Nipple confusion

Owen suffers from nipple confusion and it's all my fault. I have a feeling this won't be the last time in my motherhood career that I utter those words "it's all my fault." As I'm quickly learning, motherhood comes with built-in guilt. If you don't do it to yourself, someone else will do it for you—family members, other mothers, teachers and even the American Academy of Pediatrics. All well meaning, of course.

But back to boobs. Throughout my pregnancy, I didn't have strong opinions on circumcision, co-sleeping, vaccinations or taking pain medication during labor. We were attending natural childbirth classes but I knew that if I ended up pleading for an epidural, it wouldn't be the end of the world. I figured we'd never done this parenting thing before so we'd see how we felt when we got there. And if it's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that the second I start to make plans, something changes.

One thing I did feel strongly about was breastfeeding. That was definitely part of the plan. So of course, that was the one thing that got screwed up.

My mom had always spoken fondly of breastfeeding me and my brother—the closeness she felt holding us and being our sole source of nourishment in the wee hours of the night. In college, I wrote a paper about the superior qualities of breast milk to formula (antibodies, perfect balance of nutrients, tailor-made for your baby). And because I grew up in California, I've been indoctrinated with the virtues of healthy eating habits and the edict that "natural is better."

Not only that, studies say that infants who are breastfed have lower rates of cavities, are less likely to become obese and may even be smarter than their formula-fed counterparts. Breast milk, according to some researchers, can actually raise your IQ.

None of these studies mattered much to me because I was already a convert. I likened feeding your baby formula rather than breast milk to giving them Velveeta cheese instead of Tillamook. It was just like those evil food companies to come up with a way to get mothers to feed their children processed food right from the start. No child of mine was going to eat McDonald's style his first six months of life.

Bottle boy

That's how I used to feel, anyway, because like I said, whenever I make plans, life happens. First, I was in labor for 2 1/2 days. Yes, 52 hours. So I didn't sleep for two nights before Owen was born because the contractions kept waking me up. Then during labor, the fetal monitor picked up an arrhythmia in little Owen's heart. Soon after he was born he was whisked away for an EKG and had to stay in the nursery rather than room with me so they could monitor his heart 24-7. (Turns out the arrhythmia is nothing serious, although it's something we continue to monitor.)

Then, after going through one of the most physically demanding experiences of my life — drug free I might add (yay me!) — the nurses kept waking me every two hours to breastfeed. They'd wheel me down the hall to the nursery where I fumbled with my new baby, smooshing his swollen face into my chest, navigating the wires hanging from his, trying to get him to latch. It was an awkward dance and most of the time I couldn't get Owen to wake up. He too, was exhausted from his birth.

By the time they discharged me from the hospital two days later, I hadn't slept in five days. Even worse, Owen had to stay in the hospital another night because they were still waiting for the results of his heart tests. I had 24-hour access to the nursery but no where to sleep. Exhausted and near tears, I broke down and told the nursery nurses to go ahead a feed him formula for the night so I could go home and recuperate.

Next came the news that I may not be able to breastfeed because of a medication I was taking. I had been cleared to breastfeed on the medication before he was born, but given his heart condition, his pediatrician wanted to check with the cardiologist. So for the next week we fed Owen formula while I pumped, trying to get my milk to come in and storing it in the freezer while we waited for word from the cardiologist.

Finally we heard back from the cardiologist that breastfeeding was fine. But by that time I had developed some postpartum anxiety and I knew that if I didn't get long stretches of sleep each night, I'd end up a basket case. Breastfeeding requires getting up every two hours to feed the baby. Not the best recipe for sanity, even for mothers without anxiety issues.

So my mom and Dave took the night shift, formula feeding him so I could sleep. My plan was to breastfeed him during the day. But by then he had gotten used to the bottle and it was difficult to get him to latch correctly. He'd get frustrated, I'd get frustrated and I'd finally give up and give him a bottle of the breast milk I had pumped.

