Book review, part 2

I recently finished reading Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein. Unlike other IF books, the author and her writing was already familiar to me. Many years ago she did a study of early adolescent girls and their experiences in middle school. Several years later my mom's book club decided to read Orenstein's book about that research, Schoolgirls. As I was just getting interested in education, they invited me to read the book and join their group. As it turns out, I was in middle school when she did her research. Through reading about the experiences of these girls who were my age and my growing passion for education really connected me to the author.

So when I learned that she wrote a book about IF, I had to read it. And it did not disappoint. Orenstein is a feminist who, in addition to researching girls' schooling experiences, also has written about the difficulties professional women face in the work/life balance. Parts of her book deal with her conflicted feelings about both believing women should not have to make professional sacrifices while at the same time going to great lengths to conceive. She describes fighting for women's right to not be defined by their uterus while she is wondering if her dedication to her career meant she lost her chance to be a mother. I also identify with her frustration that she has been able to achieve everything else she set her mind to but pregnancy.

I would recommend this book to anyone in the ALI community. Through her journey, she experienced three miscarriages, several IVFs (including one with donor eggs), and went through the adoption process. I'm sure there is much we can all identify with.

I would not, however, recommend this book to those not in the ALI community as a way to gain insight into what we experience. Orenstein's journey, while touching on many different aspects of ALI, also conforms to the myth that if you just relax, not try so hard, or look into adoption, you'll get pregnant. Her several attempts with IVF all failed, but then she would get pregnant while on a break or while filling out adoption papers. I don't think this detracts from the story she has to tell, and she did not write it to highlight this fact, but I couldn't help but notice it.

Nieces and nephews

I posted yesterday about some thoughts on the child-free/childless blog. But there was something else that bothered me about that post. She dismissed the joys some of us get from our nieces and nephews.

Logically I know of course that my love for my nieces and nephews is not that same as the love my sisters have for them. But that does not diminish the joy they bring to my life. And they do bring real joy. Take just my oldest niece, for example. I remember being at work the day my sister started having labor pains. I called home every 20 minutes to see if it was time to drive to the hospital. I remember reading to her for the first time. I remember feeling lonely while studying abroad halfway across the world and hearing her say my name for the first time. It was a misprounounced toddlerized version of my name, but it still made my heart soar. And it brought even more joy when I learned she remembered those phone calls and started saying my name every time her mother was on the phone.

I laughed when she was three and clomped around in my way too big for her tennis shoes. We laughed together when she was 11 and gave me a pair of too-small-for-her-but-just-right-for-me tennis shoes. (yes, her mother has really big feet as well)

There are moments of sadness, though, when I think of my nieces and nephews. Not because of what they do, but because they remind me of the joy that children bring and that I wish dearly could be in our house all the time. I get sad when I think that any kids we do eventually have won't have same age cousins to play with. I enjoy seeing my youngest niece and hearing her updates, but I also remember the despair I felt when my little sister gave birth to her after we had our IF diagnosis.

My sister called me a few days ago and asked me to babysit her kids overnight. She works at Starbucks and when my BIL is out of town, it makes more sense for them to spend the night at our house rather than have her try to find a babysitter who is willing to show up at 4:30am so she can open the store. Usually that is fine, although this particular weekend I have a big event on Saturday and she also needed me to take my nephew to his soccer game so I wasn't sure the logistics would work out. We each needed to double check some times, so we agreed to talk again the next day. In the meantime, I started thinking of the fun I could have with the kids: playing games, making blueberry pancakes. When she called the next day and said it might too much work and she would find a babysitter, I was disappointed. I want to spend this time with them. I don't want to miss out on this fun. So we worked it out and the kids will be here in a few hours.

And then I read the blog about how nieces and nephews just don't cut it in terms of providing joy in our lives. That is something I won't accept.

Child-free?

Some of you may have seen the discussion about being child-free or childless started by a blog post explaining the virtues of motherhood. I find that post very short-sighted even if we don't focus on how insensitive it is to many of us who want children very much but remain without.

See, the thing is, this post was written on a blog that is supposedly aimed at working mothers. Obviously I don't know what it means to be a working mother. But I do know what it feels like to think about what motherhood means for my career. I was raised by a single mother who taught me that I can do anything I want. Having a fulfilling career is important to me and part of how I identify myself. I'm a researcher. I still want to be even after we finally become parents. Yes, I want to add "mother" to the list of ways I identify myself. Very much so. But I don't want that be the end of my identity.

