Pregnancy

I am very eager to have babies with the man I love. With us now moving, kids are on the back burner because we won’t have health insurance until one of us lands a job with benefits. We had been trying to get pregnant until the decision to move was made because I have decent benefits with my current hateful job. (One of the reasons I haven’t quit, the other main one being that I’m trying to hold this job out till we can move.) I really want kids soon; I have wanted to be a mother since I was 5. But the stress of life and my failing body seem to want other things for me. I had injured my back at work and now am in physiotherapy to heal it, yet I’m still obligated to work my full shifts. Those eight-hour shifts literally drain me. I haven’t had a period in 3.5 months (my doctor insists it’s stress-related). And most recently, my pap test came back with abnormal cells on my cervix. No further tests have been done, but my doctor thinks my back, lack of period and abnormal cells are at least partly because of too much stress. Hard not to be stressed when all these symptoms have made me worry and fret even more about never being able to have children! The more that I worry, the more stressed my body becomes. The more symptoms of the stress I experience, the more I worry. (A huge catch-22.) One of my worst fears is to end up being barren.

On to my other issue. My fiancé and I both smoke marijuana regularly. I will note here that we do not smoke cigarettes at all, nor do we drink alcohol very often. Although I have heard that it can prevent couples from conceiving, I only “slowed it down” when we were trying to get pregnant. My fiancé seems to have his usage under control. He is able to use on a part-time basis and not every evening and every weekend. I am a different story altogether. I use (abuse) marijuana for stress. I rush to get home after work to have the bad memories of the day dissolve into higher thoughts. I am not high at work, but evenings and weekends are full of my usage. It’s the way I’ve taught myself to deal. Although I don’t think marijuana is an “evil drug” that “leads to other drug usage,” I know that I am misusing it. I have never felt the need to try any other drug (besides alcohol and caffeine). But I barely even notice the effects any more. Despite that, I can’t imagine quitting it altogether. I know that if I were pregnant I would not smoke at all, because there is another human being involved who would be affected by it.

But without marijuana, how would I deal with life’s stress? Plus there is some part of me that feels like marijuana is not bad. You ought to know that in my family, a few other people smoke marijuana. My aunt and cousin probably use it once daily, and my mom and brother once or twice a week, and my dad on occasion. While they never permitted any drug usage as a teenager, I found out and smoked with family after turning 19. Obviously this is a huge part of the reason why I can’t seem to convince myself that marijuana is “bad.”

This new city will not have any marijuana contacts for my fiancé and me, and it is my plan to stop smoking when we move. But really, I don’t want to stop at all, and I feel like I’m lying to myself by thinking that a new city will stop me from finding a way to do it. Plus, my fiancé is moving first, and we will be apart for a month (we’ve never been apart for longer than 10 days in the past four years). I know that with him gone, I will want to smoke even more. Especially because I feel like I want to get as much smoking in before I “can’t” anymore.

I know several people who use marijuana more than I do and who firmly believe that no one can get addicted to it. I guess I’m not so sure about this, but I would like to believe it because then I’m just a hippie and not an addict. I worry about the usage affecting the physiotherapy on my back, but since we aren’t trying to get pregnant, I still smoke whenever I want to. My fiancé knows that I smoke too much, he knows that I KNOW that I smoke too much too. But month after month he still brings it home for us. I have tried to quit before, asking him to keep it all hidden and out of sight. This always fails, because I will find it and sneak some or bug and bug him to get it out of hiding for me.

I don’t think I can stop until he stops bringing it into the house and we get rid of all the marijuana paraphernalia that is around our place. If my fiancé doesn’t want to quit with me, I would be disappointed. But as long as he kept everything out of our house and cars, I think I could do it. I really do want children in the long run and better physiotherapy results in the short term. What do I do?

Moving and Shaking

Dear Moving and Shaking,

You are using marijuana to relieve stress.

Stress is your problem. Whether you stop smoking marijuana or not, you need to learn more and better ways to relieve stress.

