Update: My wonderful husband, with all his native Danish knowledge and m4d g00gl3 sk1llz, found my screwdriver for megacheap online. It should arrive tomorrow. Fingers crossed that my hard drive is ok and I can recover all my stuff.

The woman who started Wardrobe Wednesday is no longer doing it. I don’t really want to host anything formal, especially in this time of computer transition and pregnancy and whatnot, but I like doing WW, so here we go.

I have a few hats. I hang them on pegs on the wall in our foyer. Dagmar doesn’t always have access to the foyer, thanks to our baby gate, but when she gets the chance, one thing she likes to do is try on my hats.

I think the “no two articles of clothing are even remotely the same color” look really works on her. What do you think?

(For more Dagmar cuteness, in case you were not aware, she has her own site with [mostly] daily pictures at Altered Earth. If you aren’t into RSS, you’ll get updates via my Twitter account as well.)

I didn’t get around to posting on Friday, nor on Sunday or Monday, although I did think about it. Ho hum.

I just thought I’d give a little update on some of the reasons it’s taking me so long to get back into blogging.

I’m going to skip all the pregnancy- and motherhood-related reasons, because I’m just tired of talking about that. So, one evening, it was time for bed, and I closed my laptop. I had a reasonable night’s sleep, and woke up in the morning, did my usual morning stuff, and sat down in front of my laptop again. I opened it, and it did not awaken as it usually does. I checked the power cable, I checked the battery, I pressed the “on” button, and it still did not awaken or turn on. I reached back into the dark recesses of my brain for my Mac Genius training, and tried some nerdier stuff, and none of that worked either. I went on Thomas’ laptop and went to Apple’s support page and made sure that the dark recesses of my brain were remembering correctly and hadn’t left anything out. There was just no way around this. My laptop had died.

I can’t say it’s totally out of nowhere. My laptop has not had the easiest life, and there is plenty of cosmetic damage to betray that fact. Still, there was nothing immediately preceding the incident to really prepare me for the likelihood of this happening. It’s not ideal, I thought, but it’s ok. We have a desktop computer, and T has a laptop that I can use when he’s at work. I don’t really need this laptop. The only thing is that my laptop was the one place I had all my files, all my programs, all my settings, and everything just the way I wanted it. Like any good nerd, I had backed it all up, of course, but it was going to take some effort to set up the desktop and/or an account on T’s laptop that would be to my liking.

One part of this is the program I use to update my blog. It was only installed on my laptop, and even if I install it elsewhere, it won’t have all my  settings and stuff. So I wanted to transfer everything from the laptop to the new location rather than starting from scratch.

I’ll skip over the part where I just didn’t get around to doing this for a while because of laziness, distractions, illness, and so on. Time passed. That’s all you need to know. Then I was ready to do the transfer. I was excited to do the transfer. “This is gonna be awesome!” I thought.

My back-up is corrupt. For the nerds out there, the sparsebundle Time Machine made of my laptop will not open, and Disk Utility gives up on repairing it and tells me to wipe and start over. For the non-nerds out there, all you need to know is that my back-up is not useable or helpful in any way.

You may recall that the problem with my laptop is that it won’t turn on. There’s a good chance that my hard drive, and thus all my files and settings and everything, are perfectly fine. I just need to get the hard drive out of the laptop and into an enclosure. (Non-nerds: an enclosure is like an empty external hard drive. You put your own hard drive in it, and it becomes an external hard drive. Neat, huh?) So I bought an enclosure. Now I just need to get the hard drive out of the laptop. I used to do that for a living, so no big deal, right? Well, it wouldn’t be, if I could find my tools. Somewhere, I have all the screwdrivers necessary to disassemble and reassemble pretty much any Mac out there. But I can’t find them. T has some tools, and I was able to remove all the Phillips screws on the outside of the laptop, but there are two Torx screws standing in my way. We’ve gone to three hardware stores so far, and no one sells Torx screwdrivers in laptop-friendly sizes. That is, they’re all too big.

So, my perfectionism is keeping me from regular blogging, because I want to use my program with my settings, and I don’t have the right screwdriver to make that happen.

