the amniocentesis hurt. the form they had me sign ahead of time mentioned "discomfort". um, no.
it was more than discomfort. it hurt. fortunately, it didn't last long. i was sore last nite but tylenol seemed to help.
i'm just glad it's over.
the good news is that the ultrasound indicates everything is developing perfectly. the baby is even a little bigger than expected for its age, which is a good thing.
this afternoon is my amniocentesis appointment. i'm a little nervous about the whole thing.
not so much about the procedure itself - though i doubt it will be much fun to be poked in the belly with a v. large needle. but i'm assuming they'll numb everything up enough that the pain will be all psychological, not physical. and i'm not overly concerned about miscarrying as a result -- there's something like a 99.8% chance that won't happen.
but i do worry about the results. which is kind of silly, but at the same time, its hard not to.
i mean, the reason that i'm having the procedure done is because i'm over 35 and that puts me in a higher risk category, according to the medical powers-that-be. but still. just according to random statistics, there's about a 99% chance that there is nothing wrong, i.e. no genetic defects. and i'm making myself feel better by telling myself that the fact that i got pregnant immediately -- and i mean IMMEDIATELY -- suggests that overall my eggs are a good bit healthier than the average 38 year-old. so i probably in fact have a much better than 99% chance of there being no problem.
the thing is -- i never think i'm going to be the one lucky person out of however many hundreds or thousands who's going to win the lottery. why do i think i'll be the one unlucky woman out of however many hundreds who ends up carrying a down's syndrome baby? but i guess it's human nature to worry. or at least it's my nature. i keep telling myself -- if you think you're that special, why not go buy a lottery ticket?
still, it will be nice when it's all over.
so, yes, i do live under a rock, thanks for asking.
last night i watched "Saturday Night Fever", for the first time. it was very strange -- i didn't expect to love it as much as i did. i totally expected it to be a polyester-clad velveeta cheezfest, and was pleasantly surprised at the darkness of tone, the complexity of character, and the raw semi-violent energy that permeated it. this all was juxtaposed rather incongruously to the music -- the sountrack that was a ubiqutous backdrop to that difficult time in life known as puberty.
i was 10 years old when the movie was released. in keeping with life in the small remote town in northeast montana where i was born & raised, it took a couple of years for us to learn of its existence. so it works out that the SNF soundtrack constituted the majority of the music played at our 7th grade dances.
watching this film was, in part, an exercise in nostalgia -- remembering my own awkward young girl self, socially inept, unpopular with the boys, trying too hard to fit in, attempting to learn the thing called "disco dancing" that we had heard was the cool thing out in the real world, the grown-up world, the world that was not a small town in the middle of nowhere.
of course i had no idea what the movie was about! it was R-rated and it goes without saying that my ultra-strict roman catholic parents did not allow me to see R-rated movies. and i'm glad i didn't see it until now, to be honest. had i seen it when it was released, i wouldn't have understood it. it was too dark, too strange, too alien of a world. i wouldn't have understood the class issues -- the difference between bayridge brooklyn & manhattan. it would have all been New York City, from my very distant perspective. all exciting, all sophisticated, all exotic. and the coming-of-age issues addressed -- the rape of Annette, the senseless death of Bobby, the drugs, the hopelessness, the driving energy beating up against the brick wall of class limitations ~ i would have been too young to comprehend.
and had i watched the film during my own coming-of-age period, college age or early twenties, when i could have understood the processes the characters were going through, i would have been too caught up with worrying about how dated the clothes and the music were, how much cooler we were 10 years later in the 80's, how dorky they all looked with their hair and their polyester, to be able to see the point.
i guess what i'm saying is that it's nice to have some distance, because it really allowed this movie to touch my heart. because it is, at its heart, a bittersweet coming-of-age story. and now i can look back at the folly of youth, the disaffectedness, and, oh, the boundless energy looking for an outlet, with sad, fond reminiscence. it was helpful to learn that john travolta was 23 years old when he made the film, and suffered through the death of his girlfriend at that time. i think that goes along way towards informing his character, providing him with the vulnerability & slight tinge of desparation that makes tony manero ultimately a likeable character. it calls to mind my own coming-of-age in NYC, which also occurred in my early twenties. the most painful events in my life all happened within a 6month period when i was 23 years old, and living in NYC. i think that SNF managed to tap into some of that old grief.
