Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Mass. Mom Delivers Own Baby

A story in my local paper made me think, There but for the grace of God go I.

The story was about a Massachusetts mom of a 3-year-old whose labor with her second child came on so hard and so fast that she wound up delivering her 6 pound 4 ounce baby alone in the vehicle while her mother ran into the Emergency Room to summon hospital staff for help. As the baby, Grace Emily-Marie  was making her way into the world, Meghan Aucoin’s mother drove her to the hospital and by the time medical staff returned to the vehicle, Aucoin was holding her daughter in her arms.

Makes me shudder. That was me with The Youngest Son. Eight-and-a-half years ago. Baby was coming out when I was still in my bathroom. The Spouse loaded me into the car, drove like mad to the hospital, then left me (because I was unable to walk) laboring in the car as he ran into the ER to get the doctors . . . except that the doctors got to me in time and The Youngest Boy was born shortly after I was wheeled into the hospital. I became known as “the lady who almost gave birth in the parking lot.” Now Aucoin IS the lady who gave birth in the parking lot. My hat is off to her.

Item #2: 8-Year-Old on Watch List

Reading a page one story in the New York Times today about an 8-year-old third grade New Jersey Cub Scout who’s on the Transportation Security Administration’s watch list as a potential security threat does not make me feel safe. A boy named Mikey Hicks shares a name with “someone named Michael Hicks [who] made the Department of Homeland Security suspicious and little Mikey is still paying the price,” the Times reported.

This boy has been subject to pat-downs and questioning when flying on commercial aircraft with his family, starting when he was, get this, 2 years old and was frisked at an airport in Newark because his name was “on the list.”

I was incredulous. A 2-year-old being searched and treated like a potential terrorist? Seriously? I don’t know about you, but it wouldn’t instill confidence in me to see a kid in Pull-Ups being frisked before boarding an airplane because his name is “on the list.”

As Hicks’ mother said, “Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal. A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

Their congressman, William J. Pascrell, told the Times, “We can’t just throw a bunch of names on these lists and call it security. If we  can’t get an 8-year-old off the list, the whole list becomes suspect.”

Item #3: Brutal World of Politics

I’m reading the book Game Change for a column I’m working on. It’s the book that’s getting all the media attention for containing a series of inflammatory comments about the 2008 presidential campaign reportedly from the mouths of marquee national politicians (Senate Leader Harry Reid, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, etc.). And as I’ve been pouring through it — reading anecdote after anecdote about searingly private moments between politicians and their spouses (the material on Elizabeth Edwards is so devastating and so personal that I feel like I needed a shower after I read it) — it makes me wonder why anyone would want to open him or herself up to such intense scrutiny, knowing that everything you say and do — even with your spouse when you think it’s private, even in front of “trusted” aides and colleagues – would someday be blabbed to reporters and made grist for late night comedians.

Image credit: Fred R. Conrad/New York Times.

Item #1: Teacher Gifts

I thought we were in a recession, marked by high unemployment and people cutting back as they try to ride out these days of TARP and discussions of another possible federal stimulus package as industries wither away (auto, newspaper, etc.). So why did I read in the Boston Globe that Massachusetts school districts feel the need to warn parents against giving their children’s teachers “pricey” gifts? The story began as follows:

“School superintendents across the region are penning letters this holiday season to parents, cautioning them against going overboard with gift-giving to teachers, principals, and other staff members.

. . . While acknowledging that parents’ gift-giving gestures may be well intentioned the superintendents say that the state’s new ethics laws forbids public servants, including teachers on public payrolls, from receiving gifts with value in excess of $50. Violations are subject to civil penalties, the superintendents warn.”

Some of the examples of previous parental gift-giving excess, according to the Globe, were: $200 gift cards, fine wines, sports tickets, Rolex watches and HD TVs.

Hold on a sec, I thought. Who in the heck is giving teachers gifts that go for $50, never mind the ones the Globe was calling “pricey?”