Cousin Johanna helps with dinner

What they don't tell you until you're pregnant and sitting in childbirth classes is that babies don't breastfeed by sucking on the end of your nipple like you would think. Nope, they're supposed to open wide and fit your entire nipple and areola into their sweet little mouths. The nipple should be toward the back of their mouth, that area right behind the bump in the roof of your mouth. By compressing the nipple against that area, they get milk.

But that requires a different kind of sucking than how you suck from a bottle. It's a totally different experience to suck on soft fleshy breast tissue than hard plastic. Hence, Owen's nipple confusion and the reason lactation consultants warn you not to introduce pacifiers or bottles until breastfeeding is well established.

Breastfeeding, as natural as it seems, is learned behavior. Sucking is a reflex babies are born with, but both mom and baby have to learn how to position the breast in the baby's mouth to make that sucking comfortable and effective for both parties.

Whenever I tried to get Owen to latch on he'd suck superficially for a few minutes, then pull himself off, shake his head back and forth panting in frustration and start to cry. I couldn't seem to position him like our lactation consultant had taught me and frankly, I didn't have the patience to work through both of our frustrations. In other words, I'd failed as a mother.

At least, that's how I felt. I'd sob to Dave that Owen wasn't getting the antibodies he needed and would never go to Harvard. Dave rubbed my back and reminded me that my health and peace of mind was more important no matter what La Leche League said. Being calm and stable was what Owen really needed from me. As much as I hate the cliché, I had to put my oxygen mask on first.

So I did. But over the past few weeks I've also been pumping three to four times a day to give him breast milk with a bottle. It made me feel like I was doing something right to give him at least a few ounces a day of the real thing.

Everywhere you look women are pressured to breastfeed. The American Academy of Pediatrics, pediatricians, parenting websites, baby books and every childbirth pamphlet you will ever read advocates breastfeeding. Even the formula companies push breastfeeding as some kind of politically correct marketing campaign.

The other day I was standing in the baby food aisle at Target trying to find the right brand of formula, and on the front of the Enfamil canister was a warning label that said, "Experts agree that breastfeeding is best."  Great, I'm even getting shamed in the aisle of Target.

Over the last week, pumping numerous times a day has gotten harder and harder and my milk supply has continued to dwindle. Owen is six weeks old now and as much as I hate to admit it, I'm seriously considering quitting altogether. As he continues to suck down bottle after bottle of formula making eager, noshing noises, I may have to swallow my pride and realize that being a good mother is more than providing just the right balance of nutrients.

As the cardiologist told us at our last appointment, I don't have to be the perfect mother, just good enough. As a perfectionist, it kills me to settle for good enough. But given the way I feel about Owen, I have a feeling that good enough is going to be more than enough.

The miracle of life?

They say that the moment you hold your precious baby in your arms, you forget everything. You forget the four months of puking, the mind-numbing fatigue, the sneezing and peeing, the heartburn, insomnia, constant belching and general discomfort of carrying around more weight than you ever have in your life. They even say you forget the pain of labor.

For months, as I trudged (and waddled) through my pregnancy, I didn't believe them. Every time a mother would tell me you forget it all, my rebellious streak would rear up and I would think, Not me, I won't forget. 

Now two weeks after giving birth, I'll admit, in some ways they were right. I'm still not a big fan of pregnancy. As my friend Alina says, pregnancy is the "most unnatural natural state." As I struggled through it myself, I often thought there had to be a better way to duplicate the human race than have women blow up like balloons, cry during baby food commercials and develop cankles. I marveled as I walked around downtown Chicago that every person on the sidewalk had gotten here because some woman had given up her body for nine months.

Me and Owen

Pregnancy is particularly hard in this day and age, when most women are working and just because you're sick as a dog and huge as a house, your employer doesn't give you a break. You're still expected to meet your deadlines, sound intelligent on conference calls and show up to the office wearing some semblance of business casual. In my case, my employer refused my request to work from home the last two weeks of my pregnancy, even though they could see I had to leave my cubicle every 15 minutes to waddle to the bathroom to pee.

