I'm leaking.

Warning: this post is heavy on the bodily fluids and human development side of things.

So, a couple of nights ago I was changing into my pajamas, and I made the weirdest discovery. My breasts are leaking! To be more medically precise, I've started to produce colostrum, which I had to check out on wikipedia, where I was informed that

• "Colostrum (also known colloquially as beestings, bisnings or first milk) is a form of milk produced by the mammary glands of mammals in late pregnancy. Most species will generate colostrum just prior to giving birth. Colostrum contains antibodies to protect the newborn against disease, as well as being lower in fat and higher in protein than ordinary milk."

Apparently, this colostrum production and leaking is quite normal starting around week 30, which is where I'll be as of this coming Thursday. 

For some reason, this feels like the most pregnant thing that has happened to me so far. Actually, it feels like the most maternal. As much as it's obvious from the soccer-ball-sized bump under my shirt and the vigorous kicking and spinning and rolling I can feel our baby engaging in that I'm pregnant, all of that is still happening on the inside. I think there's a part of me that's not totally convinced that the end result of this whole science experiment that's been happening to my body for the last almost seven and a half months is really going to result in a human baby at the end of it all. But, if I'm making milk, that's a whole different story. That's something mothers do, which makes me a mother, which makes my head spin pleasantly and really gets the butterflies going in my stomach, although there's a lot less room for them these days.

There's also a way in which, although stretched and a bit distorted by twenty pounds of baby, uterus, extra blood and fluids and general padding, I can still recognize this as my body. It's just going through a phase. Whereas generating colostrum is a trick I've never seen these nipples perform before. This sense of awe, excitement & pride is akin to what I thought I'd feel when I got my first period. Sadly, at that time I was a scared kid, ambivalent about having a sexuality at all, pretty sure my body couldn't be trusted, and just trying to make it through the Wild West of middle school. And so I put on a performance of being excited about menarche, with a few lines stolen from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret performed for my mother at the dinner table, but all I felt was subtly betrayed by a life too complicated and confusing to allow me to celebrate for real.

Things have changed. Instead of middle school crushes on field hockey players and sensitive bad ass skateboarders, I've got a sensitive bad ass husband who loves me more than I ever thought possible and cried when he saw our son on the ultrasound screen. I've (mostly) learned to trust and love my body, and I've achieved a real sense of belonging and professional accomplishment in the world of clinical social work. So, I've been walking around for a few days with a grin in my back pocket, feeling as proud as a little boy who has just harnessed the power of his penis to write his name in the snow for the first time. Look what I can do! I can make colostrum!

Something Old, Something New...

I love old things, found things, hand-me-down things, thrifted things, vintage things, re-purposed things, upcycled things, basically any thing that isn't fresh off of the conveyor belt.

This frequently confounds my husband because I make a reasonably good living and often could afford the new version of whatever old thing I've discovered and carted home. In fact, it would often take me less time, energy, searching or what have you to just get the new thing... But, that's part of the enjoyment I get out of old things. Going to the toilet paper holder section of whatever big box store is closest, selecting said toilet paper holder and coming home is just not all that interesting. Finding an aged wooden tool box in the back corner of an antique store filled mostly with dusty Buddhas of suspect origin and lace doilies, bringing it home, dusting it off, and turning it into a toilet paper holder, now that's the thrill of the hunt.

Additionally, there's the environmentalist in me who's aware that for every old thing I reuse, resources aren't being used to make something new to replace it. Certainly there's a bit of a lag time there, and it's not such a simple one-for-one equation because the chain of supply and demand shifts subtly and slowly, but I do know that eventually if fewer people are buying new toilet paper holders, fewer new toilet paper holders will be made. At which point I can think of a few people who might accuse me of being anti-worker because now there are fewer toilet-paper-holder making jobs to be had, but I think I'll save that argument for another time.

Because really, the environmentalist reason for reusing and the thrill-of-the-hunt reason for reusing, while both quite valid and accurate, are mostly on the surface.

The fundamental reason there's a wooden tool box holding my toilet paper and I eat my breakfast at a (totally kick-ass, I might add) vintage formica table with chrome and pink vinyl chairs goes beyond style, beyond saving resources, and beyond the sport that is finding that just right thing. The fundamental reason I prefer old things is that I'm afraid of new things.

