I love being a pregnant woman in a man's world: Part 1

We're living in the Barlow Center in Washington, DC, home to not only BYU interns but also the Washington DC institute and center for public and international affairs for the Church. The other day, I went to find an ethernet cord so we could access the internet in our room and I was pulled into the institute director's office because he wanted to meet me. I obliged, and introduced myself. We began casually chatting about my internship and my future career goals (think grad school, etc). At some point, I mentioned that I was pregnant, and his whole demeanor changed. He asked me if I planned on pursuing said career goals (which, honestly, change quite often so who knows if I actually will) now that I was pregnant. I replied that I planned on it, to which he basically stated that should I choose to not be a stay-at-home, I will jeopardize my children's future. He apparently did his dissertation on such-and-such family research and found that mothers who work tend to have children that do drugs and engage in premarital sex. Ok. I get it, day care, nannies, not the right thing for most. I retorted that our children will always have one of us (meaning a father or mother) caring for them. To which he came back with the notion that my husband would not have the skills (because he's a man) to raise our children. Because, men aren't nurturing, right? I told them co-parenting has worked for many families, with very positive results including the wife and mother making a contribution to the world and the father knowing his children as well as his counterpart. To which he shoved the Proclamation off his wall and into my face. To which I told him that I knew what it said and I had thought deeply about those words. His reply: "That's your problem, you need to do less thinking and more praying."

Why this little encounter upsets me SO MUCH:

a) This man does not know me. He is not my spiritual leader, he has no right to tell me what to do. He had no right to tell me that I need to completely change my life now that I'm married and pregnant.

b) When men (or women for that matter) are staring me down and telling me things like this, I CAN'T TALK BACK. I am horrible at defending myself and my positions, I think mostly for fear of brutal retaliation. And this man is very, very intimidating.
c) He also stated that the US has good reasons to not ratifying CEDAW and members of the Church should not support such a family-demeaning institution.

d) I want to do something about it, I want him to be corrected, I want a General Authority to call him up and tell him that he's wrong, that everyone is entitled to personal revelation about their lives and families and he is not entitled to receive that revelation for MY family. I want to tell him that all people, no matter members of the Church or not, are entitled to live their lives genuinely, and if Heavenly Father wants me to be a political scientist/public health guru/midwife/WHATEVER then I should not be told that I will hurt my children and that I'm being selfish and listening to the world (which is pretty much the gist of what he said to me).

e) I don't want him to be able to say the same things to other women.

f) I think it's offensive to my husband to say that he does not have the capacity to be as nurturing and as loving and is as capable of raising our children as me. If anything, barring the birthing and the breastfeeding, I'd argue that Tim is just as capable of such a thing, and I think what hurts me most in this whole exchange was that my husband has to be outside the home to make his contribution to our family.

g) I've worked my butt off for 16+ years in school, slaving away at honors classes, multiple minors in college, internships, etc. because I like to accomplish things. I like to work hard, I like to learn, I like to contribute, I like to research. I don't think being a woman and particularly a mother makes me any less entitled to reap what I have sown with all of this hard work. And I'm smart damnit! And I've worked hard! Don't you tell me that I'm not allowed to pursue further education and potentially a career that will benefit society as well as my family!! And don't try to guilt trip me into giving it all up! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT.

End rant.

Library

I went to the library yesterday, and this is my list of books:

1. Birth: The Surprising History of how we are Born
2. Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali
3. Holistic Guide to Pregnancy and Birth
4. The Prenatal Prescription
5. Three Cups of Tea
6. Carmelo (on Today's Book Club list)

In my Netflix queue: Orgasmic Childbirth (which there is a "Very Long Wait" for, the first I've ever seen)

Can you tell what I am preoccupied with a little?? I want to learn as much about birth as humanly possible. Then I want to give birth. Then I want to be a midwife. Forget political science and foreign policy and business as usual. I want to be a midwife. This week at least.

My photo debut

My friend Kaitlyn took some cool pictures of me the other day! I think they're really good, considering she's only dabbled in photography a few months. I was so glad we did this, since our camera broke a while ago and there are no pictures of my prego belly, which is growing rapidly. And behold, our little boy finally learned to kick!! It was just a few nights ago, and very exciting. All day at work today he was going at it. And I love it.

Heard at church today....

We are in an AWESOME ward in DC. Very diverse. Meets in an old Baptist Church. Half of the ward is French-speaking African immigrants. I'm in heaven.

A few things I heard today at Church:

1. In RS (the woman sitting behind me, getting fidgety and said out loud): "I NEED a cigarette."

2. At a baptism (a prayer by a Primary boy, probably about 8 himself speaking of the child being baptized): "And bless him that he will be OK with singing hymns, because we know he doesn't really like to."

We made it.

We're in Washington DC! We finally made it. It was touch and go for a while there, mostly because I was hesitant about accepting an internship 5 months pregnant, but I did and we're here and so excited. We arrived about 3:30 yesterday afternoon, took the Metro to our lovely little dormitory. And lovely it is, because: a, it has a pull-down bed which I think is really cool; b, it feels like Helaman Halls and we all know how fun that was; c, the old interns left pillows, a comforter, towels, and we did not bring any of that and thought we were going to have to buy it; d, there's a Trader Joe's HALF A BLOCK AWAY (I'm in heaven). We live on a busy, hip street in Georgetown, near GWU. We have yet to really explore the out of doors yet, mostly we just moved in and went to Trader Joe's for delicious groceries. I'm sure there is way more cool stuff about where we live in, and I'll keep you updated.

And more pictures of Theodore

I might as well put these up for posterity while I'm at it:

Introducing....

That's right, we're having a BOY. I was so floored, yet secretly I think I knew it would be a boy. Probably because I wanted a girl so much. We weren't going to find out, but at the last minute Tim made the decision that we should. And I'm glad we did, because I think if I was set on a girl for 9 months, it would be delivery time and they would announce it was a boy and I would probably have cried or something. Now I can get used to the idea of having a boy. And figure out what you even do with a boy.

And a exhibitionist boy at that. We told the technician we didn't want to find out, so she said the whole time he was flashing his thing and she kept maneuvering to hide it. At the end when we decided, we got quite the peek, as you can tell from the picture above. I wonder if in 15 years our little Theodore (not really his name) will be embarrassed that his penis made it to the world wide web?

How I feel about finals

On my econometrics final:

"The strengths to my approach are I’m sure they resemble somewhat of what I was actually supposed to do. A weakness would be that I missed this week of class because I was pregnant and miserable, so I don’t really know how to run panel data regressions. What would I have done differently? Used birth control, probably."

Please listen to this... and laugh/cry

A Michigan woman delivers a baby in her family bathtub. She did not know she was pregnant.

Listen to the 911 call. It's hilarious.

If this couple can do it at home, I would venture to say Tim and I can. I'll just write down the instructions from this 911 dispatcher and keep them on our fridge for when I go into labor.

I can't even fathom not knowing you are pregnant. I wish I didn't know I was pregnant some days.

Mattress commercial goes home birth

A mattress commercial in Spain (pretty sure shown on national TV) portrays a home birth.

I think the tagline reads something to the effect of "your bed is the most important place in the world".

Can you IMAGINE the backlash if something like this appeared in the US? Most mattress commercials in the US feature a skinny, middle-aged white woman lying leisurely or a glass of wine not being knocked over.