I don’t know whether to get the H1N1 vaccine, and I don’t know whether to get it for The Baby.

Yesterday I went to the GP to get some blood tests (Hi, ridiculously low iron levels!  How are we doing now?) and a flu shot (which they ran out of, so I ended up getting it at the drugstore anyway).  The lovely GP also put me on the list for the pig flu vaccine because The Baby is just shy of 6 months. I was really excited about this because I’ve been wanting that sucker since May.

Now, Wizard is completely and utterly against Baby getting vaccinated for H1N1, even though he is pro-vaccine otherwise.  And he is a scientist person, so while he isn’t a medical doctor he is good with medical journals and such.  As am I, because if you can read Derrida you sure as hell can read medical statistics. Anyway, he doesn’t think any of us should take the vaccine because, in his view, it hasn’t been tested extensively enough. I am of a mind that it is just a flu shot, so who cares?

That is, until my mom’s GP told her that he wasn’t taking it and didn’t want her getting the shot, either.  And he is generally pro-vaccine as well. He says it needs more testing, especially for kids.

Now I don’t know what to do.  What are you guys doing?  Are you taking it? Getting it for your kids?

ETA: Not that y’all don’t know this, but I work at a university and Baby is in daycare.  Exposure.  We has it.

I’ve written a page in a week.  I cannot work in short bursts.  I cannot.  I try, but I can’t write.  I can think, and jot, but not compose.

Translation: I am seriously fucked.

My advisor, bless her “no babies before dissertations!” heart, has been nothing but absolutely supportive.  She’s a feminist theorist, so I had every right to expect this, but you never know what you’re going to get, especially since she told me DON’T GET PREGNANT after I got married.

Which is weird, come to think of it, because of everyone in our program getting married, I was the least likely to get pregnant.  What I mean is that I didn’t come across, I don’t think, like a family planner (which makes sense because the pregnancy wasn’t planned).  Of everyone around me having these big Christian t0-do weddings and buying houses and changing last names, I had a quick and dirty Unitarian ceremony followed by ice cream cake.  Kept my last name, as well as the apartment Wizard and I lived in before getting married.  I didn’t seem like the reproducing type, is what I’m sayin’.  But tell that to my left ovary.  (Did I mention that I know the pregnancy came from the ovary on the left?  It did.  Weird.)

Anyway, she wanted a chapter before the baby, and I didn’t produce (ha).  So I tried to get something together over the summer, but I failed.  She said this was fine because “it’s normal to need some time to get your bearings.”  But now that I’m back at work, she is laying down the law.  And she’s right.  I need rules.  I need someone to tell me DO IT NOW.  She has gladly played the role of hand-holder and hair-smoother for the past few months, but…I’m running down the clock.  And I can’t reasonably expect her to be patient and okay my slow slip into dissertation-abandonment.

I wish Godzilla  (that’s what he’s nicknamed for now.  You are welcome to suggest far-better alternatives) were more cooperative.  Yes, I know, he’s a BABY.  Cooperation is beyond his control.  But right now, for example, he is sitting on my lap, just barely keeping it together without my undivided attention (and even so, I have to stop every few seconds to re-engage him in a mirror game of “who’s the baby?”).  He won’t nap unless he’s on me, which for a while meant I was neutralized in the afternoon.  Just recently he’s started napping on me in a sling, which means I can work if I do so quietly and don’t move too much.  Ever since his cold he has refused to sleep in the crib for more than a few hours at a time, and after 2 am he’s done with the crib completely.  Wizard keeps insisting that we’ve gotten screwed in the Cosmic Baby Habits Lottery, that he is just far more difficult and time consuming than the average baby, but I know that’s not true because I read you guys (Hi, Accidents!) and know you’re soldiering through these messes, too.

But, yeah.  Won’t sleep in the crib.  Must nap on me.  Won’t spend more than 20 minutes entertaining himself (even though on a car trip he once entertained himself for TWO HOURS with a book about puppies.  Where the hell did that baby go?)  Hates to sleep and won’t settle down without lots of cuddles and walking about.  Oh, and I’m pretty sure he learned how to control his pee stream, because he squirts me, just a wee little bit, at every change.

Oh, and solids?  Damn, it takes a long time to feed these guys.

