Good reading for a new parent

Yes, I've been inordinately grumpy lately, I won't lie. It's a side effect of a difficult pregnancy, being mired in my house 24/7, completely deprived of good company and friends, and being exposed for unhealthy spans to the full brunt of the internet, politics, and craziness in this world.  My structure and routine is thrown to the wind, and it's quarter past one in the morning and I'm bright eyed and bushy-tailed for the first time all-day.

I haven't been able to scan the ultrasounds as promised because I forgot to set up the printer on my new computer and it's Windows 7, which means I have to jump through some crazy hoops just to get the updated driver to work with the printer/scanner and my new OS (I saw my husband go through hell with this, so I'm not really inclined to face that battle at this point. I have very little energy and am short of patience for this sort of thing.

By Pamela Druckerman

I've been listening to the audio book version of "Bringing Up Bébé", a book recommended by my sister, who oddly, is childless.  She read it and has been touting it with fervour since she found out I was with child. She gifted it to me, she thought it was so important.  I can't say I think she was wrong.  It's interesting, however, to read this book from the perspective of a European raised kid, to hear an American describe it. And it is in many ways, a revelation.

I've spent many hours puzzling with myself about child rearing methods I've seen in my time in this country. So many aspects of it confounded me. The indulgence, the 'it's all about the kids' thing, the leaping up and fussing to their every whimper, their lack of real consequences and discipline and the hovering, helicopter parent.  All of this is completely outside of my realm of understanding and has been for twenty years. And now, I finally know why--and Pamela Druckerman has shown me the light.  It's because I've come from the world of the 'cadre', and the parenting I see in this country is completely foreign to me.

Bringing up Bébé illustrates very strongly how children of France (and Belgium from my experience) are raised differently -- and more rationally than American and English children. It's much less child-centric overseas. They raise their kids, love their kids, watch out for them, but their entire universe does not revolve around the children. The lives of parents do not come to a halt or take a back seat because a child is born.  This book talks about the 'cadre' system which introduces life lessons, discipline and caring without being overbearing or too lax. It talks about understanding a baby's sleep cycle, to learn to not jump up every time it cries, to take pause, and in part, help the child's development by leaps and bounds by assimilating the baby to your family's routine rather than mold the family's routine to the baby. The babies sleep the night as early as two months old ... and are much more balanced, calm and peaceful because they are enjoying their full sleep cycles by rote.

It's a brilliant book, and I recommend (I'm only halfway through it BTW, my hubby stole it to listen to on his commute, which is awesome) this book to all new parents or soon to be new parents. It's eye-opening. If you want a non-screaming, non-bratty, respectful 'sage', well-behaved child that sits in restaurants quietly, eats what he's given and listens to you, this book could really help you work towards that; by basically raising your kid like the French do.  Just a quick recommendation.

Mean Girl

I guess with this pregnancy…I won’t lie, this pregnancy has been extremely difficult… my tolerance for stupidity and the ridiculous has been reduced to nothing.  My creativity, also, has taken a dive, and I haven’t done much of anything artistically, costumey, or bloggey.  I’ve been missing a lot of time at work, and have been working towards going on leave because I am pretty much non-functional the better part of the day. I start to find some semblance of normalcy around 2 or 3 PM in all truth, and it seems to be getting worse. For a while, I had just migraines, but now I have migraines and I’m back to retching again. Add onto that, at 22 weeks, the heartburn has escalated to the point where I feel like I’ve imbibed some battery acid for the fun of it because I have this innate desire to spend the whole night in agony.

The good side? Baby is a boy. We found out at 19 weeks. He’s an active little nugget, and has taken to doing his best Michael Flatly impression inside my womb. What I love about this is that before I could feel him, I lived in a constant state of anxiety. After so many years of not getting pregnant, so many disappointing pregnancy tests, I guess I always expect the other shoe to drop, and would chew my nails for every ultrasound, crossing my fingers that the heartbeat would be there, and the baby would be okay.  He was. Now, I can feel him ‘being okay’. When he’s Riverdancing on my spleen, I am well assured that so far, he’s doing fine.  In fact, at this moment, he’s round-housing my ovary.

