Month: May 2005

Two thoughts are better than one

Finally, the weather is warm enough and the days long enough that we can return to our cherished ritual of going to the park after dinner. Nothing makes me feel more like I’ve arrived as a suburban mom than hanging out in the park around 6:30 on a weeknight.

When we moved almost two years ago, the park across the street was a big selling feature. There’s a soccer field and school right across from us, a playground beside it, and around the edges of the playground are some nice little walking paths through a very sparse copse of trees. It will probably be quite a few years before I’m comfortable letting the boys run over to the playground by themselves, but in the interim I don’t mind the excuse to get out of the house in the evenings. There’s also a little pond that will make evenings in the park a mosquito nightmare in about two weeks, but which is currently the home of a lovely little duck family.

There are two sets of climbers, one for little guys and one for bigger kids, and it’s been fun watching Tristan progress from one to the other. I was pretty close to being able to just sit on the bench and watch him play on his own… and then Simon got his legs under him.

If Simon were a little more stable on his feet, or if Tristan were a little less of a daredevil, (or if I were a little less neurotic, perhaps) I could probably leave one or the other unattended. As it is, running back and forth keeping each of them safe from playground peril ensures that I seem to get more exercise in an evening than the two of them combined.

And the sand! I swear, I have more sand in my house by the end of the week than remains at the playground. I know they’ve had a good time when I change two diapers full of sand at the end of the night.

***

Saw this in today’s Citizen and thought I’d share: Mother’s Day alert: Stay-at-home mom’s worth $164,000 a year. (Their typo on the apostrophe, BTW, not mine.)

They’ve tallied up the salaries for all the jobs a mother does and valued them based on comparable salaried jobs: day care centre worker, teacher, van driver, cook, CEO, nurse and general maintenance workers. They calculate a base pay of $54,166 (Cdn) plus $109,686 in overtime.

This isn’t sitting well with me and I’m not sure why. I think it’s the reduction of “mother” to that list of tasks that irks me. Somehow, in reducing motherhood to a simple list of activities misses the essence of what it means to be a mother. What price for the worrying, the planning, the nurturing, the patience, the hoping, the abject fear? And do they deduct for the return on investment – the love, the joy, the laughter, the pride?

I understand what the article is trying to convey, that the work of mothering is incredibly undervalued in Western society, and they’ve found a pretty reasonable way of illustrating it. It just seems like in trying to make a point, they miss the point.

And then the article quotes some “prolific parenting author” by the name of Ann Douglas. Never heard of her. She sounds like trouble, though.

Am I crazy?

Am I crazy? Whoa, before you trip all over yourself in your hurry to say yes, let me put this in context.

Next weekend, we are going camping. With the kids. Beloved and I, my brother and sister-in-law, and three boys ages 6 months, 15 months and 38 months. Hell, never mind answering the question, even I think I’m crazy.

I’m not much of a camping person. I love it in theory. Appeals to the rugged Canadian buried in my psyche. Deep in my psyche. Under the diva and the princess and the wimp. But I’ve got issues with bugs. And dirt. And bugs. Since it will be mid-May in Ontario, I may also have issues with frostbite. Or heatstroke. I love our weather.

The way I got talked into this is, it’s free. As I mentioned before, I’m half Scottish and half Dutch and you just don’t get any cheaper than that. So when things are free, even when they aren’t such a good idea, I get sucked in by the free part.

Another big selling factor was that I get to spend time with my absolutely adorable 6 month old nephew Noah and his chaperones, my brother Sean and sister-in-law Nat. They live a couple of hours drive away, and I miss them terribly in between visits. Like any sibling, when we’re together, my brother mostly irritates me, but then I miss him when he’s gone. Except when I’m whipping his ass at euchre. Then I really enjoy his company. And my sister-in-law rocks. I must say I love her as a friend and sister, and my brother has impeccable taste. And I’m not just kissing up because I’m hoping she’s reading this and will do all the cooking next weekend. Well, okay, maybe just a little bit.

The whole camping thing was Nat and Sean’s idea. They heard about this free camping day at KOA campgrounds, and made reservations for all of us. Actually, the accomodations sound pretty cool. It’s not even tent camping, it’s a little one-room cabin with bunk beds and a double bed in each cabin, plus it has a swing on the porch. The (hopefully leak and bear proof) roof over my head was another big selling point, but the porch swing was the clincher. I don’t think they have bears in Brighton, just off the 401 somewhere between Toronto and Kingston, but you can never be too careful when bear-proofing. See, I know that because of the rugged Canadian buried deep, deep in my psyche.