That said, pregnancy is something I am glad I experienced. It's just one of those things that until you've done it yourself, you have no idea what it's like. You can read all the pregnancy literature you want, listen to 100 of your friends' birth stories, but until you've vomited into your trash can at work and felt the baby kick and get the hiccups in utero, you really have no idea what it means to create life. You have no true understanding of the beautiful sacrifice it takes.

During the last month of my pregnancy, Dave and I were sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the midwife to come in when somehow we got on the topic of whether birth is a miracle. Dave, a philosophy major in college, started to pontificate as he sometimes does, that really it wasn't.

"Miracles are something unexpected, something scientifically impossible," he said. "Birth is what our bodies are designed to do. It's entirely natural. How can that be a miracle?"

Sitting on the examining table, the tissue paper crinkling beneath me as I struggled to find a comfortable position for my heaving belly, I just stared at him.

"Dave," I said sternly. "Just let me have my miracle."

That shut him up.

So is part of the miracle postpartum amnesia about all you've been through?

In some ways, yes. I can remember curling up into a ball and crying because I had yet another migraine. I can remember eating only fruit smoothies for days. I can remember how often I had to change my wet pants. But none of it feels visceral. With all of those symptoms gone now, thinking about them feels like I'm talking about someone else. It all kind of blurs together into some kind of folklore from a distant past.

I think the miracle of life is that we do things even when they're hard, even when we doubt our ability to make it through. And when I gaze down at my little boy's face, I'm so so glad I did. 

Dear Baby,

For a long time your daddy and I have called you "the bean." But that doesn't seem appropriate anymore given that you are as big as a watermelon now, or whatever fruit "What to Expect When You're Expecting" would compare you to at 38 weeks. I think it's a little strange to compare babies to fruit, given that babies are much sweeter than any fruit could ever be. But I digress.

I've waited a long time for you. I've always wanted to have children, but I've always wanted to do it with the right person. And for some people, the right person doesn't come along in high school, in college, in graduate school or even in the workplace. As a single person, someone actively dating in their 30s, everyone will tell you, "You'll know it when you find it." And for a long time, I didn't believe them. As you'll discover from having me as your mother, I can overthink things. Make them too complicated. Doubt that good things will come to me or that even if they do, somehow it will fall apart. The other shoe will drop and I will be alone again.

But when I met your daddy, it wasn't complicated. I liked him from the first moment I saw him. I liked talking to him. I liked that he listened to me with an intensity I'd never really felt before, something we now jokingly refer to as his "ministry of presence." He called when he said he would. He picked interesting things for us to do together. And best of all, he never used emoticons or LOL in his emails.

Sure, I had the early dating jitters during our first few months together, but I didn't pick him apart like I had with previous boyfriends. I didn't think, "Well, he's successful but bald" or "he's funny but he competes with me." You see, you get a lot of bad advice about dating and one of them is "relationships are work." Another is "nobody's perfect." So often I stayed in relationships when I had conflicted feelings because I thought I was doing "the work." I thought I had to settle because "nobody's perfect." And neither am I, so who did I think I was being so picky?

The good news is I never married any of these people. Or had a baby with them. Something inside me held back. That was hard to do, given that one friend after another got married, even my younger brother (your Uncle Eric), who seemed much more resistant to adulthood and "settling down" than I ever was. Then they all started having babies. Even Uncle Eric and Aunt Sonnet.

I'll never forget when they called to tell me they were pregnant with your cousin, Helix, six years ago. It was St. Patrick's Day. I was at a bar in Chicago with my then-boyfriend and his friends. It was cold outside and I had gone into the vestibule — the space between the outer and inner doors of the bar — to take the call so that I could hear them above the din of the green beer drinking and celebrating. When they told me I felt sick to my stomach. I pressed my face against the cool glass of the outer door. Things weren't going well with the then-boyfriend. We would have to break up soon and I would have to start over. Meanwhile, your Uncle Eric and Aunt Sonnet were getting something that I badly wanted. And it wasn't fair.

