Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Monday, November 17, 2014
Complications in the Birth of a Babywearer
from old blog "Please Do Not Feed the Monkey on My Back"
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014/11/complications-in-birth-of-babywearer.html
I want to start my story focused on the resource I did have: education. In seven years of infertility I'd read more about newborn needs than most people do in a lifetime. I knew all about kangaroo care and vestibular stimulation and the anthropological evidence of alloparenting. I knew about just about every thing you can absorb from books or research papers. Plus, I'd seen babies worn in slings all the time back when I was getting my doula education before my health broke. At the point in pregnancy when other mothers were collecting baby clothes, I was tracking down three yards of gauze for a reboza and making my first ring sling. Who needs clothes when babies are born to be skin to skin? I was going to wear my baby everywhere!
Instead, I ended up carrying my baby in my arms for eighteen to twenty hours a day for much of the first year of his life.
It was when baby arrived that I found out just what you can and can't learn from books. Books kept us breastfeeding despite all odds. He had a latch that *looked** okay and I had what felt like an endless train of so-called "lactation consultants" playing cheerleader... all while I kept trying to tell them that I was *sure* this didn't feel right and my miracle baby's weight sank under five pounds. Because of my book-learning, I faced off with the pediatrician, demanded equipment my care providers didn't even know about, pumped for twenty minutes every hour and a half, and traded back and forth with my husband finger-feeding him with a threadlike tube for sixteen hours a day-- and all the while at the same time everyone we talked to, every time we left the house, we asked for help with the reboza I turned out to be unable to tie and the ring sling I couldn't even get on. Reading had taught me why to wear my baby, but it could not teach me how to-- and apparently, neither could anyone else (including my husband, who claimed he was a natural). The staff at our birth center, our doula, our childbirth educator, La Leche-- everywhere, the same reactions. Rebozas? Aren't they for labor? Ring-sling? What's to know, you put it on and put the baby in it, right? And why is this important when you're having feeding and weight troubles? [FYI-- babywearing is research-demonstrated to speed weight gain.]
No one we knew commented on the fact that, following internet instructions that just read "two and a half yards of a fabric you like", I'd made the ring-sling out of a dirt-cheap super light super grippy quilter's weave and **steel saddle rings** from a leather shop because I'd read there were issues with rings breaking. [FYI-- baaaaad ideas]. No one but me pointed out that, when my husband wore our little one, baby's head ended up at near right angles to his body and his little face pressed right against that (thank god!) super thin cloth. (My husband finally stopped because my already strained nerves couldn't handle it.). Meanwhile I made a "moby"style out of strips of a stretchy bedsheet on clearance, sitting at a sewing machine at my parents while family passed around the baby. The first few times I put it on were like playing twister for me, but soon it became second nature.
By three months the horror of the breastfeeding problems and procedures we'd behind us, but we were still carting around ring sling number two-- my best friend's own go-to Zosimos, mailed to me from states away. Still, no one could show us how to use it. When I'd try, I'd get a back spasm and a headache that would last hours. Our public health nurse offered to get me another sling or some time of carrier-- but was up front that she would not be able to teach me how to use it. Meanwhile our little baby turned out to be one of those who wanted skin contact at all times everywhere. After a few months, the "non-moby" was so stretched out, I chopped up the fabric for diaper wipes. My husband got fixated on buying a Becco Gemini after seeing another father wear one. It took an enormous amount of help from family to afford and acquire one but the Gemini was supposed to be "the only baby carrier we'd ever need from infancy through preschool."
Meanwhile we were still eking our way by inches out of a hoarding situation, trying to stay on top of the tangle of social services (we lost our power assistance due to an office error and then were denied three times in a year for paperwork problems that were never explained-- and some saint in DSHS had to work on our file for 7.5 hours nonstop to straighten out the hash that others had made of our food and medical benefits, all while SSI continued to stall recognition of my husband's disability). Of course, I was also going through a long distance graduate school program on a need-based scholarship that required I maintain an A- average or lose everything.
Several times, I reached a point of needing to call my father to come into town to pick us up so baby and I could have regular meals and a stable, clean place to be while I caught up on my schoolwork and my husband worked on our wreck of a home. The crazy combination of chaos and retreat came at a steep price; my son became unwilling to be held by anyone but me. At some point during all this, I finally found local BWI meeting information, but all the meetings I could see for two months were Eastside and West Seattle-- as far away as the moon to me. [FYI- BWI = Babywearers International, a nonprofit group dedicated to teaching babywearing skills.]
At least there was the Becco. Baby didn't like facing in. On my back, he just screamed-- and I had no way to get him down quickly and safely or check in on him. He loved facing out, but I was worried about his hips. [FYI - inadequate hip support from some styles of carrier, especially the popular Bjorns, are strongly correlated to hip dysplasia. The Gemini is a good carrier, but facing-out is the position that offers the least support]. I tried to limit his time facing out in the Becco to forty minutes a day-- which pretty much meant one outing a day, for me *or* my husband. I found out that I couldn't wrestle him in and out of the Becco on a crowded bus while keeping groceries upright/diaper bag at hand, so it became a short distance tool.
A pause here for gratitude-- In so many ways the Becco was a godsend-- it made groceries and the endless outdoor walking to soothe his evening colic *possible*. And everyone in the neighborhood loved, loved, loved it. Fellow shoppers at the store and homeless on the street would stop us to praise me for keeping my baby warm and near. No one around here had seen anything like it before-- on my block, mothers buy those cheap umbrella strollers for $12 when they go on summer sale, then come fall wrap up their babies like burritos and walk home with the groceries hanging in old plastic bags from the handlebars. I've seen mothers with a baby and toddler steal shopping carts to get their families where they need to go.
At the same time as it gave us these gifts, the Becco's limits on top of our own limitations were severe. My world dwindle to five square blocks of our neighborhood. Most days, most of the day, I simply carried him, and at night he slept naked in my naked arms or not at all. Managing this and my classwork came at the cost of my ability to feed and clean myself. By a year old our struggles to better understand and meet his high needs had only resulted in him being saddled with a formal diagnosis of "infant mental illness". Professionals kept telling us daycare would have prevented our problems and never failed to express their shock that their advice for "training" him by forcing him to be alone for increasing lengths of time only increased his agitation. Meanwhile, when we could get out, all our friends though we had the perfect baby boy [we agreed!]. He was so quiet, so sweet, so curious and focused-- so long as he was in my arms.
I cried the day I walked into my own library's meeting room and read on the white board there that there'd been a BWI meeting there the day before. Of course, no one in the library could give me any information on it-- whether it was a freak, one-time occurrence or a regular thing. That may have been when I gave up my hopes of ever becoming the kind of babywearer I'd dreamed of being. [FYI - The condition for reserving a public room at the library is that your event must be open to the public... and cannot be advertised by any kind of flyer. Meeting at the library kept the group accessible... at the cost of being able to do basic outreach. In fact, the group is almost entirely dependent on Facebook-- which is why I had such a hard time finding any information on them.]
I got my second chance when a Facebook-savvy friend had her own baby and asked me to come with her to a BWI meeting at my library. It was bittersweet for me, but I couldn't resist, even though at 18 months and walking my little guy was clearly beyond the babywearing stage, right? [FYI - NOT!]. I remember struggling to get him in and out of the Becco on our slow and halting way to the library, and letting myself really notice how his little body now went planked and rigid sliding into the carrier.