So go ahead and report me to protective services now, because I’ve basically listed out all the normal behaviors of infants and said they’re too much for me to handle.  But they wouldn’t be, if I didn’t have the whole “thinking thoughts and writing them down” thing going on.  I’d be fine if I could get two or three working hours in a row, but that’s not going to happen.  I was silly to think it would.

I’ve been whining a lot here, so it’s only right to follow up that behavior with a plea.  Are you a short-bursts writer?  Can you pump out a paragraph in 20 minutes or less?   That is, after being interrupted, can you pick up where you left off?  How do you do it?  I need writing strategies and would appreciate anything you’ve got.

My mother-in-law is here, and will be in-residence through the middle of October.

Ahem.

I don’t go in for the classic MIL hatred partly because it’s a bullshit girl-on-girl crime sort of thing, a relationship shortcut that refuses to recognize the reality of female relationships in their full range of animosity/love.  Partly I just don’t have that kind of relationship with her, either.  I’ve spoken before of the reasons she intimidates me, and in general I have a hard time talking to her because I fear pissing her off, but I don’t dislike her.

However.  She’s been getting on my last damn nerve due to her constant not-quite-criticism of our parenting (i.e. she never tells me anything, but she tells the baby what she thinks.  Infuriating?  OH HELL YES).

First of all, the baby (whatever his nickname is, let’s go with Wizito, “little Wiz”), Wizito (I hate that, I’ll be changing it later), is four and a half months old.  There’s not a whole hell of a lot of “parenting” to be seen here.  You take care of a baby, you love the heck out of him, you provide mental stimulation…and you’re pretty much done.  It’s not like we have to figure out when to have the sex talk or how to set up cell phone rules.  Yet apparently we’re already screwing up.  He has too many toys.  He shouldn’t nap on me.  There’s other stuff, but she’s not saying it in English, so who the hell knows.  Oh, and we also need a second car, according to her, and a nanny.

A fucking nanny.  Like we live on the UES and can hire Fran Drescher.  Which would be kind of awesome, come to think of it, because she’s really funny, but the point is I’m a graduate student.  I can be a nanny, but I can’t HAVE a nanny.  This has spawned a joke between my brother and me regarding the opportunity for him to quit his job and come to live with us, Tony Danza style.  He would cook, do some light cleaning, watch The Baby, and provide comic relief for MIL, who I suppose would fill the Mona slot. Which makes me, what?  Not Angela–that’s a tad too incestuous for my taste.  So…Sam, I guess.  Which means I have to go bra shopping with my brother, and he has to have a pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove at all times.

(BTW: the lyrics to the “Who’s the Boss?” theme song?  Trite yet profound.)

In the midst of this I have a due date for the draft of my first chapter:  mid-October.  And it isn’t even a loose due date.  I joined a diss writing group, so I have to produce something real and readable in a little under six weeks.  My director wants me to focus on producing six pages a week, which means that by her watch, I should have something by mid-October as well.

So.  There you go.  I’m supposed to write a chapter while Mona is here.  Oh!  And Wizard is supposed to finish HIS diss and defend by then, too.  It is an academic disaster of sitcom proportions, I tell you.

I am so royally fucked, and I’m depressed about my state of affairs, which makes me want to crawl back into bed, which has necessitated the drinking of coffee, which I feel bad about because it’s bad for the baby.

So I have two major problems.

Problem One:  We are completely unprepared for the possible impending I-hope-so coming of this baby.  Possibly because of the major drama at the beginning of this pregnancy, but most likely because we are just neurotic people to begin with (and thank god you don’t have to pass psychological tests to get pregnant “naturally,” because Jesus Christ if we had to pass the kinds of tests people who want to adopt have to pass…I just don’t know.  And thinking about the implied injustices there…well, let’s just not think about them, either).  Right.  I really need to stop with the parentheticals following subordinate clause intros because how can I reasonably expect you to follow that train of thought? Let’s start over.

The just-so mix of reality and neurotic fantasies has made us afraid to buy baby stuff before the baby comes out alive.  So right now my parents are taking care of the clothing needs.  But as far as I can figure out, we can’t take him home (assuming there’s a him to begin with–see how I have to qualify every fucking sentence?  CRAZY) without a carseat, obviously, and he needs somewhere to sleep, too, seeing as he can’t exactly sleep 19th-C. style in a chest of drawers.