That's right. I'm afraid of new things. To an extent, I come by this fear honestly. I remember my mother giving my (now departed) Nana a new nightgown for Christmas one year with the admonishment "Now, you have to use it. You can't just keep it in your closet and pet it," which at the age of 11 or so, I thought was a pretty weird thing to say. Except that this past Christmas, my mother gave me a gorgeous cashmere robe, with the admonishment "Now, you have to use it..." and it still took me about two months to actually take it out of the box, stop just petting it, and put it on. I'm actually really proud of myself about that robe. I have worn it pretty much every morning since I finally took it out of the box, and I only freaked out a little bit the first time I splashed soapy dish water on it, and yesterday I actually picked some pilling off the sleeve without skipping a beat. And, it's lovely. It's soft, and luxurious, and it helps me feel better about hefting my pregnant self out of bed every day to face the world, which is exactly why my Mom picked it out. But I still have a little moment every morning where I think about just petting it and putting it back in the box.

The thing about new things is, there's such promise there. They've never been used, which makes their use somehow monumental in my mind, like every thing I do with the new thing has to be just right, or I've failed it, or brought it down a notch from it's original promise. Now, an old thing has already been worn in. The promise of an old thing is about resurrection because if it's available to me, that means someone else got rid of it, so even just my act of choosing it and giving it a test drive redeems the object somewhat. I have this sense with new things that it's all down hill from here, but with old things, it can only get better. And, if an old thing doesn't work out, well, that's ok. At least I got a bit more use out of it before passing it along the chain. But if a new thing doesn't work out, I feel a very unpleasant sense of regret mixed with a vague feeling of failure. Which is maybe a little crazy.

I've worked really hard to be able to embrace new things along with the old, to take a deep breath and take them out of the box, and to try to have faith that it's not all down hill from here, but that bringing that new thing into my life & using it could turn it into an old thing with a valuable story all of my own making.

And yes, there's a metaphor here.

Three Reasons Why Pregnancy is Like Recovering From an Eating Disorder

One of the fascinating things I've been discovering during my pregnancy, which I have spent being a clinical social worker at an eating disorder treatment center, is that I suddenly have (even more than usual) a great deal in common with my patients. Here's why:

1. You have to trust the process, even though it is making your butt get bigger. When you are pregnant, a lot of really funky stuff happens to your body. For example, your butt and each upper thigh gain about 5lbs each, for no really discernibly good reason. But, you have to trust the process because there are all these doctors or midwives and friends and your partner (if you are having the kind of pregnancy where there's a partner around) promising you that if you do, you will get to have this fantastic surprise of a healthy baby at the end, and that if you don't just let go and feed yourself when you are hungry, you might hurt him.

This is a lot like recovering from an eating disorder (at least from what I can remember of my own experience) because when you are in recovery and starting to feed yourself when you are hungry and stop when you are full (which is a revolutionary process in and of itself, let me tell you), sometimes (well, usually, if I'm going to be fair and honest) your butt gets bigger. And probably your upper arms and thighs and maybe your tummy and all the rest of the parts of you that have been trying to take on a womanly shape since you hit puberty, but whose growth you have been stunting. Which can be about as terrifying as waking up to discover that your arms and thighs have turned into snakes that are trying to eat you, but there are all of these doctors or therapists and friends and your partner (if you are having the kind of recovery where there's a partner around) promising you that if you just trust this process you will get to have the fantastic surprise of having your life back and discovering who you are (which is a lot like a birth, actually), but that if you don't let go and feed yourself when you are hungry, you are hurting the person who is trying to be born, who in this case is you.

2. You are not supposed to have Diet Coke. But, sometimes you have it anyway. I remember when I was first in recovery from my eating disorder, I made myself a lot of promises about how I was only going to eat "real" foods and never succumb to the thrill of low calorie substitutes, and because I had done my poor body so much damage already, I was surely never going to eat anything that might be suspect from a health perspective ever again. I was growing a new person (me), and I was only going to give her the absolute best whole, organic fuel to do that growing with. That lasted for about two months, which is about how long I was able to keep the health kick up when I got pregnant. And then I just really wanted a Diet Coke.

