Baby & Pregnancy Books

For Moms/Dads and Soon-To-Be-Moms/Dads,

I hope we can share our lists of favorite pregnancy/baby books. I've read only a few so far, but the one I very much enjoyed was What's Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life, by Lise Eliot. I read it during my first pregnancy in April 2008, so I am planning to re-read it to remind myself of all the fascinating information the book contains. As the title indicates, the book focuses on the baby's brain development and discusses several studies that reveal how babies think at certain stages of their development. One of the interesting parts I remember is that in some of these studies, babies expressed their preferences by adjusting the speed at which they sucked on their pacifiers. By this method, the researchers learned that babies prefer to listen to songs they heard when they were in the womb and in particular, songs sung by their mothers, and to eat foods their mothers ate while pregnant. Absolutely fascinating.

So, I'll keep a running list of books I go through (with asterisks by books I recommend), and I hope you'll leave comments with books you found particularly helpful.

Pregnancy
Mayo Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy, by Mayo Clinic* - Standard and reliable book to guide you through pregnancy week-by-week, labor, and possible complications during pregnancy.
The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy, by Vicki Iovine* - Hilarious and sassy straight-talk on how to cope with pregnancy, including weight gain, sex during pregnancy, delivery, etc. She doesn't hold back on anything, and it's reassuring to hear it all from someone who's been through four pregnancies. (Note: Don't look to her book for medical advice. Check with your doctor on whatever she says.)
A Child is Born, Lennart Nilsson and Lars Hamberger -- Amazing photographs of the gestational process. Just a warning that some of the photographs may be TMI, but you'll see photos you would not have believed possible.

Post-Partum Issues
The Girlfriends' Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood, by Vicki Iovine* -- A much needed sanity check after delivering. When I was pregnant, I thought reading a whole book on caring for myself seemed overly self-indulgent. When I picked up this book after delivery, I realized how much I needed this book. I felt like I was overtaken by hormones, and this book helped me to learn to give myself a break and put my behavior into proper perspective. Highly recommended for all moms!
Operating Instructions, by Anne Lamott - Lamott's memoir of her mothering a colicky baby. Sometimes, it helps to read about another mom's journey to find the right perspective for yours.

Newborn Care
Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (8th ed.), by Benjamin Spoke and Robert Needlman - Reliable how-to-guide on caring for a newborn and children. The book tries to cover too much and is not as detailed as I would have preferred, but it was a good starter book on what I'm facing for the next few years.
The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer, by Harvey Karp - Karp argues that the baby's first 3 months after birth is really the fourth trimester and suggests ways to replicate the womb to comfort your baby. For this, he lays out five steps (or 5 s's): swaddling, side/stomach position, shhh sounds, swinging and sucking. The whole book could have probably been written as a 10 page pamphlet, but my friends swear by Karp's method. Some friends have said that the DVD is very helpful to watch to nail down the techniques.
Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, by Tracy Hogg*** - This book has THE BEST succinct advice on how to deal with your newborn when trying to put him/her to sleep. It also has sections on feeding, bathing, and playing. We used Hogg's advice to sleep train our baby, and by 3.5 months, he was sleeping 12 hours a night. I kid you not!
The No-Cry Sleep Solution, by Elizabeth Pantley - I did not read this book myself, but my husband did. We incorporated many of her helpful tips on what to do (i.e., establish a regular bed time early on) and not to do (i.e., rocking the baby to sleep or allowing him to fall asleep while feeding) while sleep training.
On Becoming Baby Wise, by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam - This book is apparently helpful for getting your baby on a schedule. I just perused this book to get a sense of a possible schedule for our baby, but we did not feel the need to have a strict schedule for little T so did not rely on this book too heavily.
The Nursing Mother's Companion, by Kathleen Huggins** - For anyone nursing, this book is invaluable. I first read the sections on what to expect when first starting to nurse, and believe me, you need someone to tell you what to expect because you have no idea. Your body goes through so many changes preparing to feed the little one, and one morning, you'll wake up to find your breasts raging out of control. After learning about the initial changes, I used it as a reference, and you may find yourself reaching for it every time you experience a plugged duct or heavens forbid, something worse. Very important book to have.
The Complete and Authoritative Guide Caring For Your Baby and Young Child, by American Academy of Pediatrics* - Our pediatrician gave us this book, and we used it as a bible during the first few months. It gives you a detailed description of what to expect each month of your baby's development.

Feeding
Super Baby Food, by Ruth Yaron** - This book has suggestions on what foods to first feed your baby, how to prepare them (she has an appendix on how to prepare each type of food, like vegetable, fruit, or cereal), what kinds of storage containers are helpful, what to look for in a high chair, etc. Fabulous book for wading through the initial stage of feeding solids.

Potty Training
Diaper Free, by Ingrid Bauer - A friend of mine gave me this book after she successfully potty trained her baby before age 1 by using the guidelines in this book. I am hoping to follow in her footsteps.

Baby Signing
Baby Signs Parent Kit, by The Baby Signs Institute** - This isn't just a book, but a class on how to teach your baby sign language. I took an intro class and received this very handy book, which contains a glossary as well as research on the benefits of signing. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn are the pioneers of baby signing and they run this institute. They have other books available on Amazon and other bookstores on how to teach your baby sign language.

Baby Development
What's Going on in There?, by Lise Eliot** - Fascinating studies of how the brain develops. Provides guidelines on how to take care of yourself during pregnancy and your child during his/her first few years to maximize the child's mental potential.
Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love, by Robert Karen** - Great introduction to attachment theory. Provides a historical overview of various parenting approaches that had been fashionable in the past. It makes you realize how little we know and how parenting can be one big social experiment - sometimes, to the detriment of the children.
The Wonder Weeks, by Hetty Vanderjit and Frans Plooij* - Apparently some weeks in a baby's development are more critical than others. Who knew. This book focuses on weeks 5, 8, 12, 19, 26, 37, 46, and 55 of a baby's growth and explains why the baby may be fussier during those weeks and what you can do about it. The book does a good job of explaining how the world looks through the eyes of a baby, although it is repetitive at times. I would also have appreciated a little more science behind their claims, but still, it is helpful to be alerted to certain stages in the baby's development.

