What to expect in your 39th year

As I get older, I’m constantly amazed by how long ago things that seem recent actually happened. 

The event itself doesn’t matter: my mind is equally blown when I consider Bill Clinton became president twenty years ago as it is when I realize Right Said Fred released their first album the same year.  

I don’t know where I was when I heard Kurt Cobain died, but I can remember with precision that I was driving to Ace Hardware in Iowa when I heard that he had been dead twenty years, because it didn't seem possible and made me feel old. 

I didn't feel the same disbelief last Saturday, which was the twentieth anniversary of my mother's death. It feels like half my life since I saw my mom, so it came as no shock that it is.  

I’ve gone through many episodes in my life since she died. I graduated from university, started a career, lived in several states and countries, went to graduate school, got married and divorced, had two children. I’ve navigated my 20s and most of my 30s without my mom, and I think she’d be mostly pleased with how it’s all worked out. 

From birth children begin the gradual process of surviving without their mothers. That’s the point of parenting: to help them grow into self-sufficient people who can live in and contribute to society. Parents only get so many years to prepare their kids before letting them go, and we are relaxing our grip slowly every day. For me, that means allowing my son to drink from a grown-up cup even though I know he’ll likely spill all over himself.  

It is not my job to keep my children from making mistakes. They have a right to their mistakes. It’s my job to help them develop the intellectual and emotional capacity to recover and learn from the mistakes they will make. But it's tricky when progress looks so precarious. It is not easy to allow my son to walk down our steep, dangerous Dutch stairs by himself (with me a step away, of course) while resisting a primal urge to grab him in a bear hug and carry him.  

I can appreciate how difficult this gets when the stakes are higher. The first time my mother agreed to let me drive with her as a passenger, she – not a drinker – had to down a digestive Ouzo at the restaurant we were in to get the courage to do it. She spent the duration of the journey in the backseat, singing the Wolfe Tones’ “We’re on the One Road” and trying not to panic. 

My mother had far less time than many parents to make an imprint on her children, to teach us what she wanted us to know, and to see reassuring signs that we were going to be okay. When it was clear she was going to die, she told me if there were windows in heaven she'd be looking down at me. I suggested maybe we could agree to a schedule, as there may be some things she didn't need to see.  

Being a parent makes you worry. Before having kids, I wasn't really afraid of much. Now I feel more vulnerable, because I have so much more to lose. I worry about something happening to them, but I also worry about something happening to me. After focusing for years on my own loss, now that I’m a parent I think about having to leave my kids – she was only eight years older than I am now – and I grieve more for everything she missed out on than I do for what I don’t have. 

My mom taught by example. She had a wonderful optimism, and never lingered in anger or sadness or resentment. She told me once that if she was scolded as a child, she would just picture herself in her mind riding her bike really fast on a summer day, and imagining that if she had very long hair, it'd be blowing in the wind. She never lost that ability to thwart negativity, even when sick. 

She wanted my sister and me to feel good about ourselves, to act with integrity no matter what we did. When I was cast as the cow in the nativity pageant as a child, rather than landing the coveted role of Mary, she assured me that the cow was very important, because it breathed on baby Jesus and kept him warm. 

She was assertive but not pushy or defensive. She was principled but not judgmental or exclusionary. She had a fantastic sense of humor, threw better parties than her teenage daughters, and, being roguish herself, forgave my teenage trespasses – even appreciated them, if I could make her laugh. 

I had a great mom who managed to teach me a lot in a short time. I know how to laugh at and forgive myself. I know how to feel comfortable in my own skin. I believe people are basically good, in spite of being flawed. More so than anything you can read in a What to Expect manual, my mom helped my sister and me understand how to live good lives, just by being ourselves. I can only hope to do the same for my kids.

Testing 1, 2, 3 ...

Today is my birthday. I am now 39-years old and 20-weeks’ pregnant, which means it’s time for a champagne-free celebration and some words about maternal maturity.

“Elderly primigravida” is a term for women who have their first child at 35 or older. I learned this during my first pregnancy, and it made me feel sci-fi dangerous. I imagined myself strapped to a table in a post-apocalyptic lab with mad scientists toiling away at me, mankind’s last hope.

But I’m not such a rare breed. Twenty percent of women in the United States have their first baby after 35, and an increasing number are waiting into their 40s and beyond. This time around, I don’t let jargon scare me. You say “post-mature,” I say, “finally mature enough.” You “obstetrically senescent,” I say, “look, I’ve been busy with other stuff.”

For me, deciding the best time to have a baby wasn’t a matter of science or statistics, but of lifestyle and personal development. Parenting is something I only wanted to do if I was ready and able to make it my priority, to commit my time and focus. But there were other things I felt I had to do first, and I don’t regret waiting.

I’m not suggesting I did anything extraordinary instead of having children in the last decade, but I’m satisfied that I gave myself enough years to explore my options. If I haven’t climbed Kilimanjaro or gone to law school by now, it’s certainly not because I didn’t have the time.

My life has balance today that it didn’t have when I was younger, and I have the privilege of being a working mother who is not overly tormented by logistical tangles, emotional conflicts, major financial strains, or laments for what could have been.

But with me at 39 and the Irish fella 52, we are hardly “babies having babies,” and there are of course downsides to that, too: older women carry higher risks of having children with genetic and chromosomal abnormalities, such as cystic fibrosis and Downs syndrome.

At my last midwife appointment, I was asked whether I wanted an amniocentesis, a test for fetal defects. It’s a procedure in which a long narrow needle is inserted into the uterus and a fluid sample is taken. I opted to do it in my last pregnancy, because I was curious about everything to do with my fetus, and because it sounded straightforward enough.

But the uterus is the Fort Knox of organs. It is formed mostly of muscle and is fiercely protective of its contents. Puncturing it with a needle took a fair bit of force and was met with an angry contraction (well played, uterus!), and, moreover, it hurt.

Still, far more disturbing for us was watching our baby on the ultrasound screen scurry away from the pointy intruder, and being told afterward that if I didn’t bleed for two weeks, I probably wouldn’t miscarry.

The test can trigger miscarriage, and this gives a lot of women pause—particularly older women who worry about their declining chances of conceiving again. And because any abnormalities identified are untreatable in the womb if at all, your only options if a problem is identified are to continue on or terminate the pregnancy.

For these reasons, some argue that the test would have more benefit to younger women, who generally have more childbearing years ahead of them—and to whom more babies with Downs are actually born, simply because younger women have more babies overall.

We decided against the test this time. We don't want to take any level of risk with this baby—not because I fear looming menopause, but because learning of an abnormality would not be a deal breaker anyway.

Of course I want my baby to be healthy, and I already know my chances. A simple Google search will tell you that a woman of 39—regardless of health history or any other factor but age—has a 1 in 250 chance of having a baby with Downs. But I don’t think of this as a game of odds. I doubt any parent raising a child with this or any chromosomal disorder would tell you they gambled and lost.

So I’m celebrating my birthday with a bit of irony: I am statistically more likely to have a child with birth defects than I was ten years ago, but I also feel more personally, financially, and emotionally prepared to provide my child whatever he or she needs, for however long. Even if I'm the oldest mommy waiting in the schoolyard.

Parenthood: Because change is good

Today is my son's first birthday—happy birthday, baby boy. We spent the morning marveling at our wobbling, babbling, chubby-legged fellow, and at how fast the time has gone and at how far we've all come in the last year. This afternoon there will be presents and cake and photos and fun. But for now, in the spirit of blogger self-indulgence, I'm going to make it about me.

Parenthood is something I always figured I'd enter into later in life, if at all. Although I knew it would be enriching in many ways, I assumed it would be limiting in others, a sort of wing-clipping, and I wasn't ready for that in my 20s or early (or even mid) 30s.

