One of those days.

You ever have one of those days where you feel like you completely lost your mind? That was me, pretty much from the moment I rolled out of bed this morning. Not my best day. I'm hoping sometime between now and tomorrow at 6am my mind returns and I can stop feeling like a freaking looney beeyotch.

Thought of the Day

I'd normally put this stuff on Facebook, but since I'm still in the not telling phase of pregnancy, I'll put it here instead:

Going through maternity clothes is one part fascination "oh, I forgot I had that" and one part horror "Dear God, I'm going to be THAT big? I'd forgotten that."

Had to pull out maternity capris and loose t-shirts today because the temps are in the 70's in March and my belly no longer works with my regular pants and t-shirts. The good thing is I have a fair number of items from post-pregnancy that should work for the next few weeks to get me to the point of going public and openly embracing stretchy panel front bottoms and empire waist, extra material in the front tops.

Raising a Strong Girl

There's no question I'm a mom with opinions and ideas about how I want my daughter to be raised: to be a citizen of the world, with a knowledge of other cultures and the extreme priveledges we experience in this country. From the way we live our daily lives, I know she will end up with values similar to ours, and, I hope, a desire to live her life in a conscious way.

The other thing I feel strongly about is a dislike of the Disney Princess Mecca and Barbie. Both leave my feminist undies in a knot when I think about the messages they send to little girls, how they place such value on your appearance and not on your person. I'm not a fan of commercialized everything from toothpaste to diapers to bedding and have gone to great lengths at times to search out non-branded toys and kiddo crap. I want my daughter to know she is beautiful, not for her appearance alone, but for her sensibility, her intelligence and her abilities.

It was with great joy that I got to read Peggy Orenstein's CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER this week. She addresses the Disney Princess craze, Barbie, American Girl Dolls and the like. I feel sort of lost as to how to navigate what lies ahead in the dolls/toys realm and know it isn't realistic to keep her so sheltered from what's out there because this fall at pre-school I have a feeling she'll see it all. Orenstein's own candor about struggling through this with her own daughter was reassuring in a 'misery loves company' kind of way.

It was interesting to learn that almost each category began with its own merits but morphed into something akin to anathema when marketers took over. Once upon a time the Disney stories were just stories in books and movies. Barbie was a feminist creation of sorts in a backlash against Roosevelt's calling for girls to play with dolls so they'd want to have children. American Girl dolls were the solution to the oversexed pinup appearance to Barbie (it was then sold by the creator to Mattel, the very maker of Barbie...how's that for ironic?). Now they all come with incredible amounts of swag that is mostly pink, conveying overt messages of consumerism and a message that girls are valued for their appearance. It hard to put one's finger on exactly how these messages hurt our girls, but I think we see it in eating disorders, body perception issues, poor relationship choices and a loss of confidence in themselves.

As Orenstein says of the Disney Princess world, "Let's review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married...and be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Their value derives largely from their appearance. They are rabid materialists....And yet...parents cannot resist them." That is so not what I want my daughter to go after in life.

So far we have no Disney in our house. We have no Barbie either, though she's seen it in Maine where her cousin was introduced to Barbie at a young age and gone on to fully invest in it. We have only regular baby dolls, nothing from the American Girl Doll empire. Yet I know all of this lies just around the corner. So when she asks for it, what do I do? I know full well that too much denial of things on my part will only lead to greater demand and the last thing I want is to force her into a place where she wants it all the more because I've said no. However, it doesn't seem as though there's a way to realistically discuss issues of body and materialism with the 3 year old crowd.

How does one navigate the world of girly-girl culture that is oh-so pervasive to raise a girl who has a strong sense of herself, who knows that her beauty is not her ticket to life and holds values that don't include owning as much stuff as possible? Orenstein doesn't claim to have all the answers. Some things she talks about, we do. When television is watched (usually Elmo's world. sometimes SuperWhy and Wiggles) I watch with her. We spend a lot of time doing random art projects of mucking around in the yard (which she calls 'the field'), picking up sticks, playing stuck in the mud, hide and go seek and kicking a ball. Orenstein did some leg work for the rest of us by finding some videos that cast girls in a positive light. Mulan is one Disney movie that has a strong female protagonist. She also talks about a film maker named Hayao Miyazaki who offers female characters of substance. In an ironic twist, these films are distributed by Disney in the US.

Her book doesn't give me a solution to what to do when Ella encounters Princess-Land and comes home asking for things. I think my tactic is to decide how much is enough and hold the line. Some exposure isn't bad. I realize I might get stuck watching some crap films where I want desperately to add my own snide commentary, but I'll try to bite my tongue. I've encouraged family to give toys that aren't in the pink realm. Maybe she'll be interested in Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. Perhaps some figurines instead of films will allow for her to write her own princess story.

