Galloping Cats

I wanted to call American Airlines today for a question about my flight. It looked like all the seats were already booked, so I was wondering if I had any chance at all of getting on, even though I have a ticket.

I submitted to the computer, agreeably answering things like “reservations” and telling them my frequent flyer number, but it was getting me noplace. The computer just kept telling me things I didn’t need to know, like the times of my flight and the fact that I did not have a seat reservation.

“Representative,” I requested.

“Your options are ‘repeat’, ‘main menu’, or ‘finished’,” the computer replied.

“Representative!” I demanded.

“Your options are ‘repeat’, ‘main menu’, or ‘finished’,” the computer replied.

“I want to talk to a fucking person!” I shouted in irritation.

“A representative will be right with you,” the computer replied.

Ida came on the line immediately.

I calmly and casually mentioned that she might want to pass the message on that the American Airlines customer service that their system would only respond to swearing.

“I’m not allowed to swear on the job,” she told me.

“I’m not saying you should swear,” I told her. “I’m not really a swearer myself.” [I'm totally going to be struck by lightening.] “I just think they might want to know that the system didn’t respond to polite requests to speak with a representative.”

Silence.

[C'mon, it was kind of funny!]

Bottom line: She claims the seat just can’t be reserved in advance but there is space. Wish me luck.

Also: I still have my fear about flying causing miscarriage, but how can I spend my life refusing to get on an occasional plane for work when I don’t even know if I am pregnant? And I know there’s no evidence that it actually does cause problems. I am just telling myself that people doing IVF get on flights home right after all the time, right?

I forgot about the part of trying to conceive in which you are reluctant to make plans because you don’t know if and when you are going to get knocked up. So in the spirit of Caro, who used to buy new pants monthly when she was trying to conceive, I’m just going to try to ignore the trying to conceive stuff as much as possible.

Last week, I bought a pair of slim-fitting pants on sale at J.Crew, and today I signed up for a working women’s tennis clinic*, which starts next Tuesday. I figure, let the fact that I’ve wasted some money on pants that don’t fit or tennis lessons I can’t take be my biggest problem.

* I haven’t played since high school. Aiiii! (And I’ll be using my racket from high school– from freshman year of high school– too!)

Sometimes it takes a certain amount of effort to remember why I love my OB so much.

He started the visit by telling me I was not pregnant.

Uh, thanks for the newsflash.

I did wonder why the nurse asked me to pee in a cup when I arrived. She didn’t even use an extra sensitive test. I can guarantee you that I will know if I am pregnant before my doctor will. What a waste.

Inserting the wand and taking a glance he asks, How much did you take this month? 50?

50 what?

Oh, he remembers, you’re not doing Clomid, this is just to check on which side you are ovulating.

Hmph. You mean he doesn’t remember the details of our every conversation? And he didn’t at least write it down in my chart next to the words “follicle check” when we talked last week?

Rooting around in there, he sees some activity, but says I already ovulated.

Dude, I have a spreadsheet to keep track of these things. It was Day 11 and I always ovulate around Day 16. I mean, anything is possible but it sure didn’t seem likely.

Oohhhh, there it is! It was hiding. Follicle growing on the right side– the undamaged side, as far as we know.

Game on! I’m ready!

I can’t think of anything to write… just waiting to see what the ultrasound says. I am going to try to maintain equanimity if it turns out that I am ovulating on the wrong side to try this month. After all, there is only a 50/50 chance. I think part of me will be grateful to push the worrying off for another month.

But I turn 33 next Saturday and I suddenly feel the threat of “advanced maternal age” bearing down on me. (And they count your age at due date, not at conception, don’t they?!) Plus over the past week I’ve gone from two regular gray hairs to five or six and I’m thinking it would be nice to get this gestating over before I have to start coloring.

Sorry I haven’t been around much lately. I am addicted to Scrabulous. The situation is bordering on out of control.

I finally managed to speak to the OB today and we have agreed that next Wednesday morning we will take a peek at my insides and decide whether or not this is a “trying” month. I am now worried that I made this too early. He said Day 10-12 and this is Day 11, but I tend to ovulate late in my cycle, so this is 4-5 days before I expect my LH surge. Do you know if it will be possible to see a follicle this early? I guess if not, I will just have to come back but time is not something in great supply these days. And not just because of Scrabulous.

Oh, and by the way, there are three indications that I am on my way to glaucoma. I swear I deserve some sort of award for the way I pile up minor medical problems.

I didn’t know how I would feel come the first Cycle Day 1 of potential procreation. What’s been confusing, lately, has been not the fear of fertility doom and gloom, which I’m familiar with and with which I pretty much know how to deal, but the fear of an actual child resulting from our efforts. Even forgetting the possibility of special needs, which leaves me quaking in my boots, it is unlikely that another child could possibly be as easy as Gatito. I mean, sleeping 12 hours/night at 7 weeks? Potty trained, nights included, before 2.5? Long attention span and ability to entertain himself from the age of two months? No, whatever delights a potential second child will have, it’s hard to believe he or she will be as easy to parent as Gatito has been.