I've been reflecting this morning on how my first year of motherhood has changed me. I can report that life is definitely not what it was before my son was born, and so far, that's overwhelmingly a good thing.

I have broadened, rather than narrowed, my social circle.

When you have a baby, you get to know a lot of other moms, just as when you have a dog, you get to know a lot of dog owners, and, to steal a line from a friend, if you have a beer, you get to know a lot of drinkers. I’ve always considered “mommy friends” a pejorative term, and envisioned a social life reduced to discussions of feeding schedules and diaper rash cures. And I was not entirely wrong: I have met a lot of other moms, and we do discuss these things, but it’s anything but dull. And at the risk of getting all mommies are people on you, among the moms I’ve met over the last year is a program director for a major Amsterdam classical music venue, a project manager for a development consultancy, and a clothing designer with her own line at an international firm. The pram may be the icebreaker, but what I have to discuss with and learn from the mom friends I’ve made goes far beyond that.

I am becoming more interesting, or at least I'm trying.

One of my first jobs was with a San Francisco-based book publisher. As each weekend approached, the kitchen bulletin board would be covered in flyers inviting staff to various events involving my creative genius colleagues: so-and-so would be reading from his book of haikus this Friday, such-and-such would be performing in a musical Saturday night. It made me feel so dull, having nothing to counter with but that I’d be sitting on my ass drinking beer all weekend. Pregnancy and motherhood have forced me to broaden my horizons, in part because I don't want my son to think I’m useless, but also because you have to get more inventive with how you spend your time when you can’t just hang out at the pub. You also have more hours in the day. For example, before my son was born, 9 am on Saturday was technically a time, but it went largely unseen and unused. Now it’s when I am available for coffee or yoga. I was inspired to do more in the last year, including participating in a writing group, a cooking class, a belly dance workshop, and intensive Dutch study, as well as earning my first by-lines as a freelance journalist.

I sleep better.

As a night owl with a day job and an enthusiasm for the, shall we say, café culture, I have never been a good sleeper. Everyone says that parenthood is the death of sleep, but for me, I’ve never been so well rested—probably because I've never been so genuinely tired at the end of the day. I always worked a lot and I always worked hard, but work was really all I had to do. Now I have just four hours of baby-free time to work each morning, and I am far more focused and efficient. Afternoons with my son aren’t billable, but they are no less busy, especially with a child who thinks naps are for suckers. I am grateful that I can divide my days between work and motherhood, and I try to do both at full capacity. It’s tiring, in a satisfying way. And while I used to struggle to wind down at night, there’s no tossing and turning now, only deep, lovely sleep.

I am a better partner.

I learned a lot from my divorce, including that successful relationships rely on accountability as much as romance. Most divorces are not sudden—every action strengthens or weakens a relationship, and before reaching a crescendo of inelegance and despair, a failing marriage begins its demise with subtle apathy. You stay up late watching TV by yourself. You leave your dishes in the sink. You cancel weekend plans to catch up on work. Not occasionally but most of the time. I love my Irish fella, and we are plenty romantic. But some of the best ways to show your appreciation for your partner are completely void of passion, like scrubbing the toilet because it’s your turn, or turning off your laptop to engage in what’s going on around you rather than feel irritated by it. That we are now parents makes it all the more important that we be strong as a couple. The Irish fella and I both love a boy whose life we want to make great, and we adore being parents so much we’re having another baby. But at the core of our family is our partnership, and not wanting that to fail makes my priorities clear.

Back to the Bump and Grind

Meet my new bump, due March 15 2012.

MAD love

(c) Time Out Amsterdam, July 2011

Four years ago, Mariette Fehmers canceled a romantic getaway with her then-boyfriend so she could take her daughter to meet Sinterklaas – and the response wasn’t exactly what she expected. ‘He flipped, and I realised we were talking about my daughter like she was a problem,’ Fehmers says. ‘My daughter is not my “problem.” She’s my asset. She’s my light. She’s everything.’

It was then that native Amsterdammer Fehmers, now 44, decided she would only date men who had children. ‘I was fed up apologising when I couldn’t do something because I had my daughter,’ Fehmers recalls. ‘Of course I have my daughter – she’s my daughter. That is something a father understands.’

Fehmers isn’t bitter. She radiates optimism and her energy is infectious. I’m betting the slender blonde former ‘Hart Van Nederland’ TV presenter attracts plenty of male attention. Instead of being discouraged by a few men who couldn’t handle the fact that she was a parent, she was inspired by it: two years ago she quit her job at a PR firm and started her own business: a dating website for single parents.

The site, MAD Company (madcompany.nl), was launched in January 2010 and now has more than 2,500 members in the Netherlands, the vast majority in the Randstad. MAD stands for ‘moms and dads’, Fehmers explains, ‘But it’s also tongue-in-cheek – you can feel mad when you divorce, but you can also fall madly in love again.’

As with other dating sites, members create profiles, search for other members based on various criteria (age, sexual preference, etc) and send messages to anyone who strikes their fancy (and the site is monitored for inappropriate conduct). But unlike other dating sites, everyone knows upfront if there are children involved, so there’s no game-playing around the subject.

The gratis membership option – versus the €6 a month paying version – limits the number of messages members can send or photos they can post, but generously allows access to the site’s many resources, including blogs, a relationship column, dating tips, alimony advice and suggestions on ways to help children deal with their parent’s divorce.

‘It’s not just about dating,’ Fehmers says, ‘it’s about forming relationships. It’s a community.’ Members plan ‘offline’ events that are open to everyone on MAD Company and that range from morning picnics to late-night dance parties. These events were the main draw for member Maui Maurer, 48. a former Hell’s Angel who recently won full custody of his two children, a daughter, 4, and a son, 10.

‘I didn’t really join for dating,’ he told me. ‘My children are my priority. It took seven lawyers to get them back. I thought with the activities – going to the park, the beach – I could do more things with them, and with others who understand my situation.’

Mirka Van Beest, 40, joined MAD Company after meeting members on a sailing trip, even though she doesn’t have kids. Anyone open to dating a single parent can participate. ‘I don’t have children, it’s just not how my life went,’ she explains, ‘and sometimes I feel I missed out. But it’s nice to have kids in your life.’

Although friendship is what most members say they’re seeking, Cupid has definitely struck for some. There are many success stories, and a new one is shared every week on the main page of the site. ‘There is couple that met on the site and are now expecting a child, Fehmers says, ‘the first MAD baby!’

Fehmers hasn’t met her own true love through the venture (it’s her personal policy not to date site members, to avoid mixing business with pleasure), but she remains open to a new relationship, and encouraging others to stay positive about the search. ‘I tell people: this site is about looking ahead,’ she says. ‘Don’t only look to where the sun went down or you’ll never see the sun come up.’

Hell on Wheels

In movies, when someone takes a pregnancy test, it is a scene of excruciating waiting, of squinting at the stick, struggling to decipher the result. In reality, the bright blue “+” sign appears while you are still midstream. It could be made clearer only if a small mallet was released to whack you between the eyes.

For me, while the physical changes of pregnancy came slowly, the mental shift from non-pregnant woman to host body was made just as quickly as the + turned blue. Psychologically transitioning back to normalcy post-pregnancy, however, has been a far more gradual process.

For a while after my son was born I still carried myself as though I had a big bump, giving myself unnecessary clearance when moving through narrow spaces. And long after the actual post-natal period was up—it officially lasts from birth to six weeks—I caught myself wondering why people no longer offered me their seat on the bus. Could they not tell I had just had a baby?