Now you know.

If anyone in the greater Copenhagen area has small Torx screwdrivers or knows where to buy them, or can come into my flat and use their psychic powers to find the ones I already have, please let me know. Thanks.

Yes, I’m still alive. In fact, I’ve had a draft of a blog post for an embarrassingly long time, and even more embarrassing, this is not it. It’s not that I haven’t had things to say, it’s just… life getting in the way.

So for my first post in a long while, I present a double feature, if you will. I’m combining the Money Monday I totally intended to post this week (also not the aforementioned draft) with some Wardrobe Wednesday fun. First, here’s my bump as of today. I’m 33 weeks pregnant.

For comparison, here’s my 35-week bump from last time:

Yeah, I’m bigger this time, but not like OMG circus-freak big. So, we can stop with the comments about how huge I am, k? It’s getting old. I know with 100% certainty that I’m not having twins, that the baby is not unhealthily large, and that everything is going fine. It’s just normal, bigger-the-second-time-around-edness. Thanks.

That said, it does certainly FEEL pretty darn big. Perhaps I’m just not as in shape this time, or maybe it’s weak muscles from having a cesarean before, or just from having had a baby in there once before, or what, but yeah. It hurts having a bump. As some of you may know, despite never wearing a support belt when I was pregnant with Dagmar, I’ve been using one for a long, long time this pregnancy.

I dedicate this post to my wonderful support belt.

My Support Belt

I love you, oh support belt! You were worth every øre!

Not that it makes all the pain go away, but it helps a lot. If any pregnant women out there are reading this and have ever entertained the idea of getting one, just go do it. For real. Best ever. Before the belt, it felt like my belly wasn’t even a part of me. It was just extra weight attached to me and pulling me down. I hated it. Now I only kinda dislike my bump, and it feels like it really is part of my body. An annoying part of my body, but hey, this is a big step up.

I can’t believe I have nearly two months left to go, and that kinda makes me want to cry sometimes, but we’re getting there. Every day, we’re getting closer. I’m trying my darndest to think it’s cute when Maggie kicks me in the ribs. Thomas is probably getting tired of me calling him over to come feel the kicks, but if I concentrate on how fun it must be for other people, it keeps me from thinking about how uncomfortable it is for me. I don’t remember Dagmar’s kicks being this annoying.

At least I have a support belt.

Hopefully I’ll get around to posting again on Friday, but if not, I’m probably still alive. Just with a cold, a dead laptop, and a toddler coughing up a lung. No biggie.

Are you familiar with Sophie la Girafe? If you’re a mom to a current or future teether, or a mom-to-be, then you should read this review (and GIVEAWAY) of Sophie over on Transatlantic Blonde. And even if you’re not, you probably don’t want to miss the pics and videos of Blondie Boy, who is a real charmer! I’m a real sucker for blogs from other expat ladies, especially when they have adorable babies (you know, just like me), so this is one I keep up with and I recommend it to all y’all too.

I can’t promise that I’m back for good. I can’t promise that this post will be coherent. But I’m back today and I’m making a post.

I’m sure I’ve noted before that I loathe being pregnant, and in addition to being in constant pain and not being able to think straight, my laptop also died. One thing that pisses me off even more about this is that I’m an intelligent, technical person, with all the training and knowledge required to fully recover from a dead laptop experience, but I just can’t hold a thought process long enough to accomplish that right now. So I know there is absolutely a way for me to access my typical ways of writing and posting to my blog, but I’m doing it the old-fashioned way, right from the website today, because I just can’t think about it. Grrr. I’m probably supposed to be happy that I’m “almost there,” but all I can think is that I still have three effing months left of this hell, and I don’t know if I can make it.

If any of you are my friends on Facebook, this is why I’ve been playing FarmVille. I can think about it. I know, it’s not exactly the most productive way to spend my time, but my brain can handle it right now.

Anyway, despite having issues with thinking, the thing that is getting me back on the blog today, is…

Yeah, I know. I have to think for this. But here we go anyway.

