I have a lot of feelings about a lot of feminist issues, but I’m not sure any of them rustle my jimmies more than that of the abortion issue. This post might alienate some of you, or maybe some of you will agree. Maybe, MAYBE, some of you will change your mind. Probably not, but who knows? I’ll give it a go anyway. Continue reading
Babies. They’re pretty cute. They’re fat and full of rolls and they giggle and they have disproportionately large heads and big anime eyes and they smell like babies! They also can’t talk and shit their pants (generally immediately after you have changed their diaper) and don’t understand how sleeping at night is awesome and their food looks like their poop and they can’t do ANYTHING for themselves. Essentially, they’re nice to look at but the upkeep is RIDICULOUS.
Thank you to all of the mothers I know. Thank you to my mother, Tracy, for loving me unconditionally, for teaching me that getting lost can be the beginning of an adventure, that there’s always room for more people, that giving can be a calling. Thank you to my stepmother, Stephanie, for showing my weird little family unflinching love and acceptance, for having a bottomless well of energy, for giving me a second family filled with more siblings and more people to love. Thank you to my sister, Alyssa, for starting the next generation, for going through a difficult pregnancy and childbirth with stubborn strength, for sending me pictures of my niece regularly.
Thank you to all of the women writing on this blog. Each of them has shared beautiful stories of mothering that make me proud to be a part of this project. They are all different on the surface, but unapologetic in who they are. They have made me laugh, made me cry and made me happy that the internet exists. This has been an amazing experience and I’m excited for the future of this site.
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Swipe swipe, we just charged $2000 to my HSA card for sperm. Yup. Aside from my car, which doesn’t really count because I’m still paying for it, this is the single largest purchase of my life. The money doesn’t bother me, it’s essentially free money, a perk of my job, it’s the true committment to this that only money or pregnancy can denote.
We had an appointment with the real baby doctor on Thursday. He’s kind of a weird guy, which I guess you’d have to be to inject previously frozen sperm into women all day, but still, he’s weird. The appointment was, for lack of a better word, easy. We sat down in his office, he had three different flip books to explain the reproductive system and the different choices we had for sans mans pregnancy. He went through them, allowing plenty of awkward silences for our minds to wonder, and for us to ask, what were probably, really dumb questions, nevermind make inappropriate jokes. Continue reading
Wow, it’s been a really awful week in woman news, right? Obviously there’s the case in Cleveland that has just been the worst. On top of that, the Pentagon study on sexual assault in the military seems to have finally brought some attention to an issue that’s been widely discussed in feminist circles. These two stories have dominated the news cycle; cable news has particularly been obsessed with Cleveland. Charles Ramsey has been lauded as a hero, rightly so, and Castro is becoming the embodiment of evil, which seems pretty accurate to me. Hearing and reading about Cleveland and the Pentagon nearly non-stop all week highlights some of the major problems in our country when it comes to domestic and sexual violence against women – it’s pervasive to the point of commonness and we only care when it’s particularly gruesome.
When the Cleveland story broke, after the initial “Ho. Ly. Crap.” reaction, I felt an air of familiarity. The kidnapped, kept in captivity, sex slave/torture victim is a pretty common story line. I know I’ve read books by authors such as James Patterson and John Sanford, I’ve seen it on shows like Criminal Minds and Law & Order: SVU. We’ve seen it in real life as well – Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard; the more you think about it, the more you realize it’s everywhere. I’m not pointing this out to reduce the experiences of the women in Cleveland. I am saying these types of things happen, get sensationalized by the news media, get retold by our entertainment media over and over until it is a part of our culture. Abduction, rape and torture – our fascination teeters on, and often falls over, the line of decency.
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Any mother, or would-be mother who spends any amount of time on the internet has read plenty of opinions about breastfeeding. The prevailing attitude seems to be along the lines of, “OMG BREASTFEED YOUR BABY OR YOU ARE THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE.” This general point is stated so pervasively and so, um, passionately, that it’s creating somewhat of a reflexive backlash. Now, very few people are challenging the “breast is best” idea because, science. Instead, what’s happening is that women who can’t or don’t breastfeed for whatever reason, or even women who haven’t yet given birth, are feeling attacked.