Pregnancy comes with many discomforts and restrictions, and after the baby is born there are even more physical, hormonal, and emotional changes to face. I got used to being in this state of adjustment. Unconsciously, I used it as a sort of qualifier: I was in pretty good shape, for someone who had just had a baby. My house was pretty tidy, for someone who had just had a baby. And so on.

But now as my eight-month old son crawls around the floor and flashes me his one-tooth smile, it’s pretty clear that I didn’t “just” do anything. It is time to let go of my post-natal mindset, to be a little bit more demanding of myself, to reclaim my body. To that end, in part, I decided to join a gym.

I reviewed the fitness classes offered. One promised me the hindquarters of Jennifer Lopez, but its name – “ass blast” – sounded far too much like a colon cleansing. I opted for spinning. The spinning room is the VIP lounge of my gym. Its glass walls allow you a tantalizing glimpse of what goes on in there: it’s dark, with flashing, disco-like lights, and there’s a DJ station. My first mistake was thinking spinning looked fun.

On a Sunday morning, I met the spunky, upbeat instructor – Pepper, from Texas – while walking to the class. Pepper was initially delighted when I said I would be joining the class, but she expressed concern on hearing it was my first time. ‘Are you cardiovascularly fit?’ she enquired, furling her brow. ‘I run every day,’ I said, because this used to be true, and for a minute I felt like my old, marathon-running self. Cardiovascularly fit? Absolutely.

There were about ten of us in the class, men and women, mid-20s to early 50s. Pepper helped me adjust my bike seat. She strapped my feet to the pedals, and explained the basics: turn the small knob between my knees left to get more resistance, right for less. We were ready to go.

My own bike is my main mode of transport, aside from my feet, but the spinning bike was different. I’m not used to my seat being higher—way higher—than my handlebars. I felt I was being hung from the ceiling by my back belt loop. I gripped my talons on the handlebars like an anxiously perched bird.

We began with what is called sprinting, which means sitting on the narrow, hard seat and holding the closest of two sets of handlebars, pedaling fast with relatively low resistance. Immediately I understood why the others wore padded pants—rookie mistake. But I was optimistic. From her front and center bike, Pepper cranked up the music and smiled at me.

Then Pepper changed. ‘I will work you hard,’ she charged, and began staring individuals down, reprimanding them by name, accusing them of partial effort, reminding us that she was watching. Then she yelled ‘climb’ and it all began to go wrong. Climbing means turning up the resistance, lunging forward to a farther away set of handlebars, and biking in a standing position.

The pain that shot up my thighs was the wailing of muscles long dormant, and my heart felt ready to fly out of my chest. The sweat from my forehead was blinding. I tried to picture my baby’s face. Was it so long ago? I looked at the clock and we were only ten minutes into the hour-long class.

I clenched the handlebars, staring down at my white knuckles and feeling all my weight in my arms, shoulders and neck. This apparently is not good form. Pepper dismounted her bike and walked over to me. She insisted that my impossibly raised tailbone was my center of gravity. ‘The force is coming from your thighs and abs,’ she instructed, grabbing me in both places.

And suddenly my left leg came free from its pedal vice, but the flywheel's momentum kept the pedal spinning at dangerous speed while I held my free leg out of its reach. Meanwhile, my right leg, its foot still firmly attached to its pedal – piston to crankshaft – cycled on madly against its will. Panic-stricken, I looked to Pepper, who shook her head and offered, matter of factly: ‘If you had enough resistance, that wouldn’t happen.'

Far more than actual ability, I rely on pride to pull me through situations in which I really ought not be. But here, I had to submit to failure. Not even the music could inspire. The songs I heard during that hour are ruined for me forever (Gwen Stefani? You’re dead to me.) I didn't leave--I really didn't think she'd let me--but I gave up, pedaling away at my own slow pace, avoiding Pepper’s eye contact and ignoring her commands, until at last the class was over.

With my face held up to the showerhead, I closed my eyes and let the humiliation wash away. And then I heard someone say my name. Standing beside me was a soapy Pepper. She was smiling again. ‘Did you have a little trouble?’ she asked. ‘I recently had a baby,’ I said, hoping that it would exonerate me, but instead she said she’d see me next week. ‘The class is a little treat I give myself every Sunday,’ she said.

Spinning that morning had been one of the worst times I’ve ever had doing anything. Clearly I have a long way to go in regaining my former fitness level, but the first step is letting go of the post-natal excuse. The second I knew I was pregnant, my body belonged to someone else, and I looked forward to getting it back--and now, at last, I have. Except on Sunday mornings, when I surrender it to Pepper.

The Shirley temple

(c) Time Out Amsterdam, June 2011. Photos by Marie-Charlotte Peze.

After climbing onto her barstool, Emma Jelinkova, 10, waved her hand slowly in front of her 8-year old sister’s face. ‘Josefina? Can you see me?’ As their eyes adjusted to the dearth of natural light, my six companions, aged 8 to 13, took in the swanky, art deco style of Door 74, where I’d brought them for a cocktail-mixing workshop.

The children rested their elbows on the bar like mini-regulars. The sight was like, say, a dog in a turtleneck. It didn’t seem right, but it was irresistibly cute. ‘What is this place?’ asked 8-year-old Olivia Carey, large green eyes gazing at the array of bottles and fruits and other mixing agents before her.

Behind the bar, award-winning cocktail maker Timo Janse, offered a diplomatic answer: ‘This is somewhere people come when they want to meet their friends, to relax. While they do, I make them some drinks.’ Put that way, a cocktail bar seemed a perfectly appropriate place to bring children.

Janse, author of ‘Shake-It’, a cocktail recipe book for kids, explained to my shakers-in-the-making that they would each be creating their own drinks. Although he started by saying ‘there are no rules’ to bartending, he offered a pointer: ‘You have to have a little bit of sour taste and a little bit of sweet, and you find the right balance for yourself.’ He encouraged the group to be imaginative. ‘If you really like a sweet drink, you can make it with bubble gum or chocolate sprinkles.’ Then he blew their minds by adding that they could even make drinks with pure gold.

'I would just put all the fruits in the whole world in a bowl and squish them all up together with ice cream and yogurt!’ cried Olivia, her high-pitch English accent soaring over the other voices. The other kids loved this idea but Janse counseled, ‘If it tastes like everything, it tastes like nothing.’

Janse invited Freya Lowe, 9, to join him behind the bar (‘a magic place,’ he said). Wearing a green hoodie and sporting a ponytail, Freya was a sharp visual contrast to the tall, dark, impeccably dressed bartender. He taught her how to measure with a jigger and to use a muddle to create her strawberry, lime and mineral water cocktail. ‘I dare you to drink it!’ the others called out as Freya carefully carried her overflowing creation back to her barstool.

Next up was 9-year old Lola-Sophia Goldman-Webb, who stepped up to the bar wearing a white shawl. Janse suggested she remove it before vigorously shaking Ernest, the penguin-shaped shaker, to create her mixture of blueberries, red currants, strawberries, lemons and cranberry juice.

Emma confessed that she prefers sour flavours to sweet, so she juiced a lemon with a Mexican elbow to create her lemon, lime, orange and ginger beer cocktail while her sister Josefina learned to use a pestle and mortar to grind lime and sugar for her watermelon-based concoction.

Saul-Patrick Goldman-Webb, 13, was feeling bold and spicy, combining hot chilies with vanilla, lemon and cranberry juice. Fruit fanatic Olivia used a strainer to pour her mixture of blueberries, strawberries, oranges, mint and pineapple. The end result was the same bright ginger colour as her hair, and her appreciation for its taste could not be contained. ‘So good!’ she called out, before quickly returning her straw to her mouth.

A variety of glassware was used – some of it more than 50 years old – from delicate champagne flutes to silver-plated lowball glasses to a chunky goblet with a face. Janse stressed the importance garnishing – ‘Pretty drinks taste better’ – offering the likes of ginger, chili peppers and edible flowers as options.