Baby Gears
Baby Bargains, by Denise Fields* - I've been using this book as the bible on baby gears, following her guidelines on what to look for in cribs, strollers, car seats, etc. With all the choices out there, I'm finding the process of buying baby gears very daunting. The book is very educational on safety requirements, something we knew very little about before picking up this book, and provides good recommendations on different brands. We've only ordered the crib so far, since it takes about four months for delivery.

General Parenting
Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, by John Gottman** - Fabulous book about being more in tune with your child's emotional states. So much of what Gottman says makes common sense, but it takes reading this book to remind you how important emotions are in our lives -- and in our children's lives. I'm so glad I read this book.

Secret Identities

Here's an article I wrote for KoreAm about Secret Identities, an anthology of Asian-American superhero graphic novels. The coolest thing about writing this article was interviewing a bunch of Asian-Americans involved in the media and the arts, like Michael Kang who wrote and directed The Motel and West 32d, actor Parry Shen who starred in Better Luck Tomorrow, writer Jeff Yang who was the editor of A Magazine and now writes a column for the San Francisco Chronicle, actress Lynn Chen from Saving Face, and many others. Another cool thing was getting a chance to talk to these Asian-Americans who are doing something to change the stereotypes out there. Kudos and a special thanks to the editors of Secret Identities!

Little Moccasins

Last Friday, we stopped by a shop in Hanalei called Ola's. We were drawn in by the shop's glass display, given Jeff's interest in glass blowing. When we were in Venice a couple of years ago, we spent three back-to-back days in Murano so that Jeff could check out all the glass shops and factories there. This time, we emerged not with glass blowing tools, but a pair of little brown moccasins that we spotted among the touristy chotchkies. They are completely useless and impractical, a fitting purchase for a first time mother. I plunked my credit card down gleefully, holding back the urge to blurt to the store clerk, "It's for our little boy."

For the next few days, I took the moccasins with me wherever I went. If I went from the bedroom to the living room, they went with me, where I laid them down a foot to my left on the couch. When I went to sip my papaya, orange, and guava juice -- or pog, as they call it in Hawaii -- on the balcony, I sat them on the stand next to my book. I sometimes rested them on my belly, to try to imagine the feet of the little guy and the rest of his body protruding from the soft folds of leather. When we packed our stuff to return to SF, I secured them in the front pocket of my backpack so that they wouldn't be crushed by other things.

These shoes are the first and only purchase we've made for the little guy so far. We didn't want to start preparing before the CVS, and once we received the CVS results, we thought it made sense to wait for the spina bifida test. We had our spina bifida ultrasound on May 15th, and everything seems to be progressing smoothly. It was amazing to watch the technician press her sensor in various angles to point out his heart chambers and his kidney, and to hear that that he has no club foot or cleft lips. We took her word for it since all we saw were grainy images of a big head and boney hands flowing back and forth as if he were giving us the royal wave. And him moving and twitching and shaking, as if he were doing the jitter bug. We went in the following Monday because they needed one more photograph, and he decided to do a face plant just as the technician tried to capture a decent image for us to take home.

Now that the tests are behind us, we are now letting ourselves look forward. We have a little over four months left to read all the books we want to read, to buy whatever the little guy needs, and to become the parents we are becoming. We are not ready yet, and I suspect we'll never be ready. But we hope to be less un-ready.

In this process, I marvel at the strangeness of it all. Strange, not in a bad way, but in a way that feels foreign, even though this is one of the most common experiences in human history. And in a way that is mind-boggling and incredible and unreal. To have another creature inside of me, moving this way and that, causing little flurries in that vicinity of my body usually reserved for mundane digestion. I went to my first pre-natal yoga class a couple of weeks ago, and the instructor kept repeating, "Remember! You are your baby's first home." Now, what prepares you in life to become a dwelling?

When I was registering for sixth grade, I remember my dad asking me if I wanted to sign up to play the clarinet in band. I had no idea what a clarinet was, but I said ok. When I started mastering how to blow into that thing without squeaking, I remember suddenly realizing that I was playing the real thing. That this clarinet was the same real clarinet that the bearded guys in professional orchestras played. Me, playing a real clarinet.

I'm a long way from sixth grade, but that's how I feel these days. That I'm about to be entrusted with this little guy. Me, a mother to a real live baby.

Holy shit.

Another Week

The last time we were in Kauai, we spent most of our week in Hanalei, which is along the North Shore. One of our favorite lunch spots was a burger joint called Hanalei Gourmet. One afternoon, after waiting on the outside porch for a table, I suggested that we just sit at the bar. As soon as we sat on the stools, I saw Pierce Brosnan sitting less than five feet away at the end of the bar, taking a big bite out of his burger. I nudged Jeff to look in that direction as I tried to say discreetly out of the corner of my mouth, "Pierce Brosnan's sitting over there." The whole time, Jeff kept saying, "Did you see that guy with six toes?" We kept talking over each other until I finally said, "What, you saw a guy with six toes?" and Jeff finally looked over in Pierce's direction while pretending not to look.

We're off to Kauai again tomorrow for a little vacation. I'll be back here in little more than a week. I can't promise any interesting tales from the trip, but we'll keep our eyes open for Pierce and the six-toed guy. If nothing else, we'll come back with a tan.

Until then, enjoy!

To Wear or Not to Wear

[Cross-posted on Kimchi Mamas.]

