For my birthday yesterday I received a delightful book called Voices from the World of Jane Austen. Among all the authors that I have loved and revered and indulged in, Jane Austen remains the constant favorite for her irrepressible wit and social commentary, heightened by conflicting sometimes with her heartfelt desire to be a moral, just, and good.
I knew, of course, that a woman such as Austen -- in her social position and period -- would have spent a great deal of time writing letters. It was the only mode of communication for people who did not have the money to travel far or frequently, and Austen had a large and scattered family. I read a passage last night that described her and her favorite sister Cassandra corresponding every single day if they were in different places, and I wondered idly of what they wrote about. Bits of Jane's humor infuse her letters, her ability to see the absurdities of others people, but that is the character of the letters. Their content is of course what you'd expect: clothes, social engagements, daily activities, progress on the piano or with a book, changes in fashion, family news ... in short, the very thing that blogs today are made of.
I am new to the blogging world, and have been discovering many excellent blogs (which I prefer to call columns or journals or even diaries in the very old-fashioned sense of the word) and some very tedious ones. It amazes me that people get up every day to tell their friends and strangers the minutia of their lives--activities, thoughts, interactions, trials, annoyances, hobbies, and discoveries--in short, the very things that letter-writers in the pre-telephone age might have composed on a daily basis.
I needn't even go so far back. I think one of the reasons I decided to start a blog is that all my pen-and-paper correspondents have fallen by the wayside. Ten years ago, when I moved overseas, when the Internet was less accessible and the telephone prohibitively pricey, probably my favorite activity was sitting in a coffee shop with blank paper and a nice, fat letter to respond to. I loved writing letters. I still do, in fact. But all my friends gradually stopped responding, many of them switching to email and some disappearing altogether.
For some reason email can't fully replace the sweep of ink across the page for me. My entire tone is different when I write an email, my thoughts less profound and my observations more shallow. The contact is certainly fleeting in a way that it wasn't when I and a correspondent made a commitment to set aside time to write a letter and put a stamp on an envelope. I miss it.
A blog isn't the perfect medium for me, either, but it allows a freedom that isn't entirely accessible when writing a different email to every person I happen to correspond with. Most of my few entries I have, in fact, started with pen to paper, as I do most of my writing. And, given the lack of people who would ever write letters back to me if I sent them, a blog is an ideal medium for an introvert, where I can muse without engaging in the high-strung jumpiness of modern social contact.
It's nice to think, though, that Jane Austen, despite all she would have deplored in modern life, would probably have adapted to and delighted in this outlet for thought, creativity, and contact with the world both near and far.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Despairing of Hope
I spend much more time than I should reading the reader letters on Salon.com, especially those in response to Glenn Greenwald's matchless daily column on the Constitution, government, and the media (incidentally, why do we still call it a blog when it has obviously become something more--why is it not a "column"? just a question of semantics). The most recent post and discussion has to do with a watershed moment in recent American history, when it seems that the country is beginning to wake up to the appalling lawbreaking and immorality of the Bush Administration.
While I do have some hope on the fronts of real freedom and the defense of the Constitution, I cannot join in with even tentative hope for the future of this country and the world. I might get lynched for this, but my heart is less wrapped up in freedom of speech than it is in the physical future of the land that I love. And I'm not talking about global warming.
Today is my birthday. I planned on going for a hike, but it's raining, so I sat in bed having late tea and writing, which I do frequently. And I found myself thinking of this recent Salon discussion, feeling around in my own heart for symptoms of hope, and suddenly dissolving into tears. No, it's not just pregnancy hormones.
My solace -- practically my religion -- for my entire life has been escape into nature, especially the wilderness of my home in the Rockies. It has always been my only real release from the pressures of life, although I find it harder to penetrate in the East Coast's sticky, oppressive summers.
But fresh, clean air and water, and unhindered views are fast disappearing. There will no longer be any solace in them for me. Which brings me every day, I'm afraid, to question the purpose of my existence. All I truly care about is nature. All I truly love and believe in is wilderness. And this one thing, the thing that makes life worth living to me, is the one thing the rest of the world sees as completely expendable, as having no worth in itself. Why do I live if what I care for is the only thing that the world refuses to protect or value?
Every day that question weighs upon me. There are many other things to live for and enjoy, I know, but this is the deepest thing, the one thing that my heart cannot let go of, the loss of which I will never stop mourning. And I despair in a life that says I have to fight for it, never enjoy it, never just take daily pleasure in it. I have to fight to preserve just a little of it, all the while knowing that the fight is, in the end, already lost. The pressures and greed of humanity will always take precedence over that which can only be lost, never found or created again. My heart -- my very spirit -- shrivels in that knowledge.