When everyone had downed their potions, Janse gave each participant his business card, ‘in case you want to email me a good recipe.’ High on natural sugar and with berry-stained grins, my budding mixologists reluctantly dismounted their barstools. As they prepared to face the bright, busy street outside, part of me wondered if this early introduction to cocktail culture would encourage them to become drinkers, the way chocolate cigarettes make kids think smoking might be cool. Could kiddie cocktails be a gateway drug?

‘People think a cocktail is about alcohol,’ Janse answered, ‘but it’s really about the balance of tastes.’ He encourages kids to experiment with different flavours, from passion fruit to peanut butter, from basil to chocolate and to explore with all their senses. I’ll definitely drink to that.

To organise a workshop for kids, contact Timo Janse at timojanse@hotmail.com. His book, in Dutch only, is available on bol.com.

My Little Eye

(c) Time Out Amsterdam May 2011

Recently, I was walking through the Spiegelkwartier with my friend’s son, 7-year old Jade Thomas, when an object inside Boven’s Veiling en Galerie caught his eye. Without hesitation, he entered the gallery and made a beeline for a large, flat ceramic piece that was laying on a low table. I followed him inside with a mind to pull him out, afraid that a child wouldn’t be welcome in the gallery, when I noticed he’d fallen into a kind of trance.

I gazed on the shiny colourful ceramic tile, approximately 45 X 60 cm. On its primarily yellow and red surface was a crude image formed by quick, rough lines – a three-dimensional scribble in cobalt blue. ‘It’s beautiful,’ Jade said, mesmerised, wide-eyed and sweet, in a manner not unlike that of a precocious child star, except that his appreciation was completely genuine.

I didn’t want to linger. I’m not comfortable in art galleries. The watchful eyes of the owners tend to put me off, as does my lack of knowledge about art. But I also didn’t want to squelch Jade’s interest, so I did the only thing I know to do when looking at art: I read the description. ‘It was made in 1973 by a Dutch artist named Anton Rooskens,’ I informed Jade. ‘It’s called “Figure in blue”…’ But Jade wasn’t listening. ‘It’s a Chinese character!’ he announced, and began pulling the piece toward him.

By now we’d attracted the attention of the gallery owner, Roel Boven. I expected him to scold us for touching the piece, but instead he gently raised it up so Jade could see it better, and explained that the image was actually a person. Jade held his hand to his chin in consideration.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s a Chinese character.’ Boven then guided Jade’s hand along the figure, narrating the journey. ‘These are the eyes,’ he explained, ‘here is the mouth, these are the hands, this is the hair…’Jade was partially convinced. ‘It’s a sea creature,’ he conceded.

A black chalk drawing called ‘Houses Amongst Trees’ was the next object of Jade’s appreciation. It was by Flemish artist Leon de Smet, and to me it looked like an unused page in a child’s colouring book. ‘All kinds of art are important,’ Jade said. ‘Anyone can make anything they want, and that’s why I like art so much.’ My young connoisseur went on to investigate everything on display. ‘Everyone really did their best,’ he concluded, in earnest, ‘but the sea creature is the most beautiful.’

Unlike me, Jade was completely at ease walking through the gallery space. I began to wonder if a child might not be the ideal art gallery companion. It seemed preposterous but equally logical. His admiration of beauty wasn’t inhibited by adult pretention or self-consciousness. His curiosity wasn’t hampered by a lack of formal education on the subject. He just liked what he liked, and never questioned his right to be there. And for the first time, I began to have a good time in a gallery. Art became fun for me.

We continued on to the So ART Gallery on Nieuwe Spiegelstraat, where Jade’s favourite item was a series of oil paintings of cows by Chinese artist Wang Zhiwu. One painting depicted cows playing football. As Jade stared at the painting, I studied it, too, trying to anticipate his thoughts. ‘It’s really dream-like,’ I offered. ‘The cows seem to be floating, and look how the detail on their faces looks like flakes of gold. I wonder if that’s a special technique.’ Jade shrugged. ‘They’re just funny,’ he said. While I was busy trying to understand why the painting was good, Jade was simply enjoying it.

A couple blocks down at Jaski Gallery, however, Jade cast a dim view on a taxidermy exhibit of parrots in jars by the art duo Les Deux Garçons, which he called ‘mean’. Although Jade thinks all forms of artistic expression are worthwhile, he’s also a sensitive kid who can’t understand why anyone would think dead birds are art. Also in the Jaski, Jade described Rob Scholte’s mixed media portraits as ‘beautiful photos that someone drew all over, and ruined.’

Jade’s perspective put a new and refreshing spin on gallery visits, which I previously considered a daunting activity reserved for snooty art experts and people with too much disposable income. For him, art isn’t something to be acquired, appraised, or understood, but to be shared and admired. To Jade, being intimidated by art defeats art’s purpose. ‘A lot of people like to make things,’ he said as we left the last gallery, ‘and they want to show the whole entire world.’ That includes, assured my 7-year-old friend, the likes of me.

Shortlisted: Best Blog 2010/2011, Expatica Netherlands

My Bump and Grind has been shortlisted for Expatica Netherlands' Best Blog 2010/2011 competition (not sure how it's best of 2011 yet, but there you go). Please cast your vote here: http://www.expatica.com/nl/lifestyle_leisure/blogs_photos/Vote-for-Expatica-Netherlands-best-blog-20102011_17286.html

Booby trap

By Tracy Brown

© Time Out Amsterdam, March 2011. Illustration by Eryc Simmerer

Taking part in vibrant city life while staying within nipple’s reach of a newborn seemed impossible when my son was born four months ago. I wanted to breast feed, but I was apprehensive about nursing Liam in public.

The Netherlands Nutrition Centre recently published a report that found that 45 per cent of people who live in the Netherlands disapprove of women breastfeeding in public. I’d noticed few nursing mothers in the city, but in a place known for tolerance – not to mention wantonness – could breastfeeding really be considered offensive?

Amsterdammer Niamh Palmer, 28, says she always went home when it was time to feed her daughter. ‘It wasn’t because of how people might react,’ she said. ‘I just think for some women it isn’t so easy to do.’

And it’s true; it’s not easy. Baby and nipple do not meet like magnetic kissing dolls. It’s more like a mid-air airplane refueling. It requires a lot of handling and adjusting, and, like my new E-cups, defies ‘subtle’.

Events such as Mama Café Amsterdam provide comfortable environments for nursing moms. These meet-ups, which take place at various cafés around the city, are a perfect opportunity to socialise with other pregnant women and new mothers, and to ask questions of midwives and lactation specialists. And, as is stated on the Mama Café website, you’re free to breastfeed.

Baby-centric activities abound in Amsterdam. Liam and I have participated in everything from baby massage to infant swimming to the playgroup at the English Bookshop. But I missed cafés, restaurants, museums and bars. If I wanted to have a social, cultural experience that didn’t involve singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus,’ I ‘d have to think outside the bra.

Recently, while browsing the post-holiday sales at De Bijenkorf, Liam and I ducked into the second-floor café. It was packed with well-dressed and perfumed shoppers, mostly middle-aged couples. Liam began to fuss. I reached into my V-neck sweater like an assassin reaching for a gun. As Liam glug-glugged from under my carefully draped scarf, I waited for some kind of fallout, but our public just carried on sipping their champagne and cappuccinos, unfazed. Was I no longer limited by my lactational leash?

I’ve since fed Liam everywhere from on the tram to the Begijnhof chapel, from the lobby of the Hermitage Museum to the Pont. At the Beiaard on Spui, Liam had his lunch while bartenders nonchalantly reached behind me to collect empty glasses. When Liam became unexpectedly peckish while browsing the picture books at Waterstone’s, we sat conspicuously on a bench facing the ground floor till. Shoppers went about their business, leaning over us to access the Recommended and Sale shelves.