I was the only one in my family who didn't throw her shoes on the pile behind the front door. As soon as they entered, the other members of my family took their shoes off and chucked them where they landed. The left pair of my mom's florescent yellow plastic slipper often sat between my dad's brown strapped slippers that he had owned since Korea and his tennis shoes, whose back flaps had been permanently folded down. My sister's sandals from the past summer were piled up on top of the sandals from the years past. My mother's pumps gathered dust next to her various pairs of $8 black, thick-soled, orthopedic-like shoes that she picked up from a Chinese vendor under the bridge on Flushing's Main Street. My brother's assortment of sneakers -- all of which looked the same but served some mysteriously distinct functions -- provided additional heft to the pile.

Unlike them, I kept my shoes in my own closet. The ones out of season, like my winter boots, were in their original boxes stacked in the back row of my tiny closet. The ones in current use, like my sturdy pair of rubber-soled black leather shoes that I purchased in the Village, sat prominently in front row, along with my favorite summer sandals and running shoes.

My sister always wondered what it meant, that I kept my shoes separately, in my room, when the rest of the family kept theirs in the front foyer. "Maybe you're more Americanized," she said. I wondered what it meant. In a family that had Korean passports, I was the only one who got naturalized in the 90s, and for the longest time, I was the only "American" in the family. We joked that we would have to stand in two separate customs lines when we traveled to Korea. If the family got deported, I would have a right to stay. And when everyone else had Korean names, I adopted the name "Christine" when I was in 6th grade, because I was tired of my teachers calling me "Shin," until I decided in college that it was silly to be called by some random name.

As soon as I moved out of my parents' house, I started wearing my shoes all day long, in and out of the house. It mattered little to me. I never sat on the floor, and even if I did, was it any worse than sitting on the grass outdoors? I saw no need to distinguish between public and private spaces, the same way I saw no need to keep our family secrets secret. My mom's constant refrain, "Don't talk about this outside of the family" never made sense to me, especially when she confided about things that would have been better shared with a friend, not a daughter.

When Jeff moved in with me about two years ago, we didn't need to discuss whether to wear our shoes indoors. That's how he lived, and that's how I lived.

A couple of months ago, a friend stopped by our place for dinner. As we were talking about my pregnancy, she asked if we would keep wearing shoes in the house once we have our kid.

"They lick everything off the floor, you know," she said.

Suddenly, I noticed bits of dirt scattered over our hardwood floor, the dried out crimps of torn leaves, tufts of Sherlock's fur. I pictured our precious little baby crawling bare hands and legs where our shoes and Sherlock's paws had trodden. And licking the floor where Sherlock had licked it the same morning, as he did daily. And I thought of the times when Sherlock had stepped in his own pee during one of our many walks.

That night, I turned to Jeff. "We have to stop wearing shoes in the house! The baby's going to lick everything off of the floor."

He looked at me as if I suggested burning the place down.

"We're fine," he said. "We wore shoes in the house when I was growing up, and look how I turned out."

I brought it up every day for the next three weeks, and Jeff always responded, "Oh, the baby will be just fine..."

One morning, as I was leaving the house, I noticed water running out of a sewer line in front of our house. I ran back in to grab Jeff and asked him to call someone to fix it before I rushed off to my meeting.

When I pulled up in front of the house later that afternoon, I noticed that the water was no longer running. But there were bits of dried-out tissue paper spread all over the sidewalk about five feet down from where I had parked. When I walked into the house, Jeff told me about the horrors he had seen bursting out of the sewer line that morning.

"The plumber pushed back as much as he could, and the rest he just washed down the street."

For the next two weeks, we crossed the street and walked on the other sidewalk. We avoided parking down slope from our house. We were grateful every time it rained. And we took our shoes off when we entered the house. We also agreed to stop wearing shoes in the house for good when the baby shows up.

Community Building

This past weekend was our bat mitzvah weekend. A dinner on Friday night, the ceremony on Saturday morning at 9 followed by a mini-reception, a party at the country club that night, and a brunch the morning after. The bat mitzvah girl is the second daughter of one of Jeff's college friends. Because several of his college friends were flying in from the East Coast and Southern California, Jeff rsvp'ed yes to each one of the events.

Of course, come the day before the series of events and we are wondering why we had signed up for all of them. At the last minute, we even wondered if we could skip the bat mitzvah ceremony. We had attended the ceremony two years ago for their oldest daughter, and all I remember is the singing and the Torah reading -- that seemed to go on endlessly.

So I don't know if it was due to my hormones or what, but I found myself deeply moved by the ceremony this time. During the first few minutes of the ceremony, Taylor's grandparents stood on the podium with her. Looking her in the eyes, they each took turns to tell her how special she is, how much she means to them, and how much they love her. There was so much love in their faces, and they embraced her with such affection and warmth. After the grandparents, her parents did pretty much the same thing, doting all their attention on this 13 year-old. Followed by her siblings, her aunts and uncles, her friends, her parents' friends, and other relatives. All in front of a community of people there to celebrate this young woman's life.

It made me think we should all have a bat/bar mitzvah. No matter what age.

And it also made me think we should all live surrounded by a community of people who love and dote on us. It didn't seem to matter too much in my late 20s when I decided in a matter to days to move out to San Francisco where I knew no one. I figured I would make new friends. And if needed, I could fly home to see my parents in New York a few times a year. I thought of the freedom of starting anew, where no one knew my past and I could be my best self, as I envisioned it, without some reminder of the person I had been or was supposed to be. And I didn't have to be subject to my parents' constant nagging to get married when I hardly found it to be a matter of my sole effort.

For the past ten years or so, I've lived that life and have more or less savored it. There were a handful of days when I considered moving back to New York, but they were a small exception. Over time, I built up a network of great friends and found a sense of belonging -- to the extent you can in our culture when you haven't nurtured roots in a religious or ethnic grouping.

While Jeff and I have spent some time thinking about the kind of school we'd like to send our child or the type of neighborhood in which to raise him, I haven't spent much time thinking about building a community. I assumed it would be a natural by-product of the friends we have and continue to make along the way. But watching 13-year-old Taylor surrounded by her grandparents, aunts, and uncles, I envied her world. And wondered what I could do to entice my parents to move to the Bay Area.