As I got closer and closer to my late 30s, I often thought about what I would do if I never found the right person by the time I was 40. I felt angry at the biological clock. I didn't think it was fair to put that kind of pressure on finding love within a certain time frame. I didn't want to adopt, or get a sperm donor. I had no interest in being a single mom. Being a parent is something I wanted to share with someone — the right someone. So I began to resign myself to thinking I'd just be the world's greatest aunt to Helix, and your newest cousin, Arya.

Another thing you'll discover about having me for your mother is that I'm not the most patient person. It's hard for me to not know what's going to happen, how things will turn out. I often want to control the circumstances, dictate the outcome. I want to prepare myself for heartache or disappointment before it even happens so that I won't be blindsided. But that's silly. Understandable, but silly. Life doesn't work that way. And having those kind of defenses doesn't really protect you anyway. You still get hurt, only longer, because you've spent so much time dreading it, then thinking "I knew this would happen."

But here's some more good news: somehow I was brave enough to just keep going. To stay open to the possibilities, despite attacks of doubt, loneliness and jealousy. And now you're here — just under the deadline. I mean, you're not here, here, but you will be within the next few weeks and I cannot tell you how excited I am to meet you, to hold you, to feed you and to play with you. I probably won't even mind changing your diaper.

I'll do everything I can to be your perfectly imperfect mother. Just like I'm a perfectly imperfect wife to your daddy. We'll all walk through this together (okay, crawl first, but you know what I mean). Because you, dear baby, are someone I will never take for granted.

Love,
Mommy

Good ol' Braxton Hicks

I always thought that the third trimester of pregnancy would be a lot like being an inflatable airbed. Your soft baby belly would just keep getting bigger and bigger until you were about to pop. Then just in time, you'd wake up one night with contractions or your water broken and you'd know, "This is it." You'd roll over, gently wake your husband and off you'd go into labor.

Not so much with me. This pregnancy has been so full of fun surprises (leg cramps, shortness of breath, peeing while sneezing) that I guess I shouldn't expect these last few weeks to be any different. Before we embarked on this journey, neither Dave nor I had ever heard of such things as the mucus plug or perineal massage (yet another reason to keep your kitchen well-stocked with olive oil). And before our childbirth classes I thought the "Ring of Fire" was a Johnny Cash song, not the burning sensation you feel down there when your baby is crowning.

I'm still trying to get my head around effacement. Dilation sounds simple enough: your cervix opens centimeter by centimeter during labor until the opening is large enough for the baby's head to fit through and you can start pushing. Effacement is the shortening of the cervix. It starts happening before dilation (I think) whereby the contractions start pulling up the tissues at the base of your cervix, making the cervix thinner and thinner so it can start opening (dilating). This, appropriately enough, is called "ripening."

At my check-up last week, the midwife said I was already 75% effaced and 1 centimeter dilated. The baby's head was "engaged" and she could feel it right there, at the base of my cervix. It didn't mean I was going into labor tomorrow, she said, because apparently some women walk around being 4 centimeters dilated for weeks before giving birth (nature can be cruel). But it meant my body was definitely getting ready.

John Braxton Hicks

That made sense to me, given that I've been having contractions for weeks. This too, can be "normal" in the third trimester, as the uterus "practices" for the main event. They're called Braxton Hicks contractions, named after a man of course, an English doctor who noticed in 1872 that many women felt contractions in the later stages of pregnancy without going into actual labor.

The thing about Braxton Hicks contractions, however, is that they are supposed to cause only "mild discomfort." They aren't painful like actual labor, according to everything I've read on my iPhone at 2 a.m. when one of them has woken me out of a dead sleep, freaking me out with the sensation of my belly seizing up from the bottom of my rib cage to the base of my pelvis.