Now think about what happens when you’re fighting with your significant other: You feel attacked. You get defensive. You look for anything you can to tear down the other person’s argument. In the case of breastfeeding, there are enough horror stories floating around that just about any pro-breastfeeding argument can be dismissed with two words: cracked nipples.
If it’s not cracked nipples, it’s not enough milk production, or mastitis, or no sleep, or any number of unpleasant side effects that make the idea of shaking up some formula seem more and more appealing. Hell, even people who do manage to successfully breastfeed often have to deal with physical pain and other yuckiness. All of this is compounded by the fact that very few women are actually properly educated about breastfeeding before having a child. What? A lack of female reproductive health education in America? You don’t say!
I’m not religious. My parents aren’t religious. I grew up believing in evolution and that babies came from vaginas. My parents were really into honesty and frank conversations with us. They told us about religions and that it was a thing that would affect our lives if we chose to participate or not. I had a very vague idea of who this god fella was supposed to be.
I went to church a lot as a kid, I had friends who’s families were religious and I was really into sleepovers on Saturday nights. I was totally into going to church with them. I found it to be really amusing and kind of like gym class, lots of standing up and sitting down and sometimes singing and then hugging strangers who were really concerned that I looked like a boy. It was an experience like no other to me. My family didn’t do that, ever, at all. We spent our Sunday morning eating sausage gravy and climbing trees. Continue reading
So, I’m no green thumb. For sure. My mom has always been a huge advocate for fresh flowers and house plants making people happy and your house feel loved and lived in. There were many years in which every time she came to visit she would bring house plants. By the time she’d come by a couple of months later the previous gift would be dead and often really dusty. Continue reading
Ah, here we are. Nearing the second weekend in May, which means we are nearing the second bullshit Hallmark holiday of the year: Mother’s Day. (The first, clearly, is Valentine’s Day, which is The Worst, without question.) (And, obviously, the third is Father’s Day.) Here, on this day, we are to honor our mothers by “letting” her take a break and giving her some flowers that are going to wilt within days and bring her breakfast in bed and maybe some chocolate, too. The OTHER 364 days in the year (or 365, if we’re celebrating Leap Year), your mom can suck it.
Before you start thinking that I’m some party-pooping-holiday-hater, let me assure that I am not. Real holidays are my fucking JAM. Halloween? DRESS UP AND CANDY! Thanksgiving? CAN I PLEASE MAKE THE PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE? Christmas? FOOD AND PRESENTS OMG. New Years? DRESS UP AND CHAMPAGNE! 4th of July? LET ME STAY INSIDE BECAUSE AIR CONDITIONING AND AMERICA. Is it my birthday? GIMME ALL DAT CAKE. So what’s my deal? Let me explain. Continue reading
About a month ago I wandered into the local 99 cent store looking for nothing in particular, which is always a bad idea because 567 random things that I am only buying because, “they are soooo cheap” can quickly add up at 99 cents each! This time I scored 6 medium sized terracotta flower pots, a tomato Topsy Turvy, and some tomato seedlings. Since I have the black thumb of death I figured it would be fun for Ben and I to get crafty, paint the pots and maybe grow something in them. Well, we did! We painted the pots, and went to Lowe’s to pick out some flowers to plant but Ben thought that flowers weren’t cool enough and said we should grow some things that we could eventually eat. I know nothing about keeping common house plants alive and actually killed a cactus once so gardening is definitely not something that I would add to my resume. I gave in to my little negotiator and we left Lowe’s with a huge bag of potting soil (that I ripped an even huger hole in when I was trying to shove it into the trunk of my car), 2 cucumber seedlings, a watermelon seedling and more tomato plants, because my kid is a tomato junkie and will eat them until his guts explode. Continue reading
Put Your Damn Pants On! 