A tale of elusive heat

"Simplicity" by suvodeb.

Once upon a time there was woman who woke one morning and couldn't get warm.

She drank two cups of coffee. But she was still cold. She drank a cup of black tea. But she was still cold. Outside snow fell. Inside, her cold fingers tapped on the keyboard, and she shivered thinking of the laps she'd committed to swim at noon.

"How shall I convince myself to stick a toe in the water?" she asked.

Then she remembered a small cafe called the Aroma Club that served hot chocolate spiked with chili. The drink was sinfully thick and surprisingly spicy, with each sip making love to her mouth and leaving a slow burn in her throat. For weeks afterward, she tried to recreate the experience.

She melted an entire Lindt chili chocolate bar in milk. But it was too bland.

She explored the tiny Latino market down the street and left with high hopes that the "genuine Mexican chocolate" made by Ibarra would do the trick. But it was much too sweet.

She became a cooking chemist, combining cinnamon and chili and coriander with cocoa. But it was too spicy.

But the woman wouldn't despair. Instead, she packed her swimsuit, goggles and a promise that when she finished her laps, she'd get in her car, crank up the heat and drive across town to the cafe where, she knew, they got it just right.

Spoilsport

State lawmaker wants to cancel caucuses because of fighting and hurt feelings.

The Reno Gazette-Journal reported Tuesday that Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus plans to sponsor a bill that would cancel future caucuses and reinstate presidential primaries.

"This notion of neighbors getting together with neighbors to talk about politics, that's just not Nevada," Titus said. "What I found in my caucus is that the meeting didn't lead to collaboration, cooperation and a good discussion. It led to hostility."

Jeez! Is Titus a boob or what?

The caucus was an awesome thing. Voter interest was so high that precincts such as mine ran out of ballots and voters had to write in their candidate's name on slips of blank paper. Why would Titus want to squelch such enthusiasm?

And where does she get off saying that Nevadans can't talk politics? Two weeks before the caucus I got together with a group of loosely connected friends to share information on the candidates' positions on key issues like foreign policy, health care and the environment. This was a group consisting of Democrats and Republicans, small business owners and liberal intellectuals, and no, we didn't all agree, and yes, sometimes people sounded kinda uninformed. But we enjoyed each other and learned a little too.

A caucus is hyper-local politics, and in a society as digitized and disconnected as ours, it's refreshing to physically sit in one spot and talk face-to-face. Caucuses dredge up the lost art of political discourse and encourage civility. I'm all for 'em.

To tell Titus to get a clue, email her at dtitus@sen.state.nv.us.

Grassroots politics

After all the hype leading up to Nevada's Democratic caucus, it was kinda a let down. For two hours, I sat on a bleacher in a middle school and cast first one vote and then another for Barak Obama. We cheered and clapped when someone from another political corner defected and joined ours, but there wasn't any raucous debating or even polite persuasion for entertainment. No. Just neighbor meeting neighbor so that next summer we can wave and chat over lawnmowers.

But it's the local connection that makes a caucus so cool. While it's great that a caucus empowers voters and amplifies Nevada's voice at the national level, it's the community that was created Saturday that really mattered. I met people who were interesting and funny and thoughtful, and learned that we shared not just party lines but property lines too.

The newest currency

Ivan Joseph Levy was born Nov. 14, 2007. Labor sputtered and stalled for 3 days, but kicked into high gear about 11:30 p.m. Contractions came quick and strong as Marcel called the midwife and I tried to blow, not push. Ivan's head crowned just after the midwife arrived, and at 12:55 a.m. he slipped into the world. His big sister, Chaja, cut his cord. We blew out our birth candle, and went to bed happy that our third son had finally decided to join us!

Learning who Ivan is and what he is all about has consumed the better part of my life since his arrival. This is what I've discovered so far:

A fourth baby is just as much work as the first. I had convinced myself that after three children, Ivan would be a cakewalk. Ha! The amount of jiggling, shushing and walking he required during the first month and a half was exhausting. The majority of each evening was spent in the bathroom because only the sound of the fan calmed him. Our thanks to "Happiest Baby on the Block" author Dr. Harvey Karp for giving us the tools to help us over this first hump.

