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My Modern Pregnancy, or A Nine Month Bout with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

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The title of this post is a bit misleading.  It was actually more like twelve months.  When we started trying to get pregnant, I began taking pre-natal vitamins and avoiding microwaves and deli meats.  I read every book on pregnancy and followed virtually every recommendation, from abstaining from over-the-counter medications to sleeping on my left side.  If I knowingly went against a recommendation, I not only felt guilty but also worried myself sick over the possible birth defects I could be causing.  In my first trimester, I took a Gas-X to prevent what felt like an alien trying to explode from my lower abdomen.  With the level of guilt I felt, it may as well have been high-ball.

I took gestation seriously.  I remember going out to lunch with a co-worker (and mother of two) and telling her we couldn’t go to a deli because I couldn’t eat cold cuts.  (Listeria, you know.)  She looked at me like I was wearing Kleenex boxes on my feet.  I remember walking with another co-worker downtown and scolding him for trying to cross against a light with a pregnant lady in tow.  I’m certain I was insufferable. 

I’m not sorry for being careful, but with all the hormones coursing through my body, an unfortunate side effect of being this diligent was that I blamed myself for any complication that arose.  At twenty-eight weeks, I took the obligatory glucose tolerance test.  I got a call that I’d need to take it again.  The second test came back with border-line results so I took it a third time.  I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes.  Ridiculously, I was devasted.  Clearly, I was to blame for endangering my baby with a high birth weight.  I cried in self-recrimination — even after reading that the cause is simply hormonal.  I followed the guidelines laid out by my nutrionist to the letter, but my blood glucose levels were still too high.  I flogged myself when I had to go on medication. 

Looking back, I can see how needlessly obsessive I was.  But could I have helped it?  Probably not.  Hormones will have their way with you and there’s no telling how they will manifest themselves.  My husband once took a course of steriods to reduce some inflammation in his back and became a raging lunatic for four days.  I took the opportunity of explaining that he was experiencing something akin to PMS.  A cartoon lightbulb appeared above his head.  And PMS has nothing on pregnancy.  I should just be thankful the hormones didn’t give me the urge to go play in cat poop.  (Toxoplasmosis, you know.)

What guidelines did you follow (or not) while pregnant?

Book Review: Time Out for Parents

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Stop for a moment and think about what kind of adulthood you want for your child. The premise of Time-Out for Parents by Cheri Huber and Melinda Guyol is that you must become what you want for your child. Modeling a happy, fulfilled adulthood is the best method of raising happy, fulfilled adults. And to do that, you must take time for yourself, and allow yourself to feel and express all your emotions.

Cheri Huber has been a zen teacher for more than thirty years. Since the use of “time-outs” for children have been in the parental repetoire for about the same length of time, she now has students who equate sit meditation with punishment. Whoops. Probably not what well-meaning parents intended. Time outs are most frequently used when the parent is at a breaking point, so it follows that it’s parents who need a time-out.

Huber and Guyol emphasize that the way you parent is usually the way you were parented, or a conscious decision to not do what your parents did. Either way, it’s not much of a tool kit. Many adults are carrying around baggage related to expressing emotions. The authors ask parents to examine their own attitudes around emotional displays. Certain emotions are “good” and others are “bad.” Parents will go to great lengths to prevent the expression of “bad” emotions in front of their children. The authors warn, “Having a fixed formula of How-I-Have-to-Be is a recipe for failure, and a poor message to give a child.” They go on, “It’s not a particular emotion that is threatening to a child, it’s how the parent feels about expressing the emotion that is frightening to a child.” This statement hit home for me. The other day my husband was really upset about something about accidentally wrecking something that was important to him. In my head, I didn’t want him to express that much emotion about an object in front of our daughter. This is completely off base. It should be okay for Nora to see her daddy genuinely upset, what she doesn’t need is me having bad feelings about his having feelings. We need to talk about our inner process of dealing with feelings with our children. It’s the classic, “all emotions are okay, some actions are not.”

They also introduce a four step process for checking in with yourself during your parental time-out. They recommend finding a quiet place for the following exercise:

1. Be present to your inner self.
2. Accept that you have needs.
3. Attune to what is needed.
4. To the best of your ability, meet the need.

Here’s an analogy from the book that made perfect sense to me: Waiting to express an emotion until you’re on the brink of losing it is like gobbling junk food because you’ve waited too long to eat. It doesn’t make you a bad person, but you’re better off geting in touch with your body and acting sooner next time.

Throughout the book, the authors ask you to stop at various points and look inward. Pay attention to your breath and your body. Identify any emotions that surface as you read.

This book is grounded in zen philosphy. You don’t need to be a buddhist to appreciate the concepts in this book, but the language about looking “inward” and finding our “true selves” can be a turn-off to some. If you hear an inner critical voice when you come to those concepts, I recommend you tell the inner voice to get lost. Keep reading, keep breathing.