one word about the music, because how can one talk about SNF and not go into the music? it was a strange revelation to learn that, until the release of this movie, disco was an underground, edgy, countercultural scene. but this movie did an excellent job of portraying that, and how music is always part of the youth energy scene. there was of course the rock & roll scene in the 60's, the raves in the 90's, and, i suppose though i don't know, that hip hop is the thing today.
but what about the 80's? a friend and i discussed this the other day. how 80's music was such an incredible wasteland of pop drivel, punctuated by isolated examples of genius. (stevie ray vaughn, talking heads, i'm looking at you.) but by & large, it really wasn't there the way that it had been in previous decades. well, except for punk. i think punk in the early-mid eighties was where it was all happening, for my generation. the place where young people gathered to hear new, exciting, raw, innovative live music & find a rhythm to drive their own collision with the brick wall of adulthood.
the only problem with that is -- i never liked punk. i tried really hard, went to some shows by what were considered top punk bands, at least by people who cared. i went because it was the thing to do, because all my friends were going. i went to party. but i never liked the music.
so maybe that is part of the bittersweetness that i experienced watching "SNF". a sincere honest regret that my own coming-of-age wasn't accompanied by a better soundtrack.
here's what i had for lunch today: italian meatballs with mushroom gravy, brown rice, and green beans.
this ordinarily wouldn't warrant a blog entry, but today was the first time i 've eaten meat since 1998 - nearly 8 years.
of course, i've eaten fish, seafood, dairy, and eggs in that time period, so i don't call myself a vegetarian. but no beef, pork, venison, poultry, or associated products. i've heard of other women who are vegetarian or non-meat eaters who find that they can't make it through pregnancy without going back on the meat. so this doesn't surprise me.
i wasn't quite expecting the extent that i would start to crave meat, though. as in: spend hours out of my day fantasizing about it. last nite we were eating brussel sprouts for dinner, and M* was suggesting various spices or condiments that might go well with them. i was like: "you know what would go good with these? HAM!!!!!" he just laughed and said we might need to make a trip out to our small local organically-grown humane-environment free-range hormone-free all-that-other-good-stuff meat producers & get me some protein.
speaking of which, my reasons for not eating meat over the last few years have been
1. health -- i started feeling better as soon as i quit eating meat. this is no longer true. while the second trimester is going better than the first, i don't have a huge amount of energy, am dragging most of the time, and am constantly, i mean CONSTANTLY hungry. nothing i put in my body seems to fill the hole, at least for long anyway.
2. ethics -- the meat-production industry is an ethical travesty. the environmental degradation, the chemicals pumped into the animals, the horrible conditions under which they are raised, the horrible working conditions of the underpaid, largely immigrant, workforce employed in the abattoirs, on it goes. i purposely haven't read "fast food nation" because i had already decided to not eat meat & didn't want to get grossed out. wimpy, i know.
but. but but but. i think for my health, i need to start with the red meat a bit again, maybe once per week or so. fortunately, there are a couple of options nearby which, as noted above, produce meat in such a way as to not violate most of the ethical considerations above. i'm not sure there is a way to humanely kill an animal that is intended to use for food, but, having grown up in a family of hunters, i'm actually okay with the killing for food part. carnivores and omnivores throughout the animal kingdom do it. it's the wastefulness of the meat industry as a whole, and the inhumane conditions in which the animals live their lives that bother me more than their deaths.
of course the environmental implications are what they are. on the one hand, these aren't cows that are grazing in sensitive riparian areas & damaging fish habitat. on the other hand, animals are high on the food chain & it takes an awful lot of water, food, and fossil fuel to produce 1 pound of meat, compared to 1 pound of tofu or beans.