I don't want to live like this. Not that I want to not live, but existence without recourse to wilderness is, to me, absolutely bleak. Some year soon enough I will no longer be able to walk in any untouched land without the hum and roar of ATVs and snowmobiles intruding on me, or without the constant conscious threat of coal mining and the demands of rapacious development.
I don't want a planet like this. Our freedoms, our Constitution, our self-respect, these things we can fight for and win back, but a landscape once destroyed will always be scarred, and wilderness once taken away can never, ever be truly regained.
What hope is there in this prospect? How can I raise my children with the values of husbandry and stewardship that were instilled in me, when I can see that I would be raising them only to have their hearts broken? Those who deeply, burningly love the land are too few to fight against those who say that the rights not just of human survival, but of unencumbered human property come first.
Until I can walk into the wilderness and know that nobody is secretly planning to drill oil wells in it, or level its mountains and poison its water for coal mining, I will not feel hope. And right now, as the country is waking up a little to political horrors, it is hurriedly pushing tens if not hundreds of brand-new coal-burning plants whose fuel extraction will utterly destroy the land of my heart. And the demands of a generation with money to spare are building gated mini-estates in hills I once walked freely. Their huge houses are like a swaggering, overweight man with a belt barely cinched below his paunch. They grin as their views give them the illusion of lordship, but they know nothing of the land they seek to own, or how to love it.
So no, I do not yet have hope. My faith is in something fragile and precious, something that others do not care for or understand, something too easily destroyed.
While I do have some hope on the fronts of real freedom and the defense of the Constitution, I cannot join in with even tentative hope for the future of this country and the world. I might get lynched for this, but my heart is less wrapped up in freedom of speech than it is in the physical future of the land that I love. And I'm not talking about global warming.
Today is my birthday. I planned on going for a hike, but it's raining, so I sat in bed having late tea and writing, which I do frequently. And I found myself thinking of this recent Salon discussion, feeling around in my own heart for symptoms of hope, and suddenly dissolving into tears. No, it's not just pregnancy hormones.
My solace -- practically my religion -- for my entire life has been escape into nature, especially the wilderness of my home in the Rockies. It has always been my only real release from the pressures of life, although I find it harder to penetrate in the East Coast's sticky, oppressive summers.
But fresh, clean air and water, and unhindered views are fast disappearing. There will no longer be any solace in them for me. Which brings me every day, I'm afraid, to question the purpose of my existence. All I truly care about is nature. All I truly love and believe in is wilderness. And this one thing, the thing that makes life worth living to me, is the one thing the rest of the world sees as completely expendable, as having no worth in itself. Why do I live if what I care for is the only thing that the world refuses to protect or value?
Every day that question weighs upon me. There are many other things to live for and enjoy, I know, but this is the deepest thing, the one thing that my heart cannot let go of, the loss of which I will never stop mourning. And I despair in a life that says I have to fight for it, never enjoy it, never just take daily pleasure in it. I have to fight to preserve just a little of it, all the while knowing that the fight is, in the end, already lost. The pressures and greed of humanity will always take precedence over that which can only be lost, never found or created again. My heart -- my very spirit -- shrivels in that knowledge.
I don't want to live like this. Not that I want to not live, but existence without recourse to wilderness is, to me, absolutely bleak. Some year soon enough I will no longer be able to walk in any untouched land without the hum and roar of ATVs and snowmobiles intruding on me, or without the constant conscious threat of coal mining and the demands of rapacious development.
I don't want a planet like this. Our freedoms, our Constitution, our self-respect, these things we can fight for and win back, but a landscape once destroyed will always be scarred, and wilderness once taken away can never, ever be truly regained.
What hope is there in this prospect? How can I raise my children with the values of husbandry and stewardship that were instilled in me, when I can see that I would be raising them only to have their hearts broken? Those who deeply, burningly love the land are too few to fight against those who say that the rights not just of human survival, but of unencumbered human property come first.
Until I can walk into the wilderness and know that nobody is secretly planning to drill oil wells in it, or level its mountains and poison its water for coal mining, I will not feel hope. And right now, as the country is waking up a little to political horrors, it is hurriedly pushing tens if not hundreds of brand-new coal-burning plants whose fuel extraction will utterly destroy the land of my heart. And the demands of a generation with money to spare are building gated mini-estates in hills I once walked freely. Their huge houses are like a swaggering, overweight man with a belt barely cinched below his paunch. They grin as their views give them the illusion of lordship, but they know nothing of the land they seek to own, or how to love it.
