Toddled Dredge

• TV shows I am watching this month: Life, Chuck, My Name Is Earl, The Office, Bones, Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock.  TV shows I watch but won’t publicly admit to liking: Psych, Sanctuary (Sanctuary is so bad it’s enjoyable). TV show for which I’m waiting for new episodes: Burn Notice, Eureka. TV shows they canceled too soon and in a perfect world someone would revive: Raines, Dresden Files, Firefly, Titus.  And as long as we’re talking perfect world, Phil Hartman would still be alive and acting.
• Fellow recovering Tetris addicts? Do not click this link.
• Today I baked a cake from my eggless cookbook because, obviously, I was out of eggs.  This cookbook in my head is called Second Rate Baking - With Pretension! The author wrote these recipes after one of her children became deathly allergic to eggs.  Good reason to create your own recipes, but then she  brags about how wonderful this or that recipe is and how it will make you renounce the eggy version forever.  This has never happened.  Not once. Instead I bake her stuff and think, Meh. So if you’re in the mood for poundcake that crumbles the moment you slice it, come on over.
• My 18-month-old really wants to be potty-trained, so we are working on it.  My three-year-old, however, refuses to use the potty.  This is a confusing family.

I am a worrier.  My imagination can find the danger in the most common objects and situations.  My natural parenting style is something called Fearful and Clutching.

But this is, of course, bad for my kids and I have tried to overcome it.  I want my girls to be strong and brave and independent.  I am trying to loosen my grip on their tiny shoulders when reasonable and let them roam and have fun.

I recently downloaded the photos from my camera.  Among all the other forgotten shots was a series of photos I took at a local park in August.  The park is shaped like a bowl, with a rolling valley in the middle, and the playground and benches on the bowl’s rim.  I was nine months pregnant and tired, so I sat on a camp chair with my one-year-old, and let four-year-old JellyBean and three-year-old Sweetpea roam the hollow as far as they liked, as long as they stayed where I could see them.

And so they did.

Letting them wander away makes it even sweeter when they come back.

When I scheduled the ultrasound for the baby’s hips, I was told not to allow her to eat anything for three hours before the test.  This sounded weird to me, but I’ve learned from experience with this hospital that there is not much point in asking the scheduler questions.  She does not know why the baby is not supposed to eat; she only knows the instructions to give the patient.  So I followed the instructions more or less, and I arrived for the appointment on time with a hungry, fussy baby.

When the nurse called me into the waiting room, she asked me if the baby took a bottle.  I told her the baby was breastfed.  She led me to the ultrasound room and the sonographer told me to feed the baby, then left the room.  Later she explained - after I asked - that the reason for the three hour fast was so that the baby could eat during the ultrasound, which might make her lie still for the test.

I felt hoodwinked.  There had been no real reason to let my baby go hungry.  First, that method was obviously intended for bottle-fed babies only.  Second, I know my baby well enough to know that no amount of feeding will make her lie calmly while she is on an examining table, held down by a stranger who has smeared her with goo and pressed an instrument into her hip.

I am not complaining about the sonographer; she did her job well and got the information we needed (hips not dislocated, just immature; stretching exercises only, no harness).  I was just puzzled why I was not given full information so I could make the best decision for my baby.

Since I have had children, I have noticed a change in how the medical community treats me.  While I have had good doctors and have no significant complaints, I see flashes here and there of a culture that treats information to mothers as a tool for producing desired behavior, rather than facts from which she can make her own intelligent decision.  Information has become propaganda rather than education.

Take the issue of alcohol during pregnancy.  At the hospital where I delivered all four of my children, they stress absolutely no alcohol during pregnancy.  This seems to be the medical party line in the US.  A swift survey of websites will tell you there is no known safe quantity of alcohol during pregnancy. That is, strictly speaking, true.  It is difficult to ethically study the effects of alcohol on pre-natal life; doctors can’t exactly encourage women to remain part of the control group if it harms the fetus.

When I was considering getting pregnant the first time, I asked my gynecologist about alcohol.  Could I unintentionally harm my baby if I drank without knowing I was pregnant?  My doctor said there was no evidence that one drink per week harmed a fetus.  That is not something I ever heard at the hospital where I ended up for my pre-natal care.  I don’t think it was as simple as a difference of opinion between doctors; it was a different philosophy of what information should be given to a patient. The hospital did not trust mothers with information; the hospital used information to persuade mothers to do as they were told.