Liam and I recently met up with four of my friends and their babies for lunch at Mazzo. A table of women and babies corralled by prams, we were anything but discrete. When our waitress caught his eye while he was feeding, Liam whipped his head around to follow her, stretching my nipple like a bungee cord.

We have our awkward moments. In my local Bagel and Beans, I noticed Liam’s cheeks were hollow as he sucked. I gave my nipple a quick squeeze to see if I was empty, and two strong streams of milk shot out: one nearly blinding him, and the other disappearing across the room. If anyone noticed, they kept it to themselves.

I have felt some resistance. At the Three Sisters pub, Rembrandtplein, assistant manager Vincent Visser told me it’s fine to breastfeed there, ‘if you go somewhere private, not in the centre of the room.’ At Mulligan’s Irish Pub, bar manager Sean McLoughlin told me he is pro breastfeeding, being a father himself, but not in a bar. ‘It’s full of drinking men, and, let’s face it, a boob’s a boob,’ he said. In sum: breastfeeding is not offensive, but it’s a lot to ask a regular to react to a bare breast with neutrality.

Perhaps when taking the anonymous poll, more people were willing to admit their discomfort with public nursing. But my experiences fit with the spirit of peaceful coexistence here: when it comes to nursing in public, Amsterdam lives up to its tolerant reputation.

An American Werewolf in Labor

There are few absolutes when it comes to labor. There's no way to know just when it will start, how long it will last, or how it will feel. But one thing that I think applies universally is a quote from midwife Suzanne Stalls: labor is hard work, it hurts a lot, and you can do it.

Even with labor being so unpredictable and with no two labors being exactly alike, while pregnant I loved hearing other people's birth stories. For me, labor has always been clouded in fear and mystery, and even though learning how it went for someone else told me nothing about how my labor would go, it was still reassuring to know it could be endured.

Of course it's always nicer to hear the stories of relatively easy labors, but even the tougher experiences are promising, because they echo the most important part of what Suzanne Stalls says: labor is doable.

For me, labor was intermittent and gradual, and therefore quite manageable. Twenty-four hours passed between the contraction that was convincing enough to take seriously and the final push that brought it all to a close. That may sound long, but although labor was exhausting and all consuming in the last hours, for the most part it was what happened in the background, an interruption that came and went throughout an otherwise busy day.

On the day I went into labor, the Irish fella and I were frantically calling around looking to replace house cleaners who had failed to show. Weeks of construction in our new home had been completed the day before, and movers were scheduled for the next day. Months of living out of suitcases were coming to an end, but before we could move into our new house, we had to rid it of the dust, muddy boot prints, and general filmy filth that you’d expect at a construction site.

I had been having strong cramps throughout the morning and, at a scheduled midwife appointment, had been told that if I wanted to have my baby in the new house, I really ought to move that day. I met up with the Irish fella for lunch and I mentioned this as casually as I could, reminding him that it is common for women, particularly with their first pregnancy, to think they are in labor when they are not. This is false labor, I assured him, both because I believed it and because actually going into labor that day didn’t really suit our plans.

After a morning-long search, the Irish fella had found two cleaners to work on our house that evening. We made a list of supplies we needed and planned to spend the afternoon doing a preliminary scrub before the professionals arrived. Before setting off to buy mops and brooms and bleaches and detergents, the Irish fella suggested we time my cramps, which were twenty minutes apart.

We walked around a hardware store and a supermarket. We went to the house we'd been staying in and packed up some things we'd need for our first night in our new home. By the time we got to the new house, I was having cramps every ten minutes.

In my antenatal class, it was drilled into us that the best thing you can do in labor is stay upright, forward, and mobile. The Irish fella, for whom standing still is anathema, was all for my being active in labor. He handed me the vacuum.

We cleaned for a while, and my cramps, which we were now calling contractions, had intensified and were occurring every five minutes. The idea of being upward, forward, and mobile is to help things progress, but what I wanted then was to slow it down. I decided to rest.

The house was mostly empty, but we had one room that was furnished and decorated, with paintings hanging and new sheets on the bed, with books on the shelves and towels neatly folded on the side table. The Irish fella had put this room together before the construction work began, as a sort of shrine to normalcy. I was grateful for a bed to climb into.

The cleaners arrived and scrubbed the house around me. The Irish fella came to check on me from time to time, and we wondered whether we should cancel the movers we’d booked for the morning. The contractions intensified, and by 8 pm we called the midwife. At this stage, we really just wanted someone to tell us if I was actually in labor. We were still living in the reality in which moving house was the priority, and wanted to know if we should transition fully into the reality of my being in labor.

The midwife kept me on the phone long enough to hear me through a contraction. She said I sounded fine (“You are not screaming”) and to call her back in the night. We called the instructor from our antenatal class, asking her if she thought it'd be better for me to get up and move around or stay in bed. She said I could have hours or days to go. She told me to have a glass of wine and go to bed.

Labor is often compared to marathon running. Having now experienced both, I agree that there are similarities: both require endurance, mental and physical strength, controlled breathing, and regular hydration and energy repletion. Both also require proper pacing, which is where the analogy falls apart.

When you are running a marathon, you know exactly where you are in the race—you know how far you’ve gone and how far you have to go. In labor, you don't, and having contractions for ten hours only to learn you are 1.5 centimeters dilated is akin to thinking you are nearly at the finish line when you are still doing warm-up laps. And not knowing how much more intense contractions are going to get can frighten women who are managing quite fine into receiving pain medication that they may, if they choose, do perfectly well without.

The Irish fella and I settled into bed. The contractions continued to come every five minutes, lasting for one minute, and getting stronger as the night went on. I got through each by exhaling deeply for a count of ten, inhaling deeply for a count of ten, and then repeating three times until the minute had passed. I reminded myself that each contraction was getting me closer to meeting my baby. On occasion I heard myself asking God or my mom for help.

The Irish fella and I had a hot water bottle between us, and throughout the night we’d press together to push it as hard as we could against my lower back during contractions. I didn’t sleep, but I managed to doze during those five-minute spells when there was no discomfort at all. I considered calling the midwife again around 3 am, but when I envisioned her arriving and the lights going on and the atmosphere changing, I decided to wait.

At 8 am we sat in bed and discussed what to do. Should we call the midwife? Should we cancel the movers? If I was only in the very early stages, we reasoned, I could have a good twelve hours to go, in which case we may as well have our furniture moved. We called the midwife, hoping she’d come examine me, and expecting she’d say I was maybe at two centimeters, in which case we’d stick to our moving plan.

When the midwife arrived, we waited for a contraction so she could feel my cervix. I breathed deeply—ten seconds out, ten seconds in, repeat—and when I opened my eyes she was removing her rubber glove and smiling. “Nearly seven centimeters,” she said. “I can get you through this.” She told the Irish fella he should go out for a walk, get a coffee, and come home in about an hour. She suggested I get in the bath. We rescheduled the movers.

It was a huge relief to know that I was not only definitely labor, but that I was actually quite far along. We were all delighted. The midwife brought in her birthing stool and prepared the bed with rubber sheets. The kraamzorg arrived—the nurse who would attend the birth and care for me after—and set out clothes for the baby. I apologized over and over for not having any furniture for them to sit on, and for the general state of the house.

I also apologized each time I felt a contraction coming, because it was impossible to concentrate on anything else in the midst of one. But between contractions, I was myself, and with a heightened politeness. The mood was so pleasant and the two women who buzzed around me while I floated shamelessly in my bathtub were so friendly that we were, dare I say, having a nice time.