Now, I'm not saying that this is necessarily a good thing, and in case the future grandmothers of our baby are reading this, I want to reassure you that I have mostly been very good about feeding this little man growing inside of me plenty of really healthy whole grains and lean proteins and organic vegetables. But, he has also had some of the aforementioned Diet Coke, the occasional Domino's Meat Lover's pizza & a fair amount of Chicken Flavor Top Noodle Ramen, complete with MSG, which was one of the few things I could eat without experiencing profound nausea during my first trimester. Because as it turns out, in both pregnancy and eating disorder recovery, you have to respect your body and the life growing inside of you, but rigidity and obsession have no place. In fact, in both cases, it's time to let rigidity and obsession go and find a place of balance and moderation. Which tends to involve the liberal consumption of seasonally appropriate holiday candy, as well as in-season local produce.

3. People will provide plenty of commentary about your changing body. And, most of it will hurt your feelings or contradict what the last person said and undermine your good intentions. I have been told by two different people on the same day (one of them a doctor at a very fine and well-respected teaching hospital & one of them a friendly woman in the waiting room at said hospital) that I was gaining weight too quickly, and that I was tiny and barely showing. Needless to say, the first comment brought me to tears and the second comment provided me with an unhelpful rush. Similarly, when I was making my way up from my lowest of eating disorder lows, there were plenty of folks who let me know how "healthy" (which always means "fat" in the mind of the recovering person) I was starting to look, or how my face was "filling out nicely" (for what, to serve me at Thanksgiving?). I'm sure they meant well, just like my doctor, but it still hurt like hell. There were also those people who kept telling me how thin I still looked and how lucky I was to have such a lean frame, which while stoking the fires of my still-sick brain, was ultimately not at all helpful. It's sad and frustrating to live in a culture where women's bodies are objectified to the extent that they become open targets for public commentary, and this seems to be especially poignant in both ED recovery & in pregnancy (and puberty... shudder).

And that, in a nutshell, is part of why I love being a therapist. Participating in other people's growth processes always gives me all kinds of juicy and helpful insight into my own growth process, which I can in turn give back to my patients in the form of compassion and empathy.

Love is a Half-Eaten Bologna Sandwich

One of the most fascinating, terrifying, confounding things about becoming a wife and soon-to-be-becoming a mother has been discovering all of the very strong beliefs I have apparently been carting around with me about how I "should" be behaving in both of those roles. The strange thing about these beliefs is that they don't seem to fit very well with my politics or any of the variety of other things I tend to think or value or espouse.

For example, in my late teens and early twenties, I went to a women's college at a time when the campus was in the throes of a community-wide discussion about if transgendered people born into women's bodies, but who now identified as men, could be admitted. That's a pretty high-level analysis of the politics of gender, and I followed up with classes in graduate school about the social construction of gender, considered Betty Freidan's "The Feminine Mystique" kind of cute and outdated, and just generally assumed that I was a very evolved feminist thinker.

Then I got married, to a man. Turns out I also believe that I am A VERY BAD PERSON if our house is messy, if someone else's wife cooks a more complicated dinner, or if I am not attractive enough to "make my husband proud" when we go out socially. Turns out it makes complete sense to me that I should do as many of the errands, as much of the laundry and as many of the chores as my husband will let me get away with.

And that's the funny thing. He's not the one slamming me with these rather outdated, Cleaver-esque expectations. In fact, he's a little confused about why I would want to take on these domestic responsibilities all willy-nilly because my behavior is in such contrast to the rather egalitarian, feminist ways we share finances, decision making, door-opening etc. It's hard for the poor guy to grasp why I go from lecturing him on the ways language is used to enforce the oppression of women when he says that something was "a b@#ch" to actually crying because a casserole doesn't come out right, or why I'm wearing an apron while I make it, barefoot and pregnant.

It appears that all of these ideas about what kind of wife (and by extension, mother) I "should" be have been transmitted to me across the generations, across the Nick at Night channel, in spite of my politics and in spite of my graduate education in post-modern constructionist ideas about gender. It's humbling, and it has actually softened me, and opened me up to conversations with other women about their own dualities.