So no, I do not yet have hope. My faith is in something fragile and precious, something that others do not care for or understand, something too easily destroyed.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
A Bed of Red Flowers, Nelofer Pazira
I just finished reading one of my Christmas presents (my mother always sends me a huge pile of used books for every holiday) -- A Bed of Red Flowers, a memoir about Afghanistan by Nelofer Pazira. Pazira grew up largely in Kabul, and her family escaped first to Pakistan, then as refugees to Canada toward the end of the Soviet occupation of her home country.
The book started out slowly enough (despite the tale of the child Pazira visiting her father in prison) that I had serious doubts about whether it was going to be any good or not. Too many factual paragraphs about who was in charge and how they came to be there, too little narrative that kept my imagination with her. But I kept reading because I thought it would at least be educational, and the book, rather than keeping up a tedious tone, suddenly opened out into a real story -- a childhood of love, fear, anger, repression, countrywide violence and war, and a simmering resentment against Afghanistan's occupiers, Soviet soldiers.
Pazira grew up hating the Soviet Union and anything to do with Russia. She watched Soviet tanks rumble through her streets and Soviet planes fly overhead, and the sight of them nurtured loathing, anger, and patriotism in her heart. From before she was ten years old, she had learned to love the mujahidin, the brave men who were fighting for her country's freedom from the hated occupiers. When she got older, she joined an underground resistance movement that supported the holy soldiers, fighting for liberation.
What's important about the book is not just the historical detail of the proxy war fought between the United States and the Soviet Union on the land of this tiny, poor country, but also the striking picture of modern Afghani life before the Taliban came to power. We in the West are used to knowing only what we see on television. So after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, we were shown pictures of women in burkas and told they had no access to education or health care. What we weren't told is that, only ten years ago, before the U.S.-backed mujahidin came to power, women dressed 'normally' (including mini-skirts and make-up), and went to school just like the boys did. Pazira grew up in a modern Afghan culture that knew little of these ultra-repressive quasi-religious practices.
But she did grow up knowing the fear of attack and the rage of an occupied land. A point came when it was almost certain that Pazira's father and some other relatives would be arrested for suspicious activity, or perhaps suspicious thought. Her father, who had many times said he would never, ever abandon his country, finally, in weariness, agreed to her mother's begging that they leave. So they did, traveling with a smuggler to a refugee camp in Pakistan.
And it was here that Pazira's illusions about her heroes the mujahidin were crushed. Her very first day in refugee lodging, she peeked out a garden gate and was shot at -- not to injure, but to warn. "Never, ever go outside," said her frightened hostess. "If they see you without your hair covered, or without a man, they'll shoot at you." Pazira was enraged. In Kabul, she had gone to school, studied -- rebelled against memorizing Marx and learning Russian, sure, but her education was never limited because she was a woman -- and she had dressed as she pleased. Most important, she had believed in the holy war, the mujahidin, the people who, like her, loved her land and fought for it. And she found, in the end, that not only were they narrow, cruel people, but that they considered her a second-class citizen, hardly a person at all.
When she was growing up, says Pazira, "I was fascinated by the word 'mujahidin.' Because they were fighting the Russians, I supported them all, unconditionally. Now it appears that, like so many of my friends and classmates, I was staring at a looking glass. The mujahidin I believed in are no longer a reality. I'm beginning to see a different face of jihad."
Pazira learned about bickering warlords, about the U.S. backing and arming of some of the worst, most inhumane men fighting the Soviets. It was these people who later took over her country. After fleeing to Canada, she received infrequent letters from a friend still in Kabul. Even before the Taliban came to power, women were forced out of schools and hospitals, under severe head coverings, and into their homes. The warlords fought among one another and, just like the Soviets, killed the innocent people in between.
This is an important book, not for its literary quality, but for the delicacy with which it shows the force of two competing outside powers pulling a country to pieces. The Soviets tugged at one end of the rope, and the American-backed mujahidin at the other. Between them, they pulled a knot so tight that they left a country full of innocent people gasping for space to think, to breathe, to live. As the Soviets pushed themselves into Afghanistan, the other side took further refuge in more extreme religion, to mark themselves as truly holy warriors, and it they who the Americans supported almost unconditionally. In 2001, they pointed to the Taliban as evil enemies, but neglected to mention that it was the American government that armed these people, put them in power, and then turned a blind eye to their extreme religious oppression and moral corruption.