Then we reached the meeting and, pretty much, my life changed. For the first time ever I found myself in a room full of mothers who thought like I did. I'd gotten used to hanging on the outskirts of meet-ups, either listening to mothers in perfect make-up compare their new boots and exchange tips on the most distracting Baby Einstien DVDs, or watching immigrant mothers excited to find one another and speak together in their own language. Suddenly I had my own cultural home-coming. The most beautiful fabric I'd ever seen (after four years working in the industry) was flying everywhere like wings beating around me. I dared to strike up a conversation with a mother of four about separation anxiety and found myself being told almost the very words we'd said to the professionals over and over-- that he simply needed what he needed and we needed help understanding and supporting that. Even my pint-sized introvert relaxed enough to toddle after the other children. I was quick to realize that many of the kids I saw arriving and climbing into slings were much bigger than my own. In the blink of an eye, my goal changed from supporting my friend to getting help myself.
I didn't stretch myself out of my comfort zone, I threw myself out of it as if from a moving train. "Please Gd," I thought, "If there is one time in my life I can make like an extrovert, let it be now!" I made eye contact with the nearest attentive face and spilled out that fact that I didn't even know what to ask. With a few questions, we'd zeroed in on my most pressing need as some way to get my new explorer up and down easily, and I found myself sent over to the "best teacher" for... drumroll, please... a crash course on ring-slings! As I walked up, she had her hands full demonstrating a long woven wrap on a fellow newbie with a much smaller child, and missing hardly a beat, she started wrapping me up, too. It was obviously way too complicated for me to pick up and useless with a baby who couldn't stand facing in, but since I did need her help, I was hardly going to complain. We scooped my baby boy up into the mass of loops around me--
And he pressed his little head sideways against my breastbone, and I felt his little body absolutely melt against mine, letting go of every last bit of tension for the first time. "You just chill out in your mama's arms, don't you?" my new teacher cooed. "You're just where you need to be."
Then she showed me how to put on a ring sling, and how to put him in it, and how to adjust it-- and it actually worked for me!
So I rushed home and got out the Zosimos and did everything I'd been shown--
and ended up with a spamming back and a killer headache. I touched base with my friend, who rushed over the pleated-shoulder wrap conversion she'd borrowed at the meeting. I tried it-- and got a perfect fit.
There followed the tale of two babywearers-- both successful, but very different.
My friend had read about the group before getting to a meeting, enough to have already branched out into the DIY support group and the swaps. She had a few for the basics of the world of babywearing. She understood what was in the library and how it worked, and she had $30 to spare for the dues for access to the lending library of all different styles of baby carrier. She could drive.
My friend made it to three meetings in two weeks and connected with people besides. Within a month, she knew which styles of ring-sling worked for her, which didn't, and why. She'd gotten some jacquard tablecloth and very detailed instructions on how to sew it with a shoulder style she knew would work for her; she was shopping for her first woven wrap. In the end, she would get what she needed (as opposed to what she wanted, which never ends :) for about half as much money as I would spend trying to meet my needs, become a far more advanced babywearer than I, and meet her goals quicker with far less frustrations.
I fumbled my way on to the local BWI Facebook group, which seemed to be written in another language, and spent hours canvassing the thrift store and consignment shop looking for the kind of super-soft pleated shoulder ring sling that seemed to work for me. Yes, I was innocently looking around for a SBP-style WCRS to be sitting on a shelf, waiting for me. [FYI - what I didn't know at the time is that this is a $80-$180 custom-made item.]. I'd ever scraped together $35 to pay for it when I found it! When it became very clear that was not going to happen, I moved towards my hopes of a long woven wrap to duplicate our experience at the meeting. I dropped that money into the clearanced cotton curtain fabric that I would spend months trying to beat into the kind of softness I was looking for. On the group, I asked hard questions that got gentle answers... and I slowly started to come to grips with the price tag of my needs. [FYI - the type of ring sling a person is most comfortable with depends on the exact shape of their shoulders and neck musculature. The weaves or "wraps" that are soft, cushioned, and flexible enough from a really conforming fit and strong enough to do the work are enormously expensive; $200 - $400 are typical, and higher prices common. $60 -$80 jacquard tablecloths are the next step down, but it is a big step.]
I studied that Facebook group harder than my classes. For the first time, I actually had access to a community of other mothers I was in sync with. I learned names-- or at least acronyms-- for things I'd been doing all along. [FYI - "BLW" = encouraging your baby to mooch off your plate.] I learned that severe separation anxiety was much more common than "the professionals" who pathologized my child knew, that it had at least as much to do with natural personality as insecure environment, and that daycare not only would not have magically prevented it but most likely would not have been possible for our particular child. I learned why the most beautiful wraps also tended to be most durable, comfortable, and functional. I learned there was nothing strange or defective about my difficulty learning from pictures and videos, my need to be shown in person and to do it hands-on and then do it again. Like my baby, I just needed what I needed.
Then, abruptly, our time with the Becco was over. There was no more possibility of disregarding either his discomfort or mine. Suddenly, I needed that SNP-style WCRS ASAP to get our groceries home. There were hideous days of haunting the budget swap [$100 or less!] while everything went to pot. I scored ring sling #3 minutes after it had been posted, barely before the next wouldbe buyer. The shoulder *looked* right in the small photo. It wasn't, but it hardly mattered-- that sling got lost in the mail.
It was time for another retreat to my parents, and while I was there, an SBP WCRS came up on the local group. With my family aghast (I'd gone into debt over #3, and wouldn't get that money back until the post office finished their search) I told the seller that if she could bring it and it fit, I would buy it. That night, I finally danced my son to sleep in a sling... ring-sling #4.
With a ring-sling, we could get groceries again. With a ring-sling, we could ride the bus again. We could get back to the functions of the religious community I'd once been a central part of. We could dare to go farther to the bigger park, or tour the neighborhood, without fear of ending up stranded with him too tired to walk and me too tired to carry him. With a ring-sling, we had more meals, more often. We were able to join the local Buy Nothing group, to trek out to neighborhood houses and haul home what was clutter to others and treasure to us-- phones that didn't crackle, sturdy toys, a hand blender for powdered medicine, and, ironically, a stroller. And ultimately, with a ring-sling, my husband was able to sway our howling, heartbroken boy to sleep against his chest while I studied or showered.
These days we are on ringslings.#5-- big enough for my super-sized husband to wear, and #6, a tablecloth special with a tail short enough for safety when I'm pushing my husband's wheelchair, custom-made as a gift for me by my friend. After I read Facebook advice offered to another new wrapper-- that to overcome the challenges of first learning to wrap, you must love the wrap, want to touch it, want to use it, want to share it with your beloved-- I finally could let go of the money and time (three months!) I'd sunk into trying to soften up that curtain fabric. That beloved "first" working ring-sling (#4) was sold to fund a Lenny Lamb, the softest wrap on the market.