the health implications of limiting my consumption to that which comes from the local farms are good too - no worry about hormones or antibiotics or other nasty chemicals, no worry about mad cow disease, less worry about e coli & some other infectious diseases that can be spread through contaminated meat. and, at this point, it would be dangerous for me to try to meet my protein needs through consuming more fish, regardless of what the sears's say in their book. tuna especially is a huge repository for mercury, and last i heard from the FDA, mercury ain't so good for the baby.
if it sounds like i'm rationalizing, perhaps i am a bit. this was a big change.
on the other hand? last nite? i dreamed i was eating venison polish sausage, raw, with my bare hands.
it's time to listen to my body.
per the discussion on The Mommy Shift over at feministe, i just want to say --
i would like to see a major daily newspaper write an article profiling the life of a typical male business traveller, alongside the immigrant women who leave their children home all day so that they can go to work for substandard wages to clean his hotel room, wash the dishes at the restaurant where he eats, mop the floors of the airport where he catches his plane, &c ad infinitum.
yes, we live in a two-tiered class society. yes, it is absolutely wrong that the bulk of the burden for the luxuries enjoyed by those in the middle-class are borne by the service class. yes, everyone should be paid a living wage for the work they do & every working person should have access to medical benefits. these are the points that need to be addressed and brought out for public discussion.
but to choose to focus on middle-class women and their choices to hire nannies, while not addressing any of the other types of low-wage work that immigrants in this country routinely leave their kids at home to go work at is thoroughly misogynistic and reactionary. not to mention the fact that all of the articles i've read covering this matter routinely ignore the men of the house, acting as if it is only the wife & mother who employs the nanny and receives the benefit of having paid childcare for the family.
when i get home from the office today, my first task is going to be to call each of my u.s. senators to urge them to refuse to confirm Alito for the Supreme Court, and to filibuster if need be. It was interesting for me to read that one of my senators, Gordon Smith, is considered to be an especially important target for constituent lobbying, on account of his being a pro-choice moderate. I'm more than happy to make the phone call, and more than happy to believe that the phone call might even be somewhat important, rather than flying in the face of a foregone conclusion.
That said, it never ceases to amaze me, and not in a good way, what the country has come to when senators like Oregon's own Gordon Smith and Pennsylvania's Arlen Spector are seen as hopeful voices of reason, moderation, and compassion. Since when are these the Good Guys? i know, i know, since the bad guys have gotten so much worse, and so much more power. it still gives me pause, though.
when i arrived at yoga class this morning, classmate V* asked "so how's baby this morning?" to be honest i hadnt formulated my thoughts to that coherent of a level yet, but when posed with the direct question, an involuntary chuckle escaped my lips before i ruefully blurted out "baby's kicking my ass!"
everyone says the second trimester is supposed to be the glory months -- bursting with energy, feeling wonderful, glowing all rosy. i.e. the halcyon period of pregnancy. while it's nice to not be nauseated and fatigued all day long anymore, i have to say that the bursting with energy part i'm definitely still waiting for.
so tired was i this morning that i vaguely contemplated skipping class, but ended up making it after all. maybe on days like today, when i'm tired & dragging & not rarin' to go, i might just end up getting more out of yoga than on the enthusiastic days when i'm tearing into each new pose with joy & verve. lowering my expectations, telling myself that all i have to do is show up at the front of my matt & take each pose as it comes, resting when i need to, and being open to the process, well. i gather that's what it's all about. ironic that it seems to come more easily on the days when i don't want to be at practice than on the days when i do. and lo, i found that i was actually able to do all the poses lori invited us to do, today! with only a slight abbreviation and rest break during the inversions.
methinks there is a taoist lesson here somewhere.
in any event, after class, V* asked me if i was feeling better, which i certainly was but still "tired and dragging". however, walking up the street afterwards, i definitely felt the light, cleansed, bouyant, open, free feeling that i have so come to know and love from yoga over the last two years, and have so sorely missed while pregnancy has altered my practice. i started to type "limited" and "reduced" instead of "altered", but realised that probably isn't as helpful of a perspective as "altered." it is what it is, and because the benefits aren't as obvious to me during this strange time when my body has ceased to be my own, doesn't mean the practice is in any way reduced. it's not better or worse; it's just different.