Some women don't even notice them. But not me. Oh no, I'm one of the lucky ones who gets the sensation multiple times a day that my mid-region has turned into a snare drum, my abdominal muscles torqued over my already compromised major organs with an intensity that feels a whole lot stronger than "mild discomfort."

A few weeks ago they got so intense that I was convinced I was going into preterm labor. I agonized that I wouldn't get the chance to wear the gorgeous blue maternity dress I'd bought for my baby showers and Dave's graduation (because in the end, it's all about fashion). A frantic call to my midwife confirmed that until the contractions grow continuously stronger and fall into a rhythmic pattern, it's nothing more than an unnerving dress rehearsal.

With less than three weeks to go now and the baby showers and Dave's graduation safely behind us, my job is to stay as hydrated as possible. Hydration is supposed to ease "false labor," so I've been drinking glass after glass of refreshing water. The byproduct, of course, is multiple trips to the bathroom per hour. This slow (and annoying) build up to actual labor, I might add, is nothing I've ever seen featured in movies. Guess it's not as dramatic as gushing water and a mad dash to the hospital. 

One day soon, one of these contractions is going to mean we're actually going to meet our baby. When that happens, a thousand mothers have told me, all of this "mild discomfort" will become a distant memory. I'm not so sure. But I am willing to concede that it will probably be worth it.

The "nursery"

We live in a one-bedroom condo. And we're having a baby. Soon. Like in 6 weeks. And no, we're not moving. It's a fair question, I guess, considering that these days almost no families of three live in a one-bedroom condo. None of the families we run with, at least.

Putting our place on the market and moving just seemed like too much to add to our already busy spring/summer schedule: Dave graduating from law school on May 20, the baby coming June 8 (or somewhere abouts), Dave taking the bar July 24-25 and then both of us having sleep-deprived nervous breakdowns sometime in mid-August.

Plus, I love our neighborhood. A great park, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Lincoln Park Zoo and the lakefront are all within walking-with-a-stroller distance. And babies are small. Of course their blankets, boppies, bumbas and binkies take up lots of room but do we Americans really need all the space we think we do? Dave was telling me the other day that in 1950, the average American starter home was less than 1,000 square feet. By 2000, it was 2,000 square feet. Two words: suburban sprawl.

We didn't all drive SUVs back then either, although my mom had a sweet, baby blue Buick station wagon by the time I was in kindergarten (1977). Now that was quite a ride. That lean, mean, wood-paneled machine was so big and heavy that one of my greatest childhood fears was losing a limb, or at the least a finger, in one of its monster doors.

The super-size-me phenomenon is one that's been seducing us for awhile. With everyone living in such big houses and driving such big cars, it's no wonder we all think the safest thing to do the second the baby hits the hospital is to run out and buy a minivan. Dave and I are still waiting for our 1996 Honda Accord to die so we can justify buying a new car. With 210,000 miles on the speedometer, it's still going strong.

The "nursery"

So given our 800-foot-square space, our nursery is more like a "baby nook" or "baby alcove" if you're feeling generous. We put a crib next to my side of the bed, hung some pictures of animal mamas and their babies and called it a day. Phew, I'm exhausted. Okay, Dave is exhausted. He's the one who put the crib together and did all the measuring and leveling to make sure the giraffes were even with the monkeys and the elephants.

Framed animals + Dave's stuffed produce friends

Side note: for some reason I've been really into animals this pregnancy. Who knew my inner "Out of Africa" would surface, along with all the progesterone and relaxin?

Don't get me wrong, I've had to resist my own American consumerism during this pregnancy. A few months ago, I was convinced I had to have a certain $1,000 crib from Room and Board. Dave thought spending that much money on a crib was outrageous. Most men (and a few women) would probably agree with him. But this crib is amazing—ultra modern and super adorable. Well worth the money, let me tell you. And if Dave really loved the baby, he would think so, too. Okay, so these days I get a little hysterical.