So.  We have to get over it and buy some stuff.  Because he is due to come out in two months.  And unless we get it together, if he does come out, in 20 years he’s going to probably report, while sitting with the sixth therapist who doesn’t know how to help him deal with his problems, a strange feeling of nakedness that manifests every time he hears someone open a drawer.

Problem Two:  I have no career prospects.  Last night, awake in bed at 3 AM, I realized why I can’t make progress on the dissertation.  And the reason is:  I no longer believe in what I’m doing.  The way I got through my MA thesis (which can’t compare to this kind of work, but it’s the closest I’ve got) was by believing, really believing, that the work itself deserved to be done.  That even if nothing came of it and it were never read (and it hasn’t been), the work itself was ethically necessary in the sense that “attention must be paid.”   Even if I were the only one paying that attention.

Somehow I lost that focus, and I think I lost it because I rushed through the proposal process without really making sure that what  I was proposing had that kind of personal relevance.  Because let’s face it, I’m getting a Ph.D. in English.  I cannot pretend that what I’m doing will ever be relevant to anyone but me.  And if I can’t make the argument for ethical necessity, then I’ve got to come up with something else, or I will be ABD for ever and ever amen.

P.S.:  Found this article on the untenability of Humanities Ph.D.s a little too late.  Do not read if you are in a “mental place” similar to what I’ve just described.

Because I have to.

Yesterday I got the “so, when are you sending me a chapter?” email.  I couldn’t exactly tell the truth, which is “I don’t have a chapter yet,” but I couldn’t lie and say something like “it’s almost done” because then I’d have to bang something out really fast, and I don’t think I have enough material to do that.  So I said something like “I have some fragments” and “it’s a mess,” hoping that will buy me time.

Remind me that I should be grateful for having an advisor who doesn’t see pregnancy and academic work as incompatible.  Because right now, I’m wishing she had written me off as one of the lost ones who may or may not produce a chapter or two or four.  And of course it’s wonderful that she hasn’t, but man that email made me anxious.

In the meantime, I’m wondering if I should post a mildly snarky comment on a blog that I read but have never commented on before (it’s none of you guys).  This is another grad student blog that I read because I like to see what mine brethren are up to, and this one is especially nice because the writer is also working on a lit dissertation.  It’s not my area, or even close to my area, but it’s still interesting.  None of my classmates are working in my area either, but we still keep tabs on each other’s projects.

The thing is, just as my blog as taken a turn toward my ever-expanding body, hers has done the same, toward her ever-shrinking one.  Apparently she was once “dangerously” overweight but is now close to reaching her ideal skinniness (in a healthy way, mind–the girl is literally working her ass off, so you’ve got to give her credit there).  What bothers me, though, is the way she talks about her former fatiness and her approaching goal.  For example, she wants to know whether it’s time to buy new clothes at the “real girl store” or if she should wait until she loses a little more weight.

Um, real girl store?  Since when weren’t fat women “real” women?  It’s obvious what she’s referring to, and she’s made these references to “real” sizes as opposed to the dreaded “plus” size before.  It bothers me that she hates her old self so much that she basically just wishes it into the cornfield (and with herself, perhaps everyone who’s still her “old” size?).  What bugs me more is that, honestly, I expect more of “my people,” especially the women.  If you’re getting a Ph.D. in literature, and your diss is on women’s lit, and you have some background in women’s and gender studies (these things are all true for her), shouldn’t you think a little more deeply about your relationship to your changing body?  I’m not saying that “real girl store” won’t still be her first reaction to the clothes she wants to wear, but I’d at least expect her to think about why she’s thinking that way.  Maybe she does and just doesn’t dwell on it in blog form.

Or maybe she’s closer to finishing her diss than I am because she doesn’t sit around thinking about crap all day.  Maybe.

When I realized I missed my daily post due to both napping and family togetherness, that line above is the first one that popped into my head.

You can decide for yourselves what that says about me.