This is what I find problematic about this "Moms at Work" blog. The blog purports to be about the "precarious tight-rope act of balancing our jobs and family." But going through the last several pages of posts, very few are about balancing jobs and family. They are almost all about parenting. I'm sure working mothers appreciate these thoughts on parenting. But aren't there a host of issues about this balancing act to talk about outside of how to take time off when you kid gets the swine flu? Shoot, I'm not even a mother and I've thought about these things. I've had senior women (and mothers) in my field advise me to remove my wedding ring on interviews so potential employers don't view me as someone who will jump ship in a maternity leave. They did so because they (and me) have heard others describe new mothers as "less productive" and not distinguished enough if they need 7 rather than 6 years to fulfill tenure requirements. I've heard my sister wonder if her dream of going back to college means it will hurt her ability to give her children what they need. I know women who gave up exciting promotions because they just found out they were pregnant. Or give up new jobs because they needed the health insurance for their new baby. And I couldn't help but notice that my mother, while always respected by her employer, never saw her career take off until after I was out of the house.

These are the struggles women experience trying to balance work and family. I'm sure there are many others, including some of the logistical challenges like snow days and sick children. But these concerns are not the focus of the blog. Instead they focus solely on being a mother. Many of the posts would be of just as much interest to stay at home mothers. And if this was a blog aimed generally at all mothers, that would be just fine.

But the implicit message sent by the totality of posts on this blog is that the important part of being a "working mother" is the "mother" part. Their status as workers or professionals are not really worth mentioning. And that's what bothered me so much about this particular post ranting about women who are child-free. There are many wonderful things about being a mother. And women without children may indeed be "missing" those joys in life. But there are sacrifices that mothers have to make (and let's be honest, even with husbands who take on equal parenting duties, the sacrifices still fall mostly on women). And I'm sure women who are child-free would say that mothers are "missing" out on something as well. We call them sacrifices for a reason after all.

Life is about trade-offs. We make decisions about what is right for us. Child-free women, working mothers, stay-at-home mothers. All have to weighs the joys and fulfillment of one lifestyle with what they may be missing from another lifestyle. I hope all women are able to achieve the balance they want. Some women don't have a choice and find themselves in a category where they feel what they are "missing" all too keenly. My heart goes out to them.

Kennedy

I woke up this morning with DH telling me Ted Kennedy had passed away. It's a sad day. His work has made our country better. I only wish he had lived long enough to see his dream come true that we finally recognize health care as a right guaranteed for all rather than a privilege.

I don't live in Massachusetts and I've never met any of the Kennedy family. I'm not old enough to remember what the Kennedy brothers really meant other than how that period is now portrayed in history. I do think I had a glimpse of what it was like through working on Obama's campaign and the sense that we are headed in a new direction.

But I do have a personal connection to the Kennedy family. I'm actually distantly related to them. It's not like I have my own room in the Kennedy compound (or any of their money or influence). But when I was in middle school and asked my Nana about our family history, she filled me in on this relationship. Terminator 2 had just come out and I quickly worked out that Arnold's kids and I were 5th cousins (Arnold is married to one of Ted Kennedy's nieces). A few years later as I became interested in politics, the relationship to the former president and current senator took on more of a prominence as I tell this story now.


This picture is from the only time I was ever in the same room with Kennedy. He visited my university to campaign for John Kerry in 2004.

Pasta

My husband's grandparents owned an Italian restaurant. I've never met his grandparents and the restaurant was sold a long time ago, but the memory of the restaurant is a relatively big deal in his family. His father would talk about working there. The recipes have been handed down and being able to replicate the sauce or meatballs is considered a feat.

For once we had an un-busy weekend, so we decided to fill it with making big batches of the sauce and meatballs. I've recently gotten into freezing food. Rather than buying things at the store that likely have preservatives, I like to make big batches and either store in a cupboard (for dry goods) or freeze. For example, I've started making my own muffin mix, taco seasoning, and bisquick. I also buy berries in bulk and freeze them because we make a lot of berry smoothies.

So this weekend we made his family restaurant sauce and meatballs. For good measure we decided to make our pasta as well. His family never made their own pasta, but we thought it would be fun and figured that was something we are supposed to do as yuppie urban intellectuals.

You know how your spouse can always surprise you no matter how long you've been married? Well, that happened. I mean, I always knew he was a direction-follower, but I never realized before how important some directions were. As we were putting together our shopping list, he mentioned that he doesn't want to get some ingredients at our neighborhood grocery store. He had to get special tomatoes that they only sold at Whole Foods. No problem, I thought. Then I saw his shopping list.

