Update January 24, 2011

So, to update you on recent events….

As far as volunteering, I have signed up for an orientation at Open Books. They’re a great organization, and run a bookstore to help fund their literacy programs (donate your used books to them!). I’ll probably just work in the bookstore a couple days am month. It’s like a dream job! I’m really excited. It will just be a question of money and babysitters.

And, I just had the test to see if the Essure worked, and both fallopian tubes are STILL OPEN! Argh! Not to mention that test hurt like a sonofabitch. It’s an HSG test, and I think it’s very common for couples with fertility issues to have it done — there was another woman there having it done right before me, but hoping for very different results. They flood your uterus with dye, and then take and x-ray to see if the dye gets through your tubes. I don’t really know why it hurts so much — it was just very crampy. I had read that it would be “uncomfortable,” but thinking that this year I’d had a distending liver, an emergency c-section, and springs shoved in my fallopian tubes, it couldn’t be worse than any of those. But it was. On the up side, any regrets I may have had about never being in labor went right out the window. The nurses told me that all their patients who have the test done and already have children say it’s nothing compared to childbirth. I think they meant to console me, but then I told them I’d never been in labor, and they just looked confused and changed the subject.

The doctor who did the test, (not my usual doc) was just chitchatting beforehand, and asked how old my youngest son was. I told her almost a year, but he should only be 8 months. “Ohhhhh,” she said. “I knew your name sounded familiar! They took you to another hospital first, right? And then you had the baby at Prentice? Oh yeah, I totally remember.” I’m famous!

My doctor, whom I adore, called me afterwards to see how I was feeling about everything, and to give me a pep talk. The good news is that the springs look like they’re in the right places, but just the tissue hasn’t grown yet. So, hopefully when they do the test again in three months (oh joy), they’ll be closed off. I know so many people who are having trouble getting pregnant, and trying everything, and I feel like I’m trying everything NOT to be pregnant, and my body is working against me. “Cursed with fertility,” Joe called it. I wish they fallopian tube transplant surgery so I could just trade with some infertile couple with plugged up tubes. Sigh.

Resolutions January 8, 2011

It is the new year, after all. So, I have made the obligatory resolutions. Of course, actually keeping up with blogging is one. Good luck. But another that is very important to me is to volunteer at least once a month. Part of the reason is tied up in the fact that being a stay-at-home-mom is a very difficult transition for me, and a lot of that is because my life PK (pre-kids) was very fulfilling. I never felt like I needed anything else to make me “whole,” like I think some people do. Volunteering was a huge part of that. (stay tuned for another post on this whole SAHM thing. Egad.) But, another reason is very much about my kids and motherhood. Every time I tell people I want to take “time off” from mommy-ing to volunteer, the response is usually “Oh, but you’re doing something so important already, by raising kids.” Well, sure, I suppose. But am I really? Sometimes I wonder.

It’s not that I think that parenting is unimportant. On the contrary. It really is the most important thing I think I’ve ever done. But the thing is, to be a good parent, you have to be a good person, I think. It’s so easy to use kids as an excuse not to do things you know you should — call friends, write in your blog, wear pants with a zipper — but they are really the biggest reason you need to do those things. Bumper sticker philosophy isn’t anything deep, I understand, but still, the bumper sticker “Be who you desire your children to become” is a good one. My kids will end up being more like who I am than who I tell them to be, in all probability. Scary stuff. So, if I’m tired and grumpy and yell at the customer service agent, even if I tell myself it’s because I’m being self-sacrificing by getting up at night with a baby, my kids learn to yell at people. Bottom line. Same with volunteering. I could say “oh, but I’m doing something so much more important by raising my children to be kind, decent people who feel a responsibility to the world around them.” And I could read them books about people who made a difference, or watch videos about helping others, or talk about it with them and draw pictures of different ways we can be helpful. But if all I’m doing is talking, I can’t imagine it will really sink in.

I worry that the parenting excuse just passes the buck from generation to generation. If I say “I won’t give back, because I’m giving back by staying home with my kids,” then my kids learn to do the same thing. Darwin and Elijah will either stay at home with their kids, think that their job is to be a breadwinner so that their wives can stay home with kids, or if they decide not to have kids, will think that somehow they aren’t doing the most important act of giving back. So every generation just passes along a flawed world to the next, and tells them “YOU should be the one to fix it,” but never shows them how. I’m not satisfied with that.

I sound very noble, don’t I? We’ll see if I actually do anything about it. And perhaps as a part of laying the groundwork for justifying not volunteering, and also in understanding of those who don’t feel the same way, I will say that I believe there are a thousand little things we do every day that influence our children, or anyone around us, to take the high road or the low road. How you treat the bagger at the grocery store, how you react when you burn the pot roast, how you advance in your career, how you treat your spouse, etc. All these things add up, and can be much more influential than a few hours a month at a food pantry or something. But for me, making the effort to show my kids that I want to make a planned, mindful effort to give back means a lot. Because now that I have a vested interest in what kind of world comes after me, for my kids and my theoretical grandkids, I have even more reason to try to make things better now, instead of waiting for someone else to do it. As I said, kids are a great excuse not to do the things we should, but also the greatest reason to do them.

It also means I get out of the house without children, so maybe it’s a little self-serving, too….