There was laughter and small talk and banter, and then every five minutes, I would morph into some primal version of myself—not a werewolf perhaps, but some form of lowing, moaning creature. Once a contraction was over, I’d return to the conversation until the next one started.

The Irish fella returned. At 11 am, I got back on the bed, and the midwife suggested she break my water to speed things up. I couldn’t see anything over my enormous bump, but I heard her ask the Irish fella if he saw what color the warm liquid was. “Green,” he said. “Erwtesoep,” she said. Pea soup. “And what does this mean?” she asked him, instructor to student, and he answered, “We have to go to hospital.”

The green color of the water is a sign that there is meconium, the baby’s first feces, in the amniotic fluid. Breathing this can be harmful to the baby, and its presence is a sign that the baby is stressed. Although the midwife was monitoring the baby’s heart and it sounded fine, a more accurate method of heart monitoring—whereby a monitor is physically clipped to the skin on the baby’s head—can only be done in the hospital. By law, we had to move.

At 8 centimeters with the end just in reach, getting up, putting jeans on, walking to the car, and driving to the hospital was the last thing I wanted. And I'd like to extend sincere apologies to the poor man with whom I held mid-contraction eye contact while stopped at a red light. But within 15 minutes, I was in a hospital bed ready to resume.

But everything was different, and I think it shut my labor down. The midwife had to leave so the doctor could take over. The heart monitor meant I couldn’t move around anymore, no more shower or bath. I still had my hot water bottle, which the nurse wanted to take from me because it was giving me burn blisters, but I wouldn’t give it up.

Two hours passed and I was still at 8 centimeters. The doctor explained that they would like to give me a drug that helps speed up contractions. So ingrained is the belief in natural childbirth in the Netherlands that even this relatively minor intervention was explained to me with reassurance that it was nothing I was doing wrong, that I was still doing all the work, but that they had to do this to help move things along, to help me.

Things were harder now. The drug sped contractions up so I was now having four every ten minutes, and they were far stronger. We were left alone, and the Irish fella sat next to me and rubbed my shoulders while pressing the hot water bottle into my back. When a particularly hard contraction had me hyperventilating, he would breathe deeply until I was back on course by following his pattern. But in between contractions, there were kisses, there were jokes about the faces I was making, there was a phone call about the delivery of our new dining room table. In between, I was tired and thirsty, but I was fine.

When I was at ten centimeters, the doctor said I was ready to push. In spite of it being 24 hours since I put down the vacuum and climbed into bed, when the doctor said it was time I heard myself say, “already?” And so there I was, in the hospital, knees to ears, Irish fella to my left, doctor, nurse, and intern at my legs, waiting for a contraction so I could push. In three pushes, my baby was resting on my chest.

It’s a bit of a blur, those first minutes. The Irish fella cut the cord. The doctor and intern and nurse took the baby to a table to examine him, and the Irish fella followed them. I stayed on the bed, streaked with sweat and blood. My belly was a soft, empty pouch. I was dying of thirst but my Powerade was just out of reach, and not a person in the room was paying any amount of attention to me. From a tray across the room, the placenta seemed to say, “Tell me about it, sister.”

It was all over and I felt fantastic. One benefit to drug-free labor that I appreciated right away was that I could walk around, and felt no grogginess. My baby was placed on my chest and began to feed. The physical pain of contractions was gone, and the elation of knowing my baby and I made it through labor happy and healthy made it all worth while. They say women forget the pain, but I don't think that's it. I remember it. And as soon as it was over, I remember thinking it was not at all worth fearing. It wasn't that bad, and it was definitely worth it.

For the last week I’ve been hearing the birth stories of the women from my antenatal class, and some of them had labors that were far longer and harder than mine. Still, we have all said it is something we know we want to do again. We know it will be hard work and it will hurt, but we also know it will be manageable, completely worth it, and most important, we know we can do it.

Toni Braxton Hicks: Get It?

Spoiler alert: I was working on this post last Tuesday, and had intended editing it later. But my bump had other plans, and within three hours labor had begun. I’m posting this now anyway because the blog has been idle too long.

I love a good band name pun: Daisy Chainsaw, Kathleen Turner Overdrive, JFKFC. At one point in my life I thought Olivia Newton John Denver would be a fantastic name for a particular duo, because I was five years old and believed "Rocky Mountain High" and the soundtrack to Grease were the only music I’d ever need.

Last night, after I had been awakened by a strong tightening of my uterus and was getting up for my third pee, I thought of another one: Toni Braxton Hicks. This morning I not only understand how lame this is, but also the extent of its exclusivity. I was playing to a very select audience: heavily pregnant women roaming the house in the middle of the night, exhausted but too uncomfortable to sleep, loopy with expectation.

It sounds ridiculous to say this so late in the game, but in some ways I am just starting to accept myself as a pregnant woman. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I can feel the part of me that is the pregnant woman expanding, literally and figuratively, and taking over the parts that I was before I was tucked away in the background of my own body. And I feel completely okay with this.

I’ve gotten used to people reacting to me solely as someone who is pregnant. I was telling a colleague that I notice people smiling at me more, granting me the right of way in supermarket aisles, and approaching me frequently for directions on the street as though they feel safer around me for being pregnant. My colleague said that’s because they don't know my belly is actually filled with the wallets of unsuspecting strangers.

But pregnancy didn’t swallow me whole. It gradually pecked away at me. At the start, it was complicated secret. Then it was a celebrated announcement. And then for a long stretch, it was just a fact, one that I tried to keep from interfering with my life as much possible.

I didn’t want my pregnancy to dominate all the conversations I had, or to limit what I still had the energy to do. I didn’t want to bore everyone around me or be perceived differently. I avoided maternity clothes for as long as I could. I took pride in still having the energy to stay out late, even when I might have preferred a night in bed with a book. One friend refers to this time not as my pregnancy, but my sobriety.

In trying to maintain my pre-pregnant self, I was not making any room for my pregnant self. This is very easy to do when you do not have friends who are going through a pregnancy at the same time as you. Not that my friends don’t care – they just can’t relate. And my friends with children have already moved from being pregnant women to being parents, more consumed by juggling soccer practices and Justin Bieber crushes than worrying about whether their water will break in public.

It was the Irish fella who had the idea to go to an antenatal class, so we would be forced to focus one night a week on the fact that we were going to be parents and had no idea what to expect from any of it. It was a new club we were joining, and we had to embrace the change, ready or not.

Driving to the first meeting, we were both feeling a little insecure. What if the other couples were just better and smarter at this than we were? When we pulled up to home of the instructor, I was bottoms-upping a take-away latte, sucking back the remaining foam, as the other couples made their way to the door.

“For feck’s sake,” the Irish fella said, “put that down before we’re thrown out.” During the class introductions, he continued to present us as best he could, volunteering the fabrication that he and I had been together for two years, and casting a dim view on my sharing that we’d met in a bar.

That first day, the instructor divided us into groups, with the men on one side of the room and the women on the other. The women’s task was to take a whiteboard on which was drawn a cartoonish outline of a naked pregnant woman and label it with various symptoms we were experiencing.

Now, anywhere else, when people ask how I’m feeling, I always say I feel great, because nobody really wants to hear over brunch that your gums bleed constantly because you are carrying 50 percent more blood than normal or that your expanding uterus has caused a substantial reorganization of some major organs, forcing you to breathe like a suffocating goldfish, among other discomforts. What I mean when I say "great" is that I feel great, considering.

But the women in my class didn’t hold back. One grabbed the marker and labeled the diagram’s feet “SWOLLEN!” Another drew little bubbles in the belly and wrote “GASSY!” Sore nipples, migraines, patchy skin, constipation, heart burn and, on a positive note, “great hair” were added. I had found my people!

