Tag: Pregnancy

Living in the tension; reflections on pregnancy and motherhood

 

When I was pregnant with our first son, I told Mustangman I was one and done. “I’m never doing this again!” I said with great conviction. Pregnancy was hard on me physically- 18 weeks of constant nausea, back pain, and debilitating pregnancy induced carpal tunnel that meant I could no longer perform surgeries after 26 weeks. Even holding a pen or opening a can of soda water was excruciating. My husband saw how difficult pregnancy was for me, and said “ok” in response to my vow to never have another baby.

When our son was stillborn at 33 weeks, I was frantic to get pregnant again immediately. During induction, even before he was delivered, I told my husband that I wanted to get pregnant again as soon as I could. I had no idea how much I would miss the kicks and hiccups I felt while our son was alive inside my belly. It wasn’t until his kicks had stopped that I felt an overwhelming need to feel kicks again. Four months later, I fell pregnant. The second time around, pregnancy was easier physically, but emotionally much more difficult. I simultaneously loved and hated being pregnant- I wanted it to last forever, but also wanted it to be over right away. 

Perpetual Childhood, Narcissism, and Fear

 

Do you get the impression that the hysteria following the SCOTUS ruling regarding Roe v. Wade is over the top, more so than usual, from the radical Left? Do you assume the reasons are because of abortion’s inherent controversy? Have you wondered about the extremely radical reaction by pro-abortion people who live in blue states that have already written pro-abortion legislation?

You have every reason to be skeptical because it’s not just about abortion.

Scot Bertram of Hillsdale College and the “Political Beats” podcast is in for Jim. Scot and Greg break down a new poll showing Americans solidly opposed to biological males competing in women’s sports. They also chronicle the decision of Gannett and other newspaper publishers to scale back on opinion pages. And they hammer most of the media for ignoring violence against crisis pregnancy centers while CNN covers it disingenuously.

What I Learned in my Due-Date Group (Also, I Had a Baby)

 

After the death of my first son at 33 weeks, I was hesitant to say anything when I soon became pregnant again. As part of my desire to be more involved with this second pregnancy, I joined the due date group on my pregnancy tracker app for the month I was due. Over 10,000 women due the same month from around the English-speaking world joined the group, and the posts were…interesting. Some of the information exchanged was helpful, but by and large, the posts broke down into two categories: ranting and seeking advice. Some posts were shocking in their drama, while others made you roll your eyes. Here’s what I learned from reading the concerns of other young women.

Having babies out of wedlock

My First Mother’s Day

 

An odd title, you may be thinking. Aren’t you in your late thirties? Well, yes. But today is my first Mother’s Day as a mother. My child may still be young enough to be aborted in Mississippi under the law under review in Dodd, but I am finally a member of the sorority stretching back to Eve.

I won’t spout any cliches about how “it’s only when you stop trying that it happens.” For the person desperate to be a parent, that offers no comfort whatsoever. I will say that when you accept that children are a gift from God that He simply doesn’t give everyone without that lack of a gift being a comment on your worthiness as a person (if the rain falls on the just and the unjust, so does the drought), that a childless life can still be one of meaning and purpose — when you can achieve that level of spiritual enlightenment and release, then the marriage bed can be freed from the sorrow, guilt, betrayal, despair, and pain that made it a mockery of its intended purpose. As much as every barren tear over the last decade scourged my heart as they carved their way into wrinkles around my eyes and bleached my brown hair silver, I can’t deny that they made me a better person, one who has a much better grasp of what is and isn’t in my control. 

Testing… Testing…

 

If I were a certain sort of woman, I’d blame it on The Patriarchy. If I were another sort, I’d blame it on A Culture Insufficiently Supportive of Life. (And, if I were a very specific sort, I’d do both.) Instead, it was the understandable result of The Powers That Be in our neighborhood hospital system not having leeway to make more fine-grained distinctions in a crisis. Which is how pregnant women, who aren’t permitted to receive any in-person prenatal care right now if they have the least little sniffle but no negative lab result for Covid-19, must go through a lengthy, frustrating, and high-exposure screening process to see if they qualify for Covid-19 testing, while the nonpregnant may simply waltz – or rather drive – through safer, low-exposure Covid-19 testing in about 15 minutes.

If you’re pregnant, though, the screening process might take hours, during which you hear, at each step along the way, that you may be ineligible for the lab anyhow – and that’s just your time spent at the walk-in screening center. It doesn’t count the hours (days) you may have spent trying to find a walk-in screening center that hasn’t run out of swabs for the day, and finding out whether you’re even eligible to visit it.

Group Writing: Advice: Babies!

