Does being logical make me horrible?

Disclaimer: This is a ranty, ragey post and my vocabulary choices reflect that mood. 

I'm a pretty peaceful person.  There are a lot of things I feel passionately about, but I'm generally pretty good at holding my tongue when it is appropriate to do so.  So good, in fact, that I managed to restrain myself from spewing three years' worth of insult all over the latest person to deserve it.  So I will spew it here.  Because I'm angry, I'm tired of it, and this is my fucking blog anyway.

She seemed so nice at first, sitting there in our doctor's waiting room.  Stroking her roundly pregnant belly, rocking a carseat with her toe, striking up a friendly conversation with the only other woman there.

"Are you pregnant?" she asked.  I told myself not to be offended by this, as we were in an OB/GYN waiting room and she probably wasn't calling me fat.  I told her no, I'm not.

"Do you have any kids?"  Yup, I have a three-year-old son.

"So are you trying to conceive?"  Okay, that's annoying, but this is no worse than what I hear on a near-daily basis, so I'll give her the standard answer.  No, we're happy with one.

"But... why?" she asked, looking horrified.  How to people not understand how inappropriate this is?  Did she ever consider that I am equally perplexed by her decision to have babies in rapid succession, but that I am too polite to show it?  I gave a tight-lipped half-smile and ignored the question.  It didn't work.

"Oh, your son is going to be so lonely!  Children are such a blessing.  I don't know what I would do without my kids.  My daughter is four, and she just loves her baby brother.  She's so excited about this new baby, too!"  This went on for a while, while I tried to figure out whether it would be more rude to get up and move across the room, or pull out my phone and immerse myself in Twitter.  

At this point, I was simmering.  She'd taken it further than most, but not as far as some.  I was leaving teeth prints in my tongue, and I was willing to keep doing so until the nurse came and rescued me.

Then she played her trump card:

"I just think it's really selfish to have just one."

To be crystal clear, this woman knows nothing about me.  She can assume I'm married due to my ring, but that's it.  She doesn't know if I am being abused.  She doesn't know if I had fertility problems.  She doesn't know if my family is destitute.  She doesn't know my background, my health, my circumstances, or even my mothering skills.  (What if I'm a shitty mom to start with?  Shouldn't you be glad I limited the impact of that shittiness?)  So I'm no longer simmering.  I am fuming.  

But I'm still biting my tongue (I'm good at it, remember), so I give her my standard they-won't-let-this-drop line: We can't really afford another child.

"Oh, nobody can.  It's never the perfect time to have kids, you just have to do it and know things will work out."

By now my brain is spewing out angry responses, which are stacking up behind my closed mouth and giving me a headache.  I want to say them.  I want to let it out, all the things I've wanted to say to every insensitive person who has pressed this issue with me for the past three years.  I briefly consider how good it would feel...

"And you call ME selfish?" I would say.  "People don't just automatically have money as they get older, you idiot. You have to work for it, plan for it, and save it.  And if I were spending every dime my husband or I could bring home on the needs of hordes of children, I wouldn't be saving.  Do you have any idea the financial burden you're laying at your children's feet as soon as they enter adulthood?  You're going to make your kids choose between not having a higher education and going $100K into debt, because you spent all the money you could have been saving on having more fucking kids.  Because the kids wanted them, not you!  Well, my kid wants ice cream every night.  He doesn't get to have it, because he has a mother who is rational enough to stick to her guns about what's best for him.  So don't let your preschooler make your family planning decisions, or don't blame your stupidity on that kid."

But I don't say it.  Instead, I wimp out and give another of my stock responses: I'm pretty terrible at being pregnant.  (If you knew me then, you know this is an understatement.)  It wouldn't be fair to my son to have a mom that was basically out of commission for nine months.  

"But every pregnancy is different!  I was so sick with my first.  I felt like I would throw up the whole first trimester."

This time, I do say what's on my mind: I actually did throw up, for 39 weeks.  Enough that they put me in the hospital and filled me up with tubes and drugs.  Enough that I took anti-nausea meds for chemo patients until the day he was born, and I STILL barfed every day.  I can't do that again.

She is undeterred.  "Well, I'm sure it wouldn't be that bad the second time."

Oh, well if she's sure....

Fortunately, the nurse came then and took me away.

This is a slightly more offensive version of a conversation that I have frequently.  At least once per week, and often with complete strangers.  Usually I shake my head and go on about my day, but this time it's stuck.  I can't get over the mad.  I am SICK OF IT.