Baby's still got separation anxiety through the roof and a very low tolerance of strangers. Life still has more than its share of both blessings and limitations. I still hurt over the first year and a half of losses to my baby, my family, and myself that could have been helped if anyone, anywhere in our lives could have connected us to the local BWI group. I still have babywearing ambitions that I simply don't have the resources and support to make happen. Sometimes our FB group feels like home to me and sometimes I am a stranger in a strange land, helpless to join the conversations that are happening or to formulate questions in a way that gets answers I can use. We all have challenges, and in a very large group it can be difficult to explain why/how things are hard for you without some exhausted mother reading in an implication that things are easy for them.
From the outside, it is easy to forget that poverty isn't just about a lack of money, but a profound and complicated lack of various resources. In my home, we live at what I call a multiplicity of four. $5 is like $20 to us. For me, buying and selling slings in the swap was as stomach-clenching as being as a new broker jumping into the stock market with no net. Distances are greater. it takes me and my neighbor the same amount of time and effort to reach the store that's on the corner from my home and two miles from hers. Out of town might as well be out of state. I've made it to a grand total of four babywearing events, counting the one we needed to leave due to meltdown. I'm still on the fence about membership-- I'd love to see if I could master a high back carry with a mei tai, and go hiking!-- but, realistically I just can't make it to enough meetings to be sure of returning materials, and we can't afford to sink money into something that may not earn its keep. Simple tasks take longer with disabilities; a dinner of chopped veggies with stir-fried noodles is a dedicated two hour marathon for my husband, after which he is too tired to clean up. The time for me to practice the back wrapping I'd love to learn gets swallowed by the time it takes to survive. There is a strange expectation that living in chronic crisis makes us tougher, but the reality is chronic crisis of any kind leaves all of us more fragile, and much more wary of risks. To date, babywearing has cost us a full 5% of a year's cash income (separate from food benefits). It's been worth every penny, but if we'd known what it would take going in, it would have seemed impossible.
Babywearing comes with two great barriers-- quality carriers and quality teachers. The hardest thing of all about longterm poverty is the way it strips away your people skills. When you're not eating well, you're not thinking well, and you know it. You never look your best when you're making do with what people pass along or the thrift store has left, when having your hair cut professionally is a silly pipe dream to you. In our society, people meet around money-- coffee shops, restaurants, movie outings... and you can't do that; they invite you to their homes and you are scared to reciprocate because of all the differences in how you live and what (if anything) you have to offer. You have to constantly weigh everything you share about yourself-- will this revelation that invite people closer or scare them away? And then there's the issues of shame, and trauma, and depression-- and there is no one at our level of income without shame, and trauma, and depression. Poverty strips away your people-skills... and babywearing is people-powered. Our whole group of hundreds depends on the efforts of less than half a dozen teachers... including the one who finally got me slinging... the very teacher who had volunteered her services to the very center where I get my WIC benefits, only to be turned down flat by someone who decided babywearing wouldn't be of interest to people like me.
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014/11/complications-in-birth-of-babywearer.html
I want to start my story focused on the resource I did have: education. In seven years of infertility I'd read more about newborn needs than most people do in a lifetime. I knew all about kangaroo care and vestibular stimulation and the anthropological evidence of alloparenting. I knew about just about every thing you can absorb from books or research papers. Plus, I'd seen babies worn in slings all the time back when I was getting my doula education before my health broke. At the point in pregnancy when other mothers were collecting baby clothes, I was tracking down three yards of gauze for a reboza and making my first ring sling. Who needs clothes when babies are born to be skin to skin? I was going to wear my baby everywhere!
Instead, I ended up carrying my baby in my arms for eighteen to twenty hours a day for much of the first year of his life.
It was when baby arrived that I found out just what you can and can't learn from books. Books kept us breastfeeding despite all odds. He had a latch that *looked** okay and I had what felt like an endless train of so-called "lactation consultants" playing cheerleader... all while I kept trying to tell them that I was *sure* this didn't feel right and my miracle baby's weight sank under five pounds. Because of my book-learning, I faced off with the pediatrician, demanded equipment my care providers didn't even know about, pumped for twenty minutes every hour and a half, and traded back and forth with my husband finger-feeding him with a threadlike tube for sixteen hours a day-- and all the while at the same time everyone we talked to, every time we left the house, we asked for help with the reboza I turned out to be unable to tie and the ring sling I couldn't even get on. Reading had taught me why to wear my baby, but it could not teach me how to-- and apparently, neither could anyone else (including my husband, who claimed he was a natural). The staff at our birth center, our doula, our childbirth educator, La Leche-- everywhere, the same reactions. Rebozas? Aren't they for labor? Ring-sling? What's to know, you put it on and put the baby in it, right? And why is this important when you're having feeding and weight troubles? [FYI-- babywearing is research-demonstrated to speed weight gain.]
No one we knew commented on the fact that, following internet instructions that just read "two and a half yards of a fabric you like", I'd made the ring-sling out of a dirt-cheap super light super grippy quilter's weave and **steel saddle rings** from a leather shop because I'd read there were issues with rings breaking. [FYI-- baaaaad ideas]. No one but me pointed out that, when my husband wore our little one, baby's head ended up at near right angles to his body and his little face pressed right against that (thank god!) super thin cloth. (My husband finally stopped because my already strained nerves couldn't handle it.). Meanwhile I made a "moby"style out of strips of a stretchy bedsheet on clearance, sitting at a sewing machine at my parents while family passed around the baby. The first few times I put it on were like playing twister for me, but soon it became second nature.
By three months the horror of the breastfeeding problems and procedures we'd behind us, but we were still carting around ring sling number two-- my best friend's own go-to Zosimos, mailed to me from states away. Still, no one could show us how to use it. When I'd try, I'd get a back spasm and a headache that would last hours. Our public health nurse offered to get me another sling or some time of carrier-- but was up front that she would not be able to teach me how to use it. Meanwhile our little baby turned out to be one of those who wanted skin contact at all times everywhere. After a few months, the "non-moby" was so stretched out, I chopped up the fabric for diaper wipes. My husband got fixated on buying a Becco Gemini after seeing another father wear one. It took an enormous amount of help from family to afford and acquire one but the Gemini was supposed to be "the only baby carrier we'd ever need from infancy through preschool."
Meanwhile we were still eking our way by inches out of a hoarding situation, trying to stay on top of the tangle of social services (we lost our power assistance due to an office error and then were denied three times in a year for paperwork problems that were never explained-- and some saint in DSHS had to work on our file for 7.5 hours nonstop to straighten out the hash that others had made of our food and medical benefits, all while SSI continued to stall recognition of my husband's disability). Of course, I was also going through a long distance graduate school program on a need-based scholarship that required I maintain an A- average or lose everything.
Several times, I reached a point of needing to call my father to come into town to pick us up so baby and I could have regular meals and a stable, clean place to be while I caught up on my schoolwork and my husband worked on our wreck of a home. The crazy combination of chaos and retreat came at a steep price; my son became unwilling to be held by anyone but me. At some point during all this, I finally found local BWI meeting information, but all the meetings I could see for two months were Eastside and West Seattle-- as far away as the moon to me. [FYI- BWI = Babywearers International, a nonprofit group dedicated to teaching babywearing skills.]