So there it is. I’m still pregnant and am more than halfway through the process of growing the baby (hubby sometimes turns to me when I’m being obstinate or bratty and says: “Just grow the baby!”.  He is very excited.

Another good thing is I continue to lose weight, in spite of the growing nugget inside me. Hopefully I won’t gain a shite-load of weight with this pregnancy. I eat badly, but only in small amounts, so that’s probably the reason why I’m still dropping pounds in spite of eating crap that hasn’t crossed my threshold for decades… like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and canned Campbell’s soup.

Other than that, my existence is mostly confined to my home. I did get out a few weeks ago to my sister’s house to go visit my horse. He looks good, and seems settled. Sister is taking very good care of him.  That’s it.

I have however, as I stated, been really short-tempered with people I usually have a lot of tolerance for.  Oh well.  I’ve been especially annoyed by people who are whiners, over sensitive, self-absorbed and know-it-alls.  I’ve gotten so much unsolicited advice from people who probably should not be giving advice. I’ve had people criticize my dietary choices, but who are completely unable to lose weight themselves yet are endowed with unending knowledge about what’s best for me; I’ve had people tell me how to raise this child, and their child is a notorious heathen.

I’ve been ignored mostly by my family with this pregnancy, only my sisters have really expressed any interest. Satan is marginally interested, mostly because 1) having a grandchild will gain her attention at the senior home, and 2) it’s a boy, which is what she wanted all along, and was quite sure to inform us girls of.  She in fact went into a litany about this when I brought her over to eat mussels a few weeks ago—she complained in none-so-many-words that I was somehow undeserving of the honour of having a male child. Yes, I wanted a girl, but this little boy is as loved and wanted as can be, and I sure as hell will never make him feel bad for being something other than a girl.  Anyway, another thing she did was to spout off to her blabbermouth friend that I had better not expect her to watch the baby all day. As if! My mother is about as nurturing as a cuckoo bird, I would rather gnaw my own arm off than leave this child in her presence for more than twenty minutes—and never alone. She was acting like this one day, and then she snapped at my sister-in-law because Jessica was excited about the new baby and apparently in my mother’s world, Jessica has no business even breathing in this baby’s general direction. God I really dislike my mother sometimes. She was so rude to Jess who was so genuinely happy.

My eldest brother and his family didn’t even say congratulations, but I suppose it’s to be expected since the only time he’s called me in the past seven years is because he accidentally pocket dialed me. The time before that, was to call to tell me that he wasn’t coming to my wedding after all, and to promise me a wedding gift that he never sent. ::shrug:: Oh well.  I got into a fight with them recently, and his wife defriended me on facebook (boohoo) and he’s been posting passive-aggressive comments on my posts. He dislikes that I’m left-leaning and really dislikes that I’m an atheist. He’s always been really condescending to me about my choices (in the four times I’ve ever had an adult conversation with him) and has always sought to ‘school’ me about my choices. He has never really been a brother to me at all, I’ve met him about as many times as I have fingers on my hands… I’m not kidding, he’s my half-brother and he is much older than I am. He’s also been pretty much absent from the family for pretty much the duration of my lifetime, and completely uninvolved with anything. He held a lot of resentment towards my father apparently for a bad childhood. I can understand him disowning my mother though. I wish I could. Yet oddly, I’m the one pretty much stuck with her.

I guess I’m just done with people who don’t really know me very well making judgment calls about me, and that includes my brother and his wife.  It also includes people who have been an annoyance to me for a long time, and who I now just don’t care if I humour them or not anymore. I was told yesterday by someone that they didn’t want to speak to me ever again; but seeing that I had to hide her Facebook feed because her posts were so irritating and sometimes gross, it really doesn’t make a difference. I apparently offended her. And if you’ve been following this blog even a short time, you know how little respect I have for easily offended people. Personally, I see people who are quickly offended as bullies. They are trying to control how other people express themselves so that they don’t have bruised feelings, and it is so wholly self-absorbed to expect everyone to walk on eggshells around them. Good god. Then they cry victim when someone lets them have it.