Why on earth do people think it's okay to insert their opinions into my family's planning?  Would they do the same thing if I were making end-of-life decisions for a parent?  I'd wager not.  Would they think it's okay for me to make bold, uninformed, insulting comments regarding their decisions to have multiple children?  Definitely not.  So what is it about the specific choice to have only one child that turns people into meddling jerks?

People call me selfish when I explain that we get to do lots of fun things with Mikey that we would have to put off for several more years if we had another child.  Am I a bad person or a bad mom because I want to take my kid to Hawaii?

People make assumptions about our income level and blow off my concerns about money.  Can't they understand that we are able to live comfortably because of the way we budget?  Can they really judge me because I like our lifestyle and would like to continue it?

People assume, and often state, that I'm less of a "real" mother because I will experience each stage only once.  Horseshit.  I've changed the diapers, had the cracked nipples, smeared on the cocoa butter, lived the sleepless nights, chased away the bogeymen, weathered the terrible twos, played the hide & seek, perpetuated the Santa myth, worried over the fevers, kissed the owies, made the lunches, and felt the pain of separation outside the preschool.  I will not allow my experience to be diminished or disregarded simply because it wasn't repeated.

Perhaps we should add parents of only children to the shrunken list of people against whom discrimination is still okay in the U.S.: Smokers, obese people, nonbelievers, and parents who have only one kid.

What a ridiculous list.

When New Motherhood Meets Quackery

I hate being wrong.  Even more than that, I hate admitting when I'm wrong.  Not only do I hate the admission, I'm terrible at it and will avoid it whenever possible.  (Just ask my husband.)  So I hope you will appreciate my discomfort as I write this confession...

When my son was a few months old, he began teething.  It happened suddenly, and it appeared to cause him intolerable pain.  He wouldn't nurse and couldn't be comforted for more than a few minutes at a time, a heartbreaking situation for any parent.  Desperate to find relief for him, I picked up a bottle of Hyland's Homeopathic Teething Tablets.  As soon as Mikey would start to cry, I'd shove a few tablets into his mouth.  It seemed like magic - he would immediately stop crying.  Even better?  You can't overdose on homeopathy!  I could safely give him as many tablets as it took to soothe his pain!  At ten bucks per bottle, we must have gone through more than a dozen bottles during the course of his teething.  We had them in every bag, car, room, and sometimes our pants pockets.  I would attest to anyone who asked that this stuff worked.

My understanding of homeopathy at that point was limited.  In fact, I didn't understand it at all.  Now that I do, I shake my head in embarrassment at my behavior during those months.  I'll chalk it up to being a hormonal new mom, but in reality, it was entirely my failure to study something that I desperately wanted to be real.

Just in case you don't know, here's a rundown of homeopathy:

In 1796, German physician Samual Hahnemann came up with the "law of similars," on which homeopathy is based.  At the time, cinchona bark was used to treat malaria.  Hahnemann noted that cinchona bark tended to produce the same symptoms as malaria.  Homeopathy is founded on this observation.  It uses the principle of "like cures like."  For example, cayenne may be used as a treatment for fever, since cayenne and fever both cause sweating.  Pause and absorb that little tidbit of absurdity before we move on.

A homeopath will assess the patient's symptoms, and decide which "remedy" is appropriate.  The next step is to prepare the remedy.  During this process, a tiny amount of the "active" ingredient is placed into a comparatively huge amount of water.  This tincture is shaken in a very special way, including ten sharp whacks against an elastic substance, a process known as succussion.  After it is succussed, they take a tiny amount of the tincture and dilute it again into a large amount of water, then succuss again.  Then they do it again.  And again.  And again and again and again until all that remains is water.  Let me reiterate: all that remains is water.  It's JUST WATER.

Homeopathic remedies have been tested repeatedly, and have been found to contain NONE of the original "active ingredient."  When testing became available to prove this, the homeopaths formulated a response: Water has memory.  It can remember that long-lost drop of belladonna it used to contain.  Somehow, though, it manages to forget all the fecal matter it has carried.

If they are preparing a tablet, here are the additional steps: Pack together a bunch of little lactose tablets (sugar pills).  Take your homeopathic tincture and place a drop on each tablet.  Let it dry.  Tah-dah!  Homeopathic pills.  Even if water had magical memory and like actually did cure like, they have let all the magical water evaporate from the pills!  I haven't yet heard anyone say that lactose has memory.

To clarify the dilutions: If you look at the back of a package of homeopathic preparation, you will see a number followed by the letters C or X.  Hahnemann's C scale means diluting a substance to a factor of 100 at each stage.  A 2C dilution means diluting something to 1:100, then taking some of that diluted substance and diluting it to 1:100.  This works out to be one part of the diluted substance in 10,000 parts of diluent.  Hahnemann believed that a substance gets stronger the more it is diluted.  Most homeopathic remedies are diluted to 30C.  

At 30C, you would have to consume 10^34 gallons of water, or 10 billion times the volume of the Earth, to consume a single molecule of the original substance.

Oh, and that Oscillococcinum you can buy at CVS, right next to the real medicines as a cold remedy?  Duck liver diluted to 200C.  You do the math.

Anyone who takes a moment to understand the basic tenets of homeopathy can surely see the absurdity here.  Unfortunately, so few of us take that moment.  Our society is currently scrambling toward anything labeled as "natural," "organic," or "chemical-free."  Unfortunately, this has made us easy prey for charlatans, quacks, and crooks.  I was so desperate to find some relief for my son that I turned to something that is patantly ridiculous, and I believed that it worked.  In retrospect, of course it made him stop crying.  I was shoving pure sugar into his mouth.  It always makes me happy to have sugar in my mouth.  In fact, if I learned that making a certain noise would cause people to put sugar in my mouth, I'd probably make it a point to make that noise more often.  

No, I probably didn't cause him any harm with my actions.  I just wasted some money and made myself into somewhat of a fool.  But I am not okay with being foolish.  I live in a world in which a healthy dose of skepticism can be quite confrontational.  I think I have permanent bite marks on my tongue from all the time I spend trying not to offend people.  I understand that we must respect others' choices and beliefs, but the fact is that sometimes people believe things that are patently wrong.  I certainly did for a time.

Mama Bear Sees Red

You should meet my son, Mikey.  He's two and a half.  Somehow, about a year ago, Mikey did something amazing: he stopped being a vaguely humanish being with all the burden of a rowdy puppy and started being a real person.  Much to my delight, it turns out he's a genuinely cool person.  He's clever, confident, sensitive, and creative with a sharp wit and a hard head.  (I realize that all parents think these things about their kids, but a lot of them are wrong.  I'm not.)

Mikey has always had a rich imagination.  Perhaps it's a hallmark of an only child, or maybe it's just Mikey, but he's perfectly happy to play by himself.  As his vocabulary increases, Joe and I have become privy to the worlds being constructed in our boy's mind.  They are vivid and exciting and silly, comprised of all the miscellaneous bits of information that enter his understanding each day.  For me, it's a joy and a privilege to join Mikey in imaginaryland for a few hours each day.

About a month ago, I left town for a few days.  The boys celebrated my absence with pizza, beer (for Joe), and a DVD set of the Superman movies.  By the time I returned, Superman had Mikey's imagination in a ferocious grip.  Mikey insists on being called Superman.  If he had his way (he often doesn't) he would wear his Superman shirt and cape every day.  He carries his new Superman doll, calls his play tent the Fortress of Solitude, and asks to watch Superman at every opportunity.  He has memorized lines from the movies (current favorites: "That's my beat, Chief!" and "Bye bye, baby!") and runs through the house pretending to push down walls and rescue people from the crashed helicopter.

Joe and I haven't seen any reason to stop this behavior.  It's harmless, creative fun.  He wants to be called Superman?  Fine, we'll call him Superman.  Wants us to tie a blanket around his shoulders cape-style?  Groovy.  And last Sunday, when he decided that Joe and I would henceforth be known as Batman and Wonder Woman... well, I've always wanted that invisible jet.

It's just a phase, right?  

Mikey attends a private Montessori school, where he has thrived since day one.  Today, the lead guide in his school pulled Joe aside for a chat when he arrived to pick up our son.  On his way home, Joe called me to share.  Audibly shaken, Joe described how the (well-meaning, I'm sure) guide told him she believes Mikey may be showing signs of an identity disorder and that this Superman fixation must be stopped, lest it result in permanent damage to his identity.  She asked if there has been some major change or event in our home that may have resulted in Mikey's identity confusion.  Basically, she scared the shit out of him by convincing him that our preschooler has had some sort of psychotic break.

Through the red haze of my anger, I think I understand what's at the crux of this.  Mikey asks people to call him Superman, and twenty other kids get jealous and decide they want to be superheroes, too.  I completely understand how that would be disruptive to the school, and I would have no problem at all with her asking us to keep the Superman game at home.  But I am livid at the mere suggestion that this fantasy behavior indicates some sort of urgent psychological crisis.  I can't help but think that it would be far more damaging to a creative child to tell him to stop imagining, stop pretending. 

So now I'm asking.  Parents?  Teachers?  Opinionated people?  Am I overreacting here, or did this guide step over the line?