I've become much more aware of all the judgments I've thrown at other women (mostly in my head) from both sides of this crazy divide. What I'm realizing now is that what kind of wife, mother, woman I become is not as much of an academic, esoteric choice as I've believed it could be, and that the forces of culture and memory, sideways glances and things overheard in cafes are far stronger than I could have known until I was up against them.

It's 2011, and I've discovered that I believe that I will be A VERY BAD PERSON if I don't breast feed, if I go back to work before my child is in elementary school, if I don't lose my baby weight within 8 weeks of giving birth and if all of the kitchen gadgets I put on our wedding registry because I "should" need them lie dormant. The only thing that can make me feel better is rushing to the grocery store to buy ingredients to make muffins with, but then if I mess up the muffins, say by leaving them in the pan too long after taking them out of the oven, my self-esteem (Master's degree and all) is back down the drain.

I worked all day yesterday providing therapy to women suffering from eating disorders (talk about your gendered disease), but the most fulfilling thing that happened to me was a photo text message from my husband with a picture of his half-eaten bologna sandwich, thanking me for picking up his vegan bologna at the store the other day. Which is not to say that caretaking is wrong or bad or that finding domesticity fulfilling is any more of a sin than sometimes leaving the house looking less than pretty. I don't want to follow the pendulum to a place of devaluing work traditionally considered "women's work", it's just that the balance seems to have gotten out of wack for me.

In my clinical social work practice, I currently am seeing a patient who is struggling with binge eating in response to feelings of boredom and a lack of fulfillment in her role as a stay at home mom, but more importantly, she binges in response to the feelings of guilt she feels for having those feelings of boredom and lack of fulfillment in the first place. And you know what's scary? The first element of my gut emotional response to her was to judge her as less than other women, just like she was. Luckily, I'm a social worker and I got to interpret that judgement as transference, and use it to inform my understanding of her predicament. I also get to use it in my own growth process and bring it back to my circle of advisors, the women I trust with my darkest secrets, and admit that in spite of it all, I still believe that I would be A VERY BAD PERSON if I didn't find chores, and making babies, and baking pies totally, orgasmically fulfilling every second of every day.

And then I recommended that my patient read "The Feminine Mystique".

So much to think about

There have been many changes in my life over the last year. I got married, I got pregnant (actually, in a slightly different order, but we didn't realize it at the time...), my new husband and I moved back to the area where we grew up so that we can share the joy (and trials, and childcare) of raising our son with our friends and family around us, and I became an independently licensed clinical social worker after three years of graduate school, two years of hard work, administrative fees, jumping through hoops and taking exams. The world of the professional testing center is a strange one, by the way. If you've never been initiated, it involves multiple scans of one's handprint and thumbprint, the kind of heavy duty sound cancelling ear muffs my husband wears to the shooting range, and full audio and video surveillance of the test taker in question.

I've always been someone who organizes my thoughts best in conversations, and I often don't know quite how I feel about something or how I want to proceed until I've "tried on" a few scenarios either by talking them out with a friend over coffee or by living my way into the decision to see if it fits me. I've been wondering, as all of these changes swirl around me, if a blog might be a useful and or enjoyable place to do some of that test-driving of ideas, or just to talk to myself in a socially acceptable way to clear my head, share an excitement or experiment with just exactly what kind of girl I want to be as I near 30.

There's a song that's been going through my head as I type all of this, and I think I'll end with the lyrics. It comes from the soundtrack of the Secret Garden musical, which my mother took me to see on Broadway for my 11th birthday. It seems to me it pretty much sums up why I started writing here today in the first place:

"I need a place where I can go,
Where I can whisper what I know,
Where I can whisper who I like
And where I go to see them.

I need a place where I can hide,
Where no one sees my life inside,
Where I can make my plans, and write them down
So I can read them.

A place where I can bid my heart be still
And it will mind me.
A place where I can go when I am lost,
And there I'll find me.

I need a place to spend the day,
Where no one says to go or stay,
Where I can take my pen and draw
The girl I mean to be."

So there you have it. I'm not sure where this blog will go, or how often I'll post, but now it's mine, to do with as I like while I sort out "the girl I mean to be".