Are people at your kids’ schools dishing out major cash for gifts?

Item #2: Decade of Overparenting

As part of its ode to the decade of the 2000s that’s about to come to a close, New York Magazine has a piece by writer Sandra Tsing Loh describing this past 10 years as a period of time when “Everybody Else Knows Best,” at least when it came to parenting, as parents have felt under siege by the volume of child-rearing advice. Tsing Loh focused on an anecdote involving her friend, the mother of a 9-month-old who won’t sleep. The friend didn’t know what to do about her son’s sleeping issues and fretted that she would make a mistake. Tsing Loh put a stake into the notion of relying on so-called parenting “experts” to tell us what we should do at every moment of our children’s young lives. Worth the read.

Item #3: Pregnancy Discrimination on ‘Housewives’

Desperate Housewives has had an irritating Lynette Scavo-centric storyline this season, one in which the fortysomething mom of four — who’s pregnant with twins, whose husband has gone back to college and she’s the only breadwinner — is being discriminated against by Carlos Solis, her boss/neighbor/friend, so much so, that after she was unjustly fired, she felt compelled to sue him.

She didn’t tell Carlos — who openly told her that he’d discriminated against another woman and not given her a promotion because she was pregnant and instead gave the promotion to Lynette —  immediately after she found out she was pregnant, but made arrangements, trained an underling and landed a big account so that she wouldn’t leave Carlos in the lurch. But when he found out (not from her) he acted as though, by getting pregnant, she’d let him down and hurt him, and that he was justified in forcing her out of a job.

This fictionalized version of pregnancy discrimination is the focus of my Mommy Tracked column this week, where Lynette’s situation is being played for laughs. I also asked readers what a woman in Lynette’s situation could/should do. (See video from the latest episode below for an example of Lynette being treated shabbily by Carlos’ wife Gabby.)

By the way, after this past week’s plane crash on Wisteria Lane, I began to wonder if this particular (fictional) street in Fairview is the most dangerous street in America. The results of my curiosity can be found here, where I documented every violent/criminal act that I could find that has occurred on Wisteria Lane over Desperate Housewives’ half dozen seasons. If I’ve missed any, please feel free to let me know.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Felicity Huffman’s character Lynette Scavo on Desperate Housewives. In the first season when she was an at-home mom of four, Lynette spoke the sometimes ugly truths about her struggles with parenting small children, her loneliness and how she frequently felt as though she was screwing up at every turn. In season two, she returned to the workforce and was the comedic embodiment of the modern woman’s no-win attempts to balance her career and her home life.

However as the show got older, I found I liked my once favorite character less and less. The writers, I believed, fell down on the job and gave her some pretty cruddy story lines, especially last season’s when one of her kids was arrested. God last season was a bad one for Lynette. She’d become a shell of her former, real mom character.

When the new season began, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Lynette I admired from seasons one and two had returned. Now, she’s back working as an advertising executive who’s found herself pregnant again with twins, and she’s feeling distinctly ambivalent about the pregnancy, something not many folks would admit in public. And Lynette  seems to have regained some of the spark she’d lost.

Below is a scene from the season premiere where she was in an ob/gyn’s waiting room and brought a first-time pregnant mom to tears. The old Lynette is back, baby.

I blog weekly about the latest Desperate Housewives’ episodes at Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum. My review of the most recent episode, “Being Alive,” can be found here.

Item #1: Triumphant Working Mom Tale

I’m a huge fan of the talk show Morning Joe on MSNBC (6-9 a.m. weekdays), chiefly because I like the easy rapport and smart, witty banter between the co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. (My three kids now know the hosts by name and have been known to pause while eating their breakfast cereal to ask, “What is Joe TALKING about?”)