 

Seven months ago (no, not to the day, we missed our chance to gain a dependent on Independence Day), @kidcoder and I produced our first offspring, so here are a few brief analyses of common advice people give.

Sleep when the baby sleeps, do laundry when the baby does laundry, drive when the baby drives, etc.:

Maybe, Baby

 

If you knew you only had a 1% chance of surviving tomorrow, would you consider that a death sentence? What about 2%, 5%, 10%… at what point would your odds of survival be good enough you wouldn’t feel doomed? And what if you had to purchase your fairly slim chance at survival by risking the life of another? When would you do it? What balance of risk would just barely escape counting as doom?

What if you were the other whose life was risked on the slim hope of avoiding someone else’s death sentence? When would that hope be worth it, and when would it be a forlorn one? How effective must our efforts to lift another’s doom be in order to merit the price?

Susan In The Sky with Spring Flowers

 

Madison Wisconsin, Spring 1975

She was house sitting, that week, as memory serves. The teacher’s home had an adobe-style wall fencing in a plethora of dogwoods and cherry, plum and almond with an occasional Japanese maple thrown in. There were hydrangeas and rhubarb, the stalks of irises, and some jonquils so newly yellow peeking out from behind some type of vegetation.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America cheer new poll numbers showing Americans overwhelming reject the idea of felons voting from behind bars, an idea promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders.  They also shudder at reports – apparently from Michael Cohen – that Cohen helped Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. squash the possible release of highly embarrassing photos, and that eventually triggered Falwell’s endorsement of Trump in early 2016.  And Jim unleashes a terrific rant in response to the pro-choice CNN guest who says a pregnant woman does not have a human being inside of her.

Life

 

Last night I was watching an episode of Red Oaks, well, re-watching since we’re being honest here. The main character, David, bumps into one of his mom’s friends, who is pregnant. He asks, “Can I?” since he wants to touch her belly. She replies, “Of course.”

Why does David want to touch that pregnant belly? And why does she so readily consent? Surely he would not ask and she would not agree to this rather intimate contact under other circumstances. After all, they hardly know each other.

The more astute (or should I say woke) among you see where I’m going here. There’s life in that belly and we all have a stake in it. Historically, children have been a sort of public property* in the sense that everyone feels some responsibility and care for children even if they belong to strangers. Yet somehow these beings are not given the most basic human right before they exit the womb. Even animals are better protected from suffering. This and related contradictions will have to be resolved someday. On a personal note, I admit without hesitation or embarrassment that my own views on this matter have changed over the years, in no small measure because of posts and comments here on Ricochet.

Winning through Ricochet – and Knowing What You’ve Lost

 

Ah, collagen. The most abundant protein in animals. Great for cooking into rich sauces – and glue (hence the name). It gives structure to mammals’ extracellular space. Your skin, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, mucous membranes, cartilage, bones, and teeth all depend on collagen for strength. When our collagen lets us down, we can expect trouble.

Several diseases, from rheumatoid arthritis to scurvy, are connective-tissue diseases. Several attack our abundant collagen specifically. Sometimes, though, collagen weakens not because it’s under attack, but because it never formed right to begin with. Several genes have been identified as causing Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), congenitally weakened cartilage, and several genes remain to be discovered. The worst types of EDS are super-weird, and super-scary. Your silly-putty skin could be so loose and stretchy that it’s obvious from birth you’d be a freak-show star, pulling your neck skin over your face for strangers’ amusement. Or maybe your joints dislocate so easily you’d join the circus as a contortionist, disarticulating yourself for cold, hard cash. Or maybe EDS causes your organs to explode, far less marketable but still super-scary. Many of us, if we’ve heard of EDS at all, have more reason to think “circus freak” than “subtle.”

Transgender Man’s Pregnancy Roils Family Members

 

The title above was not a headline in the National Enquirer; it was the title of an Ask Amy column, from March 9. In reading the column I shifted between shock and confusion; the letter writer was in distress because her son’s decision to become pregnant as a transgender male had created a rupture in her family that she didn’t know to heal.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I know that gender and sexual identities have been tampered with and distorted for many years, but I wondered: how in the world does a transgender man become pregnant, and more importantly, how does this kind of insanity take place in today’s society?

Member Post

 

I would like to offer a bit of encouragement to a certain segment of men. I’m uncertain how this will be received, and afraid that this encouragement may seem small or insignificant. It means something to me and so I offer it here for everyone’s consideration. It is for any man who feels envious (or negative […]

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Member Post

 

I know many of our Ricochet members avoid Facebook (missing out on our totally hip and cool Facebook group) for whatever strange reasons. Luckily, you all have me to share my Facebook adventures. It’ll be just like you signed up/never left! Yay me! For the last couple of years, some here may know my wife […]

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