Start doing tai chi; start doing yoga; meditate; take naps; breathe deeply a lot; do biofeedback. If you are doing any of these activities already, don’t conclude that since you’re doing it a little it must not work. Instead, do it more.

You may need higher doses of yoga to get relief. Also, if you are consuming lots of caffeine, see about cutting back. Try substituting some herbal teas for caffeinated beverages now and then. Notice the difference. Especially in the afternoon, cut out the caffeine so you can get a better night’s sleep.

You will notice things about yourself this way. You will notice the different qualities of consciousness that arise from various techniques. It will be entertaining and interesting. You will notice a gradual improvement in your ability to go through life in a relaxed, worry-free way. Unpleasant activities like work and dealing with power-hungry blockheads will go more smoothly.

During this time, you might want to experiment with not smoking for a time. Pick an occasional time when you are stressed out, and instead of smoking, do 15 minutes of meditation, or some tai chi or yoga.

Don’t try to quit all at once, especially not on your own. Just learn some better relaxation techniques. Take it easy. Look for gradual improvement.

Once you’ve found other ways to relieve stress, you may not feel so fearful about the idea of quitting marijuana for good. Try going without for a few days at a time and see how that goes. You can always smoke. But experience what it’s like to handle life without it. Try to get accustomed to that feeling. You may feel slightly on edge, but take a deep breath of fresh air instead of a hit of weed.

The thing is, whether you call yourself an addict or not, changing habitual behavior is hard, and it’s especially hard to do alone. It’s hard to do without a program. It takes time, effort and support, and there are ups and downs. So I wouldn’t recommend trying to stop smoking marijuana on your own, or just with your fiancé.

As you say, for a variety of reasons, you are going to want to quit. So what I’m suggesting is that you prepare, in these ways, for the day when you will need to quit. I’m sure marijuana gives you other things besides stress relief; it probably gives you a heightened sense of the beauty of life, of tastes and sounds, and of general well-being. These things you may need to seek out in life; I find that there are other ways to feel these momentary highs. Seek them out.

For quitting things, as you probably know, I favor the 12-step method because it has added benefits: It helps you get your life together and is a lasting program of living. It is a community. It works for a lot of things.

When and how you quit is up to you. I can say that based on experience, it is definitely possible. You can quit and lead a normal, happy life, when you’re ready to. My bottom line is just that A) You should acquire new stress-relief methods first, before trying to quit, and B) what was B? Oh yeah, B) Don’t try to quit on your own. If and when you do decide to quit, do it with a group or a program behind you.

And, hey: Good luck. You sound like really nice people and I wish you the best in life. And say hello to the kids when they come. And say hello to the mountains.

My friends moved to a progressive, Midwestern college town so he could complete his Ph.D. and she could have two more wonderful children in quick succession. She had uncomplicated pregnancies, had those babies at home, breast-fed like a champ, and is now interested in private (Waldorf) schooling for the children as they enter the preschool years. All the while they’ve had the financial support of retired, secure grandparents to make some of these things possible that wouldn’t be on a graduate student stipend alone.

My husband and I had our delightful daughter in a hospital setting, I went back to work when she was 11 weeks old (also breast-feeding and pumping for a year plus), we pieced together childcare from the generosity of my sister, neighborhood baby sitters, and finally a daycare close to work and now a great preschool. None of those events happened without difficulty — financial and emotional – but we passed through them and have a loving, happy little family.

It’s been four hard and wonderful years — interspersed with a significant illness on my part that delayed trying for a second baby (and trying, and trying) until — yes! — I was finally pregnant and ready to share the news with my good friends (who had since moved only an hour away when my friend secured a professorship at a nearby college).

The earthquake: We go up to their house for the weekend, our kids go off to play, I share that I’m pregnant and then … well. Questions about how my daughter was born (didn’t they know? I thought I told them?) turned into a strong push for my husband and me to consider having a home birth for this new baby. And they weren’t particularly nice about it. They made it clear that the birth of my daughter was an awful experience (if only I would recognize it) and that I clearly hadn’t done my research (I did). When it was evident from my shaking voice and tearing eyes that I was upset, and as I attempted feebly to defend my goddamn “birth experience” and my intelligence, they (sort of) dropped it and we all played a game of Balderdash. I so desperately wanted things to be OK that I pretend that they were.