There are no easy answers in this book, except perhaps one. A friend of Pazira's, an older man, points out that, while historians try to make war a story of strategy, of battles won and battles lost, those facts are simply the window dressing, something to make sense of war. What war actually is, is destruction, despair, death, and the anger of those caught between -- a story of lives lost and destroyed, of a land ripped apart.
The book started out slowly enough (despite the tale of the child Pazira visiting her father in prison) that I had serious doubts about whether it was going to be any good or not. Too many factual paragraphs about who was in charge and how they came to be there, too little narrative that kept my imagination with her. But I kept reading because I thought it would at least be educational, and the book, rather than keeping up a tedious tone, suddenly opened out into a real story -- a childhood of love, fear, anger, repression, countrywide violence and war, and a simmering resentment against Afghanistan's occupiers, Soviet soldiers.
Pazira grew up hating the Soviet Union and anything to do with Russia. She watched Soviet tanks rumble through her streets and Soviet planes fly overhead, and the sight of them nurtured loathing, anger, and patriotism in her heart. From before she was ten years old, she had learned to love the mujahidin, the brave men who were fighting for her country's freedom from the hated occupiers. When she got older, she joined an underground resistance movement that supported the holy soldiers, fighting for liberation.
What's important about the book is not just the historical detail of the proxy war fought between the United States and the Soviet Union on the land of this tiny, poor country, but also the striking picture of modern Afghani life before the Taliban came to power. We in the West are used to knowing only what we see on television. So after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, we were shown pictures of women in burkas and told they had no access to education or health care. What we weren't told is that, only ten years ago, before the U.S.-backed mujahidin came to power, women dressed 'normally' (including mini-skirts and make-up), and went to school just like the boys did. Pazira grew up in a modern Afghan culture that knew little of these ultra-repressive quasi-religious practices.
But she did grow up knowing the fear of attack and the rage of an occupied land. A point came when it was almost certain that Pazira's father and some other relatives would be arrested for suspicious activity, or perhaps suspicious thought. Her father, who had many times said he would never, ever abandon his country, finally, in weariness, agreed to her mother's begging that they leave. So they did, traveling with a smuggler to a refugee camp in Pakistan.
And it was here that Pazira's illusions about her heroes the mujahidin were crushed. Her very first day in refugee lodging, she peeked out a garden gate and was shot at -- not to injure, but to warn. "Never, ever go outside," said her frightened hostess. "If they see you without your hair covered, or without a man, they'll shoot at you." Pazira was enraged. In Kabul, she had gone to school, studied -- rebelled against memorizing Marx and learning Russian, sure, but her education was never limited because she was a woman -- and she had dressed as she pleased. Most important, she had believed in the holy war, the mujahidin, the people who, like her, loved her land and fought for it. And she found, in the end, that not only were they narrow, cruel people, but that they considered her a second-class citizen, hardly a person at all.
When she was growing up, says Pazira, "I was fascinated by the word 'mujahidin.' Because they were fighting the Russians, I supported them all, unconditionally. Now it appears that, like so many of my friends and classmates, I was staring at a looking glass. The mujahidin I believed in are no longer a reality. I'm beginning to see a different face of jihad."
Pazira learned about bickering warlords, about the U.S. backing and arming of some of the worst, most inhumane men fighting the Soviets. It was these people who later took over her country. After fleeing to Canada, she received infrequent letters from a friend still in Kabul. Even before the Taliban came to power, women were forced out of schools and hospitals, under severe head coverings, and into their homes. The warlords fought among one another and, just like the Soviets, killed the innocent people in between.
This is an important book, not for its literary quality, but for the delicacy with which it shows the force of two competing outside powers pulling a country to pieces. The Soviets tugged at one end of the rope, and the American-backed mujahidin at the other. Between them, they pulled a knot so tight that they left a country full of innocent people gasping for space to think, to breathe, to live. As the Soviets pushed themselves into Afghanistan, the other side took further refuge in more extreme religion, to mark themselves as truly holy warriors, and it they who the Americans supported almost unconditionally. In 2001, they pointed to the Taliban as evil enemies, but neglected to mention that it was the American government that armed these people, put them in power, and then turned a blind eye to their extreme religious oppression and moral corruption.