At least there was the Becco. Baby didn't like facing in. On my back, he just screamed-- and I had no way to get him down quickly and safely or check in on him. He loved facing out, but I was worried about his hips. [FYI - inadequate hip support from some styles of carrier, especially the popular Bjorns, are strongly correlated to hip dysplasia. The Gemini is a good carrier, but facing-out is the position that offers the least support]. I tried to limit his time facing out in the Becco to forty minutes a day-- which pretty much meant one outing a day, for me *or* my husband. I found out that I couldn't wrestle him in and out of the Becco on a crowded bus while keeping groceries upright/diaper bag at hand, so it became a short distance tool.
A pause here for gratitude-- In so many ways the Becco was a godsend-- it made groceries and the endless outdoor walking to soothe his evening colic *possible*. And everyone in the neighborhood loved, loved, loved it. Fellow shoppers at the store and homeless on the street would stop us to praise me for keeping my baby warm and near. No one around here had seen anything like it before-- on my block, mothers buy those cheap umbrella strollers for $12 when they go on summer sale, then come fall wrap up their babies like burritos and walk home with the groceries hanging in old plastic bags from the handlebars. I've seen mothers with a baby and toddler steal shopping carts to get their families where they need to go.
At the same time as it gave us these gifts, the Becco's limits on top of our own limitations were severe. My world dwindle to five square blocks of our neighborhood. Most days, most of the day, I simply carried him, and at night he slept naked in my naked arms or not at all. Managing this and my classwork came at the cost of my ability to feed and clean myself. By a year old our struggles to better understand and meet his high needs had only resulted in him being saddled with a formal diagnosis of "infant mental illness". Professionals kept telling us daycare would have prevented our problems and never failed to express their shock that their advice for "training" him by forcing him to be alone for increasing lengths of time only increased his agitation. Meanwhile, when we could get out, all our friends though we had the perfect baby boy [we agreed!]. He was so quiet, so sweet, so curious and focused-- so long as he was in my arms.
I cried the day I walked into my own library's meeting room and read on the white board there that there'd been a BWI meeting there the day before. Of course, no one in the library could give me any information on it-- whether it was a freak, one-time occurrence or a regular thing. That may have been when I gave up my hopes of ever becoming the kind of babywearer I'd dreamed of being. [FYI - The condition for reserving a public room at the library is that your event must be open to the public... and cannot be advertised by any kind of flyer. Meeting at the library kept the group accessible... at the cost of being able to do basic outreach. In fact, the group is almost entirely dependent on Facebook-- which is why I had such a hard time finding any information on them.]
I got my second chance when a Facebook-savvy friend had her own baby and asked me to come with her to a BWI meeting at my library. It was bittersweet for me, but I couldn't resist, even though at 18 months and walking my little guy was clearly beyond the babywearing stage, right? [FYI - NOT!]. I remember struggling to get him in and out of the Becco on our slow and halting way to the library, and letting myself really notice how his little body now went planked and rigid sliding into the carrier.
Then we reached the meeting and, pretty much, my life changed. For the first time ever I found myself in a room full of mothers who thought like I did. I'd gotten used to hanging on the outskirts of meet-ups, either listening to mothers in perfect make-up compare their new boots and exchange tips on the most distracting Baby Einstien DVDs, or watching immigrant mothers excited to find one another and speak together in their own language. Suddenly I had my own cultural home-coming. The most beautiful fabric I'd ever seen (after four years working in the industry) was flying everywhere like wings beating around me. I dared to strike up a conversation with a mother of four about separation anxiety and found myself being told almost the very words we'd said to the professionals over and over-- that he simply needed what he needed and we needed help understanding and supporting that. Even my pint-sized introvert relaxed enough to toddle after the other children. I was quick to realize that many of the kids I saw arriving and climbing into slings were much bigger than my own. In the blink of an eye, my goal changed from supporting my friend to getting help myself.
I didn't stretch myself out of my comfort zone, I threw myself out of it as if from a moving train. "Please Gd," I thought, "If there is one time in my life I can make like an extrovert, let it be now!" I made eye contact with the nearest attentive face and spilled out that fact that I didn't even know what to ask. With a few questions, we'd zeroed in on my most pressing need as some way to get my new explorer up and down easily, and I found myself sent over to the "best teacher" for... drumroll, please... a crash course on ring-slings! As I walked up, she had her hands full demonstrating a long woven wrap on a fellow newbie with a much smaller child, and missing hardly a beat, she started wrapping me up, too. It was obviously way too complicated for me to pick up and useless with a baby who couldn't stand facing in, but since I did need her help, I was hardly going to complain. We scooped my baby boy up into the mass of loops around me--
And he pressed his little head sideways against my breastbone, and I felt his little body absolutely melt against mine, letting go of every last bit of tension for the first time. "You just chill out in your mama's arms, don't you?" my new teacher cooed. "You're just where you need to be."
Then she showed me how to put on a ring sling, and how to put him in it, and how to adjust it-- and it actually worked for me!
So I rushed home and got out the Zosimos and did everything I'd been shown--
and ended up with a spamming back and a killer headache. I touched base with my friend, who rushed over the pleated-shoulder wrap conversion she'd borrowed at the meeting. I tried it-- and got a perfect fit.
There followed the tale of two babywearers-- both successful, but very different.
My friend had read about the group before getting to a meeting, enough to have already branched out into the DIY support group and the swaps. She had a few for the basics of the world of babywearing. She understood what was in the library and how it worked, and she had $30 to spare for the dues for access to the lending library of all different styles of baby carrier. She could drive.
My friend made it to three meetings in two weeks and connected with people besides. Within a month, she knew which styles of ring-sling worked for her, which didn't, and why. She'd gotten some jacquard tablecloth and very detailed instructions on how to sew it with a shoulder style she knew would work for her; she was shopping for her first woven wrap. In the end, she would get what she needed (as opposed to what she wanted, which never ends :) for about half as much money as I would spend trying to meet my needs, become a far more advanced babywearer than I, and meet her goals quicker with far less frustrations.
I fumbled my way on to the local BWI Facebook group, which seemed to be written in another language, and spent hours canvassing the thrift store and consignment shop looking for the kind of super-soft pleated shoulder ring sling that seemed to work for me. Yes, I was innocently looking around for a SBP-style WCRS to be sitting on a shelf, waiting for me. [FYI - what I didn't know at the time is that this is a $80-$180 custom-made item.]. I'd ever scraped together $35 to pay for it when I found it! When it became very clear that was not going to happen, I moved towards my hopes of a long woven wrap to duplicate our experience at the meeting. I dropped that money into the clearanced cotton curtain fabric that I would spend months trying to beat into the kind of softness I was looking for. On the group, I asked hard questions that got gentle answers... and I slowly started to come to grips with the price tag of my needs. [FYI - the type of ring sling a person is most comfortable with depends on the exact shape of their shoulders and neck musculature. The weaves or "wraps" that are soft, cushioned, and flexible enough from a really conforming fit and strong enough to do the work are enormously expensive; $200 - $400 are typical, and higher prices common. $60 -$80 jacquard tablecloths are the next step down, but it is a big step.]