And the thing that started it all? This is really funny… Apparently a really sweet friend of mine posted a picture that had some joke about vegans or meat eaters or whatever. I wasn’t aware of the controversy that ensued about this image, but my friend was pretty much made to feel so shitty for posting a joke, that she felt compelled to take it down. She was pretty much bullied to take it down in a really passive-aggressive way. Of course, I didn’t know this … all I know is that my friend posted that she’d removed the post and felt terrible for offending someone. I told her she should not feel bad, and that she should not feel compelled to remove anything from her wall for the sake of some sensitive whiney brat. It wasn’t anything she could do to keep someone from taking offense at something that is ultimately and WHOLLY ridiculous. It was then that the woman who apparently raised the stink jumped all over me, calling me mean, and accusing me of glorifying my meanness. It was hilarious—but it also pissed me off because all this drama about restricted diet was at my nice friend’s expense, and that selfish woman who started it turned it into a circus for no better reason than to call more attention to herself and how special she is I guess.  I have no patience for shitty people who hide under the guise of victims while expecting the world to bend backwards to accommodate their overly sensitive nature.  I have a hard time feeling any empathy or sympathy towards people who* demand* and *expect* it from me rather than earn or deserve it. I don’t care how bad your situation is, if you live to be treated specially for your personal issues, you’re a selfish dolt.  I was sexually abused as a child... I don’t get all pissy when someone posts a pedobear joke on their wall and browbeat the poster until they take it down.  My brother is developmentally disabled, I don’t humiliate people for using the word retard… why? Because I’m pretty sure that post is NOT ABOUT ME. Obviously this woman has a hard time making that distinction because apparently *everything* is about her. Don’t post anything criticizing people with dietary restrictions or you’ll get relentless, lengthy missives in your comments until you can’t stand it anymore and you feel compelled to retract your post to make it stop.

She made an complete spectacle of herself and then blocked me. ::eyeroll:: My feelings are so hurt. I’m so offended. ::shakes head and chuckles:: That sort of defensive response to something is really telling though.  Extremely telling. It ultimately reveals that person for what they are. Insecure and self-absorbed.


Am I mean for saying this? Not in the least. I’m not mean at all. I’m truthful, harshly so sometimes. In general, I’m extremely nice and pretty freakin’ tolerant of a lot of drama and stupidity on the most part. I am also one of the most understanding people you’ll ever meet. But if you cross the line, are obnoxious to people who don’t deserve it, if you lead people astray because you think you know better, take a nebulous, generalized issue and focus it down onto one person, or who take your drama to my threshold, or the threshold of someone I care about who is too nice to defend themselves, I’m going to be honest with you and I’m going to call it as it is. It’s as simple as that. And if you cry offended over stupid shit, or take something personally because you feel guilty because there’s truth the generalization, that’s your god damned problem and I’m not going to humour you for it. It’s as simple as that.   Life is too short for that shit.  And I’m not going to expend any precious energy at this time humouring someone to spare their over-sensitive feelings. I am an expert at being polite and considerate and I am extremely diplomatic, but I am not stupid or easily manipulated… and I sure as hell won’t be browbeaten by some self-important whack-job.

::sigh:: I feel better now. It’s probably best I’m confined to my house right now on the most part because I just have no patience for this sort of crap these days. Petty, whiney, hypochondriac, classless, oversharing narcissists… no thanks. I’ll stick to people who are not so self-absorbed that they don’t think everything that’s controversial is about them, and who can take a prickly subject in stride like an adult, and laugh it off with a sense of humour and objectivity.  I’ll take the worthy souls who are worth my time, energy and caring—who don’t expect it, who don’t demand it, but who earn it with depth of character. In other words, my friends.

I’m going to go and find some chocolate now. Nom! I’ll post some ultrasound pics tomorrow.