Barely promoted

Too many doctors

We're flying out tomorrow morning, and I am a complete basket case. So many boxes have gone to FedEx ground already! There's still so much crap to deal with! And it's so damn long until I really get home, and even then the damn kitchen won't be close to done!

List for OB appointment today:

1. Request a copy of my records, to hand-carry to Canada and to Ohindinois.

2. Request to fax out referral form to Canada. I've found a lovely family maternity practice (and they're so apologetic, in their cute little Minnesota-on-steroids-plus-a-hint-of-Scotland accents, about having to bill—bill!—me), but I can't make an actual appointment without a referral.

3. Request an order for a three hour glucose tolerance test, and possibly a set of gestational diabetes diet guidelines and a prescription for a glucometer and strips. My 1-hour results won't be back, most likely, and there's a good enough chance I failed that I want it to be easy to get a 3-hour test done in NY next week.

4. Sing LA LA LA loudly after I'm weighed; you know, our friends fed us really well last weekend, and this hip pain has been making it harder for me to walk miles and miles, and I just don't want to hear about it.

If you're ever planning to sublet your house for six months or so:

1. Please do not forget that your tenants gave you a multi-thousand-dollar deposit check, six months before they moved in.

2. Please remember to take along your prescription painkillers when you leave. And your passport.

3. Please do not leave your collection of vibrators out next to the bed.

The virus stops here

A couple of weeks ago, I cruised the "baby supplies" aisle at Walgreens while Beaker was off looking for something: fragrance free shaving cream, perhaps? In between the disposable nursing pads and the supposedly anatomically correct nipples were some bottles of Ensure. Ensure?! Yes, Ensure Healthy Mom.

Our last California party

It's a fecund group. I'm not the only pregnant woman in an ugly salmon pink maternity T-shirt. Two babies, three toddlers, two preschoolers, several others under 10. The older kids run for the backyard swing set. Later, they're the first to colonize the hot tub (yes! of course there's a hot tub!), and are only coaxed out by the cutting of the birthday cake.

The old, old frat boys (some back to the class of '79) collect in the kitchen; the women, in the living room with the babies. Everyone talks about local real estate, all the time. Everyone comments on Beaker's apparent health, too: there are several people present who haven't seen him in a decade or so, and yes, it's very good that he's still alive, but he and I know what it's taking him on a daily basis now. One commenter has an obvious hand tremor, but volunteers no information, and we don't ask.

One sweet woman with a sharp sense of humor, whose children are the oldest present, offers sage advice to the tense mothers and mothers-to-be. We last saw her and her husband back in January, when they were overjoyed that, despite several early losses, her pregnancy seemed to be sticking; she was about three weeks ahead of me. She is very thin now, and her husband confides that they terminated at 19 weeks: Down syndrome. The other kids don't know there was a decision to be made. She's only 3 years older than I am.

One of the oldest and shaggiest of the frat boys has finally married; he and his wife have two children, both adopted from South America. ("You know, once you've got the family, it's just harder to find time to work on the motorcycles.") They are the ringleaders in the back yard, but the adults whisper along rumors that they've been difficult to raise.

The grill is shut down. The meat runs out, although there are still plenty of veggie dogs. The frat boys settle down to bridge. (Bridge!) The babies are carried out, howling, by their parents. The remaining women settle in for the Desperate Housewives finale. None of us has seen more than 3 or 4 episodes, but together we've seen enough to be able to piece most of it together. After that bit of spotting, I'm keeping my feet up and mainlining club soda.

It's the last time we'll see most of these folks for a while. California doesn't feel like home, at all, and it never will, but we have so many friends here—and so many more old and good friends than back in Ohindinois— that there's real sadness in leaving.

Efforts at self-calming

Third trimester, day 2:

Yesterday evening, there was a wee bit of spottting. BUT, we'd, uh, had some fun earlier. So, not to worry, right?

Last night, my uterus felt tense when I went to bed. Tends to happen after a long day, right? Not so many kicks, but there haven't been the last couple of day—must be facing my spine, right?

Woke up at 4:30 in the morning. Belly still tight, some crampiness. Probably just digestive issues from all the crappy rich food I ate yesterday, right? Plus, even when I get my period in real life, my intestines usually go kinda haywire. Like I can even tell what hurts down there. (Where are my intestines these days, anyway? There's not a lot of room down there.)

Decided to do a home trial glucose tolerance test, since I was up early. Get an 87 fasting level, then drink a bottle of juice that claims 54 grams of sugars, then wait an hour and test again. 141! HOLY FUCK. One point over the threshhold. Well, perhaps the sucrose and fructose stick around a little longer than glucose. And it was 54 grams, not 50.

A few kicks, but sort of subtle.