Why it had taken me so long to see the value in getting to know other pregnant women, I don’t know. I have a particular aversion to anything with "mommy" as a qualifier, including (hypocritically) mommy blogs and mommy friends. And yet I have running friends, work friends, writing friends, pub friends. Every role you have in your life comes with new knowledge, new vocabulary, new experiences, all of which are best shared with others who have similar interests or ambitions. You have to find them.

The women in my class are all figuring out how to balance their pregnant selves with their working selves, their adventurous selves, their partner selves, their selfish selves. We are all taking on something new and unknown that feels too huge to not mean everything and yet too foreign to be part of our identities at present. We are preparing to make room to be moms while maintaining everything else that have worked hard to be.

It would be unfair to expect people to see me as anything but pregnant now, including myself. What was as small as a pine seed in the first ultrasound has grown into a watermelon-sized bump that is part hindrance, part armrest, part my little boy.

But now that I live in a body that I maneuver with the nimbleness and grace of the Kool Aid man, now that my mind is full of labor and motherhood, and now that I have embraced this so fully, it’s all about to change again.

Our class has already planned a December reunion, at which we’ll meet the literal fruits of each other’s labors. The first of us is being induced today, and we are all thinking of her and cheering her on, wondering who will be next, whether we are strong enough, how it will be. I hope we can continue to be a source of support for each other as we tackle the next phase, beyond the bump. If for no other reason, I'll need these women to test my new material on, the jokes that only a new mom can understand.

Define "prepared" ...

The Irish fella tells me to not always believe what I think. What he means is, when we are seeking the expert opinion of, say, a realtor, we should not spend half the meeting hearing what I believe is going to happen with the housing market. Ditto for consultations with plumbers, tax advisors, lawyers, and city hall clerks.

Both pregnancy and labor are things I previously knew little about beyond the broadest of strokes. Before becoming pregnant, I mostly associated the condition with sacrifice—one that took away wine and sushi and left your breasts like two windsocks on a still day. As for labor, I associated it with terrible pain, and assumed my pregnant friends spent nine months fearing the inevitable.

But it’s remarkable how little I really understood about the process. For example, I can’t remember when I didn’t know that a woman in labor had to be fully dilated before she was ready to push, but I didn’t know exactly what had to be dilated. Yes, it’s embarrassing. I just hadn’t given it any thought.

When you aren’t preparing for labor, you don’t bother to break down the details. You keep it abstract. You hear the term “birth canal” and picture Moses himself slowly bobbing his way down the Nile, even though with a spot of consideration you understand the journey to be more a matter of width than length.

I looked to experts. Early on in my pregnancy, the Irish fella and I sat side-by-side reading books I’d bought. His was explaining the importance of knowing the various stages of labor and what happens at each, and mine was telling me there are no stages of labor, that it is best understood as one fluid process.

Another book suggested we would be better prepared for labor if I put the Irish fella on the floor and covered him with a blanket, and then slowly removed it to reveal him again. In this scenario, he is the fetus and the blanket is the cervix. I’m fairly open-minded, but it’s hard not to be cynical about advice like that.

Time went on, and as one pile of books warned me against the advice given in the other, I stopped reading. It wasn’t hubris; I just didn’t want to learn anything and then be told to unlearn it. But when people asked what I was doing to get ready for labor, particularly for the drug-free home birth we’re hoping for, I felt like a slacker.

I do not think of labor as something that will happen. It's something that I will do. So it’s not that I didn’t want to prepare, I just wasn’t sure what preparing meant.

Studying too much about how labor will work and what must be done at (or by) what point makes birthing seem like a one-size-fits-all process. My midwife told me some women hold their breath and push until the small capillaries in their faces burst because they are told it is time and they must. But this is ineffective if your body isn't ready, regardless of how dilated you are. Not to mention it wastes valuable strength and disrupts the flow of oxygen to the baby.

In labor, women can feel vulnerable, and we can unknowingly resign ourselves to behaviors and procedures that are dictated by doctors or by our own ingrained expectations rather than an attentiveness to what is actually going on with our bodies. We forget to believe what we think. To trust what we feel.

A friend of mine began to scream during labor, startling her midwife, who asked her why she was making so much noise. My friend realized she didn’t actually feel the need to scream; she was doing it because it’s what she thought she was supposed to do. Television is a terrible labor coach.

Another friend, when her midwife asked her to push, realized she had never been told what to push, or from where exactly, or how. She panicked and labor abruptly stopped. When she relaxed and gave over to her own body’s instincts, she had no trouble at all.

Trusting your own instincts also means believing that you know how to breathe. There are breathing methods you can learn, such as Lamaze and its infamous “hee-hee-hooos” that are said to help ease the pain of contractions, and there is the Bradley technique, which consists of long, deep breaths to relax a woman between contractions.

I don’t dispute that these can be effective—but they have to be learned and remembered and executed properly. A doula—a trained labor companion—told me she does not recommend these methods to women because they are too easily forgotten in the throes of labor, leaving women without the trusty pain management system on which they’d planned to rely.

The same doula has coached woman in prison through labor, women who had no birth preparation, some of whom were in handcuffs while delivering their babies, and she said they breathed beautifully, all on their own.

Relying on—and asserting—your instincts seems to me paramount in labor and beyond. You can’t parent if you don’t trust yourself. Looking to experts to inform yourself is good, but in the end you have to be able to filter what you read and hear and decide for yourself. Otherwise you just react, and toss your logic out the window.

For example, months ago, the Irish fella and I read in several publications that it’s no longer safe to put blankets in cribs. We stocked up on sleeping “bags” that are recommended for the baby to wear to bed instead. When the kraamzorg—the nurse who will visit our house after our baby’s birth—asked us if we had a blanket for the baby, we very confidently said no.

She looked at us blankly, and we explained that babies were suffocating. She searched for the words. Finally she just said: “But it will be cold.” Then she used layering hand gestures to illustrate: mattress, baby, blanket. I’ve never felt myself plunge from informed to inept in such a short time.

So to prepare for labor, I’m thinking of it as a joint effort of baby and me. I know what it will require for him to move from the uterus to the midwife's arms, and being able to visualize this helps me understand what positions and motions make the best use of gravity and of the shape and workings of my own body to make this passage easier for him and for me. I trust that my body is made to do this. I trust I have the physical and mental capacity to endure it. That's just what I think. But I believe it.

Two Boobs and a Blanket

For the last two months, I’ve been working for a news and information website that serves the international community in various European countries. The company organizes a massive expat fair in Amsterdam every year—a major event that involves lots of exhibitors and the blood, sweat, and tears of my colleagues.

To remind our readership of the fair’s date, and us of approaching deadlines, there is a ticker at the top of the site that tells exactly how far away the expat fair is: it’s 4 weeks, 4 days, 22 hours, 7 minutes, and 34 seconds from right now. This is of particular interest to me, because the fair date is also my due date.

I’m not banking on the baby arriving on that day, even though 10/10/10 seems like a pretty lucky birthday. But in Holland they don’t allow the baby to stay put more than two weeks past the due date, which means the end of this pregnancy is undeniably nigh. According to my midwife, the little guy is positioning himself well for his big debut, dropping into place and slowly altering my walk into one that will eventually scream “there is a skull in my pelvis.”

As for me, it’s time to nest. Friends have described this phase to me: how they got up in the night to scrub the kitchen floor or how each time they tried to relax on the couch in the evening they had to get up again to investigate something that “smelled musty.”