To keep this simple enough for me to work with, I’m going to concentrate on one little part of the article we’re all discussing this week.

One hates to invoke Scandinavia in stories about child-rearing, but it can’t be an accident that the one superbly designed study that said, unambiguously, that having kids makes you happier was done with Danish subjects. The researcher, Hans-Peter Kohler, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says he originally studied this question because he was intrigued by the declining fertility rates in Europe. One of the things he noticed is that countries with stronger welfare systems produce more children—and happier parents.

There is no argument against the plain fact that Denmark has a stronger welfare system than the United States. It just does. Absolutely. I will happily admit that there are aspects of this that make me happier. I’m totally thrilled that my daughters will have the option of going to university in Denmark without me paying any tuition for them, and in fact, they will get a stipend to live off of while they’re studying. I think that’s awesome, and how it should be. I love that I’m not already stressing, before Dagmar is even two years old, about how we can possible afford to get her an education that I don’t even know if she’ll be interested in taking. We can think about these things when it’s appropriate to think about them.

There are also aspects that, on a personal level, are actually a bit inconvenient. It’s not just possible or easy to be a working mom; it’s expected to be a working mom. Danes really can’t seem to grasp the concept of actually wanting to stay home once maternity leave is up. “But what do you do all day?” Honestly, if there were nothing to do all day, you wouldn’t have to take your kid to a daycare, right? I mean, I assume you realize the people at the daycare have things to do all day. Whatever. I’ve not had a child in the United States, but at least from reading online, it would seem that there is more of a network for SAHMs. At least, the chances are decent you aren’t the only SAHM you know. Here, once the kid is a year old, all the moms go back to work, and suddenly there are no playgroups to go to anymore, and everyone is asking why you haven’t enrolled your kid in daycare yet.

But anyway, the point I really want to make is that this article focuses on the welfare system as being the key to why Danish parents are happier. And then it says this (emphasis mine):

More generous government policies, a sounder economy, a less pressured culture that values good rather than perfect kids—all of these would certainly make parents happier.

This is the only mention of what I think the key really is. Maybe they’re related. Maybe the culture is this way because of the welfare system. I don’t know. But I do know that the article talked about maternity leave and daycare and subsidies and not about this. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Danes are way, way, way more laid back than Americans. This is something that hardly ever gets communicated in articles that talk about Denmark or Scandinavia, and I think it’s missing a huge point. I see it all the time when people talk about how Scandinavia is full of atheists. I can’t speak for Sweden or Norway, but Denmark is full of people who don’t think about religion very much at all. I don’t have a big problem calling them atheists, but if you’re picturing a bunch of Richard Dawkins-types, you’re way off the mark. One thing Danes tend not to do is worry about other people. They don’t think about religion, because they aren’t religious, and that’s all that matters. Similarly, they aren’t stressing about parenting because there is no cultural competitiveness about it. Oh, your kid sleeps 15 hours a night? Cool. The end. There’s no, “oh crap, mine only sleeps 8″ involved. What you do is what you do and what I do is what I do.

I don’t see an obvious connection between that attitude and the welfare system. I see it as an extension of janteloven. Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of janteloven, but it does seem to be a successful antidote to the overly competitive nature so rampant amongst Americans. When I say how long my kid sleeps to a Dane, it isn’t taken as a comment on them. It’s just a statement about my reality. And that’s the way it should be. Dagmar started walking at 10 months. When I say that, I’m not saying she’s better than another kid who didn’t walk until 2. It’s just what happened. I think being able to hear and process that the way it’s intended goes a long way to making parenting less stressful for everyone. I don’t have to stress about how you’ll take the news of my kid’s milestone, and you don’t have to stress over your kid’s age at reaching the same milestone.

I had other thoughts while reading the article, but I’m not sure I can communicate them all, so I’m just going to end there, having talked about the Denmark part, as The One Who Lives in Denmark. I’ll also add that there has never been a single moment of parenting that I have hated nearly so much as being pregnant.