In the end, we compromised. I agreed that spending that much money on a crib we would only use for a couple years, maybe a couple more if/when we have a second kid, was a little much. So off we went to Ikea, where we found a safe, functional, semi-cute crib for $120. But I'm still holding out for a $1000 dresser from Room and Board. That I can justify by saying the kid has to use it until s/he leaves for college. And by then, we should be living in a two-bedroom condo.

When others try to shame us

Yesterday I had a run-in with a lawyer I work with at my firm. To protect the not-so-innocent, I'll just call her Mary.

Mary is high maintenance. She talks in paragraphs rather than sentences and launches into endless analogies that make what should be a 10-minute conversation turn into an hour. You can always tell when a coworker is on the phone with her because they say nothing but "Mmmm hmmm" a lot and stare blankly into the distance.

The problem with Mary is that even with all the words she uses, she's not the best communicator. She'll send you an email asking you to do something for her and it's unclear what she wants. That's because Mary doesn't know what she wants. She just knows she wants something. And she wants you to figure it out for her, which takes lots of time and energy.

Mary changes her mind a lot and over thinks every step of the process. So let's say I've agreed to write five paragraphs about a pro bono project she's working on for the firm to post on our website. We'll discuss what the story should say, I'll read the background materials and settle in to typing. In the following 24 hours I'm sure to get at least five emails from her with links to various websites, "Maybe we should mention this," she'll write or "Can you look into that?" What should take me an hour turns into an afternoon, then another day of back-and-forth and second guessing.

The thing about Mary, however, is that she really is a nice person. Before my wedding a couple years ago, she inter-office mailed me a blue handkerchief she had embroidered with little blue flowers. Something borrowed, something blue. I was touched. It really was quite thoughtful.

In the past I've had the time and the patience to navigate her Woody Allen-like quirks without losing my composure. But that's not what happened the other day when I reached the end of my rope and snapped at her.

As my devoted readers know, this hasn't been the easiest of pregnancies. Every other day I seem to come down with a migraine or spend the evening trying to keep down dinner. I don't have the stamina to keep up with the demands of work, home and life at the pace that I used to -- a reality I often find frustrating. As the projects at work stack up, my belly grows bigger and bigger. The same items stay on my to-do list day after day and filling a prescription or getting to the dry cleaners to get my new maternity pants hemmed feel like overwhelming endeavors.

This is the backdrop against which Mary called the other day needing something. I reluctantly agreed, given the long list of higher-profile projects I was working on. From there, it got messy. The details about what happened are long and frankly, boring. So I'll spare you. The bottom line is that Mary wrote some emails to some of my team members thinking she was being helpful while in reality she was making the project more convoluted and complicated.

So I fired back some strongly worded emails basically telling her to stop it. I fell into the trap of saying things in email that I probably would have said with more finesse in person. I also "replied to all," causing her much embarrassment.

Last night I was working late when my office phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and knew it was her. I debated picking up, then decided to face it.

"Laurie, it's Mary," she said, her voice shaky with emotion -- a dangerous combination of hurt and fury.

I took a deep breath and braced myself as she launched into how this was all a big misunderstanding and that I was accusing her of doing something she didn't even do. She was calling from the hospital where she was dealing with a very sick family member, she said, almost sobbing.

"You sent four emails all saying the same thing," she said. "I'm in the hospital on my laptop, my battery is dying and they just kept coming."

That's because I was responding to four emails she had scatter-fired to my team members raising slightly different issues that I felt were worth addressing. But I didn't say that. Instead, I tried to put years of therapy into practice by listening, trying to understand her point and reflect it back to her.

But then she got personal.

"More than anything, I was shocked by your tone," she said. "Of all people, I never expected this from you. I never knew you were THAT type of person."