I’m not sure what to expect from the boys on this camping adventure. I’m hoping the fresh air and running around like maniacs just tires them out so much they are asleep by 6 pm. The idea of them on the loose near an open fire has my stomach clenched already, but since we are four adults to three kids, one of whom is as yet non-ambulatory, I am trying not to worry about it.

Any tips on camping with preschoolers?

The well is dry

Uh oh. I’ve been staring at this empty screen for quite a few minutes now, but nothing is happening. No rants, no complaints, no witty anecdotes (I like to think they’re witty, anyway), no pleas for assistance or information. There’s a whole bunch of stuff rattling around in my head, but none coherent enough to make a full post out of it.

I was going to ask you about ear infections. Seems Simon has one. Again. How do you tell your kid has an ear infection anyway? There’s no external sign like flaming red ears or a big neon sign saying, “Ouch.” He wasn’t tugging on his ears and meaningfully engaging my attention like Lassie when Timmy fell down the well. I thought he just had a cold. Notch another mark on the bad mommy calendar I guess.

And then I thought I’d whinge for a while about Tristan’s temper tantrums of late. Hooo-boy. I thought at three we’d be mostly past that, but for the past week he has been truly insufferable. But that’s about all I’ve got on that topic.

I really should tell you to wander over to see Ann’s new blog, except I am so insanely jealous that I don’t really want to draw any extra attention to it. It’s just exactly the kind of redesign I was talking about for my own blog. Hmpf.

I toyed with the idea of complaining about my new cube. It sucks. I used to be tucked away in a corner against a wall, now I’m in the middle of the zoo off a high-traffic corridor. Between overhearing telephone conversations from five or six different people and the drop-in visitors who have nothing better to do, it’s pretty darn hard to concentrate on my blog. Er, work.

Oh wait, here’s an idea. We can rejoice that finally the annoying old couple got eliminated from the Amazing Race last night. Okay, now what?

Nope, I got nothing. So, what’s new with you?

Edited to add: Here’s another thing that I thought I’d mention but couldn’t work up enough steam to merit a full blog post. My dear friend ÃœberGeek was kind enough to point me toward this blog. For serious geeks and Star Wars junkies only – don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Things we never expected from IVF

As I’ve mentioned before, my eldest son Tristan was conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) and my youngest son Simon was a blissful surprise. I used to be a quite vocal advocate of IVF causes, but have been lucky enough to be too burdened with parenting to do much work on that front lately.

Just before we did our first (and thankfully, only) cycle of IVF, Beloved and I were interviewed on CBC about the ethics of IVF. In particular, they were interested in embryos created but not implanted, and what you do with “leftover” embryos when your family is complete. It’s a part of IVF that, when facing our first transfer, we really didn’t lose a lot of sleep over. By the time I had come to terms with the more immediate hurdles of the $7,000 to $9,000 out-of-pocket cost for a single cycle, the paltry 35 to 40% chance of success, and the fact that I would have to do my own injections, we were willing to sign off on just about anything to get our kick at the can. Leftover embryos? Sure, (touch wood) if we are ever so lucky (touch wood) we’d be happy to donate them, maybe to science or maybe to another infertile couple, sure, where do I sign, just please can we get on with it?

Our clinic requires you to sign off on the “disposal” of excess embryos before you do your cycle. (Note: I’m having a very hard time writing this post and using words like excess, leftover and dispose when I know I’m talking about little frozen babies-to-be. I’m not at all rabid about abortion or right to life or anything, but it seems so cavalier to be using these words and I thought in the interest of disclosure you should know.)

In the end, I think we agreed to donate excess embryos to science, but not to go so far as to donate them to an infertile couple. At the time, I admired the nobility of the idea of donating embryos to an infertile couple, but Beloved had strong reservations and we compromised. For now, our lone frosty waits in cryogenic slumber and we pay $400 a year for the luxury of not having to think about it yet.

And now, I am finally getting to my point today. A friend of mine has both an older child and twins conceived through IVF. When she and her husband knew their family was complete, they made the selfless, courageous and heroic decision to donate their embryos for adoption. Imagine their surprise, shock and dismay to recently open an e-mail from our mutual clinic to find a forwarded e-mail from the family who adopted one of the embryos – with a photograph of their newborn child. The clinic, showing in my opinion an appalling lack of consideration, had forwarded the birth announcement back to the donating biological parents.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like for them to open that e-mail. My friend said she and her husband couldn’t help but scan the baby’s features, looking for similarities to their own – their other? – three children. I have to wonder what on god’s green earth the reproductive endocrinologist who forwarded that e-mail was thinking. He has made a career dealing with infertility and its intricacies, and I cannot fathom what would justify his actions.