I studied that Facebook group harder than my classes. For the first time, I actually had access to a community of other mothers I was in sync with. I learned names-- or at least acronyms-- for things I'd been doing all along. [FYI - "BLW" = encouraging your baby to mooch off your plate.] I learned that severe separation anxiety was much more common than "the professionals" who pathologized my child knew, that it had at least as much to do with natural personality as insecure environment, and that daycare not only would not have magically prevented it but most likely would not have been possible for our particular child. I learned why the most beautiful wraps also tended to be most durable, comfortable, and functional. I learned there was nothing strange or defective about my difficulty learning from pictures and videos, my need to be shown in person and to do it hands-on and then do it again. Like my baby, I just needed what I needed.
Then, abruptly, our time with the Becco was over. There was no more possibility of disregarding either his discomfort or mine. Suddenly, I needed that SNP-style WCRS ASAP to get our groceries home. There were hideous days of haunting the budget swap [$100 or less!] while everything went to pot. I scored ring sling #3 minutes after it had been posted, barely before the next wouldbe buyer. The shoulder *looked* right in the small photo. It wasn't, but it hardly mattered-- that sling got lost in the mail.
It was time for another retreat to my parents, and while I was there, an SBP WCRS came up on the local group. With my family aghast (I'd gone into debt over #3, and wouldn't get that money back until the post office finished their search) I told the seller that if she could bring it and it fit, I would buy it. That night, I finally danced my son to sleep in a sling... ring-sling #4.
With a ring-sling, we could get groceries again. With a ring-sling, we could ride the bus again. We could get back to the functions of the religious community I'd once been a central part of. We could dare to go farther to the bigger park, or tour the neighborhood, without fear of ending up stranded with him too tired to walk and me too tired to carry him. With a ring-sling, we had more meals, more often. We were able to join the local Buy Nothing group, to trek out to neighborhood houses and haul home what was clutter to others and treasure to us-- phones that didn't crackle, sturdy toys, a hand blender for powdered medicine, and, ironically, a stroller. And ultimately, with a ring-sling, my husband was able to sway our howling, heartbroken boy to sleep against his chest while I studied or showered.
These days we are on ringslings.#5-- big enough for my super-sized husband to wear, and #6, a tablecloth special with a tail short enough for safety when I'm pushing my husband's wheelchair, custom-made as a gift for me by my friend. After I read Facebook advice offered to another new wrapper-- that to overcome the challenges of first learning to wrap, you must love the wrap, want to touch it, want to use it, want to share it with your beloved-- I finally could let go of the money and time (three months!) I'd sunk into trying to soften up that curtain fabric. That beloved "first" working ring-sling (#4) was sold to fund a Lenny Lamb, the softest wrap on the market.
Baby's still got separation anxiety through the roof and a very low tolerance of strangers. Life still has more than its share of both blessings and limitations. I still hurt over the first year and a half of losses to my baby, my family, and myself that could have been helped if anyone, anywhere in our lives could have connected us to the local BWI group. I still have babywearing ambitions that I simply don't have the resources and support to make happen. Sometimes our FB group feels like home to me and sometimes I am a stranger in a strange land, helpless to join the conversations that are happening or to formulate questions in a way that gets answers I can use. We all have challenges, and in a very large group it can be difficult to explain why/how things are hard for you without some exhausted mother reading in an implication that things are easy for them.
From the outside, it is easy to forget that poverty isn't just about a lack of money, but a profound and complicated lack of various resources. In my home, we live at what I call a multiplicity of four. $5 is like $20 to us. For me, buying and selling slings in the swap was as stomach-clenching as being as a new broker jumping into the stock market with no net. Distances are greater. it takes me and my neighbor the same amount of time and effort to reach the store that's on the corner from my home and two miles from hers. Out of town might as well be out of state. I've made it to a grand total of four babywearing events, counting the one we needed to leave due to meltdown. I'm still on the fence about membership-- I'd love to see if I could master a high back carry with a mei tai, and go hiking!-- but, realistically I just can't make it to enough meetings to be sure of returning materials, and we can't afford to sink money into something that may not earn its keep. Simple tasks take longer with disabilities; a dinner of chopped veggies with stir-fried noodles is a dedicated two hour marathon for my husband, after which he is too tired to clean up. The time for me to practice the back wrapping I'd love to learn gets swallowed by the time it takes to survive. There is a strange expectation that living in chronic crisis makes us tougher, but the reality is chronic crisis of any kind leaves all of us more fragile, and much more wary of risks. To date, babywearing has cost us a full 5% of a year's cash income (separate from food benefits). It's been worth every penny, but if we'd known what it would take going in, it would have seemed impossible.
Babywearing comes with two great barriers-- quality carriers and quality teachers. The hardest thing of all about longterm poverty is the way it strips away your people skills. When you're not eating well, you're not thinking well, and you know it. You never look your best when you're making do with what people pass along or the thrift store has left, when having your hair cut professionally is a silly pipe dream to you. In our society, people meet around money-- coffee shops, restaurants, movie outings... and you can't do that; they invite you to their homes and you are scared to reciprocate because of all the differences in how you live and what (if anything) you have to offer. You have to constantly weigh everything you share about yourself-- will this revelation that invite people closer or scare them away? And then there's the issues of shame, and trauma, and depression-- and there is no one at our level of income without shame, and trauma, and depression. Poverty strips away your people-skills... and babywearing is people-powered. Our whole group of hundreds depends on the efforts of less than half a dozen teachers... including the one who finally got me slinging... the very teacher who had volunteered her services to the very center where I get my WIC benefits, only to be turned down flat by someone who decided babywearing wouldn't be of interest to people like me.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Monday, June 16, 2014
My son was born after the Age of Privacy ended.
From old blog "Please Do Not Feed the Monkey on my Back"
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-son-was-born-after-age-of-privacy.html
A few weeks ago I put up a question on my Facebook, asking friends what they remembered from childhood that children now will never know.
That weekend I read a book on the subject that chilled me to the bone.
It was the second draft of my uncle's history of our family. It's also a rigorous examination of the key central mechanic of America class motility-- the key to America's success as the land of opportunity.
Privacy.
You see, every individual in my family who ever made a name for him/herself, took up a step socially, or set up her/his kids for a better future.was able to do so by moving to a new place and telling a new story about themselves.
Privacy. It is how Americans have succeeded in defining ourselves by our potential, rather than our pasts.
And it is gone.
My uncle spent 35 years puzzling out the pieces of Grandfather's side of the family. Stripping off all the veils from Grandmother's side took only five years with current information technology.
So what? you ask.
So this past month a close friend of mine was tracked down by a childhood molester. This happened despite a cross country move, name change, and years of rigorous active paranoia trying to control what personal data appeared in search engine results.
I was painfully reminded of reading about an elementary school teacher's desperate plea to Google to remove her name from the internet-- in early childhood she'd been at the center of a bizarre tragedy and her name had appeared in local news. Decades later, casual internet tinkering by her students and their parents was resurrecting the story and ruining her career. Think about that-- everything she'd accomplished in her whole life, rendered worthless by a horror that happened before she could remember.
Growing up, business books on my father's shelf had a ton of advice on how to speak about your paycheck and perks, your job duties, your previous employers-- the bread and butter of an interview, the quintessence of self-promotion. Nowadays much of that advice is deemed counterproductive-- after all, even if your real work differed from the official description (a situation about as common as dirt) saying as much these days puts you at risk of the universal interview kiss of death-- looking like you're lying.