Not this girl! At least not yet, but she has one all ready to go in approx. 21 weeks or so when she makes her grand entrance into the non-womb world. (Hooray for hand-me-downs!) Say “hi” to Maggie Rose. In that last pic, she’s waving at you! All’s looking good and normal.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m extraordinarily lucky, or because I am extraordinarily unconcerned, but I just haven’t had any issues with other people caring for Dagmar. She has stayed with my in-laws for an evening or a weekend here and there, and she comes back in one piece. Though we don’t have identical philosophies or anything, I trust them enough not to do anything harmful. When I’m around, they ask me if it’s ok to feed her some new thing or whatever, and I guess because of that, I assume they know I’m the mom and they aren’t and so they know better than to go behind my back and do something stupid with my kid. Once, when we came to get her, she had a scratch that wasn’t there before, and mother-in-law pointed it out right away, explained what happened, and demonstrated she was sorry and hoped it wouldn’t happen again. I don’t know what else I could ask for. I mean, she gets scratches under my watch as well. She’s a kid. It happens. I just don’t stress about this.

I think they go overboard in their attempts to make sure she’s “warm enough.” This might be a cultural thing, since I don’t really understand why Danish children are running around in full snowsuits in the middle of May when their parents aren’t even in windbreakers anymore. I know they need to be warm, and they’re smaller than adults, and it does take more to keep them warm. I do get that. But I think a snowsuit, a blanket, and turning the heater on full-strength for a 20-minute car ride is overkill, and this is evidenced by the fact that she’s literally sweating (and not in a particularly good mood) whenever we get where we’re going. She’s been kicking the blanket off ever since she’s figured out how to do so, but it still gets thrown on every time. I guess I just figure this isn’t worth discussing. We’ll all survive.

I’m pretty sure if we lived close to MY parents instead of T’s, this post would be an entirely different ballgame.

Since this post isn’t very controversial, I’m gonna throw a little something extra in. It’s kinda related, since the topic is multiple mom-figures.

The plural of mom is moms. The plural of mum is mums. The plural of mama is mamas. The plural of mommy is mommies. Can we please stop using apostrophes in these already? I swear mommy-words get the apostrophe treatment more than any other words out there, for some reason, and it makes us mothers look like idiots. Let’s band together and put an end to the madness! PLURALS DO NOT HAVE APOSTROPHES KTHXBAI!

My princess needs a crown.

She won’t keep clips in her hair, but I bet she’s keep a crown on, and I already know she loves wands. Clicky above to see why I entered to win goodies for my girlie. Gooooorgeooooous!

It’s open topic this week! Be sure to clicky the beautiful logo to check out all the other participants.

April was Cesarean Awareness Month, and now it’s May, but I’m of the opinion that anything that needs awareness needs it all the time, so I’m not going to concern myself with the calendar today.

Long story short, after three days of excruciating back labor, Bean was eventually delivered via cesarean section. Another long story short, it took me some time to be at peace with what happened.

People who have never had a cesarean often have misconceptions about why those of us that have might be upset about it. Women who hate their cesarean experiences often expect every other cesarean mom to hate her experience too, and even get defensive if they find someone who didn’t. Women who loved their cesarean experiences can’t figure out why everyone else can’t just buck up and deal with it. I have a lot to say about all this, and I might get kinda rambly. You’ve been warned.

Part 1: Me Me Me

I want to talk a little bit about how I felt and how I feel. I am in no way a representative for all cesarean moms, and do not for one femtosecond think that I am speaking for anyone other than myself, or that you can extrapolate any of my feelings to some other woman you know. This is just about me, and doesn’t reflect on you or anyone else you know.

I really, truly feel that I did everything I possibly could have done to avoid having a cesarean, and that I ended up with one because it was really, truly necessary. I have no regrets about any decision I made. This goes a long way to being at peace with it. So why wasn’t I immediately at peace with it?

First, I just didn’t want to be in that small percent of women that actually need surgical assistance to do something that most women can do all by themselves, and have been doing since the beginning of time. My roommate’s cat hid in the corner of his closet, and after a few hours, she was nursing four kittens. Although logically, I know there doesn’t have to be any fairness about it, but emotionally, it’s hard not to think, at least for a fleeting moment, “why did Nimra the cat deserve a better birth experience than I did? Why can most women do this, but I couldn’t? What’s wrong with me?”