Canned tomatoes. He had to make a special trip to Whole Foods for canned tomatoes? It's not like he's getting specialty organic-grown tomatoes. They are canned!

Once we opened up the cans, his direction-following continued. See, he bought whole, peeled canned tomatoes. And then proceeded to crush them. Now, I wondered, if you are buying canned tomatoes anyway, why not buy crushed canned tomatoes? That is not what the recipe calls for at all.

The sauce and meatballs turned out great. Just like his family makes. The pasta was a different story. Since we wanted enough to freeze, we decided to make four batches. We measured out four times the flour and four times the eggs and tried to make the dough.

Emphasis on tried.

We were not getting anything remotely looking like a dough we could roll out. We added another egg. I re-read the directions. I searched for another pasta recipe to see if some people added water. This recipe had more elaborate directions and read them out loud.

Me: "Knead the dough until smooth, firm, and elastic."

DH: "You mean it's not supposed to be dry and crumbly?"

We added some water and another egg. Finally it started turning into something we could call smooth and elastic. We have made pasta before, a few years ago, and seem to remember having this much trouble making it then as well. After our last fiasco (where we tried to roll out the dough with only a rolling pin and ended up with VERY thick ravioli) we bought a manual pasta maker. Once we got the hang of it, it was pretty easy, although repetitive.

For future reference: making four batches of pasta can be tedious. We had fun making the first half. But we had to keep going and keep rolling. By the end we just wanted to throw the rest of the pasta in the trash.

The ravioli turned out great (we used a spinach-cheese filling). Let's hope the linguine turned out well.

Christmas in August

Since I saw this twice in the space of a few minutes and in between I was reading comments from fellow crafters, I figured it was a sign that I needed to participate in this exchange. Here are the rules:


The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me, especially for you. I don't profess to be a super crafty person, but I know my way around the web enough to find some awesome how-tos! I promise I'll make it worth your while!

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make but I hope you will.

2- What I create will be just for you.

3-They say I have a year to get it to you. But I promise it will NOT take that long (11 months maybe, but NOT twelve ;-)

4- You have no clue what it's going to be. It’s a surprise to both of us at this point.

The catch? You must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.

So the first five people who post, and are willing to pass it along,will get a handmade gift in the mail from me.

When you get it, make sure you post a pic on your blog!

Book review

I mentioned last week that I borrowed some IF books from the library. I just finished the first one and wanted to give an update. I have to say that I don't recommend it. I feel kinda bad if I give out the name of the book, but I don't want anyone to waste time reading it.

So what was so bad about the book? First, it got some pretty basic things wrong. It had a few sidebars scattered throughout the book. One of them had the usual "when to see a fertility specialist" information. Except it didn't make any sense. First it said see a specialist if you are over 35 and have been trying for 3-6 months. OK, that seemed normal. But then it advised you to see a specialist if you are under 35 and have been trying for a couple months? What?! Why are younger sent to a specialist earlier?

Maybe I should have known then that to stop reading the book, but I'm of the frame of mind that once I start a book I need to finish it. (OK, my one exception is Moby Dick, which I tried to read twice but just couldn't get past all the chapters on whales). Anyway, my next sign that the book was crazy was this description of "dipsticking." Do any readers here partake of dipsticking? Apparently it is a way to check if AF has arrived in public. And, yes, it does draw its name from the dipstick you check car oil with. Think of sticking a dipstick down your pants...in public...in an airplane of all places...with the flight attendent right there. And she insists no one noticed. Maybe she thinks no one notices the way people who pick their nose in their car don't think anyone notices, but they do.

I just can't picture how this is done discreetly. If any of you do this, please enlighten me.

But the real problem with the book is that she is way too optimistic. Things are going to work out for everyone once we have a plan! There are all sorts of ways to end up with a baby so no need to get worried! Once you figure out what method is best for you things just fall into place! The thing is, the author did go through 5 IVFs (the last one was successful) and then used a surrogate. So clearly she went through a very hard journey. I wanted to read about that journey and know how she overcame those struggles. She glosses over the pain of IF and skips right to how happy she is now with 3 kids.


(And if you've made it this far, I'll reveal the book. It's called "Having a baby...when the old-fashioned way isn't working" by Cindy Margolis. I was intrigued by the book b/c she is a RESOLVE spokeswoman.)