"Mom and Baby Are Doing Fine"

On a listserv to which I belong, the birth announcement of a grandson was shared to group members. The announcement had all the regular particulars, such as the baby's name, date and time of birth, weight and length. After that, the person announcing included the statement, "Mom and baby are doing fine." This statement has long struck me as odd, and today I thought I'd write about it for this blog.

Why must we announce that "mom and baby are doing fine?" What about the dog or the dad? How are they? Did we expect that mom and baby might not otherwise be doing well? What is it about the way birth is talked about that medicalizes it and turns it to pathology? If I got news of a successful quadruple by-pass surgery, I'd like to know that not only was the surgery complete, but "'Uncle Joe' is doing fine," would seem appropriate. My assumption with birth is that everyone is indeed fine, in fact, wonderful! If that is not the case, and there was a complication that deserved mention, then, great, let us know and we can then await news that it all turned out o.k. However, we might otherwise pay more attention to what we say, and not feel obligated to say, "Yes, it all turned out well!" Instead, we might assume it is just grand and let it be at that unless it isn't.

From my experience giving birth, and serving as a doula and a midwifery assistant at various points in my life, it is actually the dog and dad (maybe not in that order) who need a check-in on how they are doing. Becoming a father for the first time is often more emotionally charged than becoming a mother. As the pregnant person, I've kind of gotten used to the motherhood part. I am aware of it all and being the one actually giving birth, I'm not really shocked or overwhelmed by the baby. Being a by-stander, especially a male, seems fraught with mixed emotions. On the one hand, you're very involved and concerned about your partner, who might seem alternately to be elated, irritated, in pain, tired, hungry, in need of empathy or may exhibit super-human strength--all of which are equally unnerving, especially as these things seem to all happen at once, possibly. On the other, you are also witnessing birth for what is likely the first time. You are a bit overwhelmed with the process itself, and you are processing becoming a parent, a dad. As a woman witnessing birth, I am never not affected by the process. I cannot imagine what it is for a father.

For my own husband, I watched as the entire realm of human emotion rippled through his face when he was handed our daughter in a blanket in our living room by the midwives as he watched them tend to me and my excessive bleeding. His face told me he was overjoyed and awed at what he held. He was astounded that this little creature was his child. He was terrified that I was dying. He was awed at what he witnessed me do. Because it was our first birth and I had a short second (pushing) stage, he was still recovering his shock at being in the same room with other people when I made noises similar to those I make when we're intimate with one another. He was scared holding her and feeling the weight of his responsibility for this newborn baby. He was equally thrilled at the potential she held for hope and beauty in this world.

At a home birth of what was one couple's fifth child, but what was also a relatively complex birth, the dad looked stricken once the emergency was handled and all set. His other four children were his responsibility during the labor, in addition to supporting his wife. He was overcome with emotion at the birth of his child and was handling the after-effects of the adrenalin rush from the complication that occurred. The midwife got the mom in the shower with his help, and when he walked back into the room, the look on his face made me walk to him and say, "Do you need a hug?" He looked up at me, as his eyes had been cast downward, nodded and then sobbed on my shoulder for a good five or so minutes. After this catharsis, he was completely fine and healed.

I've had other experiences like this when in a support role at a birth. I often believe that doulas are just (or should be just) as much support for the dads as for the moms. So, if we're going to talk about anybody being "fine" post-birth, it might be the dads that we check in about. My point herein is two-fold in improving the atmosphere and support around birth: one, let's stop "worrying" so that we feel a need to say that "mom and baby are doing fine" and let's start recognizing the entire family that birth creates. This makes the dad a part of the package and strengthens the familial bond. It recognizes his role in supporting the birthing mother and his own coming-into-fatherhood. We get rid of the dooms-day attitude and realize the birth of a family, a mother, and a father.

Happy Anniversary, Marriage Equality in Massachusetts

Seven years ago today, I stood on the street corner in downtown Worcester and watched as supportive onlookers blew bubbles as newlyweds exited City Hall. It was the first day in Massachusetts when same-sex couples could seek marriage licenses and be legally recognized as committed couples. It was a joyous, sunny, perfect day. Overcome with emotion, I called my husband from the sidewalk and described the scene to him. He and I cried tears of joy as I told him about the bubbles, the clapping and cheering amidst the police protection.

Often, we talk with others about remembering "where were you when..." and the event being discussed is tragic. My parents remember each of the Kennedy assassinations. I remember the space shuttle Challenger exploding and of course have my own story of the events as they unfolded on September 11, 2001. I still remember the days following September 11th, when a friend awaited news of her brother's safety and school children repeated their parents' vengeful rhetoric on sidewalks while walking to school in the morning.

It feels wonderful to have a positive "where were you when..." story to tell. Especially on this rainy day in New England today, I'm buoyed by my memories of the blue sky with white fluffy clouds above Worcester's City Hall back in 2004. I think of the cheers, encouragement and mood of celebration that filled the street that day and feel a warmth in my heart and even a little bit of pride that in my home state, marriage equality still exists these past seven years and has fought and won battles and proposals to take it away.

I receive a Massachusetts' Humanities email that details "this day in history." Today's memorable moment was not marriage equality, but the defeat in Massachusetts of separate but equal education. The seventeenth of May might be remembered as a day of civil rights for Massachusetts. I can't help but think that some of that zero tolerance for separate but equal remained a thread of thought and hope over the decades so that in Massachusetts, we worked for marriage equality and not a supposedly separate but equal civil partnership, as other states have done.

So, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY Marriage Equality in Massachusetts! May you have many happy years to come!