Second, going through surgery is a big deal. Going through completely unexpected surgery is a big deal. I can’t imagine it not taking time to process, no matter what the circumstances. I imagine if I needed any other kind of surgery, I’d still need some time to reflect on it. I’d had my wisdom teeth out and gotten a few fillings, and that was about the sum of my surgical experience. It’s scary to be wheeled into an operating room, period.

Third, I now have a scar on my uterus for the rest of my life. This isn’t about being too embarrassed to wear a bikini or some crap like that. Honestly, I’ve always been too embarrassed to wear a bikini. This is about how I was immediately aware that this would impact any and every birth I would ever have in the future. And that bothered me. I never imagined that I would have to deal with that. More on this later.

Some people seem to think that because a baby came out, my joy about that should just replace all the other feelings. I don’t know about you, but I have the ability to feel lots of things at once. The joy I felt when she was finally out was overwhelming, and the joy I still feel every time I look in her eyes is indescribable. But I still have my own life and my own non-Dagmar-related feelings. My feelings about the birth have nothing to do with my feelings about Dagmar.

Part 2: The Next Birth

Before Dagmar’s birth, I just assumed she would be born vaginally, and all future babies would be born vaginally, and that’s that. Then the doctor said, “you need a cesarean.” Now suddenly I was faced with either a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) or an RCS (repeat cesarean section). I was faced with the fear that I might end up having the same experience again… all that labor and pain only to end up in the OR.

From that moment on, and still going on now, I think about what I’ll do for Maggie Rose’s birth. I keep changing my mind. At first, I just wanted to guarantee I wouldn’t have the same experience again. An RCS seemed almost obvious. But my logical side knows too well that it’s unlikely everything will go down the same way twice, and that I can make different decisions the second time, e.g. I could opt for an epidural. I started to think about how frustrating it was that I couldn’t get out of bed and get my own baby when she cried, and I read accounts from women saying that their vaginal birth recoveries were orders of magnitude easier on them than cesarean recoveries.

Here in Denmark, VBAC is the norm. Before I was discharged from the hospital, a doctor came in to assure me that there was nothing wrong with me and no reason to think I’d need a cesarean again. I was terrified at the thought of doing anything again at that point, but in retrospect, I’m quite glad he took the time to tell me that. They actually measured me and verified that it was her position and not my body that kept her from coming out. That’s pretty awesome, when you think about it.

But I’m still scared. I’m full of doubts and fear about how everything will go. Doubts and fear that I never had the first time. Although I say that I’m at peace with what happened, the truth is that what happened still haunts me in this way. I just can’t look forward to the birth in the same way I did with Dagmar. I can’t. I still get jealous when I read the birth stories of first-time moms who get the birth they wanted.

Part 3: Me Again

I’ve been trying to find information and support for my VBAC, but I’ve only been marginally successful. All the English-language VBAC forums are full of women making statements like, “I’m so upset I’ve never felt a contraction” or “I just want to give birth the way nature intended.” It’s not that I don’t understand why they make those statements, but they’re nothing like statements I would make. I felt enough contractions for everyone, and I hated every one of them. They sucked so completely and totally in a way that’s very difficult to explain even to people who have had contractions, and impossible to explain to anyone who hasn’t. Even though I know that if Maggie Rose is more properly positioned, my contractions won’t feel the same way, I don’t have any particular desire to go through another contraction. My reasons have nothing to do with using my vagina the way nature intended, and everything to do with doing what’s best for Maggie Rose and for me. The studies show it’s beneficial for both of us to have a vaginal birth, if it’s possible. That’s it. That’s why I’m most likely trying for a VBAC.