A Need for a Safety Device

[Please be warned that some readers found the article I linked below very difficult to read.]

Here is one of the most heart-wrenching articles I've read in a long time. Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post wrote about the prosecution of parents who inadvertently left their babies in the backseat of the car. There was a story about it in our local paper a couple of years ago when a father from Benicia, who had changed his routine that morning, completely forgot about the sleeping baby in the backseat as he went into work. In that case, the DA chose not to prosecute, thank goodness, saying that the father was obviously distraught and that it was a devastating mistake. My heart goes out to these parents. Even as you pray that something like that won't happen to you, I can see how it can. Not all actions are a matter of will. Sometimes, it's a matter of how the brain functions. Instead of spending so much effort prosecuting these tormented parents, maybe the energy can be spent on implementing a safety device in the baby seats to protect both the babies and the parents.

Dressing Myself

We're attending a bat mitzvah this weekend. It's a bat mitzvah, but apart from the religious significance, more like a wedding without the groom - a ceremony flanked by a dinner the night before, a party at the country club on the evening of the ceremony, and a brunch the morning after. I have nothing to wear to any of these events.

Until this past weekend when a couple of my girlfriends brought me bags of their old maternity clothes, I had two maternity pants and a couple of loose tops. Between those and my baggy pants, I've managed to get by, especially since I'm not going into an office these days. For more formal occasions, I had a dress and a jacket that I had from my chubbier days, which I thought worked well until my mom saw me last week and commented that I looked rather dated in them. Suddenly, I realized she was right.

I've gained about nine pounds so far with this pregnancy. Given that I'm in week 18, I think that's pretty reasonable. But that's not counting the 20 pounds that I gained with my prior pregnancies and failed to shed after my miscarriages despite my regular visits to the gym.

None of these pounds has come gracefully. I look at women who expand only around their waists while skipping down the street in their skinny legs and high heels, and I wonder why I wasn't born to be one of those creatures. Instead, I'm large everywhere. My face has expanded, my arms, fingers, thighs, butt. I look at photos of myself when Jeff and I got married a year and a half ago, and I miss that body.

Viewing myself in a full length mirror at the department store is not a happy experience. I went to Macy's a few weeks ago to try to find something decent to wear, and I was mortified to find nothing fitting the way they used to -- or even anywhere close. When I found myself reaching for an extra large, I felt compelled to hide the size tag.

I never enjoyed looking at myself in the mirror. Throughout most of my teens and 20s, I remember looking at myself and wondering why any boy would want to date me. I didn't feel comfortable in my skin until my late 20s. I think a part of it has to do with having developed very quickly at a young age. In grade school, I was often the tallest kid in my class, although I leveled out at 5' 6". When I was in first and second grades in Korea, my teachers paired us up after lining us in height order. I was often the odd girl out, trailing at the end. My mom remembers me running home crying that I didn't have a partner.

I tell myself that it's only for another five months -- and that I have many more inches to expand until this little guy shows up. That I shouldn't even think about this until late October. And I'd be willing to gain a hundred pounds if it ensured his safe arrival. But I have to learn to stop treating my pregnancy as a weight gain -- and hiding my belly as if it were excess fat. If anyone has any magic tricks for dealing with that, I'd love to hear some ideas.

This morning, Jeff suggested that I sign up for a pre-natal yoga class. I suddenly realized the brilliance of that idea. Not only will I be getting some much needed exercise, I am bound to surround myself with women with body shapes like mine. Maybe I will see the physical glory of this experience more clearly in their bodies than I see in mine.

Sherlock

When we go out, we usually leave Sherlock in the backyard.

The backyard is a mess and completely overtaken by weeds. We tried to hire some help last year, but the guy was a disaster. He usually showed up 30-40 minutes late, stoned, and pretended to do some work by hacking away some healthy plants while never dealing with the weeds. When I told him that it wasn't working out, he said, "Yeah, I find you difficult to work with too."

We interviewed another company, but the lady who stopped by said she couldn't deal with dog poop and would fine us if she stepped in any poop. Unfortunately, shit production happens to be Sherlock's specialty, and the odds of us cleaning up all of the poop before she showed up each time seemed unlikely.

Since then, the backyard has had to fend for itself.

But in the midst of the chaos, there are some lovely plants that have managed to withstand the weeds. I have roses in bright yellow, deep pink, white, and red -- all the size of large navel oranges -- growing in the front right corner. I also have some lovely calla lilies and fuchsia to the left. And an abutilon megaptamicum that I picked up at a flower show a couple of years ago.

The most visible is a row of poppies growing in the front tier of the yard. The side of our house facing the backyard is all windows, and whenever we have guests, the first thing they notice is the yard. The poppies rest eye-level when we sit on our couch, and their bright colors in various shades in the forefront of the yard command the most attention.

The couple of weeks ago, we had a few friends over for a friend's baby shower. As we were cleaning the yard a few days before they showed up, I thought, well, at least the poppies will be in bloom by the time they show up. Most of the poppies had buds on the verge of blooming, and I figured by the time people showed up, their beautiful colors will be adorning our yard. I pruned all the leftover stems from the prior bloom and watered them thoroughly.

The morning of the event, Jeff and I went out back to clean the dog poop. All of a sudden, I noticed that all of the poppy stems were budless. They were standing straight up, as if the flowers should have been on their end, but they were naked. All 20 or so buds appeared to have been bitten off. I wondered if some bird ate them, although that had never happened before. I mentioned it to Jeff, and he asked if there were bits of the bud that were left over. Nope, they were bitten off clean.

He paused, then looked at Sherlock, then back at the flowers.

"Sherlock, did you eat them?"

Sherlock, eyes popping wide, tilted his head to the side and wagged his tail.