There are no easy answers in this book, except perhaps one. A friend of Pazira's, an older man, points out that, while historians try to make war a story of strategy, of battles won and battles lost, those facts are simply the window dressing, something to make sense of war. What war actually is, is destruction, despair, death, and the anger of those caught between -- a story of lives lost and destroyed, of a land ripped apart.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Alcohol and the Fetus/Embryo/Baby/Parasite Debate
For 16 weeks now I've been reading all the articles, books, and Web sites people give me that relate to healthy pregnancy practices. Every single aspect of my life has been addressed: what's best to eat, how often (and how) to exercise, what position to sleep in, what my caffeine intake should be limited to, how to pick things up off the floor when I get huge, how late I can fly, how much weight I should gain, and, of course, the effects of both alcohol and stress on the little parasite that's taking up all my bladder space.
I list these last two together because I cannot separate them, if other people can. I don't need to reiterate the snippy debate between European and US standards for alcohol consumption, during pregnancy or at any other time. I grew up in America, with a certain expectation of what was 'okay' to drink; my parents were very sensible people in that respect -- and they were poor, so buying wine or good beer simply wasn't part of our lives. However, I moved to Europe and married a European in my early 20s, so quickly acquired the pleasing habit of having wine with dinner every night. I refuse to justify this habit to anyone who thinks it's awful. Go read French Women Don't Get Fat for yourself. I can't take seriously the criticism of any society whose idea of a great weekend is to mow a chemically green lawn.
Added to this is my own scientific training and analytical turn of mind. I don't simply nod my head and do whatever my doctor tells me. No, I do the research for myself. And the research, I have to say, has done nothing but get me completely wound up and stressed out about the entire issue.
When I first took the "you've got a blue line" test, I did a bunch of research online and decided to go with the UK government guidelines rather than France, tempting as it was (in the last month, by the way, France has altered its recommendations; it used to advise women to have a glass of wine per day, but now is more aligned with the UK). The advice is "no more than 1-2 units of alcohol once or twice a week." That's all right until you find that 125 ml of 12% wine constitutes 1.5 units of alcohol. It's not a lot. And it's not even that I wanted more -- my mother was absolutely right when she said I wouldn't even feel like having alcohol most days (she didn't abstain, either). But I hated the feeling of being constrained.
Then well-meaning people began sending me research, which, instead of reiterating or listing the Web sites here, I'll condense (imagine people screaming this progressively louder across a room): WE DON'T KNOW! WE DON'T KNOW SO WE'LL TELL YOU NOT TO HAVE ANY AND SCARE YOU TO DEATH TO MAKE SURE YOU DON'T!
Well, bugger that. How is it that chemical companies and mining conglomerates and people like Monsanto have permission to litter our water, air, and bodies with toxic, probably cancer-causing pollutants simply by saying nobody can disallow their actions because WE DON'T KNOW what the impact is, yet I'm ostracized for my two drinks a week because alcohol, which has been around about as long as civilization, might possibly have a miniscule effect on a baby that will probably be just fine?
And here we hit the stress wall, which frankly applies to all the other damned pregnancy advice. With all the articles people send me of the possible effects of alcohol, I do worry. And that stress, it has been shown, probably has a much more detrimental impact on my child than have a glass of wine every day could ever have if I'd hadn't known better (so to speak).
Forget the alcohol for a second. Imagine you're a thirtyish woman who eats well, exercises relatively regularly, isn't all that fit but is pretty darn healthy, keeps her mind active, gets outdoors a lot, but, of course, spends a lot of her time trying to limit her calorie intake and get really in shape cause it'd be nice to be super-fit, and should probably cut back on drinking due to the calories, and who also wants to learn French and Arabic and hike through Tibet and further her mathematical studies and learn to play the piano really well. Then she gets pregnant. Suddenly, all this stuff she's been trying to do in a mild sort of way becomes, in the doctors' eyes, absolutely essential. The message is, in short, "You must immediately become the perfect person you've had an image of for the last 10 years." Stressful? You betcha.
The other day I was at a seriously boring dinner party, where I made a sarcastic comment about not being able to drink. A man said, meaning well, "Well, just think of it this way. At least you're not forcing your baby to consume alcohol." At which point I was ready to scream at him. It's the baby that's keeping me from doing a whole hell of a lot of things I love doing, from wine with dinner to doing handstands in yoga to sleeping through the night without needing to pee.
Right now I'm clinging to a lifeline in the form of What's Going on in There?, a book about baby brain development written by a neurobiologist. Here's the research: moderate drinking probably does have a mild effect on the fetus's brain. Modest drinking, however, having been subjected to thousands of studies both sides of the pond, is still inconclusive, although tends to lean toward the preassumptions of the culture (yes in the US, no in Europe).