I get why many women want the experience of a VBAC, but I’m kind of tired of reading about it. It doesn’t help me prepare for my own or make me feel more confident about Maggie Rose’s birth. That’s what I want to read about. This doesn’t mean that if you want a VBAC for the experience of it, that you shouldn’t write all about that and post on all the VBAC forums you want. Please don’t think I’m trying to stop you. I know it helps you and many, many other women when you write about it. I just wish there were some other forum for people like me, to talk about the numbers and logic behind VBAC.

I also go to cesarean boards, both because I might end up with another one, and because I have experience to share when it might be helpful. These are more mixed bag. Some women just don’t understand why having a cesarean is something you’d have to get over at all, and others don’t understand how anyone could possibly be ok with it. It drives me crazy. Is it really so hard to believe that we might experience things differently? Give me a break.

And for these reasons, I do often take a break from all these boards.

Part 4: And over to you…

Whether you’ve had a cesarean or not, no matter what your own feelings are about cesareans, all I’m going to say is don’t assume you know how anyone else feels. Don’t tell a cesarean mom to get over it. Don’t tell her that a healthy baby is the only thing that matters. Don’t tell her she should feel any differently than she does. Maybe she’s over it already, and that’s fine. Maybe it’ll take her years to get over it. Maybe she does think that a healthy baby is all that matters, and that’s fine, too. But if she happens to think her own experience matters, she has a point. That’s all I mean. We all deal with things differently, and there’s no right or wrong feeling. We feel what we feel. I’m tired of people on all sides projecting their own feelings on everyone else.

In Conclusion

The baby must come out. I wish I could teleport her out, but I can’t, so probably right up until it happens, I’m going to worry about it. I was so much more confident and happy about it last time, but everything’s different now. The one thing that’s the same is she still must come out.

You might have noticed that so far, my ControverSunday posts haven’t actually stirred up much controversy. In fact, most of the other people’s haven’t either. We’re all way too nice and reasonable for that, huh?

That might all change today. I’m gonna say something that I know some of my readers aren’t going to like.

I care very much about the environment. I love this planet. It’s the only one we’ve got, and really, even if we do find another one capable of sustaining our lives, it’s a pretty big deal to up and move there. It seems like an all-around better idea to make sure we can stay on this planet as long as possible, regardless. I love the amazing diversity of plant and animal life, and even fungi and bacteria and everything else we’ve got here. I think it’s a pretty darn sweet set up. And that’s why I don’t buy organic food.

That’s right. I said it. I do not buy organic food. On purpose. Because I love my planet.

Not because I’m too poor or cheap. Not because I’m ignorant. Not because all those hippies piss me off.

“But it’s better for the environment!”

No, it’s not. Part of this misconception stems from the (utterly ridiculous) idea that if something is natural, it must be better. I’m pretty sure I’ve addressed this BS before, but if you think that natural pesticides (and yes, organic food does use pesticides) are always better for the environment (or for you) than synthetic ones, you’re just plain wrong. Brian Dunning does this better than I do, so I’m gonna turn this one over to him.

Organic farming also has lower yield than conventional farming. In plain English, that means it takes more land to make the same amount of food. Nothing about that is better for the environment.

“But it’s better for you!”

No, it’s not. Every well-done study shows no significant difference in nutrient content or hormone content. They’ve looked at fruit, veggies, meat, eggs, and even milk. Brian Dunning talks about this too (plus a bit more about the environmental stuff).

“But they taste better!”

Fresher food tastes better than less fresh food. If the organic food you’re buying is fresher than the other food in the same store, then this might be true. Otherwise, this just isn’t true either. If you bought an organic and a non-organic apple at the store, and did your own little taste test at home, that’s not very convincing. Sorry. In addition to other factors (like freshness) not being controlled for, everyone I’ve ever known who has done this was expecting the organic one to taste better. So, guess what. It did. That’s how your brain works. That’s why we do double- and triple-blind studies in real science and why a non-blind, sample-size-of-one, done-in-my-kitchen taste test is not real science. What science tells us is that an organically-grown apple is exactly the same as a conventionally-grown apple. Since they’re identical, there just isn’t any way for them to taste differently. Plain and simple.

So, there you have it. *dons asbestos underwear in preparation for flaming*