Stranger Than Fiction

My blog title today is the title of a book by Chuck Palahniuk wherein he writes about the strange people, jobs and information he's come across in his research for his novels. I love Palahniuk's novels because I think he nails the internal dialogue of human beings. Yes, a lot of what he writes comes across as over the top. However, if we admit it just to ourselves, he puts on paper what has likely at least crossed our own minds in various situations.

I love writers who can do this. Right now, I'm reading Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross. I absolutely love it! While I'm in a marriage so happy it would make you sick to hear anything more about it, there are still those days. There are still times when I'm so mad at my husband, so utterly aghast and baffled by something he's done or said, that I feel like I do not know him. Moreover, at those times, I don't want to know him! (Lest you think I pick on him, he's freely admitted to murderous rage directed toward me at some point over all our years together.) Ross writes as if he's been married for many years, yet the book dedication belies this and makes it sound as if he's relatively newly wed. It is his understanding, and putting on paper, the workings of the human mind, with all its twists, turns, and dark corners, that compels me to keep reading. I anticipate the conclusion of the book and never want it to end. We do not necessarily "know" the characters and yet we feel akin to them. We can find a little of ourselves in them and them in us.

Realistic writing that gives us enough detail that we truly suspend disbelief is a joy to read. Another author capable of this is Stephen King. He may never win the Pulitzer, even while he's won many awards for fiction in the horror genre, yet he remains one of my favorite authors. Yes, there was a period when he dealt with drug addiction and the writing then was not so good. However, prior to and since that time, King reigns supreme at his handling of human beings. In his latest, Under the Dome, we can't help but want to know what happens to each of the characters he's introduced. We're taken aback when certain characters die, and fervently wish others would meet their demise in a way only King could render. Not once while reading Under the Dome did it ever occur to me that I was reading something supernatural in nature. I was completely able and willing to believe everything was happening just as described: that there was a dome over an entire town.

Books by authors such as Ross's, Palahniuk's and King's are like dramatized psychology and sociology texts. We don't just read the diagnostic terms, we see the madman created by meth. We see the aftermath of a power-complex gone awry. We wend our way toward the awful discovery of multiple personality disorder, and we glimpse the possible results of our own murderous thoughts at a safe distance. Before the end of the weekend Mr. Peanut will come to an end for me. I look forward to reading over what is predicted to be a rainy weekend. Today, on the train, I felt my face contort to horror, felt my head nod in agreement and felt a smile widen and raise my cheeks at the various scenarios Ross presented in the first half of the book.

I love these authors for their ability to take us on a tour of the haunted mansions, the basements and sewers of the human mind. I'm thankful that they write what many of us won't even admit to ourselves that we think. If you know of an author like this or a specific book that made you feel like the author "got" you and humankind, leave a comment, post a reply or email me with a recommendation.

Just Kids - book by Patti Smith

The design of the hardcover version of this book captivated me when I first saw it. Having a nook and being leery of spending the money for the hardcover, I waited until the book went into paperback before buying it. I'm sorry I waited. Patti Smith's Just Kids is a delight, especially to anyone who knows anything about Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorp, modern art, the beginnings of punk rock, or New York in the late 1960s through the 1980s.

Smith's writing is sublime. She really nails every emotion. From the first page, I felt like she grabbed my heart and didn't let it go until the very last word. Her description of her circumstances and the serendipity when she got notice that Mapplethorp died of complications from AIDS is wrenching. You can picture the scene in her home, the emptiness in her heart at the news and the fitting scene in which she heard it and digested it. We read the end before the beginning, and while we know the result, what we're heading toward, the ride is magnificent.

I knew very little about Patti Smith as an artist, musician and writer. I knew a little more about Mapplethorp, especially the controversy of his work over the years. I don't love all of his photographs, yet I have to say I love what they all stand for, what Mapplethorp was trying to do and what he accomplished in art and photography during his all-too-brief life. Smith captures the essence of Robert Mapplethorp as a human being and all of the complex and seemingly juxtaposed ways really being human involves. We see a pure friendship, a true intimacy that is so rare in this world. She lets us into that world a little bit, but also without coming across as celebrity tell-all or expose. We never feel she has betrayed Mapplethorp's confidence. By the end of the book, we, too, feel the loss of Mapplethorp as an artist and person.

Who's your childhood book hero?

What's your favorite children's book? Which one(s) do you remember from your own childhood? What books have you read again and again? What was it about them that captured your imagination?

I own a nook and also subscribe to emails from Barnes & Noble since they offer free or inexpensive e-books quite often that way. Recently, nook asked readers to name a book that influenced their lives. Without blinking, I thought, Harold and the Purple Crayon! This is a picture book, and a simple one at that. Of course, I have a running list of favorite books, books that rocked my world, books I want everyone to read and all of that. However, my favorite book as a child was Harold. 


Why was Harold my favorite? Well, for one thing, Harold never got into trouble and he drew on the walls of his house with a purple crayon. In fact, in one of the books, Harold is given cocoa in a chair by the fire after one of his escapades in the night on the wall with the crayon in lieu of bed. As you read a Harold story, you see that he draws himself into all sorts of trouble. Some of it is quite silly. However, the key to Harold's success with my attention is that he is also able to craftily draw himself out of trouble in the nick of time. Harold taught me that while I might get myself into a problematic spot, I can always find a way out, find a way to return back home again to a safe place. Of course, life has not been as reliable as that. And, sometimes even when I've returned home to my safe, warm bed, I have not returned unscarred or unscathed as Harold. That is the reality of adulthood. However, each time I catch a glimpse of the purple crayon books, which still sit on my bookshelf next to hefty volumes from the classics to comics, I'm reminded of a person who taught me to take responsibility for myself and gave me the confidence to see through whatever strange purple lines that have detoured my path: Harold.