A more obvious example of this paternalistic attitude toward mothers can be seen in the changing policies over free formula for maternity patients.  When my first two daughters were born, I received a diaper bag and free formula from a formula company.  When my third daughter was born, I had to fill out a card at my OBGYN’s office to receive the formula.  When my fourth daughter was born, I had to ask the hospital nurse to receive the free formula.

Many hospitals are changing their policies on allowing free formula.  Patients now must request it.  The goal is to encourage breastfeeding.  When mothers don’t have the formula handy, they are less likely to use it.   The claim is that when hospitals allow formula companies to give formula to mothers, the mother believes the formula comes with the recommendation of the hospital.  She thinks to herself, If it comes from the hospital, it must be good for the baby, so I’ll use it.  Wouldn’t it be better for her and her baby if we kept the big bad formula companies away from her so they can’t confuse her?

There are many things I find offensive about this thinking.  First, I am thirty-six years old; I understand what an advertisement is.  I do not believe that the formula companies are offering me free formula out of their deep concern for me and my baby, and I do not need the enlightened policy-makers to protect me from a basic element of life in the media age.  Advertisements do not “make” anyone buy anything; if they did, we would all be drinking Tab and eating Reddi-Bacon.   But since I know that I will eventually need the formula, I take it.  I take it and fill out whatever forms I need to get more, because that’s stuff’s friggin’ expensive.

But let’s say that there are women who do not understand that the formula cans they receive at the hospital are advertisements, not prescriptions.  What should we do with these confused and benighted women? Shouldn’t we, smart people that we are, kindly act in their best interests, hedging their choices so that they will be more likely to make the “right” one?

Here’s a simple rule: if the problem is a lack of knowledge, then the solution is the supply of knowledge.  Explain it to them.  My overwhelming objection to hospital policies that interfere with the free formula is that they try to encourage breastfeeding NOT by presenting accurate information and allowing women to make informed decisions, but by treating goods and info as tools for manipulating women into the desired behavior. It treats mothers not as responsible adults who need facts to determine choices, but as children who are easily confused and need a little cajoling to get it right.

I am not a child.

I think our ideals of motherhood sometimes become so important to us that as a culture or as an ideology or as a group of activists we decide we CAN’T let mothers think for themselves.  Too much is at stake.  If we leave it all up to her, she might make the WRONG DECISION.  She might sip that champagne or feed her child that formula.  She might decide she knows more about her child than we do, and act accordingly.  And that would be a DISASTER.

But I think the real disaster is this: we compromise our standing as women when we deny mothers the independence and information to make up their own minds.  Women have fought in past centuries to be treated as fully human, as rational beings capable of thoughtful decisions, rather than pretty, helpless things needing authority figures to make decisions for them.  Yes, knowledge doled out carefully in little doses may help produce the behavior you desire, but it comes at the expense of something even more dear.

And it just ain’t worth it.

A new Dunkin’ Donuts opened in our neighborhood recently, to my dread and delight.  Yes, I can feel both those things at the same time.  I can when donuts are involved.

Anyway, I tried the drive-thru one day, and was perplexed to see this sign at the intercom:

The voice on the intercom asked for my order and I said, “Uh.  The sign says I can only order the express dozen.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So why do you have a menu out here if I can’t order from it?”

The voice explained that it actually is possible to order something other than the express dozen from their drive-thru.  The sign SHOULD say something like: “Orders of a dozen donuts are limited to the express dozen only.”  You can pick and choose your own donuts if you want three or seven or ten.  But if you want twelve, you can only order the twelve they have pre-chosen for you.

This signs irks me.  It turns out there is something I long for even more than donuts: clarity.

1. If I had been a boy, my name would have been Jonathan Edwards.
2. I talk to the radio.  More specifically, I talk back to NPR.  NPR is like the annoyingly political uncle whom you invite over every weekend but cannot resist contradicting.  Unless Daniel Schorr is on.  Then I just turn it off.
3. I am dreadfully allergic to poison ivy.
4. I hate crowds.  No matter how wonderful the event, if there is a crowd, I would rather skip it.
5. While I generally hate computer games, I am susceptible to the lure of simple games like Tetris.  Tetris was briefly my crack.
6. Amusement parks are a wasteland to me.  Just give me a book and let me sit on a bench and read.  Because if you put me on a roller coaster, you would unbuckle my corpse.