Burst into tears when Beaker insists on taking the train into the city, rather than driving—I have a passport renewal appointment, and the office is about 5 blocks from the station, a distance which seems kind of insurmoutable in my newly-found-out-to-be-delicate condition.

Sulk aggressively when no one offers me a seat on the train.

Sulk even more aggressively when my hands are swollen after getting off the train.

Lash out at the nice clerk who asks me to fill out an entirely new form: "What was wrong with the one I got online?" "Well, you'll save 30 dollars by using this one." Oh. Whoops. Thanks.

The digestive issues have actualized: both uncomfortable and comforting. Belly still feels tight, but perhaps it's just stretching today? (And where are the good solid kicks? And why, if I'm so paranoid, don't I just call my doctor—as a contrite Beaker keeps reminding me I should?)

Attachment dogwalking

Yesterday I passed the following little group as I walked through a pleasant residential neighborhood:

—A middle-aged woman, quite butch, whose roots needed to be touched up, whose spikes needed to be regelled, and who needed about 40 hours of sleep, pronto.

—The small dog she was walking, sort of a Chihuahua-plus-frilly-tail, if you know what I mean.

—An older woman in a shabby rain coat, whose Upper West Side accent was thick enough to stand a spoon in.

As I approached, the older woman, who was walking about 10 feet behind the other two, barked, "She's not done yet! You don't have to pull her like that, she'll let you know when she's done!"

Ah, a doggy-drive by, I thought. Yeah, people around here might be that pushy. The dog found another tree to investigate, and the older woman erupted, "See, now let her be! Take your time!"

I passed all three, noting that the older woman was staying a fixed distance behind the other two. Soon after I heard in the distance, "Look at how she's all itchy now! She's stepped on, I don't know, a splinter or something!... See how she's biting at it? You have to stop and pull it out!"

Was this a poor mother-daughter relationship in its late stages? An interview for a job which, if offered and accepted, will provide a great deal of the most unhealthy kind of stress? Or some sort of "humiliation" precursor to activities I really don't want to imagine?

A magic number?

From a plaintive little piece in Inside Higher Ed today:

But research expectations have changed college-wide. Determining exactly when has been difficult, but the climate here is most certainly at a different place than it was a few years back. Vagueness was replaced with exactness. A numerical value was established as the minimum standard for being on track for tenure: three is that value, and the value shall be three.

The author is upset with the consequences, as illustrated by the case of one of his colleagues:

About seven years ago, my department hired a promising young biologist who was enthusiastic about teaching and already established as a talented researcher. She was hired during our “vagueness” period. She was told the same thing that I was years earlier: for research publications, one is a must, more is better.

But while this young faculty member was traveling down this path, a detour suddenly appeared: The exactness period was ushered in. The short version of a rather nasty story is that my colleague was seemingly held to the new standards. It goes without saying that, if true, this was not a fair or appropriate practice for tenure protocol. No doubt you have predicted the outcome of her tenure decision: She was denied.

I've only seen this sort of sudden standards-change occur at minor state schools trying to better themselves after dicta from on high: usually such places already have much more structured personnel policies, so it's really obvious when bars are raised. In fact, I've never heard anyone at a liberal arts college (whether Granolan, or better, or worse), give a straight numerical answer when asked how many publications were required for tenure. That vagueness seems almost to be an institutional requirement (and is certainly a key part of how we evaluate students, too): is the author's school building towards some larger change in category?

Yet, at the same time, we've clearly had quite a bit of evolution in requirements over the last thirty years. (My impression is that, back in the day, the administration didn't really understand that, say, it was papers, rather than books, that were important for scientists; they still have some issues with recognizing outside grant money as a good and important thing.) I'm guessing this has been driven by our wanting to continue hiring people from top graduate schools, but who can say?

There are some terrific comments (on changing students and their changing expectations, on developing research independence) and only a little trollage, on the original article.

Compared with your parents

An excellent (starter?) question from the survey accompanying the Times's series-opening article on class:

Compared with your parents when they were the age you are now, is your standard of living now much better, somewhat better, somewhat worse, of much worse?

For Beaker: somewhat worse. His Ivy-league-educated lawyer father had just entered private practice. His job, with its ample pay and excellent benefits, allowed his (also Ivy-league-educated) wife to stay home with their three young children; they had just moved into a larger house in a lovely suburb.

Beaker, displaced academic spouse that he is, does pretty well salary-wise, especially since we usually live someplace pretty cheap. But my job provides all the benefits, all the security. We need both of us to be working.

For me: much better. When she was 34, my mother had just started her last period of major instability—well, until the one that lasted to the end. For most of the previous seven years, she and I had been living with her parents (I think she'd been in and out of hospitals during my first year). After her father went bankrupt and her parents had lost their house in the suburbs, she tried to live on her own in a near-tenement apartment in Manhattan (yes, with a clawfoot bathtub plumbed in the living room). She broke down, badly, and was taken away to spend months and months in a mental hospital. I went into foster care.