Anyway, tomorrow today a few hours from now is the big day.  Either we get bad news, or good news, or orders for tests that will tell us either bad news or good news.  The whole family (well, all the parents) have decided to go with us–because when we’re dealing with the medical system, we like to do things entourage-style.  A few years ago, when my mom needed multiple eye surgeries, at least two of us, often three, would accompany her to her appointments.  One of the party was constantly updating the others with text messages.  We are still known for this at that practice, which is a huge, hundreds of patients, teaching hospital kind of place.  I’d be embarrassed of our antics, but…I’m just not.

So.  Wish us luck.

Her childfree friend, her childfree friend?  Who’s afraid of her childfree friend?

Me. Me. Me.

Lemme explain.  I have a friend who is avowedly Childfree, which is not just an idea but a movement.  I’d say it’s the exact opposite of Quiverfull except that it’s not.  While Quiverfull folks seem to limit their notion of what a family should be to themselves (though I’m sure they’d like their anti-birth-control rules to become law), the Childfree wouldn’t mind if everyone followed their suit.

Apparently this friend of mine isn’t as active in the movement as she once was, before I knew her.  But she still holds to her version of the philosophy, believing:

1. That there are enough children in the world–enough that we should just “stop having them.”
2. IVF, IUI, and other fertility treatments are wrong.
3. If a couple sincerely wants to raise a child, they should “just adopt” (her words–I’m not asshole enough to use the words “just” and “adopt” in close proximity).
4. Having one child isn’t so bad, but you should NEVER have more than two.
5. People who have children are selfish and are wrecking the planet for the childfree.
6. The childfree are screwed over by a society that awards childbearing through tax cuts and other employment benefits, such as parental leave.
7. Children are generally distasteful.
8. Kids shouldn’t be allowed in quiet public places or anywhere, really, that their presence might be distracting or even evident.
9. And finally, one that I actually agree with:  women shouldn’t be made to feel incomplete or inadequate because they do not reproduce.

So…you might imagine my problem.  Ever since I got married, this friend (let’s call her CF) has been more vocal than ever about her childfree beliefs.  Who knows, maybe she was proselytizing.  It didn’t work, obvs. But she knows that I disagree with her, and she knows that she can’t convince me on any of her points except that last one (which, admittedly, I believed long before our talks).

The point that pisses me off the most is the anti-IVF stance.  IVF is advanced enough now that you most likely won’t end up Gosselin-ized, which, along with the physical/psychological toll it can take, are the major drawbacks.  But infertility takes its own toll, and it should be treated as a legitimate health problem (and receive appropriate insurance coverage, but let’s not even start).  As far as I’m concerned, if you’re willing and able to endure IVF in order to have a child, go for it.  Her argument:  if you can’t naturally have children, you aren’t “meant” to have them–a surprising viewpoint for an atheist to hold, no?  Oh, and what about gay couples that want to bear a child together?  They often need IUI.  I thought I’d get her on that one since she is straight but very pro-gay, but this is where the “just adopt” argument takes over.  She believes that society puts too much pressure on women to reproduce, and I agree that it does.  The problem, though, is that she casts adoption as this equal-but-lesser alternative to childbirth as opposed to a legitimate choice in family-building.

Anyway.

Despite all this, we are closer than acquaintances.  We see each other about once a week, often with Wizard in tow.  Yet she does not know I’m pregnant.  I was dreading telling her to begin with, but after the conditional condition made itself known, I started to really worry.  Let’s say that the shit goes down this week and I end up losing this pregnancy.  How am I supposed to tell her, and what level of empathy do I have a right to expect from a person who doesn’t want and doesn’t much like children?  I’m expecting her to see it as no big deal–and part of the reason that I haven’t told her about it yet is that I can’t imagine she’d understand why we’ve been freaking out for the past month.  I can’t imagine she would understand the irony of my situation: that I can be avowedly pro-choice and yet consider the fetus I am carrying to be a child, a child we want, a child we can’t stand the thought of losing.

Once we know which direction our lives will take, I’m going to have to tell her.  If the news is good, I don’t care what happens.  Hell, I won’t care if my hair catches on fire when I dial the phone.  If the news is not good, you’ll have to help me out with this, Internet.

I’m too boring a diarist to write a post a day.  I should have realized that.