Speaking of universal, I have several friends involved in the technological march toward universal medical records-- a utopia vision of a future collective data base where all your health data follows you from birth to grave. I live in terror of this idea: I am quite literally alive because of points in my life when I moved to a new system and specifically denied permission for my records to follow me-- forcing my new doctors to assess me with fresh eyes. Actually, studies are *very* consistent at showing that more data does NOT make for better decisions;-- the human brain is built to do more with less. (Go read _Blink_, everybody.)
And speaking of more with less, I'm forever seeing these inspirational social media memes about moving on from the people in your life who don't make you a better you-- which is ironic because social media has made moving on from people gosh darned difficult. "Friendship" has become an opt-out, rather than an opt-in, relationship...with a distinct exchange of quality for quantity as we expend our energies sharing a morning snapshot with a hundred people in a tenth of the time it would take to have a real conversation with one.
There's some huge blessings possible here-- especially for an uber-introvert like me who has a lot of love to give and not many spoons for giving it-- but there is still some part of me for whom "real friends" are the people you can read by scent and body language and by the quality of their silence. I suspect my little boy will grow up in a world where the only word for such people is "relatives." At the same time, my uncle points out that children today will grow up in a global version of small town small mindedness, where things they said and did decades ago are only a click away.
We can no longer burn our old love letters.
Looking back, I realize that as a growing child myself during the dawn of the Information Age, all the futuristic network-world fantasies I ever read had omething in common. Every single spec. fic writer I ever read, every single one, envisioned the 'Net as a place of anonymity, the ultimate field of self invention, an arena entirely separate from real world identity and action. I think the alternative was, simply, unimaginable.
We have destroyed the natural boundary between history and memory.
My son will grow up in a world where his ability to define himself, reveal himself, and ultimately create himself will be constrained beyond the imagination of his pioneer ancestors. He will live out his life in a cage of data, and all he can do in life will only add bars.
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-son-was-born-after-age-of-privacy.html
A few weeks ago I put up a question on my Facebook, asking friends what they remembered from childhood that children now will never know.
That weekend I read a book on the subject that chilled me to the bone.
It was the second draft of my uncle's history of our family. It's also a rigorous examination of the key central mechanic of America class motility-- the key to America's success as the land of opportunity.
Privacy.
You see, every individual in my family who ever made a name for him/herself, took up a step socially, or set up her/his kids for a better future.was able to do so by moving to a new place and telling a new story about themselves.
Privacy. It is how Americans have succeeded in defining ourselves by our potential, rather than our pasts.
And it is gone.
My uncle spent 35 years puzzling out the pieces of Grandfather's side of the family. Stripping off all the veils from Grandmother's side took only five years with current information technology.
So what? you ask.
So this past month a close friend of mine was tracked down by a childhood molester. This happened despite a cross country move, name change, and years of rigorous active paranoia trying to control what personal data appeared in search engine results.
I was painfully reminded of reading about an elementary school teacher's desperate plea to Google to remove her name from the internet-- in early childhood she'd been at the center of a bizarre tragedy and her name had appeared in local news. Decades later, casual internet tinkering by her students and their parents was resurrecting the story and ruining her career. Think about that-- everything she'd accomplished in her whole life, rendered worthless by a horror that happened before she could remember.
Growing up, business books on my father's shelf had a ton of advice on how to speak about your paycheck and perks, your job duties, your previous employers-- the bread and butter of an interview, the quintessence of self-promotion. Nowadays much of that advice is deemed counterproductive-- after all, even if your real work differed from the official description (a situation about as common as dirt) saying as much these days puts you at risk of the universal interview kiss of death-- looking like you're lying.
Speaking of universal, I have several friends involved in the technological march toward universal medical records-- a utopia vision of a future collective data base where all your health data follows you from birth to grave. I live in terror of this idea: I am quite literally alive because of points in my life when I moved to a new system and specifically denied permission for my records to follow me-- forcing my new doctors to assess me with fresh eyes. Actually, studies are *very* consistent at showing that more data does NOT make for better decisions;-- the human brain is built to do more with less. (Go read _Blink_, everybody.)
And speaking of more with less, I'm forever seeing these inspirational social media memes about moving on from the people in your life who don't make you a better you-- which is ironic because social media has made moving on from people gosh darned difficult. "Friendship" has become an opt-out, rather than an opt-in, relationship...with a distinct exchange of quality for quantity as we expend our energies sharing a morning snapshot with a hundred people in a tenth of the time it would take to have a real conversation with one.
There's some huge blessings possible here-- especially for an uber-introvert like me who has a lot of love to give and not many spoons for giving it-- but there is still some part of me for whom "real friends" are the people you can read by scent and body language and by the quality of their silence. I suspect my little boy will grow up in a world where the only word for such people is "relatives." At the same time, my uncle points out that children today will grow up in a global version of small town small mindedness, where things they said and did decades ago are only a click away.
We can no longer burn our old love letters.
Looking back, I realize that as a growing child myself during the dawn of the Information Age, all the futuristic network-world fantasies I ever read had omething in common. Every single spec. fic writer I ever read, every single one, envisioned the 'Net as a place of anonymity, the ultimate field of self invention, an arena entirely separate from real world identity and action. I think the alternative was, simply, unimaginable.
We have destroyed the natural boundary between history and memory.
My son will grow up in a world where his ability to define himself, reveal himself, and ultimately create himself will be constrained beyond the imagination of his pioneer ancestors. He will live out his life in a cage of data, and all he can do in life will only add bars.
Monday, June 2, 2014
Shaving the bones
From old blog "Please Do Not Feed the Monkey on my Back"
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014/06/shaving-bones.html
Hoarding.
It's complicated. It's genetic, neurological, stress-triggered. Imitates OCD in some ways and Addiction in others. There are case studies, brain studies, quantitative and qualitative research, and one vitally import chart...
From the inside-- Hoarding is about a badly broken sense of self. There's no boundary between self, stuff, future, past, feelings, reality... No capacity to navigate between potential, and fact.
The worst thing you can tell a Hoarder is that the you you are actively being in the life that is actually happening right now IS the real you in your real life.
And the easiest things in the world to Hoard, are books. Books ARE extensions of the self. Books are people in pages-- half a conversation trapped in time, with all the power a conversation has to engage, motivate, reassure suspended where you can return to it time and again with new insights and all the while ensconced in the safety of being by yourself.
Books you've read pass themselves off in your mind as free return tickets to the most important places you've ever been... although the truth is you are always a different you, coming back, and it is never again the first time.
And books you haven't read offer the illusion that you can go every place you've ever wanted to be, learn every thing you've ever wanted to know-- complete every you you've ever dreamed of becoming... all in one lifetime.
Then the eyes start to go. And the headaches last longer. And the blessed child you have waited so long for arrives, and the now of life demands a present presence more constant than it ever has before.
And there isn't enough space.
So you begin the process of excising the external brain. You ask the necessary dehoarding question-- "What am I realistically likely to use in the coming year?"-- knowing that in this context it becomes the impossible question "What am I most likely to *think* over the foreseeable future?"
It is time for a gruesome confrontation with the reality of yourself and your life-- the eyes you won't be getting back, the time you won't be having.
All de-hoarding is about dismantling the dreams that have come to be in the way of life. Books are the building blocks of dreams. All surgery is bloody.