Parenting Weekly describes nesting as “the uncontrollable urge to clean one’s house brought on by a desire to prepare a nest for the new baby, to tie up loose ends of old projects and to organize your world.” It’s a natural part of preparing for labor. But what I’m experiencing may be a titch more than that, because my nest looks like this:


This is the second-floor landing of my new house. The bathtub that someone recently asked if I’d be using during labor? That’s going to go right there against the back wall, as soon as the pipes are laid and the floor is put down. And there will be walls, of course. I’ve got plumbers, painters, carpenters, plasterers, and electricians crawling all over the joint, all of whom assure me I’ll have a proper house by month’s end.

October 10 is just one of many delivery dates noted in my trusty blue diary: the tiles arrive Monday, the washer and dryer on September 20 , the refrigerator September 27, the dining room table on October 1—and the list goes on. The only post-baby delivery is the couch, which is unfortunate, but who knew it took 12 weeks—a trimester!—to deliver a couch in the Netherlands?

I’ll tell you who knew: a friend of mine who is an organizational wonder. To give you a taste, last year she hosted a Halloween “pre-party” at which she served dinner to six of us, hemmed one woman’s costume, gave me a haircut, and got herself ready, all in less than an hour. She’s a machine.

Last February I invited her over for tea. We got to talking about her list of things to do before even thinking about trying to have a baby. At the time I knew I was expecting, but I hadn’t made this public, and as she went down her list—get a new mattress, because pregnancy can be hard on the back; buy new furniture for the guest room, because family will want to visit; purchase new furniture for living room, because that's where you spend the midnight hours feeding your baby—I began to feel ill prepared.

I started my own list: Get divorced. Decide whether to refinance or sell the house. Find out if the Dutch government provides maternity leave assistance to the self-employed. See if it’s really true what they say about 18-month waiting lists for day care (it is).

I’ve historically been a more seat-of-my-pants person than some, but in spite of appearances the Irish fella and I actually wasted no time trying to get ready for this baby. We began our house search in March, made an offer in June, and closed the deal in July. Then came August.

Holland shuts down in August. Stores close. Towns are deserted. Everybody—everybody—goes on holiday in August, generally for three weeks. So when you consider how little time we’ve had—less than ten days—to prioritize projects, find builders, and order materials, the house is coming together rather impressively. Sure, there’s a dismantled toilet on what will be my bedroom floor, but I’m trying to see this as a sign of progress.

And behind one of the doors in the photo is a peaceful, freshly-painted room with the most beautiful nursery furniture I’ve ever seen. It’s my sanctuary in what will eventually be a really nice house. I don’t know if it’s the calm-inducing pregnancy hormones, but I’m feeling relaxed.

A few months ago I reassured myself by joking that all a baby really needs is two boobs and a blanket—I can give him that and some. If the little guy shows up early, even if there’s no hallway floor per se, he’s got two parents who can’t wait to receive him and a nice place to sleep. Not a bad start.

Circumcision: Willy or Won’t He?

The night I learned I was pregnant, my unsuspecting Irish fella was out with a friend of his whose wife had just learned she was expecting. They toasted this news into the wee hours, and my Irish fella spent that night dreaming about babies, specifically that he had twin daughters.

Upon learning the next morning that I, too, was pregnant, he continued dreaming about having twin girls, one dressed in blue and one in yellow. The dreams were detailed and recurring, and we began to believe in the girls, and had picked out perfect names for them. An eight-week ultrasound eliminated the possibility of twins, but we still leaned very heavily toward ‘girl’. It wasn’t a preference—just a feeling.

When we went for the 20-week ultrasound, the first image we got was that of our baby yawning. It was incredible to see. The technician took us on a 30-minute gray/blue grainy tour, pointing to and measuring the skull, the lips, the hands, the feet. “Here are the lungs,” she beamed, “and the heart, and the stomach, and here is the liver, and here—” she drew an arrow onscreen—“are the balls!”

And indeed, there were the balls. This meant we had to rethink our names, but it also meant, for me anyway, that we had to talk about something else.

In the States, although the practice is increasingly questioned, circumcision is still the norm. It’s not something I had made up my mind about, but it’s something I thought we should discuss. But because the Irish fella is ‘unsnipped,’ I assumed his answer to the circumcision question would be absolutely not.

“Absolutely not,” he said, “and don’t be Googling it.”

But I’m a Googler, so of course I Googled. The United States, I learned, is the only country in the world that circumcises the majority of its male infants for non-religious reasons, and I was curious to know why so many parents opted for this.

Many members of the parenting discussion groups I visited online seemed to believe it was better for the baby. But as far as medical benefits, there are none, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has been saying as much since 1971. In fact, no national medical organization in the United States recommends circumcision. Claims that circumcision helps reduce the instance of infection and the spread of STDs are unfounded.

One woman in a pregnancy forum said she was going to circumcise her son because she didn’t want to have to handle his bits in order to wash them. The improbability of avoiding touching your son’s privates while caring for him in the early years aside, this is misinformed. The penis in its natural form is a self-cleaning mechanism, much like a vagina, and it is not true that an uncircumcised penis is more difficult to clean—not in adulthood and not in infancy. In fact, the baby books are very clear on how to care for a newborn’s foreskin: leave it alone.

What I’ve found, both online and in speaking to mothers of sons, is the overwhelming majority of parents lean in favor of circumcision so the baby will “look like daddy.” This seems widely accepted, but it doesn’t hold for me.

These are well-meaning parents, as I believe most are. But the “look like daddy” argument is a self-perpetuating one that ensures the continuation of circumcision while negating medical research that not only dismisses any benefits of the practice, but that actually points to the potential damage—physical and psychological—that can result from it.

I understand that children are wonderfully inquisitive and observant and will notice and ask about the differences between their bodies and their daddy’s (and mommy’s). But on hearing something like, “people used to cut the skin off because they thought it was safer, but now we know that is not true so we didn’t do that to you,” I think most little boys will accept this simple truth rather than have confusion instilled about their masculine identity.

Adults over-complicate, but kids don’t. Explaining my divorce to a small child sounded something like this: “We decided we are better friends when we aren’t married to each other.” It took a little more explaining to grown-ups, but the additional details didn’t really change the core truth of what I’d said to my friend’s six year old. We shouldn’t impose our instinct to over-analyze on children. We should allow them to enjoy a period of life where simpler explanations are acceptable, particularly when they tell us all we need to know.

I can only conclude that we, meaning Americans, circumcise because it’s what we’re used to doing, and because the majority of boys in the States get the snip, a circumcised penis is what we are more accustomed to seeing.

One woman wrote in an online forum that she once saw an uncircumcised penis and it looked like Darth Vader in a turtleneck. She said it was ugly, and worried that girls wouldn’t be attracted to her son. I can’t imagine society accepting elective surgery on the genitals of female babies because we prefer how it looks.

And of course circumcision is not the norm worldwide. According to some statistics, about 60 percent of infant boys are circumcised in the U.S., and Australia is not far behind. Only about 30 percent are snipped in Canada, and figures drop to less than 20 percent in countries elsewhere in the world. I mentioned these numbers to an Australian friend of mine, a circumcised male, who immediately fell into a fit of insecurity about whether Dutch girls think he looks like a freak.

It reminds me of the Dr Seuss story about an island inhabited by two breeds of Sneetch: some have stars on their bellies and are considered vastly superior to those without. The star-less Sneetches obtain a large and fabulously Seussian machine that puts stars on their bellies, prompting the original star-bellied Sneetches to acquire a machine that removes their stars. Chaos ensues: nobody knows anymore whether it’s preferable to have a star or not to have a star.

Of course a star is not a foreskin and a baby is not a Sneetch. The bottom line is that every parent should choose what they think is best for their child. Inform yourself and weigh the pros and cons.

For me, my baby will not be circumcised, not because he’ll be growing up in Europe and not because he’ll look like his daddy if we leave him intact, but simply because it is not necessary.