As with most of parenting I think I'll have to wing it when the time comes and rely on what my intuition tells me and find a way to talk about things in age appropriate ways.

You heard it here first...

I had a dream.

No, not that kind of dream.

It was a crazy pregnancy dream which I seem to specialize in when I'm expecting. In the dream I had the baby - a boy weighing 7lbs 1oz. We'll see come the fall if my subconscious is somehow able to predict the future. Though given the rest of the dream, I kind of hope not.

In any event, in the dream I was nursing and feeling very grateful that this child was a much better nurser than the Shorty. I finished one side, put him down to switch sides, went to pick him up again and couldn't find him. For three days. In that time I realized I had no memory of the time right after delivery but I was pretty sure the midwives hadn't handed me the baby right after he came out and he hadn't nursed to get any colostrum and therefore my milk hadn't come in (I realize in real life that makes no sense, but whatevs. Ride along here with my addled, hormone saturated, losing mass brain).

So, even though I couldn't find the baby, off I went to get 3 ounces (apparently I was sure that was all I would need) of formula to feed him. Wherever he was. I went to the store and came back and eventually found the baby strapped into his car seat where he was emaciated and near death. I fed him and he lived.

Nice. Really nice.

I'm pretty sure this dream was inspired by a section of the book BAD MOTHER where the author had a baby with a cleft palate who couldn't nurse, but no one knew this and he nearly starved until she took him to the doctor to see why he felt so light and discovered he had gotten no food in many days. I finished reading that book over a week ago. Apparently it took my mind some time to be able to convert her experience into something that I could be anxious about.

Ah, me. Last night I had a dream about a woman I know who is about 5 weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy. In the dream she had delivered her baby and was experiencing terrible post-partum depression, crying 24/7. No one but me thought this wasn't normal. In the dream their baby also had an adult size head and a five o'clock shadow (it was also a boy)....Jaysus. You'd think I was eating super spicy food before bed or something.

Stay tuned for more from the annals of Sarah's brain on pregnancy. Yikes.

How to freak a pregnant woman out...

There is one sure way to completely freak a woman out when she is pregnant and it happened to me last Friday.

I went in for my first appointment with the midwives. They weighed me, I peed in a cup (and all over my hand - WHY have I never mastered doing that? I remember as a kid repeatedly dropping the cup in the toilet and my exasperated mother fishing it out and getting me another...) and took blood.

Then, the midwife came in. We chatted a bit - she was on the morning after I had the Shorty and was the one who noticed I looked rather pale and had me tested for anemia (THANK YOU!). Once we'd caught up she did the exam. At first when I commented that I felt like I'd popped out really early, she looked and said, oh that's just bloating, but then a few minutes later when she went to feel my uterus, she said, "hmmm, you are big. I think we better do an ultrasound to see if there are twins in there."

All I can say is thank God they'd already taken my blood pressure because I'm pretty sure it went through the roof at that moment. Twins are not on my agenda. Even remotely.

After several minutes of lying there feeling not only like I was going to puke, but also like I was going to have a heart attack she came in with the portable ultrasound. It wasn't the best picture, but she saw only one little being bobbing around in there.

WHEW.

The upside is though it was too early to hear the heartbeat on the doppler, we could see it on the ultrasound so that was reassuring.

My first official ultrasound as part of genetic testing is at the end of the month. I'll be grateful for another confirmation that there aren't two growing in there - and until then I'm going to try not to think why I was measuring at 13 weeks when I was only 9 weeks and 5 days along.

Thinking Deep Thoughts

This post comes with small caveat for all two of you who read it: I'm going to disclose something in it that is not yet public knowledge, so feel free to email me about it, but please don't post it on Facebook!

Of late, I've spent a lot of time wondering about the point of my life. Deep, I know. But really, it gives me pause when I think about it, because I have NO IDEA what the answer is. I realize the simplistic stupidity of this statement, but I've always felt like I am meant to do something extraordinary with my life. Never have I been able to define what that extraordinary thing is, but the feeling has always been there.

I began working when I graduated from college and haven't stopped, but nothing has ever felt like the extraordinary job where I make a difference in the world. Then, I had a child and extraordinary took a back seat to survival. Now, I'm 2 plus years into being her mom and staring down the next 30 weeks before #2 arrives (yep, big reveal, not ready to go Facebook level public with it, though).

Juggling working with being a mom is not without its complications and, though I want to work, professional life doesn't seem particularly compatible with mommy-hood. So I guess my conundrum is this: is the point of my life to be an excellent worker or to be an excellent mom? I am thus far not convinced that the standards I hold for each allow for the other to be possible.