Nonetheless, I greeted the arrival of my period this morning with optimism. I’m ready to get this show on the road. Now can somebody please tell me approximately how many days before ovulation an ultrasound will be able to detect the side on which the follicle is growing? I left a message last week, but my doctor is ridiculously hard to get on the phone. Also, I assume they need to use the super-powerful machine, not the portable one they wheel from exam room to exam room?

I’ll leave you with another A/Gatito story:

A, for reasons unknown, was eating a cheese stick wrapped in a piece of bread.
“Come here, Daddy,” Gatito said sweetly.
A approaches.
“A little closer,” he encouraged. “Sit down.
A sits.
“Let’s share this plate,” he offered, showing A his own plate with his own, now grubby stick of cheese. “Put that down here.”
A put the cheese n’ bread on the plate and Gatito unwrapped, took the cheese, and offered A his own grubby cheese return.

We are accustomed to the appropriation of our food, but the pre-meditated stealthiness is something new! Makes me nervous.

Last night, as A was putting Gatito to bed, I overheard this:

A: Would you like a baby brother?
(All boys in this generation of our extended family so we can’t even imagine having a girl!)

Gatito: Will he talk?

A: Eventually, but not at first.

Gatito: I want a big brother who talks!

A: That’s going to be… unlikely.

***

(We’re so confused as to whether we want to try another child that we’re trying to make Gatito decide. Now there’s some good parenting and decision-making.)

Infertility

Ectopic pregnancy

Miscarriage

Stillbirth

Feeling dizzy/ill/uncomfortable/delicate/nervous for nine months

Giving up our simple, easy life

Missing Gatito

Having a child with special needs

Making any changes to a life that is awfully close to perfect just as it is

I wasn’t going to write about this, out of fear of polarizing my readers, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts, has changed my life. This piece is a good summary, if you want to go read that first and come back. Please know that I am not sitting in judgment of other people’s life choices. I am writing this because the book had an impact on me and I want to talk about it.

I feel the need to start by saying that there is much not to like about this book: The author is, on many occasions, disrespectful in her descriptions of women who don’t work. She describes too many jobs as fascinating (really– how many jobs are?) and she believes that any stay-at-home moms who say they are happy are lying, pretty much. I also found it amusing that she made the hashed over statement that stay-at-home moms bore their husbands because they have nothing to talk about. That is so stupid to me, because the absolute last thing A wants to talk about is my job, and the subject we discuss most frequently and happily is the minute details of Gatito’s life. And by the way… couldn’t a stay-at-home mom (with kids beyond the infant/toddler stage) simply read the newspaper daily for a ready supply of discussion topics? Ms. Bennett also has this gratuitously nasty passage where she makes fun of stay-at-home moms who spend too much time cleaning their homes and making every detail perfect, while she lets her daughter keep her room messy and believes it inspires her creativity. Then there are a few ridiculous anecdotes like one about the grown kids of a mother who did not work being too lazy to work themselves because they are following her example. I believe that some of these things are pure distractions that suck the power away from her main message.

Nevertheless, there were many aspects that really hit home with me, and enabled me to change the way I think about my life and my work:

• I think I have written here before about my feeling that the burden of supporting a family is too much for one person to have to shoulder. Ms. Bennetts points out that when both people work, it often enables them to work more reasonable hours, rather than having one person kill themselves trying to advance and earn more money. It made me realize that it is in part because we both work that we are both able to be home between 5:30 and 6:00 every night. Neither of us are exactly shooting to the top, but we’re both doing pretty well, slowly advancing our careers. Knowing A, I can definitely see that if he was the only one working, it would be a lot crazier hours as he would feel compelled to work harder and advance faster. My working has enabled us to both make that tradeoff and enjoy a reasonable work/life balance.
• Ms. Bennetts thinks that men respect their wives more when they work. What I have seen in my community is that men like to know that their wives are home with the kids when they are little and that they get that it’s hard work and are grateful that they don’t have to do it. But when the kids get to be school-aged, they start to wonder what their wives are doing all day, and they start to resent it. I know one banker from the Wall St. firm that just collapsed who is pressuring his wife to go back to work. She is resisting under the argument that she didn’t choose their lavish lifestyle (apparently she would have been happy living a more modest life), but since he chose it, she is neither willing to relinquish her luxuries nor work to help support them. And last weekend, I overheard another woman complaining that her daughter’s husband (my generation) is demanding that his wife get at least a part-time job, accusing her of spending their children’s future. I never had the chance to play this scenario out, but I do think that it’s likely A would have become resentful of bearing all the financial responsibility for the family if I didn’t work, particularly as kids got older. As it is, I think he’s proud and respectful of my accomplishments in the office.
• She writes a lot about women who think their husbands could never ever leave them, even though it has happened to others they know. Stories like Alyssa wrote about here. I actually got through most of the book thinking how silly it is for women to believe that their marriages couldn’t possibly break up before I realized that that was what I still believed about my own marriage! I have thought that A could fall ill or die (I have morbid freakouts about car accidents every time I send him on an errand, for instance) or simply lose his job, but I never even considered the possibility that we could get divorced, even as I was reading about other women who couldn’t believe it could happen to them.
• I also realized how unusual it is to have a husband that is an equal participant in child-rearing. Even Ms. Bennetts’ husband had to be trained and harassed a little into taking on household responsibilities and she still has more than half of these. Meanwhile, A does at least half– probably more– of the stuff around the house, from taking out the garbage to cleaning the kitchen nightly and straightening the house (we pay someone to clean once/week– a real sanity saver) whereas I pretty much just do weekend laundry (Tata does weekday laundry). And since A is Gatito’s parent of choice more often than not, A ends up taking on more parenting responsibility than I do, too. (I have been telling A how much I appreciate him and he has been refusing to believe that anything he does is out of the ordinary, which is probably for the best.)
• I thought it was interesting to consider the length of a career. From college graduation through retirement, I am likely to spend about 45 years of my life working. Assuming a four-year age difference between Gatito and a potential sibling, and assuming the most needy years (from a time-intensive perspective) of a child are through age 12 (I picked this age fairly arbitrarily), that is 16 years of a juggling act– just a third of a whole career.
• The author writes about women who don’t work because the cost of childcare eats up a substantial portion (sometimes all) of their earnings. But she points out that when viewed in the context of a decades-long career, these years of breaking even should actually be seen as an investment in future earnings potential. When I first went back to work after having Gatito, over half of my take-home pay went to his nanny. But with my new job, which I wouldn’t have gotten without the experience of my prior job, it now amounts to… egads, I just did the math… it is still 45% of my take-home salary. I thought I was doing better than that. Never mind, moving on. But seriously, eventually I won’t need a full-time nanny, so say in another six years (assuming I am able to have a second child in the next year) this figure could drop to 25% or even less if I continue to advance.
• Ms. Bennetts also points out that many women hit one bump in the road in their career and use motherhood as an excuse to opt out. E.g., they work a crazy job with a terrible boss or they just don’t like what they do and rather than looking for a way to address the situation or find a new job, as a man would have to do, they drop out. This is interesting to me because I have to admit, in addition to wanting more time with Gatito, the idea of not having to deal with the hassles of work is appealing. But I’ve realized that finding a path through various obstacles is important and is good for me.

Unfortunately, I think the author’s aggressive style makes it hard for someone who has made a different choice to read. In the article I linked to above, she writes:

Equally encouraging [sarcasm] was the woman who, after being introduced to me at a cocktail party, made a horrible face when the hostess told her about The Feminine Mistake. “I don’t think I want to read it,” she said, pursing her lips as if she’d just sucked a lemon. “The last thing I need is a whole book telling me why I should feel even more guilty about my life than I already do.”

I can certainly understand how that woman feels, because I think the tone of the book comes off as very judgmental and one-sided. There are just too many distractions in there that take away from the main message that “a man is not a financial plan.” I will freely admit that there is no way in hell you’d catch me reading a book that will criticize my working and add to my guilt about leaving my child, so I can easily understand why stay-at-home moms wouldn’t want to read this.

Ultimately, though, as I said, this book changed my life: I have spent the 2.5 years since Gatito was born fantasizing about not having to work, or about starting some kind of consulting thing that would allow me to work part-time and mentally treating my job as a necessary evil. In addition to validating my choice/reality, The Feminine Mistake has allowed me to feel at peace with and even inspired by my career. If you are a working mom looking for a little validation/ encouragement/ inspiration or you are about to be a mom and are struggling with the work/stay home decision, I do recommend giving this book a read. If you’re not working, I think it would be a little (a lot) hard to take, but I would be very interested in hearing your opinions and whether or not it changed your views on or plans for working.

I am just back from my first business trip in about five years, and my first nights away from Gatito since he was born. I spent less than 24 hours in Alabama, where I stuck out like a sore thumb, but can I just tell you? I would pick up that accent in two weeks, guarantee you. Then less than 24 hours in Miami, but I *did* get to dip my toes in the ocean. I’d never been there before– it was gorgeous. A has a thing against Florida (I actually think he has never been?) but I would love to go back for a vacation.

I told Gatito I was going to Miami and he said, “You’re going to your ami?” Later, when A told him I was in Miami he said, “No! It’s Mommy’s ami!” He’s funny.

It wasn’t too bad being away from him, mostly because he was home with A, so I didn’t have to worry that he was scared or sad, the way I would if A and I went on vacation and left him. We also were able to talk on the phone and we sent each other cell phone videos a couple of times. Technology is really amazing, isn’t it?

It was great to get home and see him yesterday, though. He and Tata had made me a “Bienvenidos” poster and I got a terrific, huge hug. I’m hoping not to have to travel much in this job– my boss told me once/year before I accepted, but I am starting to see this is probably not going to be the case. I have some choice, but in some cases it will make the difference of how well I can do my job, so we will see.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been, but I have a couple of posts stored up in me, so stay tuned.