My tolerance for vomit and excrement has increased. I can spend the whole day in a shirt that Ivan has spit up on, even going out in public with stains on my shoulder and chest. I can sleep in a bed that smells of sour milk. And I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the other night I climbed into bed stained with baby poop. Too tired to change the sheets, I laid a towel on top and fell asleep.

A dairy-free diet sucks. I've cut out milk and cheese in hopes of reducing Ivan's flaky skin and stuffed nose, and it appears to help. But giving up my hot chocolate and slices of sharp cheddar with apple fills me with self pity. So, what do I do but comfort myself by eating more sweets, and while rolls of fat look adorable on Ivan's thighs, they don't look so great on my own!

But his smiles are worth a million, or at least all the colic, filth and self-deprivation of the past two months.

Insomnia

Photo courtesy of neil-san.

To walk my street, alone at 12:30 a.m., is exhilarating, which isn't the emotion I should be striving for at this hour of night, but when one can't sleep... I had awakened to the dripping of rain off the eaves and couldn't get back to sleep, so finally pulled on a coat, hat and scarf and walked outside. The trees are dripping and the streetlights glitter on the grass. Our cat crawls out from beneath the minivan and meows before slipping into shadow.

I walk through the steady patter of rain hitting pavement, the occasional plink of a heavy drop falling into the gutter, the gurgle of the two outdoor fountains from the house four east of mine. I walk through patches of darkness and then into the glare of a streetlight, allowing the neighbor's dog to spot me from its front window and bark furiously through the glass.

I listen to the faraway whistle of a train, the whir of cars speeding down Pyramid Highway, my breath as a contraction seizes my belly. I walk up and down the middle of the street, forgoing sidewalks because the shrouds of shadow make me nervous. I am a horse at the track, warming up for the big race, steadily finding my pace as contractions grip and release. Two, three, four times, I walk along this stretch of H Street between G and 4th. H for home, for hope, for hurry. The rain lets up and I come inside for a mug of steamed milk with sugar and nutmeg, my eyes heavy and ready for sleep.

For every rule there is an exception

As I waddle to week 41:

Max sings "Flying Purple People Eater" in falsetto.

Sam licks his fingers, habitually, and complains about his dwindling stash of Halloween candy.

Chaja wanders about the house asking no one and everyone, "When will the baby come?" prompting me to grit my teeth and grumble that I'm making her replacement as she speaks.

What is a due date, anyway, but a statistical blip, a technique first used by a German doctor in the 1800s, and now backed up by ultrasound. But guess what? The Estimated Due Date is fraught with assumptions, among them the average lengths of a woman's menstrual cycle, the calendar year and the gestational period, which means the due date could be off by a week or so. But what about ultrasound, you ask? Doesn't measuring the developing embryo prove when it was conceived and therefore tell a doctor when it will be born? Yeeesss, but a scan performed in the first trimester has a 95 percent error margin of six days. And then there are more recent studies that lengthen or shorten the due date based on number of pregnancies, the mother's ethnicity and the quality of prenatal care.

Which means I crossed the finish line, but the race ain't over yet.

Worry Beads

My family and friends made me a string of beads at my baby shower that I keep running through my hands, caressing each bead's smooth or bumpy shape, watching the colors glisten in the sunlight. It is beautiful, and all the love it symbolizes is reassuring, because there is a risk with this pregnancy that didn't exist before, a scar that stretches like a dark smile just above my pubic hair that is evidence of the cesarean I had six and a half years ago.