Perhaps a note to the donating family, advising them that the donated embryo had – again, I am struggling for the right phrasing – come to fruition would have been marginally acceptable. That would have been more than enough for me. But to forward a photograph? I am simply flummoxed that the clinic would do this.

As if this weren’t burden enough, my friends now wrestle with further dilemmas. Their son, conceived at the same time as the donated embryo, has a serious nut allergy. They now wonder whether they are obliged to relay that information back to the adoptive family, via the clinic.

Nothing concrete changed when my friends looked at that photograph. It didn’t change the decisions they had made, and I’m sure on some level they knew that of course there was a good chance that someday, somewhere, a baby would be born from the embryo they conceived. I know enough families who have suffered through infertility to know that that baby has been born into a family that went to the ends of the earth and back to bring him or her into the world, and that there is a very good chance he or she will lead a wonderful and priviledged life. But, I do think that it would be better for everyone if that baby’s face remained unknown to my friends, because it was not their choice to know.

When we committed ourselves to the idea of using IVF to complete our family, there were a lot of things we agonized over. The cost, the physical challenges, the fear of failure were all huge obstacles to overcome. We worried about long-term health implications for me, for the children conceived through reproductive technologies. And yes, we worried about what to do with any leftover embryos, should we be so lucky to face that choice.

The jury is still out on what we’ll do with our lone little frosty, but I think we’re leaning toward giving it a try. I never expected to have three kids, don’t have a whole lot of room for three kids in our house nor our budget, but I think we have more than enough love to go around and with that as a foundation we can make anything work. Maybe in a year or two.

Before I wrote this, I asked my friend if it would be okay if I told you her story, and she said she’d be interested in hearing feedback from others. I know a lot of you have struggled with infertility, and have used reproductive technologies. We’d both like to hear your thoughts, whether you have wandered down that road or not.

Categories:

In praise of sleep and retail therapy

Sunday was a very good day. Sunday was such a terrific day, in such an ordinary way, that I am still feeling the hazy afterglow effects on Monday.

For one thing, probably the only thing that really matters, I slept for almost eleven – ELEVEN! – hours on Saturday night. I’m so pathetic that I fell asleep on the couch before 9 pm Saturday night, and slept solidly until being hollered awake by a hungry baby around 6 am. I nursed him and dumped him into the custody of his bleary-eyed daddy to redeem my one-day-a-week sleep in pass. As I stretched the covers back up to my nose, I was thinking something about, “Man, I’m awake now, I’m never gonna be able to …. zzzzzzz.” And I slept until 8 am.

It’s only in realizing yesterday how much I felt like me again that I realize how much I have not been feeling like myself lately. And, in retrospect, I’m glad that shrieking harridan with the trip-wire temper is not who I really am, although I was truly beginning to wonder. It just felt so good to be in my own skin again!

And frankly, what better time to go shopping than when you’re happy in your own skin? It has been five years since I’ve needed a proper summer work wardrobe. In summer 2000, I was pregnant (but that baby miscarried at the end of the summer). In summer 2001, I was pregnant with Tristan. In summer 2002, I was home with Tristan. In summer 2003, I was pregnant with Simon. In summer 2004, I was home with Simon. Seeing a pattern here? This is the summer I am breaking the pattern!!!

So I stepped out and went shopping. It’s been ages since I did any serious shopping for myself. Every now and then I’ll pick up a sweater or shirt or something if I’m desperate, but it’s never coordinated, never with a plan, and invariably completely on impulse. And so I bought two pairs of pants and four – FOUR – new tops, all mix-and-match. It’s my own little downmarket version of the shopping excursion on What Not to Wear, except I spent less than $200 instead of $5000 and I shopped at Reitmans in Barrhaven instead of tony shops in NYC that would intimidate the hell out of me on my best day.

As if 11 hours of sleep and fancy new clothes (did I mention the colours? Cranberry and cream and black and tangerine – how gorgeous is that?), I also worked in an hour-long walk with Tristan and the dog while Simon napped, plus dusted the living room and dining room (I’m surprised we could even see the television through the fingerprint smears on the screen), plus cleaned up the poop-dogs in the back yard, plus set the boys free in the zoo that was the “largest indoor garage sale” in the city (I miss the Stittsville flea market fiercely), plus made an extremely healthy dinner of grilled mahi-mahi and veggies (which everyone except me hated – oh well, I thought it was yummy) and on top of all that dragged the whole family out on an after-dinner walk. What a day!

And then, because no good deed goes unpunished, I’ve been up since 4:30 this morning with Simon. Ah well, at least I’ve got my new cranberry blouse to brighten up my day. I’ll try not to drool on it when I crawl under my desk for a nap.