Despite having been a regular viewer of this show for a little more than a year, I didn’t know that Brzezinski had been let go by CBS in 2005 when she was 39 (when she learned “coincidentally” that one of the network higher ups didn’t think she was attractive enough, though she says that she doesn’t think that’s why she was fired). The mom of two went into a deep funk, wound up taking a job which paid a fraction of her original salary at CBS and . . . now she’s a successful TV host. Her interview with More Magazine in the October issue – which has the awesome Sela Ward on the cover — is worth reading if only to learn her philosophy about trying to succeed at your job and raise a family at the same time. “I’d rather spend one good hour with my kids a day than eight bad ones,” she said.

Item #2: Hollywood Babies After 40

 In that same issue of More Magazine, there was a feature about 10 celebs who have given birth to their first child after the age of 40, a trend which seems to be gaining traction in Hollywood. “The birthrate for women ages 40 to 44 has more than doubled in the past 25 years, and Hollywood is no exception to the trend,” More reported. Among those on the list: Holly Hunter who had twins at age 47, Mariska Hargitay who had her first son at age 42 and Marcia Cross who also had twins at 45.

Item #3: Welcome Home Daddy

One of the things about which members of the media were excited when a president with young children moved into the White House were photos like the ones taken recently of 8-year-old Sasha Obama, who was so excited that her dad, the president, had arrived home from a business trip that she ran to him and leapt into his arms. The same thing happens in my household when The Spouse gets home and our 8-year-old son launches himself into The Spouse’s arms, thrilled . . . only there’s no White House press corps to document it. Just me.

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If you watched the latest episode of Mad Men entitled, “The Fog” (my recap/review can be found here), you saw a dramatization of what it was like to give birth during the 1960s.

And it wasn’t pretty.

As Betty Draper gave birth to her third child, the medical staff — one nurse in particular – patronized her (mocked her for eating pineapple earlier that day), threatened her (when Betty said she was too tired to push the baby any longer the nurse said she’d better push or they’d go in and take the baby out), ignored her pleas for her husband, pinned her down, provided no comfort or encouragement, and drugged her so that she was in what they called “twilight” sleep where she was in and out of lucidity. During the stressful pushing stage, Betty’s mind wandered off to her own kitchen where she envisioned herself speaking with her deceased parents, including her father who died the week before. All in all, it was a miserable experience.

A Mad Men themed blog entitled Basket of Kisses had a great analysis of the way in which Betty was treated at the hospital. Many of the blog’s readers chimed in in the comments section and shared their experiences of giving birth during that period, when the men went to a solarium to drink and smoke, while the pregnant women were infantilized. It was a horrifying portrayal, to say the least.

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

I’m getting a kick out of watching Betty Draper’s pregnancy playing out on this season’s Mad Men. It’s such a study in contrasts. In that day and age — 1963 — pregnant women drank and smoked and no one said a word to them about it. The women didn’t think twice about it. (They also referred to pregnancy as a “condition.”) In the latest Mad Men episode there were two pregnant women drinking and no one blinked an eye.

Compare that to now when if the pregnancy police see a gestating woman eating unpasteurized cheese or holding a Starbucks cup in her hand, the pregnant woman would potentially subject herself to a public scolding, at the very minimum.

I’m dying to find out how much more Mad Men creator Matt Weiner is going to delve into Betty’s pregnancy and eventual delivery. I’m also wondering if they’ll be any discussion about baby formula (vs breastfeeding) and disposable diapers.

Meanwhile, over on Showtime, circa 2009, the off-beat show Weeds had its main character, Nancy Botwin, give birth to a Mexican drug lord/politician’s baby midway through the season and spent the last few episodes tackling issues such as sleeping through the night, circumcision and breastfeeding/formula.

One of the funniest episodes – actually it was painfully funny — occurred two weeks after Nancy gave birth to her baby and she went out to dinner with her former brother-in-law. While there, she became engorged with breastmilk. She brought her hand-held breast pump into the women’s bathroom in order to relieve the pressure, but it broke. She took rather *cough* unorthodox measures to deal with the situation.