I could hear her breathing heavily into the phone. If I could see her face, I'm sure her nostrils would have been flaring.

"This is not the Laurie I knew," she continued. "I've never been anything but polite to you. And I will continue to be polite to you because I'm not THAT type of person."

That's when my internal alarm bells went off. Like a scientist in a lab coat, I could step back and watch the conversation with Buddhist-like detachment and reach an objective diagnosis: Wow... she's shaming me.   

It's a powerful technique and terribly effective. We've all done it in the heat of an argument, especially when we've felt deeply wounded by the other person. You hurt me and now I'm going to hurt you even more by attacking your character. It's like when your mom gives you that withering look and says, "I'm disappointed in you" rather than "I'm disappointed by what you did."

I've fallen victim to this emotional trap many times over the years. I've walked around for days with accusations ricocheting inside my head, going over and over them and asking myself, "Am I really that difficult? Am I truly heartless? Selfish? Completely irrational?" I'll survey my closest friends, looking for reassurance. "Do you think I'm difficult? Heartless? Selfish? Completely irrational?"

This time, I didn't do that. Having the realization of what was going on didn't make what Mary said any less painful. I still cried after I got off the phone with her out of sheer exhaustion, remorse and frustration. I felt badly that I had hurt her. If I had to write the emails over again, I would have done it differently.  But I didn't question the core of who I am. I didn't ask anybody for reassurance.

Some of Mary's feedback was valid and I'll take it into consideration for the future. But the shame is hers. That I'm not taking. I'm building a new life here -- both mine and our baby's. I'm just not up for a game of character assassination.

True family values

Last night I was working late, feverishly typing away in my cubicle with my baby belly grazing the keyboard when a coworker came up to talk to me.

"How many months?" he asked, pointing to my nonexistent waistline.
"Six," I said.
"Really?" his eyes grew wide. "When are you going to stop working?"
"We don't get much maternity time off so probably right up to the moment I go into labor."
"What?"
"Yeah, we only get three months maternity leave."
"Three months?"

To any average American, this seems entirely normal. But to Michal, who grew up in Prague, it was unconscionable.

"But at three months, the baby is only this big," he said, holding his hands about a foot from each other.

"I know," I said. "That's the American way."

He shook his head in astonishment. I went on to tell him the worst part of the story. Sure, I get three months off with my job held for me, but I only get 60% of my pay for the first six weeks of my leave, then nothing for the last six weeks. The Family Medical Leave Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, requires employers to give you up to three months off for medical reasons like pregnancy, but your employer doesn't have to pay you. Anything you do get is out of the generosity of the company. So basically, whatever they can get away with on the open market.

"What?" he said again.

"Yeah, It's awful," I said. "Our firm also takes all of your PTO and applies it to your leave to supplement the percentage they aren't paying you. So when you get back after three months, you have no vacation or sick days left."

"What?" he repeated. "In the Czech Republic, women get three years off."

"It's okay," I said. "After three months, a baby is pretty self sufficient. You just leave them some food in the refrigerator and tell them not to put anything sharp into the light sockets."

Michal smiled at my obvious sarcasm. He shook his head.

"I've got to finish this," I said, and returned to my typing.

Later that night riding home on the bus I started thinking about the Presidential elections. Despite all the problems we have in America -- the economy, jobs, crime, drug addiction, foreign relations -- the conversation has shifted to focus on women's health. Virginia's proposed law to require women to undergo a vaginal ultrasound before getting an abortion. The Catholic Church's refusal to pay for contraception for its workers. Rick Santorum attacking the Affordable Health Care Act for providing free prenatal testing because he says it leads to more abortions.

Normally I try to tune this stuff out and hope it goes away if I stick my fingers in my ears, close my eyes and sing "la la la la la la" at the top of my lungs. Listening to it for any length of time turns me into a frothing-at-the-mouth feminist. When are we women going to stop allowing men to tell us what to do with our bodies? Priests. Ministers. Stupid senators from Pennsylvania.