But it isn't that simple. You *are*, in large part, the you shaped by those books you had casual, constant access to at a child. The books that were not discovered or recommended, but just there; the books that could be prodded and taste-tested again and again over the years. The antique books. The gilded books. The battered books with the questions in the margins. The books that fall open at a special spot.
You aren't just custom-cutting away the woulda coulda shoulda of your own future-- not just giving up on the teacher, the learner, the doer you wanted to be-- you are also swinging shears through the garden of your child's future daily life with books.
But there isn't enough space.
You must become an expert in issues your friends haven't even thought about. What pictures and charts actually transfer to eReader, and what are lost in transition. How quickly seminal works may be flushed from the library shelves, and which genres are most likely to linger. What memories really need to be at hand on a moment's notice, and what may be safely put "on hold".
And there still isn't enough space.
We have a special term for culling out books by now.
We call it, "shaving the bones."
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Mandatory über extroverted codependency much?
From old blog "Please Do Not Feed the Monkey on my Back"
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014_05_01_archive.html
So this advice columnist "epic smack down" has been making the viral rounds, and while everybody else who was ever picked last for a kickball team or left out of a birthday party has been cheering, I am just weirded out.
The core issue is a very small group of very close family women who, *once* a year, make a special retreat together... and another woman in the family, with very different life experience and lifestyle choices, who wants in.
So what's this woman doing with that desire? Is she shifting her lifestyle to take advantage of the activities that keep the others feeling close? Is she concentrating on building bridges across their differences in life experience by strengthening their individual friendships? No, she's playing the "I want to keep doing what I've been doing and for everybody else to react differently to it" game. She's throwing adult temper tantrums and slander. (Gee, I wonder if that kind of behavior might have something to do with why none out of a group of four or five women want her along on their yearly recharge session.)
Our letter writer asks-- rather mildly, in my opinion-- how to guide this woman into taking the personal responsibility of building up her own group of like-minded, experience-bonded, nurturing friends... and our advice columnist takes the letter writer's head off, to general acclaim.
Apparently the only reason a person doesn't "fit in" is because others aren't "making space" for them.
Great to know! Personality conflicts aren't real, life experiences don't matter, people don't actually grow apart, and nobody needs boundaries-- we just have to play nice and make space!
There's a difference between being gracious, and being a doormat. Pretending to want to be around somebody you don't want to be around is mostly a reeeeeally creepy, passive-aggressive, and seriously damaging thing to do to somebody.
I appreciate that this woman is having a hard time... but the hard truth is, it doesn't matter *why* the group she's stalking doesn't want to share their once a year most-special time with her. There is just no way around the fact that this woman really does need to make her own friends who can relate to and nurture her.
I have to wonder, if this was a close knit group who were held together by their experiences of being senior citizens, or gay, or cancer survivors, or amateur gourmet chefs... would the advice columnist have been so cavalier with their once a year special time together?
Because the picture I'm getting from the way this is written is that, because these close friends are ardent churchgoers, they're not supposed to have special friends, or special times, or personal needs.
And I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with standing by and watching "Christian" translated as "mandatory co-dependent". I'm not okay with a group of mothers getting dressed down as "horrible people" for taking one weekend a year for selfcare in seclusion with those they most trust and understand.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
We Can't Keep It Real Unless We Start Real: Words and Sex
From old blog "Please Do Not Feed the Monkey on my Back"
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014/04/we-can-keep-it-real-unless-we-start.html
Annalee Newitz's has written an amazing essay, "Your Penis Is Getting in the Way of My Science", to defend Science from the asshatery of pop media prattling about a "female penis" just because we've found a female insect with a body part that ends up in her male mate. The essay is awesome. READ IT. IT'S IMPORTANT.
But the issue seems so trivial, you may be thinking-- and you are thinking that because of one of Newitz's two mistakes.
Newitz is concerned about protecting science, but the bigger issue here is REALITY. Allow me to demonstrate why how we think about and how we talk about things like this is so important.
Quiz time! Where do babies come from? Why, every comedian knows the answer to that-- there's the wild whoopee splort and then a cutthroat race to the death for a gazillon sperm swarming up the female system until the one and only winner slam dunks its way into the waiting egg.
Sounds familiar?
How about the special two day stay at Club Cervix? You know, the point right after the wild whoopee splort, where those teeming thousands get welcomed into a critical period of rest, relaxation, perfect temperature, and all you can eat food? When was the last time you heard about that part?
Or the sperm teams? You know, when Club Cervix opens the doors to release all those plumped-up powered-up little champs for the race to ovulation, and they spontaneously form teams just like Tour De France, each team providing support and buffering protection for the one in the best shape. When did you last hear about the teams in the race? They even have an equivalent to bike lanes-- the special tracks laid out inside the Fallopian tubes, with more food all along the route. Those special tracks that make it *possible* for the sperm to go anywhere, because without those tracks, sperms travel about as well as ice skates on a gravel road. Have you heard about them?
And when did you last here a comedian talk about the fact that a sperm has no way to get inside an egg? What was the last good routine you heard about the way the majestic egg sits there with that first sperm knocking at the door, and then waits for more, and then finally somehow-- and we don't know how-- SELECTS one, forms two plastic arms, and embraces that chosen one into itself?
Does that whole process sound anything like what you learned in school?
Does it sound anything like what "everybody knows"?
What kind of impact does it have on our society that from greeting cards to cocktail parties, we're all told a hundred times over that life itself begins with a ruthless, random, savage competition of male units in conquest of a passive female landscape... when that is just not the reality?
What would it mean for men in our society if every boy was taught that his father's contribution to his existence was cherished, nurtured, supported, guarded, chosen, and embraced on the journey to his conception, rather than being the random conqueror?
This is serious stuff. This is about Reality, and our ability, and willingness, to recognize reality.
Which brings me to the other error in Newitz's lovely essay-- her perpetuation of a term that has no place in science.
Consider, if you please, the reality of the human penis.
Penises are blunt. Penises bobble. Penises blunder.
A stiletto penetrates. A spy penetrates. A penis is like an enthusiastic blind puppy that has to be guided home. If penises wore T-shirts, they'd say things like "Hold Me" and "Which Way Shall We Go?" and "Help! I Fell Out and I Can't Get Back In!"
The reality is, a penis doesn't penetrate; a penis gets inserted.
That's a pretty big difference.
The basic definition and connotations here are just not right.
Every single time *any* of us speaks of a penis "penetrating", we're perpetuating a myth of male as active, female as passive, and sex as violation. It is no more accurate, clinical, or objective to speak in terms of "the penis penetrating the vagina" than it would be to talk in terms of "the vagina consuming the penis".
Frankly, we all deserve better.
Even those hinky insects.
But the issue seems so trivial, you may be thinking-- and you are thinking that because of one of Newitz's two mistakes.
Newitz is concerned about protecting science, but the bigger issue here is REALITY. Allow me to demonstrate why how we think about and how we talk about things like this is so important.
Quiz time! Where do babies come from? Why, every comedian knows the answer to that-- there's the wild whoopee splort and then a cutthroat race to the death for a gazillon sperm swarming up the female system until the one and only winner slam dunks its way into the waiting egg.
Sounds familiar?