But: for her parents? When they were in their mid-thirties, my grandfather was a successful technological entrepreneur, my grandmother mothering two children very comfortably just outside a small midwestern city. She was starting to get restless, and they moved to New York just after their third child was born. Although they had less snotty schooling, they were mostly their era's equivalent of Beaker's parents.

It's where they were then, and how they rasied their own children, that makes me leery of claiming any sort of lack of privilege in my own upbringing. And it's how their children turned out, and how uncomfortable the late stages of their lives were (and are), that makes cold shudder down my body whenever I catch myself counting my current blessings. Can we really control anything?

Complications

My travel plans over the next eight weeks are insane. No, really. California to Massachusetts to New York (and possibly to Ohinidinois) to British Columbia to Oregon to British Columbia to Ohindinois to Vermont to Ohindinois. All brief stops except for British Columbia, where I will bunk in with grad students and try to write. I'll be 26-32 weeks for the exciting parts.

The good news from Dr. Pippi-Poisson: she's totally fine with the air travel.

The bad news: she wants visits every two weeks to start at like 28 weeks, and she's totally opposed to my self-monitoring during my adventures. Look, doc, I'll take Beaker's spare blood glucose monitor, you slip me a couple of pee sticks, and, with a tape measure and a drugstore blood pressure station, what can I not do that would happen at a 30-week checkup? Okay, no Doppler, but I trust the kicks at this point.

(Remember: I've given myself intramusclar shots in the butt, lady. Lots of them.)

So there's the hematocrit. Okay, we'll do some real bloodwork in two weeks, before I leave. She's really hung up on my doing an official 1-hour glucose tolerance test, so that'll happen early, too. (She even tried to convince me that the official sugar solution had, in essence, special powers of divination.)

Well, folks: do I try to find a doctor in Canada? (Is that even legal? Can they just see Americans? And God only know what my insurance would make of it.) Shall I branch out to a midwife for that one visit, just for kicks? Or do I go gonzo, fully aware that I should get myself to a hospital pronto if anything skeevy starts happening?

I'll see my midwest OB as soon as I can, once I'm back home. Promise.

Note: I think the real issue here is dealing with a generalist doctor, who mostly sees healthy people, people who aren't really expecting to take control of their care, ever. My husband spends several hours a day on self care, and I made it through major fertility treatment: I'm not your normal pregnant woman.

Beaker hit some of the same sorts of issues when he got sent to diabetes specialists. He and his CF specialist collaborate on decision making—the doc knows Beaker's done a good job of keeping himself going. The endocrinologists just didn't want to deal with his questions, many of which were based on his having collected more blood glucose data than they'd asked for, or his suggestions. When they failed to spot a major drug interaction for three months, then acted as if they'd warned him about it from the beginning, he gave up; his CF doctor prescribes the insulin cocktail these days.

Note: alas, work pressures for both of us have cut out the drive cross-country. We just don't have time. So the car will get Fed Ex'd back home, and we'll get more frequent-flyer miles.

What we don't usually talk about

I love it when other bloggers talk about the deep history of their families. Even more when they have a larger point in mind—as Jody always does. Go check out her entry on class (and mobility, and where academics sit). (And check out the comments, too.)

In-law management: day 3 of 5

1. Make sure they rent a car.

2. Make sure they take you back to the chocolate factory. Mmmmmmmm. (This time, notice how there's fancy modern control equipment hooked up to the antique roaster, and demand to taste the extra-extra-extra-dark.)

3. Send them off to wine country so you can get some work done. (Make sure they get wine for the dinner party you're throwing for their friends in two days.)

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I feel like I need to tell nice things about my in-laws, after my carping in the last message. (It's not their fault that I have this weird ambivalence about the entire issue of—oh my god—this child will have a father! And paternal relatives who, you know, care! Which is fabulous and the way things should be, but not really something I've ever, you know, had any experience with myself. And it's not my MIL's fault that my FIL is a sort of crypto-geneaology-freak.)

So: my mother-in-law breastfed all three of her children. The first one (born in 1965!) for 18 months. (Beaker weaned at 7 months—his CF wasn't diagnosed until he was 2 1/2, but he had pretty serious failure to thrive before that, and they were probably sort of desperate to figure out what was going on.) She's been through births with and without drugs, and they were big babies, too. She's really pretty relaxed about the whole child-rearing thing—the only crazy parenting idea of ours she's made fun of so far is cloth diapering, and, you know, we're perfectly aware that we might not really be able to hack it, no matter how cute the pastel Kissaluvs are and no matter how much we love our front-loader.

And, what's best: she raised three totally terrific, and totally different, children. Somehow Beaker was both kept healthy and kept from ever feeling sorry for himself: I feel like that's a real testament to how his parents were able to focus on the things that counted.