Sherlock has had his heydays of attacking the yard, but that was before I met him. As a pup, he had a list of offenses on his rap sheet, including tearing apart the drip system, flooding the backyard, and swallowing a malibu light bulb that came out intact on the other end. But now, at the mature age of 6, we figured he had outgrown such dalliances. When we leave him outside these days, he seems to spend most of his time either sleeping in his little house or sunbathing on the steps.

About a week ago, I saw a slew of new poppy buds growing.

Yesterday morning, as I was eating my cereal, I looked out and suddenly realized that all the buds had been bitten off again. I called to Jeff to come look. There were about 30 stems, sticking straight up, holding nothing.

We wondered why these buds were attacked when all the other plants were left intact. Then we wondered about the day before when Sherlock had been unusually sluggish.

Could it be that we have an addict in the family?

The Law Thing

During the last week at Georgetown Law, right after our last final exam, a group of us sat around a table at the Cheesecake Factory. Someone asked, "How long do you see yourself doing the law thing?"

We had just spent the past three years in classrooms, working toward our JDs. We had each invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I had accumulated a $90K debt. We had passed many nights at the library, preparing outlines, stressing over exams, pouring over the Bluebook. After all that, each of us had been lucky enough to secure positions with big law firms in different cities around the country.

Despite that, the responses were almost uniform. "No more than three." "Two years tops." Not ten, not the rest of our lives. Only two or three.

No one wondered how that made sense. To spend three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars toward a career of two, three years? Instead, we all nodded matter of factly.

I was the last in the circle. I too didn't think to question it. I had no idea about my future, so I just said, "I guess two."

Then one of the guys turned to me, pointed his finger, and said, "I give you no more than one!"

I wondered why he singled me out for just one year.

Well, it turned out to be more than one. More than two or three. It took three years to pay off my debt alone. Then another few to dawdle. Then a few more to talk myself into staying with the well-paying career in which I had invested so many years.

By the time I was fired, most of my friends had already left big law firms. Many had in-house positions. A few went into government, another few to academia. A couple of others were floundering visibly -- although almost all of my friends had wondered quietly at one point or another what the hell they were doing and how much longer they could do the law thing. Only one or two made it to partnership.

These days, I find myself meeting with friends who are starting their own shops. We wonder why it seemed so daunting to move on. Why we wrung our hands so many times wondering what we should do next. What it meant to have our self-esteem tied to a big corporate name. When a friend announces, "She works at Google" as her eyes enlarge and that knowing look appears, I now notice.

I'm now on the other side of that world that seemed to represent a sense of security. It had to happen sooner or later. And it's a relief to find that it's not so bad over here.

Miscarriage Survey

If you have miscarried in the past six months, please take this survey being conducted by Lisa Rosenzweig, a doctoral student at Columbia University. This survey is designed to help medical and mental health professionals provide better support to women who have miscarried. I feel that miscarriages are far too often treated as non-events, and attitudes need to change. This can make a difference.

Thanks to Lisa for tackling this issue. Please see the intro from Lisa below.

(If the link above does not work, please cut and past this url:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=VCaiTA9Wo6w60W8HA0QxSA_3d_3d)

* * *
Everyone has a unique experience with miscarriage and many find help and support through websites like this one. Unfortunately, little is known about women's experiences of support and how this may affect responses to miscarriage, and so I invite you to participate in my dissertation research study examining women’s experiences following a miscarriage. Although there is no direct benefit to you, survey results may help healthcare providers better understand and meet the needs of women following miscarriage. This online survey takes approximately 15-20 minutes and is open to women who have miscarried a wanted pregnancy in the previous 6 months who are 18 years of age or older, living in the United States, and involved in a relationship with a significant other. Participants are eligible for a raffle for a $50 American Express gift certificate. For more information, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Lisa Rosenzweig
Teachers College
lsr2106@columbia.edu

Susan Boyle

I don't usually comment on pop culture since I'm always behind or completely clueless, but the other day, someone sat me down to watch Susan Boyle's YouTube video. Since then, I've watched it no less than 30 times. Not only because Les Miserables is one one of my favorite musicals. Something about that lady standing in front of an eyeball-rolling audience and belting out her talent is strangely appealing. And watching the judges' faces transform.

There's a slightly righteous side of me that says, She showed them! Why do they even think appearances are correlated to singing? But a larger part of me feels so inspired by her. She could have told herself that she's 47, who cares to see some middle-aged woman sing, what are the odds of being discovered at this point, and why even bother? And fears of being judged by a hostile audience could have easily kept her at home.

If I were to project all my fears onto her, I could see myself ruing the years I had to spend looking after my mother, rebuking myself for letting the pounds creep on and for having passed up my youth. And I can easily imagine myself slowly caving into myself, forcing myself to accept that this is my lot in life, and becoming a little crotchety in the process.

Maybe in her private moments, she fretted about the years that passed - or the opportunities she missed. Maybe she had fears up to her ears. Maybe others had to cajole her to sign up for the audition. But whatever happened, she did it. And that is so damn inspiring. Good for her.

CVS Results

We received our CVS results on Thursday. Everything is normal. And it's a boy.

We are so relieved. Now, we have to have the baby tested for spina bifida, and once we are cleared of that, we can really start breathing.

We started thinking of names. And pulled out the mound of books I had bought during my first pregnancy. And reviewed the To Do List to get ourselves ready for the little guy. And even bought a pregnancy magazine. I hear it has the powers of a talisman.

Notice

Hi, Everyone,

Thanks for stopping by. I'll be out of town this week, so I'll be back here sometime after 4/11. Hope you have a great week!

Shinyung

CVS

When we went in last week for our CVS, the doctor couldn't perform the procedure because of the position of the placenta. They just did an ultrasound and assessed the risks based on a blood test and the measurement of the baby's nuchal translucency. The odds look incredibly good: just one in 1400 chance of having down's syndrome and one in 4000 of having trisomony 8 or 13.