How about the special two day stay at Club Cervix? You know, the point right after the wild whoopee splort, where those teeming thousands get welcomed into a critical period of rest, relaxation, perfect temperature, and all you can eat food? When was the last time you heard about that part?
Or the sperm teams? You know, when Club Cervix opens the doors to release all those plumped-up powered-up little champs for the race to ovulation, and they spontaneously form teams just like Tour De France, each team providing support and buffering protection for the one in the best shape. When did you last hear about the teams in the race? They even have an equivalent to bike lanes-- the special tracks laid out inside the Fallopian tubes, with more food all along the route. Those special tracks that make it *possible* for the sperm to go anywhere, because without those tracks, sperms travel about as well as ice skates on a gravel road. Have you heard about them?
And when did you last here a comedian talk about the fact that a sperm has no way to get inside an egg? What was the last good routine you heard about the way the majestic egg sits there with that first sperm knocking at the door, and then waits for more, and then finally somehow-- and we don't know how-- SELECTS one, forms two plastic arms, and embraces that chosen one into itself?
Does that whole process sound anything like what you learned in school?
Does it sound anything like what "everybody knows"?
What kind of impact does it have on our society that from greeting cards to cocktail parties, we're all told a hundred times over that life itself begins with a ruthless, random, savage competition of male units in conquest of a passive female landscape... when that is just not the reality?
What would it mean for men in our society if every boy was taught that his father's contribution to his existence was cherished, nurtured, supported, guarded, chosen, and embraced on the journey to his conception, rather than being the random conqueror?
This is serious stuff. This is about Reality, and our ability, and willingness, to recognize reality.
Which brings me to the other error in Newitz's lovely essay-- her perpetuation of a term that has no place in science.
Consider, if you please, the reality of the human penis.
Penises are blunt. Penises bobble. Penises blunder.
A stiletto penetrates. A spy penetrates. A penis is like an enthusiastic blind puppy that has to be guided home. If penises wore T-shirts, they'd say things like "Hold Me" and "Which Way Shall We Go?" and "Help! I Fell Out and I Can't Get Back In!"
The reality is, a penis doesn't penetrate; a penis gets inserted.
That's a pretty big difference.
The basic definition and connotations here are just not right.
Every single time *any* of us speaks of a penis "penetrating", we're perpetuating a myth of male as active, female as passive, and sex as violation. It is no more accurate, clinical, or objective to speak in terms of "the penis penetrating the vagina" than it would be to talk in terms of "the vagina consuming the penis".
Frankly, we all deserve better.
Even those hinky insects.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
My Scary World
From old blog "Please Do Not Feed the Monkey on my Back"
Original URL: http://pleasedonotfeedthemonkeyonmyback.blogspot.com/2014_02_01_archive.html
So let's talk anxiety.
Trauma + deprivation = anxiety issues. (Or triggers. Or phobias. Or whatever you get paid to call them depending on your special field. Let's move on.)
I have anxiety issues around mail, phone calls, paperwork, people, and traffic.
Yeah. Not functional. Working on that.
But before we get to the Big Girl Panties part-- which is coming, I promise you-- I need you to think about cockroaches.
Yep, cockroaches. Plural.
Like that one box they have at the zoo, where for a second you just register a big box with dark walls and no animals in it, and then you realize... the walls are moving... the walls themselves are layers of living giant Amazonian cockroaches--
--are you there with me?
Okay, think about putting your hand into that box.
Ready? Three... Two... By the way, Amazonian cockroaches *bite*... One!Stick your hand in there!
Yeah. That box, is my mailbox to me. That's how it feels.
Making, or taking, a personal phone call, is like walking a tightrope for me.
You need my signature on something?
Traffic? Russian roulette. Every. Outing.
All of these fears are experience-based. Mail can contain nasty surprises that can rip life apart-- court notices, social service failures. Between my anxiety and my neurological quirks, telephone calls involve real vertigo, and eventual sensory shut down. Nobody likes forms or paperwork, but working with government assistance is like getting constant pop quizzes for which you can go to jail for getting an answer wrong. And traffic-- abusive behavior in the home often goes with reckless driving on the streets. I grew up with that fear. Besides, have you seen how people drive?!
And speaking of people...
I grew up in an environment in which social anxiety was taken for granted. For everyone in my household, anytime spent with anyone not of our household, was spent in a state of terror of doing something ruinously inappropriate in that act of trying to reach out.
I've been more lonely than I can say for most of my life.
I've worked incredibly hard for the people skills and community that I have.
That doesn't make being with people any less exhausting.
Even fun with friends can be hard on the inside.
And reaching out to ask for help, which can be scary for anyone to do, feels like this.
Now it is almost time for those Big Girl Panties.
But before I pull them on, remember:
I'm also low income, also partially disabled, also the caregiver of a toddler and the helpmate of a significantly disabled man. All that means it takes the vast majority of each day's time and energy just to make food and clean-up happen, AND I'm trying to inch my way through graduate school to build us a better future.
So, even with the Big Girl Panties on, I can only jump out of so many planes a day.
Trauma + deprivation = anxiety issues. (Or triggers. Or phobias. Or whatever you get paid to call them depending on your special field. Let's move on.)
I have anxiety issues around mail, phone calls, paperwork, people, and traffic.
Yeah. Not functional. Working on that.
But before we get to the Big Girl Panties part-- which is coming, I promise you-- I need you to think about cockroaches.
Yep, cockroaches. Plural.
Like that one box they have at the zoo, where for a second you just register a big box with dark walls and no animals in it, and then you realize... the walls are moving... the walls themselves are layers of living giant Amazonian cockroaches--
--are you there with me?
Okay, think about putting your hand into that box.
Ready? Three... Two... By the way, Amazonian cockroaches *bite*... One!Stick your hand in there!
Yeah. That box, is my mailbox to me. That's how it feels.
Making, or taking, a personal phone call, is like walking a tightrope for me.
You need my signature on something?
Traffic? Russian roulette. Every. Outing.
All of these fears are experience-based. Mail can contain nasty surprises that can rip life apart-- court notices, social service failures. Between my anxiety and my neurological quirks, telephone calls involve real vertigo, and eventual sensory shut down. Nobody likes forms or paperwork, but working with government assistance is like getting constant pop quizzes for which you can go to jail for getting an answer wrong. And traffic-- abusive behavior in the home often goes with reckless driving on the streets. I grew up with that fear. Besides, have you seen how people drive?!
And speaking of people...
I grew up in an environment in which social anxiety was taken for granted. For everyone in my household, anytime spent with anyone not of our household, was spent in a state of terror of doing something ruinously inappropriate in that act of trying to reach out.
I've been more lonely than I can say for most of my life.
I've worked incredibly hard for the people skills and community that I have.
That doesn't make being with people any less exhausting.
Even fun with friends can be hard on the inside.
And reaching out to ask for help, which can be scary for anyone to do, feels like this.
Now it is almost time for those Big Girl Panties.
But before I pull them on, remember:
I'm also low income, also partially disabled, also the caregiver of a toddler and the helpmate of a significantly disabled man. All that means it takes the vast majority of each day's time and energy just to make food and clean-up happen, AND I'm trying to inch my way through graduate school to build us a better future.
So, even with the Big Girl Panties on, I can only jump out of so many planes a day.
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