I underwent a vaginal ultrasound at six weeks. Know why they do it vaginally? Because the fetus is so small they wouldn't be able to find it by squeezing a bunch of gel on your belly and putting the wand on your lower abdomen. In fact, at this stage, it's not even called a fetus. The embryo doesn't become a fetus until at least the ninth week of pregnancy, when all the organs have begun forming.

From experience I can tell you, it looks nothing like a baby. More like a fragment of the Milky Way Galaxy. The technician has to put little white dots on the printout so you can tell which gray fuzzy part is the baby and which is your uterus. The kicker, though, is that she turns on the sound and you can hear the heartbeat. The first time I heard it, tears sprung to my eyes and Dave instinctively put his hand on my shoulder. We were going to have a baby.

And that's precisely why Virginia legislators want women to go through this. In hopes that she will hear the heartbeat, squint at the fuzzy gray mass and change her mind about wanting to have an abortion. To guilt her into realizing this is a potential human. As if most women make the decision lightly, like deciding to get their teeth cleaned or remove an ingrown toenail. Don't insult our intelligence. Women who do make the decision lightly aren't fit for motherhood anyway.

I also underwent prenatal testing. When I was three months pregnant, Dave and I trudged over to Northwestern Hospital, where the doctor stuck a long needle into my belly and guided by what he could see on the ultrasound, took a sample of the placenta while steering clear of the baby. I didn't know this until undergoing this procedure, but the placenta has the exact genetic makeup as the baby. So by performing a CVS (chorionic villus sampling) they can look at the chromosomes to see whether the baby has Down syndrome or Trisomy 18 or 13 -- all major birth defects with varying degrees of mental retardation and health problems.

Why did we do this? Because I'm 39 years old and at my "advanced maternal age" have a 1 in 83 chance of having a child with a chromosomal abnormality. Dave and I sat on the couch and had a long talk about what we would do if the CVS came back positive for defects. We agreed that we weren't up for raising a child with physical and mental abnormalities. Does that make us weak? Immoral? Ungodly? Rick Santorum would think so.

Bedtime: Arya, Helix, Dave

Luckily the test results came back negative and we didn't have to make a heartbreaking decision. But you know what? It was our decision to make. Not our priest's or our minister's or our senator's or the lady down the street. Ours.

So as I think about these men running around trying to save the fetuses of America, proclaiming family values, I wonder, What are they doing to help the babies once they're here? What are they doing to help the working moms and dads who want to be at home caring for their children but can't afford to?

Are they introducing bills to extend FMLA to at least six months and requiring that employers pay us? Or offering government subsidies for mothers and fathers on leave so they can care for their babies without worrying about the mortgage? Are they offering tax breaks for child care costs? Or low-cost medical care for families with newborns and toddlers?

No. All they seem to care about is the fetus. Once the kid is here, parents are expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This is capitalism, people. Every man, woman and child for themselves. If we have any type of universal health care system or government-subsidized maternity and paternity leave we are in grave danger of turning into socialists. And you know what that means...we're one step away from becoming a bunch of communists who may have free health care but have to stand in line for bread and buy Levis on the black market.

I'm so tired of the scare tactics. If these men really cared about what was going on inside my uterus, they would help me take care of my baby once it's here. They would pass laws enabling me and my husband to stay home with the baby longer and do things like breastfeed, sleep train and take mommy, daddy and me classes. They would never think of sending me back to work after three months, forcing me to run off to the office bathroom every few hours to pump, so that we didn't lose our medical benefits. 

Anyone who truly values their children knows it means spending time with them. Wiping noses, drying tears, changing diapers, playing peek-a-boo. With all our talk of family values, why wouldn't we, as a civilized society, do everything in our power to help parents do that?

The first person who steps forward to propose anything that truly helps families has my vote. And it better happen by early June. Otherwise we're going to have to move to the Czech Republic.