Weekly Roundup: Not an Expert, Marriage Equality, and Bad Pants

Weekly Roundup: Not an Expert, Marriage Equality, and Bad Pants

Via

This article resonated with me so much. When our adoption fell through last spring, I thought something very similar, something along the lines of "well, now I'll always be able to help women who have lost a baby some way or another!" or, at the very least, "now I'll never ask what might be painful questions of other women about babies." Come to find out? Not so much. To paraphrase the article, one failed adoption does not an expert make. I've found myself asking the exact questions that bothered me so much except I'll ask them all sneaky, which is even worse! "Do people ask you when you're going to have a baby?" I've asked that question! Out loud! Isn't that awful? I've asked women if they want to or plan to have a second baby even though I hate that question about a first baby. Of course I want one!! I want to scream...and yet, there I am, asking away.

On the other hand, I have this almost morbid curiosity about pregnancy, being a mother, being a co-parent. I want to know what it's like so much, and sometimes asking questions helps me to feel closer to that experience. I want to ask things that I don't: do you have stretch marks? How do you feel about them? Are you nervous about breastfeeding? Will you work full time after he/she/they come? What does it feel like when the baby moves? How did you know what it was the first time? Are there things that surprise you about being pregnant? About being a parent? Are there any "golden rules" you had in your head before you were a parent that you have since broken? You're having twins-did you do IVF? Yup, I want to ask that. Yup, I'm aware that might be insensitive, but I do wonder, and I still find this shroud of secrecy around something that it so common. 

I could go on and on. 

Loss of an expected child (children) put me into a club that I didn't know existed, and a few women have spoken to me about their losses, their miscarriages, their hopes...but that doesn't make me an expert. It makes me a student to my own experience, and hopefully to theirs. 

This article came out awhile ago, but I still re-read it because it warms my heart. 

And I thought this piece by Man Repeller on why she wears "bad pants" was really interesting.