I plan to VBAC, a decision that runs in direct opposition to the majority of the doctors who share on-call duties with my obstetrician. Should I go into labor this weekend, the two doctors who would meet me at the hospital are severely opposed to vaginal birth after cesarean. "Be prepared for a fight," my OB warns. And so I have prepared -- an alternative. My midwife, Diane, is a short, round woman with burnished hair and a contagious laugh who has birthed hundreds of babies. She and her two apprentices will come to my home and together we will bring this baby into the world -- gently, safely and without condemnation. My doctor knows of my choice. He acknowledges that it isn't science that holds sway over his colleagues but the fear of medical malpractice lawsuits that has them frowning over VBACS.

Granted there is risk to the mother and baby when a uterus -- once cut and stitched back together -- is asked to clench and stretch its muscle again. The chance that the scar will rip open is 0.7 percent or 7 in 1,000 women, according to the International Cesarean Awareness Network. In addition, there is an increased risk with each cesarean that the placenta will embed into the wall of the uterus and cause the woman to hemorrhage. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that a doctor be immediately available for a woman choosing to VBAC.

For most doctors, this recommendation carries too great a risk to their livelihood, so they pressure women into cesareans. At one point, my own doctor said he may ask me to sign paperwork that spelled out a VBAC's risk in graphic language before agreeing to perform one, but he didn't acknowledge that a cesarean carries its own chance of catastrophe or death until I pressed the issue. Cesareans account for 29 percent of all U.S. births, and this week some researchers placed partial blame for the spike in maternal death rate -- the highest its been in a decade -- on this major surgery.

Shame on the doctors for forcing me to choose between home birth and cesarean, when most agree that the safest place for me is to VBAC in a hospital with a supportive staff. I am scared over these risks, no matter how small, and frightened of these doctors who would judge me harshly, and so I run my fingers through these beads and pray.

Pregnant Pause

39 weeks, 3 days and counting ... the number of times I wake up at night to pee (three) ... the number of times I ask for aches to be rubbed away (once daily) ... the number of contractions I feel in the 10 minute walk to my children's school in the morning (four) ... the number of baby heartbeats in a minute (137) ... the number of times the voice on the other end of the phone expects to hear labor has started (every time). The numbers bore me. The waiting bores me. Being round and ripe as a pumpkin ready to be split open and spill its seeds upon a newspapered table bores me.

I'm one giant, tired yawn that yearns to wake up, move on, charge ahead into a rich, complicated life spilling over with family and writing. For I believe -- no, I'm determined -- to kick-start a career that stalled out nine years ago when I became a mother. And this time it will happen, not because I want it to but because I'm not interested in learning to be a better mother. Don't give me a book on the latest parenting method. Don't sign me up for a mommy-and-me playgroup. Sure, I'll be the best mother I can be, but what I really want is the chance to be the best writer I can be. I want to move away from a child-centered existence, and instead care for my baby with benign neglect. I want writing to be as critical as my cups of afternoon tea (two), and as regular as the punches and kicks the baby gives to my belly (10 between 9 and 10 p.m.).

My role model is Harriet Beecher Stowe. According to an article on the website Write from Home, one day Harriet wrote that, "I have been called off at least a dozen times ... to nurse the baby, then into the kitchen to make chowder for dinner, and now I am at it again, for nothing but deadly determination enables me ever to write: it is rowing against wind and tide ... the spirit moves now and I must obey." It will take a mountain of determination to listen and heed that small voice of inspiration after a day of diapers and drool, but bring it on! I say. Give me the baby over this belly crisscrossed with stretch marks and plagued by indigestion (nightly).

Monday it stormed, and as the the sky turned to slate and the wind tore the leaves from the trees, I thought, "Tonight, baby! Tonight!" My friend, Jenny, a former labor and delivery nurse, said that the hospital always had a spike in deliveries whenever it rained or snowed. "Something about a change in barometric pressure," she guessed. So I smiled and hummed a few lines of the Sheryl Crow song that I had taken the liberty to change: "Come baby, come baby, come baby, come, Baby come." And when Marcel poured himself a second glass of wine, I warned him that I was planning on having the baby that night. But he just laughed and raised his glass -- to the wine, to my whine.