We went back in this afternoon for the CVS. The doctor who met with us today was the same doctor who was supposed to perform the CVS last November when we found out that the baby had died. He remembered us and greeted us with the warmest smile, a pat on the arm, and a hearty, "Looks like you're doing much better today!" The CVS was quick and painless, although my heart seemed to stop when we saw the catheter probe so close to the baby. It'll take about a week to get the results. In the meantime, I get to lie in bed for the rest of the day, bug Jeff if I need anything, and catch up on my old New Yorker issues. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon...

A Whole Fish for Breakfast

[Previously posted on Kimchi Mamas.]

In my early 20s, I used to think it was important to marry a Korean. Not that I was particularly attracted to Korean men. I wasn't. And even though their incessant harping weighed down on me, it wasn't only because my parents wanted me to bring home a Korean boy with an advanced degree and the perfect Korean family.

Mainly, it was because I couldn't see how a non-Korean could fit into our family.

For decades, our family of five had lived as if we were stranded on an island. We had no relatives in the US. My parents had very few friends. We no longer attended church. The time they didn’t spend at our dry cleaners was passed snoozing in front of a TV. We didn't have family activities apart from eating. We hadn't taken a family vacation since the mid-80s.

In our relative isolation, we had our own way of doing things. On Thanksgiving, we didn't carve the turkey. After tearing off the drumsticks and the wings, my mom piled random chunks of the bird onto a dish. Once we shredded it further with our chopsticks, we chased turkey bites with kimchi and other banchan. For regular meals, we ate things like pressed pigs' ears, oxtails, and various roots that we couldn’t name in English. We often ate the same things day after day. We double dipped with our chopsticks. On birthdays or Christmas, we didn't always exchange gifts in nicely wrapped boxes. Sometimes, we forgot to celebrate each other's birthdays -- or put them off until the timing was more convenient.

There was also the language issue. My mom doesn’t speak English. When we sat down to dinner together, the children spoke English to each other. To our parents, we spoke Korean, the only language they spoke with each other. Often, we ate without speaking at all. Silences were particularly noticeable on the few occasions we ate out. I longed to have engaging conversations about politics and current affairs, books, anything -- rather than the often repeated "eat this, eat that, don't eat too quickly" that came out of our parents' mouths.

I didn't think of us as a normal family. At least not the kind that seemed to exist out there. I didn’t know how a stranger could fit into our fold. Much less a non-Korean stranger who didn’t have parents like mine. What would he think? How would he communicate with my mother? What would he think of our eating habits?

More than anything, I didn’t want an outsider entering our family and judging my parents the way “Americans” often seemed to. It was bad enough when a contractor turned to me for interpretation even when my dad was speaking English. Or when a white couple passed us as we were eating kimbap on one of our infrequent outings to a Long Island beach, and the lady stopped to point her finger at our lunch as she exclaimed, “Look, Bob, they’re eating sushi!” Or when our store customers slowed down their speaking, simplified their vocabulary, and increased the volume when speaking to my mom.

I can’t remember all the incidents that made me clench my teeth and cross my arms. All I remember is the feeling that our family’s small haven should be protected against outsiders who couldn’t possibly understand. Not that I thought of all outsiders as racists or malicious people. We just had different backgrounds, and I couldn’t imagine others understanding us in our own light, against our own backdrop of social and cultural norms, without processing us through the prism of American life.

Most of all, I think I was worried that if I introduced a “foreigner” into our home, I would see my parents more through his eyes. I already caught myself doing it when we dealt with store customers. When my mom spoke to a customer, her accent seemed unusually pronounced. And the three or four layers of shirts and sweaters she usually wore to keep warm appeared mismatched and shabby. Her hair needed touch up and her shoes needed cleaning. My dad’s emphatic English, usually articulated as if he were delivering the Gettysburg Address even during normal conversation, made him sound like a caricature at times. Sure, that’s how they appeared now that we lived in America, but the least I could do was protect them on our side of the threshold.

And I wanted my future husband to be able to see them as they really were. To be able to laugh with us when my mother ran out of the bathroom covering her nose at the stink of her own fart. Or to understand why my father so often repeated his stories about the time he had to give up his valedictorian position for that kid from a rich family. To understand that how they appeared here was a distortion of a kind.

In my late 20’s, I gave up this idea of meeting a Korean man. Maybe because I met more than my share, and I realized that I was scared of becoming that Korean daughter-in-law who cuts fruit symmetrically or plays the piano. Maybe because when I met a Korean-American guy who had an investment bank internship on his resume followed by Harvard and Wharton degrees, I saw a failure of imagination and originality rather than his hard work – something I feared in myself. But more than anything, it was probably because I was no longer living at home and I felt freer to live my life without trying to make everything fit into one big jigsaw puzzle.

When I first introduced Jeff to my parents, I wasn’t sure what to expect. He’s not Korean and doesn’t speak the language. The conversation was stilted at times, and my mom spent most of the lunch smiling and nodding along. At one point in the car, my mom reached forward, tapped him on the arm, and said, “Jeff, you learn Korean. I’m too old to learn English.” Jeff just smiled and nodded.

A few months later, we visited them for a few days in their Long Island home. After making fun of my second grade school picture, in which I bore a remarkable resemblance to the cartoon character Nancy, Jeff made himself at home. The following morning, he didn’t even flinch when my mom served him a whole fish for breakfast. And even though he hates fighting fish bones, he worked his way through the whole damn thing, telling my mom how delicious it was. And I was ready to give him a thousand kisses.

No one thinks about the love that comes with a whole fish prepared for breakfast. But I do. I thought about it when my mom asked me over the phone a few weeks later why I didn’t prepare some of that fish Jeff liked so much. I think about it when Jeff orders a cod fillet at our favorite Italian restaurant. When I see him make room for us – and for my parents – in our lives, as we plan for our future.

Nowadays, all the cultural hodge-podge that preoccupied me in my 20s no longer seems so confusing. And I am relieved that I wasn't foolish enough to try to force everything to fit together when I didn't know any better.