But they’re not, obviously. One game of Balderdash does not restore a friendship. Neither does my friend’s post-earthquake attempts to “like” everything I post on Facebook. I never told them how much they hurt me, but I also have no desire right now to see them. I would rather lick my wounds alone, grow fat with a new baby, give birth in the big bad hospital, and check in with them once the kids are done with college and our early “parenting choices” fade into perspective.

Worse, that one earthquake event made me revisit the slow drift, so now I’m resentful of how “easy” they’ve had things when before that fateful weekend I didn’t give anything a second thought — I was just happy to spend time with them and their kids. Aren’t we just lucky to even have kids? And jobs? And old friends?

If I don’t try to save this friendship now, do you think I can save it later? Should I save it? Can I come to a place of forgiveness without a discussion with them? Or do I have to discuss it with them? What can I learn from this experience about myself that’s positive, or things about myself that I can/should change so this type of thing doesn’t eat me up so much? I feed off resentment sometimes. How can I stop?

Sad Mama-to-be

Dear Sad Mama-to-be,

There are certain topics in the discussion of which otherwise decent, thoughtful people behave like tyrannical bores. One such topic is “the good of the children.” Apparently “for the good of the children” no remark is too tasteless or insensitive or intrusive. When “the good of the children” is concerned, your feelings as parents and friends no longer matter.

Your friends would never so ham-handedly advise you on proper techniques and apparatus for sexual intercourse with your husband. They would never suggest that in your bathroom habits you’re doing it all wrong. That stuff is private! It’s taboo! That would seem weird and offensive. But no offense is too great when it comes to “the good of the children.”

It might be different if the children in question were in danger of dying from unsanitary conditions or suffering brain damage. But just who are these children about whose good we are so deeply concerned, and what is the peril? They are, on the whole, extremely fortunate children, children of wise and loving parents, about to be born in sophisticated modern hospitals where the greatest possible medical advances ensure nearly flawless safety for mother and child in an event that throughout history has involved peril of death for both.

So I join you in your high dudgeon; I am in solidarity with you. Your friends were out of line.

At the same time, I have to tell you: Let it go.

Your friends love you. They are simply flawed people, like all of us.

Birth at home, birth in water, birth in the silent, peaceful dark, that sounds great. I wish I could have been born that way. That would have been great.

But who chooses the manner in which the birth is to be had? Friends? Strangers? Doctors? The state? The church?

You choose. The mother chooses. And the rest of us step back and respect that.

Still, you have to let it go.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Just precisely exactly in what manner on earth are you to just simply “let it go”? How, pray tell, is that supposed to happen?

Me, I am, imperfectly but fairly determinedly, a practitioner of the 12 steps. And one thing we learn in practicing the 12 steps is to concern ourselves with the phenomenon of the disturbance itself. We put aside questions of who was right and ask, Why am I disturbed? In your case, you are uncomfortable with something someone has said to you. Regardless of the content, it is you who must adjust your outlook to accommodate this phenomenon. Sure, someone has been rude. But people can be rude to us with no consequence  to us if we are, shall I say, spiritually fit.

It takes practice, of course. But the 12 steps lead us to a place where we are not disturbed greatly if at all by such intrusive boorishness. We shrug it off. We lovingly let it go. For help in learning to practice the 12 steps you might look into something like Al-Anon or codependents anonymous, groups that use the 12 steps to tackle problems other than substance abuse and addiction.

Now, abandoning the notion of who is right and who is wrong is a huge shift for people who consider themselves thinking individuals, problem solvers, rational, decent people. But that is what the 12 steps call for; that is what is required when all reasonable, commonsense solutions have come up short. When you are driven to the 12 steps, usually your reasonableness has indeed been exhausted. You have seen your situation to be absolutely hopeless.

So. Well then. The only thing that stands in your way seems to be the absence of absolute hopelessness!