Today was spent cleaning/resting/cleaning/eating chips/cleaning.  I don’t know if this is early-onset nesting or late-onset prep for the mother-in-law’s visit.  But my MIL isn’t one of those. She’s not someone who would call me out for the glaring lack of shelf paper or the dusty baseboards.  The problem is that her worldliness intimidates me.

She’s just cool. And I’m not.  She’s an artist, and she is what aged artists are:  reserved but observant, quiet but opinionated, normal but…not.  She makes me realize how despressingly standard my life is.  She and Wizard (if you’re new, he’s my husband) vacationed in Switzerland most summers, resulting in Wizard randomly saying things like “I wish I were good enough to ski the Alps” or “I should have learned to like cheese earlier so I could have really enjoyed France” (because of course there was a lot of time spent in France.  And Italy.  And the USA, back before he lived here).   Wizard is one of those people who legitimately misses Europe because he loves it, not because he’s an asshole.  And where were my childhood family vacations spent?  Florida.  Rich beachy Florida, but still.

When you’re an academic, especially one in the humanities, you tend to think of yourself as the edgy non-conformist type.  A job?  Oh no, not me.  I’m too busy experiencing the depth of human emotion and talking about it with my clique.  But when I compare myself to MIL, I’m just another American who drives too much and has bad taste in everything.  She doesn’t try to make me feel this way.  I take care of that myself.

The other problem is that she has had some really horrible health experiences, including a rare disease that has resulted in multiple extensive surgeries over the past 40 years.  (Yes, really.  However, this doesn’t prevent her from doing stuff like going on artists’ retreats to Middle-of-Nowhere, Europe where the whole village shares one phone, literally.)    So, you know, in addition to being just plain cool, she’s also practically superhuman.  I’m trying not to overdraw this picture, but she does amaze me.  The problem, then, is that my difficulties with this pregnancy are nothing compared to what she’s faced.  How can I whine to her, then?  I can’t cry over amniocentisis when she’s had her guts cut apart time and time again.

Maybe I’m trying to define myself as equal and opposite.  Maybe I really am nesting.  For whatever reason, I turn hyper-domestic when she comes to town.  Now my back hurts, and I have to put the apartment back in order, and I have to cope with the reality of being a week away from getting The News.

Happy Election Day.  I’m going to rant.

I like to think of myself as an informed voter who weighs the issues, but the truth is that I ultimately vote on one issue, and that issue is Choice.  I don’t care how good a candidate might seem otherwise.  If he (oh, it’s always he) wants to rummage around in my uterus, that’s a no-go.

I’m also using my “pregnancy makes me say crazy things!” card to say this:  Obama is not as pro-choice as I want him to be.  Sure, he’s not using air quotes on “health of the mother,” but I want the kind of Change that means I don’t have to worry about my reproductive freedom forever and ever amen. I want it to be a given.  I’m tired of it being up for debate.

Here’s the truth:  I was never as pro-choice as I was on the day I peed on a stick and saw the word “pregnant.”

This is who I am:  I am upper-middle-class.  I am white.  I am 29.  I am married.  I like my husband.  He likes me.   We are financially stable.  I am on a career path.  My husband is on a career path.  We have an apartment.  We have two cars.  We have a family that supports us and our decisions. We have a network of friends. We want to have a child together.

And yet.

Seeing the word “pregnant” was one of the scariest things I’ve seen in a long time (not counting that damned ultrasound report).  It doesn’t matter that I’ve got the support network I need, and it doesn’t matter that this is a wanted pregnancy.  The truth is, when you see the word pregnant, it shakes the foundation of your entire world.**  Getting married was nothing compared to this.  This?  Utterly transforms your life.  Since August, I haven’t “forgotten” I’m pregnant for even a second.  It is a constant state of being.

And it took that moment to make me pro-choice. I mean, for real.  Because I’ve always been pro-choice.  But in the back of my head, it wasn’t “about me.”  I have had access to birth control, and the training to use it, and the willingness to refuse sex with men who refused condoms, my entire life.  So, you know, I just wasn’t going to get knocked up.  I knew that when I got pregnant, it would be by choice.  Oh, sure, rape and incest, yes yes, but I was pro-choice because it seemed obviously right, not because it meant something to me.