Nancy’s unorthodox life choices in the wake of her first husband’s death — turning to pot dealing and then spiraling down in the abyss of the drug trade — along with the impact of those choices on her two sons were the grist for several of the latest episodes. (One of her sons has gone from a wimpy kid getting trounced on a suburban soccer field to a violent maniac, while the other has tried to make a living by peddling medicinal pot in California.)

The video below is a snippet of conversation with her kids about  breastfeeding their baby brother, the son of the drug lord/politician.

Talk about a high-wire act. You’re picked to play on the All-Star team for the second consecutive year. Your pregnant wife who’s due at the end of August, winds up being hospitalized in premature labor. Then she’s stabilized, though still hospitalized.

Now there are a handful of  macho guys who’re apt to say that there is no question or decision to be made here. You play the game, no matter what’s going on at home. They’d tell Pedroia to go to the All-Star game in St. Louis and be a starter. It’s his duty, they’d argue. He can be with his family when his baseball career’s over.

Then there are legions of others — myself included — who think that family comes first. Pedroia and his coach agree. Pedroia will be staying in Boston with his wife.

The Boston Globe had a good story on Pedroia’s decision.

Red Sox Manager Terry Francona, who helped Pedroia through his decision process, told the Globe: “I said, ‘Pedey, look. What’s the worst-case scenario if you don’t go to the All-Star Game? He said, ‘Well, I’m mad.’ I said, ‘What’s the worst-case scenario if you go and Kelli is not . . . ‘ And he said, ‘I can’t go.’ . . . I think he has been stressing about it. I think Kelli has been stressing about it. It’s not something he took remotely lightly at all. I know it’s the right decision. Because you can’t predict the future it’s the only decision.”

In a written statement, Pedroia said, “I am disappointed that I will not be able to enjoy the amazing experience with the other All-Stars, especially with my Red Sox teammates, but it is important that I put my family first at this time.”

I browsed through a number of Red Sox blogs, fan sites and the comments sections of news media sites and, with the rare exception of a few stray knuckleheads, people largely seem to be supportive of Pedroia. Which is a wonderful thing to behold.

Image credit: Jim Davis/The Boston Globe.

Item #1: ‘I Hear You’re Running an Infirmary’

That’s what one parent said to me after our second graders’ Valentine’s Day school show this morning. And he’s right, I have been running an infirmary. The Spouse has been sick, though he’s better now. The Eldest Boy stayed home from school on Monday with a cough, headache, low-grade fever combo, the same combo that had The Girl home from school for two-and-a-half days last week. (I sent her back to school one day, but the school had me pick her up at 11 a.m. saying she wasn’t well.)  The Youngest Boy, who spent many days holed up in our house after being diagnosed with a “breakthrough” case of chicken pox (he’d already been vaccinated,  though didn’t have a booster shot, who knew?), got the green light to return to school yesterday.

However soon after I woke up this morning, I began feeling slightly feverish and not quite right. I hope the minor cold symptoms end there, but I suppose this is what I get for running an infirmary and for hugging my patients.

Item #2: Don’t Talk to Me About the Octuplets

I really don’t want to talk about them, or their mother – who’s now a mother of 14 – or her infertility doctor, although I think most reasonable people can agree that the mother and the doctor who transferred all those embryos acted irresponsibly.

But amid all the name calling, the finger-pointing and the discussion about who’s going to pay for what, my thoughts keep gravitating back to those fragile little babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, as well as to their six older siblings whose lives will be turned upside-down once everyone’s living under the same roof. There are 14 children who are going to need a whole lot of care, regardless of how they or this situation came to be. So instead of treating this like a circus sideshow, where everyone attacks and mocks the adult players involved, I can’t help but see this as a sad story for the children whose needs, I hope, will be met, one way or another.

