are more natural than others, and environment makes all kinds of difference.

Despite my disinclination to get the baby party started since it would interfere with my plan to go to school forever, it troubled me that if something terrible happened and one of us were left alone, we would have nothing to show for our marriage (here's as close as I came to being naturally lawful). We decided we'd be done with pills the same summer we'd leave for vicarage, rather than our last year of seminary as originally planned, and figured we'd make it work somehow.

A few months before that summer, though, we got wind of the potential abortifacient mechanism in ALL versions of the pill (I had previously been told only some were abortifacient and did my homework for the kind I was on). Bluff called and feeling robotic, I went home and pitched my pills. A couple of weeks later I totally kicked butt on a pregnancy test.

Now, quitting the pill is not the same as professing CSPP. I have another post for that chapter of my really awesome autobiography that so many people are interested in. My goal here is explain how I thought, and how I thought was: Huh? For what it's worth, I just didn't know. What it's worth, of course, is nothing in an absolute sense. But two doctors and a pharmacist had told me the pill I was on was not abortifacient, and all I knew about family planning was that for some reason Catholics weren't supposed to do it. I didn't like that Catholics weren't supposed to do it, because after all, why does God give women brains? So I wasn't exactly the noble savage, either.

But with no hard feelings toward you nice people who never dreamed of anything other than spending 20 years of your life cranking out kids: you're weird. Most people, most Christians, most Lutherans don't know why you got pregnant right away and keep turning up that way any more than they know why your pastor preaches on texts (not the lectionary, mind you--texts) and wears vestments (not maniples, mind you--vestments). They don't actually disagree with you in their natural state, because they don't even get how you think. They just think you want a lot of kids, because to them wanting is the only language of reproduction. If they suspect some sort of conviction on your part, well, that's easy enough to blow off, since holding weird convictions means you're weird and thus can be blown off by definition.

Coming over to the weird side is a big fat deal if you grew up normal, thinking normally, envisioning a normal life. Missionaries deal kindly, patiently, and charitably with polygamous tribal chiefs, and there's a lesson in that for all of us.

Playing the slots

Consistency, consistency, consistency: a hallmark of good parenting. However will the kids learn to behave if whining lands them in fruitless quarantine one day and earns them those coveted fruit snacks the next? If the operant behavior sometimes results in a reinforcer, the operant behavior is more likely to recur. Duh. I get it already. Kids should know what to expect from their parents: consistent, firm-yet-gentle responses to even the nth repetition of an absurdly annoying behavior. After all, it’s hard to make sense of life if you put your coins in the same vending machine every time, but never know what you’ll get in return.

Ohhh...maybe today it'll be the Snickers!

So. . . there are days, and then there are days, y’know? Lotto days: Go ahead, kids, and push those buttons. Pull those levers for all they’re worth. Mostly, you’ll get what you always get: Sane Mom (or what passes for such), dispensing the Sane Replies; sometimes she even remembers to do so gently and graciously. But look out: sometimes, oh some times, just when you least expect it, you will hit The Jackpot. Before your shocked-and-awed eyes, the cherries line up—ching! ching! ching!—clicking out the magic sequence that unlocks the slots to let that Other Mom come roaring out. RUN—and don’t forget to duck and cover.

Learn this lesson early, kids, and save yourselves a heap of trouble:
Gambling with your mother just ain't worth the risk.

Consistency. So simple, in the abstract. Too bad these little critters are so darn concrete all the time.

We implore you to hear us, good Lord

I'm still ruminating on the litany we did Ash Wednesday.

In recent years, I have particularly appreciated this petition (and the variations thereof) for being equal parts honest, faithful, and hopeful:

To grant all women with child, and all mothers with infant children, increasing happiness in their blessings...