But now it means something.  Because now I know that a wanted pregnancy still scares the shit out of you.  And my god, what an undertaking all this of is–and despite the ultrasound shitiness, I’ve had an easy time of it.  That anyone would be forced to do it without looking forward to the end result makes me…enraged.

And then you’ve got my lovely fetus and his conditionally conditional condition.  Since the government’s got its arm so far up my vagina it can’t shake its own hand, we are operating under a deadline.  The genetics counselors tell you three things:  we cannot comment on the results at this time, we will combine these results with the results of your 18-week scan in hopes of having a clearer answer, and all decisions must be made by week 24.

Y’all know what decision we’re talking about here.

I might need an abortion.

I refuse to call it a procedure.  I refuse to call it “necessary termination.”  It is an abortion.  And the sooner we call medically necessary abortions by their real name, the sooner we respect the fact that this is never, ever, ever an easy choice.  If we find out the lovely fetus we say hello to each morning is going to die on his way out, we will abort him.  And it will test our health, our strength, and our marriage.  That is the reality of a “necessary procedure.”

And that is the reality of every abortion.

Abortion is not birth control.  Abortion is the nasty thing that happens to your body when, for whatever reason, you cannot carry your pregnancy to term.  The only politician who has ever made sense when talking about this issue was Howard Dean, who recognized that abortion under any circumstances is a difficult choice, a choice that should always be between a woman and her doctor.

And honestly, here, where I sit, at the beginning of week 17, I am still waiting for the men who rule my uterus to understand that.

**Unless you’ve been going through fertility treatments, in which case the word “not pregnant” would likely do the same.  I know other couples would kill to see that word, but it’s still scary.

Hi.

So if what I wrote below is true, and it might be, I’m going to try to undo my bad bloggery by posting every day. We’ll refrain from contemplating my likelihood of success until after I’ve failed.  Here, then, in handy list form, is what I’ve been up to in October (and before that):

1. I finished the proposal.  People approved it.  I am now ABD by all standards, not just my own.  The whole process only took six months, which means that even though I am behind everyone else in my year, I took the “right” amount of time to get through this stage.  This marks the first thing I’ve done “right” in about two years (school things, not life things).  All of this has gotten done despite the fact that:
2. I’ve been going to the doctor.  A lot.  More than I’ve gone in the past so-many-years-of-my-life combined.  Why?
3. Because in August, I was diagnosed with a condition called pregnancy.  It is reportedly fatal to dissertations.  But I’m trying to pretend this is not true.  I’m trying to pretend, in fact, that you can go through an entire pregnancy and actually work harder than you’ve worked in the past two years (see #1).  So far so good, except for this one glitch, which is:
4. Abnormal fetal anatomy results at the 12-week ultrasound.
5. Fuck.
6. No, really, fuck.
7. How the fuck does this happen?  I’m under thirty, healthy, blah blah blah. Might one apply one’s skills of analysis to one’s ultrasound report?  Let’s see.  What does “possibly evolving” mean?  It means the fetus has been diagnosed with a conditionally conditional condition.
8. Fuck.  What now?
9. Wait and see.  Wait until week 18, and see if the conditionally conditional condition is an actually actual malady.  In preparation for week 18:
10. My parents are coming and staying with us.  My mother-in-law is flying in from Country of Origin to stay with us.  Everyone wants to be there “just in case.”

After about three weeks of waiting, we’ve got two more to go.  I used to like October.  But this one?  Not so great.  Last year?  Ditto.  I didn’t post about all of this in October because…posting makes it more real, and I’m not a fan of overshare, and there were no results so what’s to say, really?  But, really, there’s a lot to say.  Stay tuned for posts on: discussions you’d rather not have with your advisor, what happens when crying doesn’t make your obstetrician stop yelling at you, and more.

One note:  things might get dark around here.  Hell, might?  Probably going to.  So if you are pregnant, or want to be pregnant, or are afraid of the troubles of pregnancy, you might want to check out now.  Same goes if you aren’t prepared for frank discussion of a major life decision known to doctors as “a procedure.”  I’m just sayin’.  This was supposed to be a dissertation blog, and it still is.  It’s just that now, it’s also about this other thing I’m trying like hell to produce.

P.S.:  If you’re like me and are doing the post-a-day business, this might help: