As Yet Untitled

What a baby and dog may look like. It seems to me that there is something of a great divide between people who love children and people who love their animals as if they were children. As someone who has two dogs, a cat, and a human child, I simply don't understand this. Personally speaking, giving birth to a human did not diminish my love for my four-legged furballs, and having the fluffy ones around has not in any way interfered with the growth and development of my baby. It has recently occurred to me that a big part of this might be because in many ways, raising my child has been a lot like raising a dog.  For instance:   What a baby's face looks like after totally destroying your world. 1. They go to the bathroom whenever, wherever Obviously you know about how babies use diapers. This is not really very different from a puppy who goes to the bathroom in his or her crate, or really anywhere in the house. The point being--as a pet parent or a human parent,...

Today I have been a mother for a month. It has taken me a long time to write this post, the post about my birth experience and my transition into motherhood. Most mothers, when recounting their birth, whether completely natural, totally medicated, or surgical, look back fondly on the experience. They will wax nostalgic about the pain and the sweat and the exhaustion, dreamily opining about the magical, miraculous moments when they first met their precious child. My birth experience was somewhat different. It was not magical. It was stark, clinical, and cold. I knew a week in advance what would be happening. My amniotic fluid had simply run out and the baby was simply out of room in my wonky, deformed uterus.  We woke up early on a Wednesday morning and checked into the hospital at 5:30am. It was chilly and I was shaking with nerves. I have always hated hospitals, medicine, and most of all, surgery. But surgery--the biggest surgery of my life--was the only way they wo...

Well, I am now nearing the end of my pregnancy, and there are several thoughts that I would like to share with the public at large. 1.  Although I said I never would, I broke down and took some maternity photos. And I am so glad I did. I am fortunate enough to have a professional photographer as one of my besties, and she agreed to come over for the day and snap all kinds of pictures of me and my bump. In between waiting for the light to be right, we watched Poltergeist II and ate brownies. This is the added benefit of being besties with your maternity photographer. So throughout this post I will be interspersing my favorites from the shoot. There are some really gorgeous shots here. 2. I would like to register my frustration with the attitude toward pregnancy in the world of academia. As some of you may know, I am currently seeking my master's degree in English. This semester, whenever I walk down the hallways I get odd looks, like, "What are you doing here? How can yo...