Professional Advice

Maybe I would have reacted differently if we hadn't watched Michael Moore's Sicko on Friday night.

On Saturday, I woke up bleeding. It was a very small amount. I looked it up in my Mayo Clinic guide, and it advised calling a doctor if the bleeding continued past 24 hours. Jeff and I decided not to worry about it unless it got worse. This past Thursday's ultrasound showed the little thing looking perfectly fine. And when I had some spotting two weeks ago, we rushed in for an ultrasound only to find out that all was ok.

On Sunday morning, I was bleeding again. I called my doctor's hotline and spoke to a triage nurse who asked me to call back if I started passing clots the size of a plum. I tried to rest, but when I used the restroom again, I appeared to be bleeding more. And this time, the blood looked fresh, as if I had some open wound somewhere, instead of the brownish color I had been seeing earlier. My first miscarriage started with a small streak of fresh blood in mid-afternoon. By 3am the following morning, I was dropping blood in buckets. I couldn't bear the thought of going through that process again -- sitting on the toilet, crying as my body purged itself, and feeling so out of control. I assumed that if I were already miscarrying, there was nothing the doctor could do. But she could at least help me cut the process short.

So I called the hotline again and spoke to another triage nurse. I explained that I was bleeding more, and I wanted to go in for an ultrasound. She asked me how much I was bleeding. I said that it wasn't very much but it now looked fresh, and I was concerned given my past two miscarriages at about the same stage in my pregnancy. She advised me against going into the emergency room since I was not bleeding enough. I asked her what harm it would do to just go in for a quick checkup to make sure the baby was ok.

She responded, "We have our protocol, and we don't advise you to go in unless you are filling more than one pad an hour or passing clots the size of plums." She advised me to lie in bed for the rest of the day.

I then asked her, "Do you know what is causing the bleeding? Can you tell me if this is normal?"

She responded, "No, Ma'am, we don't know the cause and we certainly wouldn't say it's normal."

I said, "Well, if you don't know what's causing the bleeding, then how do you know that bed rest would help?"

She simply repeated that that was the protocol.

I then explained that my first miscarriage started with a small amount of blood, and by that evening, I was miscarrying. Waiting until I was bleeding more to see a doctor didn't seem to make sense.

But she kept insisting that I rest in bed and not go to the emergency room.

I responded that I was going to go in and that I wasn't taking her advice. Then, she kept repeating, "Ma'am, that is not my advice. You would be going in against my advice."

I asked her what difference that made. Would going against her advice mean that insurance would refuse to cover my emergency visit? Would doctors refuse to see me?

She said, "No, maam, that's not what I'm saying. It's just our protocol, and I'm supposed to call ahead if we are sending someone."

I finally got fed up and said, "Well, I'm going in. Thank you for your help." Then I hung up.

When Jeff and I arrived at the CPMC emergeny room, there were two patients waiting. We waited for less than 20 minutes, and a nurse set us up in a room. She explained that the ultrasound in the emergency room wasn't very clear, but the doctor would be in shortly. When the doctor appeared in less than 15 minutes, he quickly performed an ultrasound. On the screen, the baby appeared alive and well, and we saw the little heart pumping away.

I asked the doctor if I needed to stay in bed for the rest of the day. He shook his head and said, "Don't lift anything heavy. Don't climb Mount Tam today. Otherwise, you're fine."

I could have spent the whole day lying in bed, fearful that I was miscarrying, reading everything on the web on bleeding during pregnancy, and counting the minutes until I could call my regular doctor on Monday morning. Instead, I spent the rest of the afternoon at my friend's baby shower, celebrating her new arrival. Sometimes, it helps not to listen to a professional.

Hoping

I'm in my 12th week. The first one died on the first day of the 12th week. The second had already died at nine weeks and three days, even though we didn't know it until we went in for our CVS on week 12. So technically, this is the furthest I have come with any pregnancy.

Last week, we rushed into the hospital for an ultrasound after I had some spotting. Seeing just a spot of blood takes me back to that first night when everything gushed out, when I continued to drain in buckets until the D&C the next afternoon.

When we went in this past Monday, the doctor first tried to find the hearbeat with a doppler because the ultrasound room was in use. She slathered my belly with some jelly and pressed down the wand. She moved it around and around, and we silenced ourselves to hear the heartbeat. We heard static, irregular beat that abruptly ended, more white noise. After 30 seconds, she said, "This is torture. Let's move to the other room."

In the ultrasound room, the image popped up and much to our relief, we saw the little thing moving around, flashing its heartbeat. We were stunned by how big it looked. We had never seen the fetus past eight or nine weeks. Those had been the size of a nickle. This guy or gal looked the size of a hand, and we could see its legs kicking mid-air.

Walking down the street later that day, I passed a little girl carried by her mom. I realized that I had stopped imagining our fetus as a baby. I stopped thinking about the little outfits and the crib. I just focused on seeing its heartbeat from one ultrasound to the next. I had forgotten that it's supposed to grow into a little baby we would carry around like that mom on the street.

Tomorrow is my CVS. Despite everything that has happened, we are hopeful. Sometimes, hope can make you feel like a sucker. But we've been suckers before.

The Visit

“Come back here.”

The guard motions with her wand. Her hair is pulled back so tightly that her face stretches like a taut balloon.

“Who, me?” I look around to see if she’s talking to someone else. I shrug at my friend Heather as I walk back out through the metal detector.

“Raise your arms,” she says and moves the wand up and down my back. No beep.

“Turn around.”

She scans my front. Mid-chest, the wand starts beeping. She waves across my chest again. “Under-wires?”

“Uh-hum.”

“You can’t wear that in there.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said you can’t wear that in there. You need to take it off.”

“But they let me in the last time.”

She glares. “I said… you can’t wear it in there.”

As I turn to look at Heather, the guard points her wand at her.

“You, come back here.”

“Me?” Heather asks.

“Um hmm,” the guard nods her head once, with her wrist on her hip, the wand sticking out to the side.