Item #3: I’m Anti-Valentine’s Day Like Risa

I am so with my Mommy Track’d colleague Risa Green when she said that she does not like Valentine’s Day because she thinks you should already be telling the people you love that you love them on a regular basis and shouldn’t require the Hallmark company and the nation’s florists telling us how to celebrate that love.

Her latest column focused on how her daughter’s glee in filling out valentines for her friends was turned into a major moment of decision when Risa told her that she had to give a valentine to a girl who had been mean to her. If she didn’t give a valentine to the mean girl, Risa told her, she wouldn’t be able to give one to anyone in her class. ”She countered with the fact that all the valentines said things like, ‘I Love You,’ and ‘Best Friends,” and ‘Be Mine’ and that if she gave this particular girl a card that said any of those things, it would be like lying,” Risa wrote.

While her daughter ultimately chose to make one for the mean girl, this kind of moment is one of the reasons why I don’t like what Valentine’s Day has become because it all feels forced an inauthentic, like compulsory Mother’s Day celebrations.

Last week, I wrote about how my two fourth graders have been asked to write, excuse me, type up, a two- to three-sentence compliment for every member of their class, including the kids who haven’t been nice to them or who have made fun of them. They, like Risa’s daughter, balked at the notion of having to write a compliment for everyone. Like Risa, I told them if they didn’t want to do the assignment, they didn’t have to do it. My suggestion to blow off the “compliment assignment” was met by both children with utter shock because to not complete it would mean there’d be some sort of notation made in their teachers’ ”Homework Book,” which apparently is very bad. And, like Risa’s daughter, they soldiered through it anyway and wrote out compliments to everyone, no matter how insincere or untrue.

The Obama family has officially been living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a little over a week now and already folks are posting images of Michelle Obama online where they scrawl all over her mid-section suggesting that the First Lady is carrying the First Fetus.

I’ve stated many times before how much I loathe this fetish that web sites and so-called “journalists” have made of dissecting photos of female celebs, suggesting that if women have any contour at all to their bellies that they MUST be pregnant. I find the whole practice invasive and tacky.

When people openly hypothesize online, in print and on TV about whether someone might be pregnant — and that person won’t comment about the subject — did those folks ever think that perhaps there’s a good reason for the silence and that perhaps it would be in good taste to back off? If the woman is pregnant, maybe she’s had difficulties in the past (such as miscarriages) and wants to wait until she’s further along in her pregnancy to announce the news. If the woman isn’t pregnant, maybe it’s a case where she was photographed wearing a baggy outfit, or maybe she missed a month’s worth of Pilates classes. Either way, what’s the harm in waiting to report on these things until you know for sure? It’s not like a pregnancy will be a secret for long.

That being said, I’m ALREADY sick of the speculation that Michelle Obama might be pregnant. I seriously don’t want to endure four years of bloggers and entertainment “journalists” writing all over Michelle photos.

Image credit: AP/Telegraph.

Item #1: Yuletide Simple

Still haven’t gotten anywhere with my Christmas cards, although I did spend two quality hours in Target yesterday racing around, trying to make sure I didn’t forget stuff. Have tons more to do. In the meantime, my plea for a simple Christmas is featured in this month’s Parents & Kids Magazine.

Item #2: Christmas Carol Reading

So, even though I’ve been aspiring for the Picket Fence Post family to have a holiday season filled with simple pleasures, I’ve been toying with the idea of reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol aloud to the kiddos. Wonder if they’d even be interested or if I’d be wasting my time trying to force a wholesome family moment?

Item #3: Mama Drama?

During Thanksgiving weekend in between our two family dinners, The Spouse and I stayed up way too late one night watching a string of Entourage in order to finish the fifth season of the HBO dramedy. After many hours of wallowing in the world of Entourage, we engaged in a ridiculous conversation about characters and who was most like whom. And that’s when The Spouse said I was most like Johnny Drama. (He, of course, fancies himself as Eric.) Then he put a twist on it. Started calling me Mama Drama. Sweet, huh?

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