The more I think about this, the more frustrated I get…:  I think it’s messed up that daycare expenses are tax-deductible but that there do not appear to be analogous breaks for women that choose to stay home to care for their children.

I wouldn’t necessarily advocate that there be some kind of across-the-board tax-break just because she decided to stay home but looking at it closely, it seems to suggest a kind of penalty for mothers that choose to breastfeed.  Especially during those first few months, breastfeeding is practically a full time job.  Making daycare expenses tax-deductible without some equivalent or analog for breastfeeding mothers seems to stack the economic deck against this decision.

It occurs to me that this would be a tough thing to put in place.  How do you verify that someone is exclusively breastfeeding?  Do you take away the tax-break if someone slips in a bottle of formula once in a great while because of some emergency?  I suppose there is no easy answer but it also seems like we’re not trying hard enough as a culture ensure that parents aren’t penalized for what should be good, smart decisions in their child-rearing.

Papa says…: Well, today marks two weeks.  It’s certainly an interesting adventure to have an infant around the house, that’s for sure.  Most things were slightly up or down from “as expected”.  Changing the cloth diapers?  Slightly easier than expected.  Giving Holden a bottle full of breastmilk?  Slightly harder than expected.  Sleeping at night?  Slightly easier than expected.  Leaving the house to do anything or go anywhere?  Slightly harder than expected.  Actually doing that stuff once we manage to leave the house?  Slightly easier than expected.

Of course, other things were a bit farther up or down that scale.  The first two nights home?  Much harder than expected.  Every night after that?  Much easier than expected.

That said, I want to briefly address something.  The most-often-heard phrase (for me at least) of the entire pregnancy was: “This is going to change your life forever.”  (Or some variation on that phrase.)  Two weeks into it, I would like to say that I really don’t think this is true.  There.  I said it.  The moment our son was born was a beautiful, awe-inspiring moment.  But I didn’t have a sudden, overwhelming urge to vote for McCain or decide that our VW Rabbit wasn’t safe enough or that I needed to start socking away more money every month.  This is not to say that my life is exactly the same anymore.  I’m not a dummy — I realize that we have a son now and that there is some added responsibility there, etc. etc. etc.  But it’s not like we didn’t know that.  It’s not like you go through the whole pregnancy thinking Oh, my life is always going to be EXACTLY LIKE IT IS RIGHT NOW even after the baby comes.  Maybe we were just well-prepared for this in the first place.  It isn’t like we impulsively traveled to exotic locations anyway.  It isn’t like we ever cavalierly dropped a couple grand on a TV or jumped out of airplanes for fun or even had large, frequent house parties.  Having a baby in the house just doesn’t seem (to me) to be that big of a lifestyle change.  And I think that if we do it right, we can keep doing things the way that we’ve been doing them — with some minor changes to procedure and some relaxation of Papa’s otherwise tendency toward rigid scheduling — without having to feel like we have sacrificed anything.

Which is not to say that things are exactly the way they were two weeks ago.  Some of the priorities that make up the cardinal directions on my internal compass do seem a bit realigned.  Those priorities were always there, it just seems like they have perhaps shifted a bit.  Like my personal magnetic north swung around a little.  Again, this isn’t anything drastic; these are feelings I’d always had about priorities that had always been there.  They are perhaps just slightly rearranged.  Spending the past two weeks with A. & H. has given me a chance to reflect on certain things and I’m beginning to think that I might need to line up some changes to ensure that I can live in a way that matches those priorities.

Maybe that’s what people mean when they say Oh, it’ll change your life forever.  But they never say it that way.

(NOTE: If you came here looking for updates about The Boy…  Well, A. has said she’ll be making a post along those lines soon enough.)

We spent a good portion of what would have been my first Father’s Day in the garden, tending our little 15’x30′ plot, helping our “green babies” get nice and big.  The idea is for them to bear fruit that becomes the first set of solids that our human baby eats.  Anyway…

It was a good day.  And A. got me a very nice card.  Sweetheart that she is.

And of all the photos we took today, the above seemed the most appropriate.  With the two fully formed blossoms hanging out in the background (just out of focus in the depth-of-field), waiting for the other one to burst forth from its little bud.

Here goes…

We are into June and the mere possibility of the baby coming in May has passed.  This is not all together bad as it was not all together something we were actively hoping for either.  The past week or so has been a flurry of activity and shuffled schedules and last minute tick-marks on checklists.  Etc.  Ever since our May 23rd midwife appointment and that news, well it has been a but hard to concentrate…

A. seems to be taking the anxiety and the nuance of all the past week in much better stride than I am.  My mind is full of intrusive thoughts every hour.  I bombard her with the text messages that certain family members are no doubt tempted to unleash as well.  (We thank them for their restraint though it feels like a mistake to have shared “that news” sometimes.)  That every woman’s tale is different only adds to my agitation.  There is no reliable reference point and no way of making even remotely accurate predictions.  Has there been any change since the last appointment?  Are things “imminent” or weeks away?  There is an endless stream of related questions.  And as such, we turn ourselves to distractions.  We bought a new camera.  We make trips to our garden.  We come up with all kinds of little “dates” to get ourselves out.  We saw the new Indiana Jones.  (It was great.)  We keep stuffing our meager little freezer with meals.

Through it all we have been dealing with the nagging feeling that “someone” is coming any day now.  (Or not.)  And unfortunately, we have also been dealing with the drama that is our downstairs neighbors.  Last weekend it was noise that went on well into the night…  Last night it was some fight that erupted out onto the street.  (We placed two calls to the police as we feared for the safety of the young woman downstairs; not to mention our own safety and the safety of our property.  We don’t need to put up with that shit.)  The whole thing got our respective blood pressures up and try as we might, it was very difficult to stay at all calm and collected through the whole thing.  What kind of people have fights and shouting matches?  A. lamented after things had started to die down that she felt guilty, like it was somehow bad to bring a baby home to a place where things like that happen.  I told her I refused to feel guilty — that this just raises the stakes and means that my already low threshold for stupid bullshit just had its bottom pulled out.  I don’t really give a shit if I get dirty looks or if they trash talk me on Facebook (I had a dream about that (don’t ask)) or whatever.  You want to think I’m the world’s worst neighbor?  Fine.  But if we all sleep a little safer and sounder at night, I’m counting up the interest on those thankful sentiments for when you get around to paying them.

I suppose that in a nutshell the sentiment around here is: we cannot wait to fucking move (but why should I change when you’re the one that sucks?)

So yes…  Pile all of that onto the bubbling cauldron of pre-existing nervousness that follows me around like an aggressive panhandler.  And just like it’s all weird how there is no reliable “Gold Standard” of what to expect with the physical parts of birth, it’s all weird what else has been like (or very UN-like) what people have told us to expect.  As we left the garden last night, A. admitted that she didn’t expect her mobility to be so restricted.  But she also didn’t expect to still have a smokin’ figure at 38 weeks either.  We did expect that there would be all kinds of unbearable excitement and enthusiasm from family members.  We didn’t expect that there would be so many people that would question or otherwise outright reject our wishes.  I’m sure I could come up with a dozen more examples if I tried…  But anyway: the plan for today is to put the last of the seedlings into the garden.  And then find more activities to distract us.