Professionally, I want to be high achieving, hard working and committed to my job. As a mom I want to be involved, present, making healthy meals, developing young people who will be citizens of the world. It doesn't feel like the two can co-exist without it coming at a cost to someone or something - either work loses, or the child loses or worst of all, I lose.

Work doesn't feel family friendly and family friendly doesn't feel like it allows for work. Working part-time seems like it should fit the bill, but my current part-time work is no picnic and when I look at other jobs, they are all low level, low paying and don't exactly fill the 'extraordinary' category of what I'm capable of or interested in doing. If I want to be extraordinary and make a difference in a tangible way, the jobs I see are full time. So, do I want that as a worker or is that what I think professional life should be?

Over the years I've evolved and the career path I chose to go down way back in 1998 is no longer my understanding of where I need to be. I have learned so much more about the world and realize that the passion one needs for something like performing has probably never been present in me the way it should to want to make singing a career and teaching has begun to feel like a poor alternative. I find myself ignited though, when I think about issues like poverty and hunger and the effects they have on women and children. I understand the need for all humans to have the chance to live healthy lives in a way I have never understood dressing up in costumes and parading around on stage. So, I get that professionally, if I'm going to go the route of working, I need to make a change. We won't even delve into what it is like to go on a job interview in your first trimester of pregnancy and how/when do you reveal in the process that shortly after you would start working for them you'd be leaving to pop a kid out.

Thinking about the issue of my life and its purpose has also circled around to the issue of whether the mom I want to be is really the mom I think I should be: super mom. The mom who does crafts, makes things for her child in the way of clothing, curtains, sweaters, goes to the library regularly, takes her child to music classes, exposes her regularly to new foods. I enjoy all of those things, but it doesn't feel like enough for me to satisfy my existence. And, honestly, there are many times I find being home for a whole day alone with a child totally smothering. Other days it is nice to fruit around, stay in our jammies, read stories, change pretend poopy diapers and nap.

Would I ever give up working to raise kids? I think I would feel like I'm giving up if I did that. Financially it probably isn't an option, but staring down the cost of two in daycare, even part-time, my current job won't cover it and it seems unlikely from what I've seen of what's out there that any other part-time job would cover it. So, if I work full time, what do I do with my super mom tendencies?

Some other women must wrestle with this and many probably don't. I started writing this two weeks ago and now today is international women's day. Maybe this day will bring some enlightenment to what feels like such a clouded issue. I could sure use some illumination on how to proceed!

Swan Song?

I'm beginning to wonder if this semester is shaping up to be my swan song from voice teaching at Harvard and maybe from the field.

In my eight years there nothing has changed to make teaching there better and the reality is, nothing will. The University isn't suddenly going to allot more room to teachers. The students aren't suddenly going to start showing up weekly for their lessons and understand that when they sign up they are committing to the semester and therefore, to my income and when they quit out of the blue, I'm out income. The Director of the Choral Program isn't suddenly going to become a strong leader, interested in people's teaching and in professional development for voice teachers. The other teachers aren't suddenly going to be interested in collaborating and communicating about voice teaching to have a cohesive department.

Those are all things that I know I need to keep teaching. I've hoped for a long time, particularly when the leadership turned over, that it could come to fruition, but clearly, it ain't happening. Six students dropped this semester, and one week in I've already have many last minute cancellations leaving me twiddling my thumbs for hours. There's no communication from above except the occasional run in when he'll launch into how expensive the program is and it isn't sustainable to pay us what we are paid blah, blah, blah. My commute is now longer and rather than just taking the bus to work I now have to pay for gas, tolls and parking in a garage in Cambridge - the garage alone can run anywhere from $13-$25 a day. I find teaching days draining rather than inspiring.

Not much to recommend staying, yes? I have a hard time letting go of it though. I think I'm a good teacher, with a lot to offer and I've worked hard over the last decade to become such. Each semester I start with new hope that maybe I'll find the right balance of how much to teach each day and how to teach in a way that I'll not feel drained of creativity at the end of the day. I took a sabbatical leave position last term at another school in the hopes it might build a connection to get me out of Harvard. I met some nice people and enjoyed working in a more 'legit' situation, but nothing came of it. It seems as though no one is retiring from schools where lessons are offered for credit and there are no openings ever. None of it seems to be panning out. I have fewer students than ever this term due to many people dropping and just received an email from a new student saying she isn't continuing, despite signing up for the term.

The question is, what on earth would I do if I leave voice teaching? Our household needs two incomes and I also think I'm a mom who needs to have some professional outlet to be a better parent. I want a job that will give me flexibility with my young family, but also prove to be satisfying. It would be nice to use some skills and abilities that I have cultivated in my professional life in my next position.

Any suggestions? Thoughts?