The catch? "Moderate drinking" is defined as three drinks per day, every day. "Modest drinking," one drink every day. The effect of high stress? Very conclusive detrimental effects on emotional and mental development. With my desire for only two unmeasured drinks a week, I know which risk I'd like to take.
I list these last two together because I cannot separate them, if other people can. I don't need to reiterate the snippy debate between European and US standards for alcohol consumption, during pregnancy or at any other time. I grew up in America, with a certain expectation of what was 'okay' to drink; my parents were very sensible people in that respect -- and they were poor, so buying wine or good beer simply wasn't part of our lives. However, I moved to Europe and married a European in my early 20s, so quickly acquired the pleasing habit of having wine with dinner every night. I refuse to justify this habit to anyone who thinks it's awful. Go read French Women Don't Get Fat for yourself. I can't take seriously the criticism of any society whose idea of a great weekend is to mow a chemically green lawn.
Added to this is my own scientific training and analytical turn of mind. I don't simply nod my head and do whatever my doctor tells me. No, I do the research for myself. And the research, I have to say, has done nothing but get me completely wound up and stressed out about the entire issue.
When I first took the "you've got a blue line" test, I did a bunch of research online and decided to go with the UK government guidelines rather than France, tempting as it was (in the last month, by the way, France has altered its recommendations; it used to advise women to have a glass of wine per day, but now is more aligned with the UK). The advice is "no more than 1-2 units of alcohol once or twice a week." That's all right until you find that 125 ml of 12% wine constitutes 1.5 units of alcohol. It's not a lot. And it's not even that I wanted more -- my mother was absolutely right when she said I wouldn't even feel like having alcohol most days (she didn't abstain, either). But I hated the feeling of being constrained.
Then well-meaning people began sending me research, which, instead of reiterating or listing the Web sites here, I'll condense (imagine people screaming this progressively louder across a room): WE DON'T KNOW! WE DON'T KNOW SO WE'LL TELL YOU NOT TO HAVE ANY AND SCARE YOU TO DEATH TO MAKE SURE YOU DON'T!
Well, bugger that. How is it that chemical companies and mining conglomerates and people like Monsanto have permission to litter our water, air, and bodies with toxic, probably cancer-causing pollutants simply by saying nobody can disallow their actions because WE DON'T KNOW what the impact is, yet I'm ostracized for my two drinks a week because alcohol, which has been around about as long as civilization, might possibly have a miniscule effect on a baby that will probably be just fine?
And here we hit the stress wall, which frankly applies to all the other damned pregnancy advice. With all the articles people send me of the possible effects of alcohol, I do worry. And that stress, it has been shown, probably has a much more detrimental impact on my child than have a glass of wine every day could ever have if I'd hadn't known better (so to speak).
Forget the alcohol for a second. Imagine you're a thirtyish woman who eats well, exercises relatively regularly, isn't all that fit but is pretty darn healthy, keeps her mind active, gets outdoors a lot, but, of course, spends a lot of her time trying to limit her calorie intake and get really in shape cause it'd be nice to be super-fit, and should probably cut back on drinking due to the calories, and who also wants to learn French and Arabic and hike through Tibet and further her mathematical studies and learn to play the piano really well. Then she gets pregnant. Suddenly, all this stuff she's been trying to do in a mild sort of way becomes, in the doctors' eyes, absolutely essential. The message is, in short, "You must immediately become the perfect person you've had an image of for the last 10 years." Stressful? You betcha.
The other day I was at a seriously boring dinner party, where I made a sarcastic comment about not being able to drink. A man said, meaning well, "Well, just think of it this way. At least you're not forcing your baby to consume alcohol." At which point I was ready to scream at him. It's the baby that's keeping me from doing a whole hell of a lot of things I love doing, from wine with dinner to doing handstands in yoga to sleeping through the night without needing to pee.
Right now I'm clinging to a lifeline in the form of What's Going on in There?, a book about baby brain development written by a neurobiologist. Here's the research: moderate drinking probably does have a mild effect on the fetus's brain. Modest drinking, however, having been subjected to thousands of studies both sides of the pond, is still inconclusive, although tends to lean toward the preassumptions of the culture (yes in the US, no in Europe).
The catch? "Moderate drinking" is defined as three drinks per day, every day. "Modest drinking," one drink every day. The effect of high stress? Very conclusive detrimental effects on emotional and mental development. With my desire for only two unmeasured drinks a week, I know which risk I'd like to take.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