Perhaps absolute hopelessness is present in some form. Let’s hope so.

(Please forgive my nerdy attempt at dark, 12-step humor.)

Good luck. I hope you can go back to these friends of yours and admit that you were hurt in that conversation but you value them and love them and want to save the friendship. They sound like good people. You all sound like good people. I hope you can remain friends for a long time, and raise these kids together.

The other path that I have been on is one of self-discovery, mainly through yoga and meditation, which have been a daily part of my life for over a decade now. What these practices have afforded me is an appreciation of “the moment” and an increasing ability to escape the tyranny of the mind. It’s quite easy for me now to drift away into a state of bliss, to allow my body and mind to unwind and to fall into the peaceful abyss that lies beyond the intellectual mind. But this practice has also meant a gradual shriveling of my ambitious self. The passion that I once felt for storytelling (acting, writing, filmmaking — all a part of my working life) seems to have dissipated. I would rather lie on the floor than sit down at my computer and work on my screenplay.

What is the point? I seem to say. We are all nothing, we all return to nothing, why spend time and energy pursuing and achieving when we are here simply to exist and to experience? Pursuit and ambition have a lot to answer for. And the cult of individual success is, I believe, the source of much unhappiness in our society.  And yet I understand that our pursuits and achievements are an important part of our existence and I fear that my ability to be “in the moment” is actually preventing me from being all that I can be in this lifetime.

I am so much happier now than when I was full of ambitious determination, and yet I long for my previous motivation. How do I take the lessons that I have learned from my spiritual practice and put them to good use? Me sitting blissfully in my lounge room is not going to help the world. But it’s such a lovely place to be, I am finding it difficult to leave.

Yours,

One-Time Wannabe

Dear One-Time Wannabe,

Perhaps you are waiting for the ambition to return. Perhaps you are forming a new idea.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Nor would it be the first time a woman got pregnant and found her priorities shifting.

I had a really great therapist who got pregnant. I had to move over and let the baby come in. She still sounds a little bewildered about the change; well, not bewildered; I don’t imagine a therapist that brilliant is every completely bewildered; let’s just say that totality of motherhood took her by surprise, as the totality of love or illness can take us by surprise. We think our plans are what it’s all about. Then we allow ourselves to fall in love, or get pregnant, or form a business, or write a novel, and the thing we thought was our project takes over. We become its project.

Then we’re all like, hey, what’s this? Who’s in charge?

Indeed.

You have allowed life to take charge. So when will you be back in charge? Just as soon as … the stroller years are over, or … she’s finally a teenager or … she graduates from college or … she’s finally married off to a swell guy at Pixar? Who knows?

Here’s the other part. You do still have plans. You’re still a creative artist. You’re still ambitious. Your plans may not be clear. They may seem on hold. But there will be a next step.

Wait for that next step to appear. Don’t worry right now about not having a plan. You don’t need a plan until you have a clear goal. Resist the temptation to have a plan, any plan; resist the danger of wasting time in meaningless activity, a fruitless simulacrum of purpose. If you have no purpose then rest. That’s fine. Rest and wait for the baby.

This will give you the time to fully envision that next step. It could take a while. So prepare the bed for it. Wait for it.

Maybe your purpose will be hidden at first.

Then you may find yourself driving to an orphanage or a sick bay or clinic. You may find yourself drawn to the sea to rescue turtles. You may find you want nothing more than to go up in the mountains. Wait for the signal. It might not look like one. That’s the interesting part: The signal to reengage may not look like a signal to reengage. It may come in the form of coincidence or comic mishap. More darkly, it may arrive as an accident or misfortune, an opportunity to help.

Wait for it. It will come. When it comes, meditate first. You’ll know what to do. And soon, when the baby comes, you won’t have to think about what to do next. There will be too much to do and not enough time to do it and you, for once, will have no choice and will be sort of glad not to have a choice. I suspect it will be a kind of surrender that your meditation has prepared you for — that your current strange, listless waiting is also preparing for.

So wait for it. It will come. Be ready.