Once Heather approaches, the guard commands, “Take off your jacket.”

Heather gives me a what-the-fuck look. When she removes her black jacket, the guard moves her wand up and down Heather’s back and front and then zooms in mid-chest.

“You too?” she asks, lifting her left eyebrow.

Heather responds, “Well, yeah, but it’s the same bra I wore last time.”

“Well, you can’t wear that in there.”

“Are you serious?” Heather asks.

The guard just looks.

“Excuse me,” I interrupt. “We’re lawyers and we’re here to see our client. They’ve let us in before…”

The guard turns her eyes on me. “I said you can’t wear them in there.”

I look at Heather and say, “Should we take them off in the bathroom?”

“Yeah, let’s just take them off,” says Heather.

“You,” the guard says pointing at me, “can get away with it.” Turning to Heather, she says, “But not you.”

We both look down on our chests. And then at each others’.

“And you,” the guard continues, pointing her wand at Heather, “you need to get another shirt. No sleeveless tops allowed.”

We all look at Heather’s top.

“But I have a jacket I’m wearing on top of it,” Heather says.

The guard stares back. “I said no sleeveless tops.”

“So what are you saying, that I need to take off both the bra and the top?”

The guard smirks. “You can get another shirt at the Friendship House.”

“What’s the Friendship House?”

“At the end of the parking lot,” she says as she turns her back on us.

Heather and I look at each other, sigh, put our jackets and shoes back on, re-pack our purses, pick up our three-ring binders and redwelds, and retrieve all the forms we had submitted to the guard at the desk. We walk past the line of people who had been standing behind us in the queue and push past the double doors. Back out in the scorching heat, we trek across the parking lot.

“Maybe there’s something in my car,” Heather mumbles. We reach the car, and Heather unloads her Audi trunk. She pulls out the box of knick knacks, a black plastic container of tools, a grey blanket, a lawn chair, an umbrella, two frisbees, and a dodgeball. She rummages in the corner and emerges with a crumpled navy blue Speedo swimsuit.

“Awesome! My mom’s swimsuit!” she says. “I’ll wear this instead of the bra.”

“Ok… I hope it’s clean.”

She brings it to her nose and sniffs.

“What are you going to do about the sleeveless top?”

Our eyes veer across the parking lot. There’s a trailer about 30 meters away with a “Welcome” sign splashed across the front.

“Do you think that’s what she was talking about?”

We walk over and up the steps.

There’s an obese lady sitting behind a desk, knitting.

“Hi, is this the Friendship House?”

“Sure is.”

“Uhh, we need a shirt because I’m wearing a sleeveless top.”

“Over there,” the lady says, pointing her head toward to a box in the corner.

In the left corner of the trailer, there is a big cardboard box. We walk over and see a mound of shirts. Flannel, striped, paisleys, electric blue, hot pink. Heather digs into the pile and pulls out a bright yellow polo top. She holds it up against her torso.

“What do you think?”

The shirt is the color of McDonald’s golden arches. It runs down past her butt, almost half the length of her skirt. It is large enough to fit a football player. It is wrinkled and has a brown stain the size of a spatula.

“Works great.”

She runs into the bathroom and comes out with her new yellow top over her black pencil skirt, black pantyhose, and her black pumps. I can see the blue of her mom’s swimsuit through the sleeve large enough to be a collar. I then run into the bathroom, remove my bra, and dress back in my blouse and suit jacket.

We stop by the car to drop off our clothing. Then, we head back across the parking lot toward the prison and straighten our postures to present ourselves to the client.

Finding My Balance

I think I finally struck a decent balance between trying to make a living and working on my writing. My friends have been sending me contract work as well as cases to handle on my own. The contract work does not pay very much, although it is a generous sum for what I am doing (i.e., brainless work). On the other hand, the cases pay quite well. On an hourly basis, I'm making more than double what I was paid as an associate. At the same time, the clients are paying far less than what they would for the same time were I at a big law firm. We're all happy.

I limit my legal work to part time and spend the rest of it interviewing, writing, and attending classes. I used to feel guilty signing up for a $500 class at Berkeley Extension, but now, I can pay for it with what I earn. One hand feeds the other. It's perfect. I am also so grateful to have the flexibility. This pregnancy has seriously slowed me down, and I feel relieved that I can take breaks when I feel overwhelmingly exhausted or nauseous.

This week so far has been fascinating. Over the weekend, I had a chance to interview Bobby Seale, who founded the Black Panther Party with Huey Newton. I went out to his house right off of MLK Way in Oakland, and he let me ask him questions non-stop. At first, he seemed suspicious and didn't make much eye contact. Within 30 minutes of the interview, he was up and about, gesticulating, re-enacting some of his memorable moments, and nudging me when he was making important points. What a charismatic man. An hour and a half later, I walked out with three books on the Black Panther Party.

Yesterday, I met with Yul Kwon, who won Survivor: Cook Island in 2006. A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed him briefly for an article I was doing for KoreAm on an anthology of Asian American superheroes called Secret Identities (coming out in April). I thought it would be fun to talk to him more to find out what he's been up to since the show and blog about it on Kimchi Mamas. We met at Red Mango, a frozen yogurt franchise that he has invested in with two of his friends. He now has four stores in the Bay Area. We talked about his current life (he's getting married next month, and has been active in many non-profits and political events), parental expectations (his parents were mortified when he decided to do Survivor. His dad said, "What have I done to you? Why are you embarrassing the family?"), and what he's done with the prize money (not much. He hasn't bought himself anything except a car with over 100K miles on it. The most expensive thing he has bought since is the engagement ring).

I feel that every time I interview someone, I learn so much. On the whole, they have been so thoughtful about what they are doing with their lives, how they are spending their time, what kind of an impact they want to make. Talking to them takes me out of my way of thinking - and makes me question a lot of the assumptions I have come to accept as the norm. I have a lot of crusty beliefs to flake off.