Read the Bottom Line and Open Wide

After the standard well-baby care visits to the doctor, I pretty much suck at managing a child's health care.

I attribute this to my high anxiety regarding paperwork, specifically insurance forms. I'm pretty sure that started the day I had to declare myself dependent on the state of New York for medical coverage and food benefits. Maybe someday I'll tell you more about that horror of horrors.

For now, I'll just admit that I'm not one of those moms who circles dates on her calendar six months in advance and works her schedule around her kid's physical or teeth cleaning.

I can barely plan six days in advance. Life happens, you know?

I myself don't go to the doctor unless 1) I'm growing a human being inside me, as I happen to be doing now, or 2) there is a profuse amount of blood or snot coming out of somewhere.

Between the months on Medicaid and my current employer's health plan more than a decade later, I never even had dental or vision coverage. I had worn the same pair of contacts for a scandalously long time. Let's just say, longer than any pair of shoes I own.

I managed to tend to my son Gabe's eyeballs only slightly better, dutifully getting him glasses but updating the prescription only when he couldn't see the blackboard at school. I took him to the dentist only when the office would periodically call and ask if they could finally throw out our records.

Don't I suck?

But I suck at that only, I think. I did fairly well in every other area of parenting. He always had clean clothes that fit him, he always had enough food in his belly, he always had a warm and safe bed in which to sleep. He went to libraries and zoos, parks and swimming pools -- hell, even Canada. He had an astounding vocabulary from an early age, including polite manner words. He had a self-confidence that comes from being absolutely and unconditionally loved.

He did have bad eyes and scuzzy teeth though. Until this week.

I finally got him to a new dentist, after getting him to a new eye doctor earlier in the year. (We've lived in this area about two years now.) Even more impressive, I've taken him to our family doctor several times in the past few months to freeze off some warty thingy on the bottom of his foot that has been there for goodness knows how long. All the while I've been dragging my own pregnant butt to the OBGYN and the lab for every possible thing.

I am way past my comfort zone, but there have been pleasant surprises. Gabe and I both got updated eyeballs, with new frames for him, at the eye doctor for, like, $30. Since I'm paying out the nose for this damned vision insurance through a paycheck withdrawal -- an amount that went up at the same time the salary went down in a round of union contract concessions -- I might as well use it.

I still experienced trepidation about going to the dentist office this week. I can't even remember the last time Gabe had a teeth cleaning; I think I may have been taller than him then. (That's a long, long time ago.) I even warned him that I might have to leave the office for a little while if the appointment was going to take a long time, not confident that I could sit in the waiting room without a sign magically appearing over my head with a big arrow, pointing out that: "Here sits the worst mother in the world. And look, she's even pregnant with another kid she'll probably neglect."

But the receptionist was kind and welcoming and didn't even ask me where our old dental records were. She filled in the insurance part on the new patient forms for me. I could have kissed her. A bonus: two big leather couches in addition to the standard waiting room chairs. I plopped my pregnant butt in one of those couches and watched episodes of animal rescue/cop shows on a big-screen TV. It felt much more like a home and much less like a courtroom.

Gabe emerged later with a goody bag of dental care products and the need for filling only two tiny cavities. The kind receptionist waved off my attempt to pay and said she would make sure to check all avenues with my insurance company first. I came home so pleased and energized that I even washed dishes and did laundry.

I may have gotten here even sooner if I hadn't needed months to recover from the absolute shame of getting dressed down by the school nurse at high school registration. She told me that Gabe really needed to get to a dentist and an eye doctor -- in front of EVERYONE. Every parent, every new student, every wayward 10th-grader in the wrong line. Right there in the hallway, looking first at the check marks on his paperwork (which had taken me three days of puffing into a brown paper bag to fill out in the first place) and then looking down on me.

First, I already freaking knew that he really needed to get to a dentist and an eye doctor. Second, the nasty letters sent home periodically did not help.

Would it have killed her to invite me into the little exam room? Or scribble down my phone number to call me later? Did she have to add peer pressure to an already horrible situation, exposing me to the pitying looks from other parents? Could she ever have asked, just once, what my problem was?

As people with odd anxieties are wont to do, I may be projecting my anger and misplacing blame. Sorry.

But it seems like a great big assumption that parenting comes naturally in all contexts, that all of us mommies are out there doing it with Stepford alacrity.

Not this sister. I suck at some things. But I did get a little better recently. We'll just have to see how well I keep up with it.

In the meantime, Gabe just needs to floss.

A Baby by Any Other Diaper ...

Every pregnancy is different, they say.

They say a lot of things, really. Since my last pregnancy was a decade and a half ago, I have trouble remembering what, if anything, is different.

When I lost all reasonable control of my emotions during this second trimester, I told an old college roommate, "Geez, I don't remember being like this before."

"Dude, you were pretty emotional," Megan replied, remembering what it was like to live with me then. (Yes, "dude." It was the '90s, whaddya want?)

I know for certain that I had managed to skip morning sickness before. When I made it through the first three months this time around with little more than queasiness, I thought my innards had special fortitude. Come month four, I was barfing in my office bathroom well past morning.

I do remember liking pregnancy before. I had wanted to be a mommy since, oh, about 6 years old, carting around dolls and becoming fascinated with real babies when my cousin Amanda was born. I'm told I was fascinated with my baby brother, but I don't really remember his infancy three years after my own.

I had really good parents and really good grandparents, and raising a family was as inheritable as the farm. I knew I was going to be a mother some day.

I didn't know that I would become one while I was still trying to finish up my $100,000 education, or that it would throw me and my fiance into veritable poverty, or that it would make starting my journalism career that much more challenging.

As hard as that was, I was still happy about being pregnant and even happier once my angel Gabriel was born. I was a confident, attentive baby mama, and he thrived. He was a good eater, a good sleeper, a good pooper, pretty much good all the way around.

Yes, I called my mother once, tearfully confessing that I wanted to throw him out the window. I happen to think that is normal, and quite healthy to tell someone about it. Frankly, if you don't want to throw your kids out of a window at some point in their lives, I doubt you're putting all of your heart into parenting.

That may be the only thing I'm sure will be the same this time around, those desperate moments a mom can feel when a baby won't stop crying or her body won't resemble anything besides a beached whale or her partner won't live up to whatever crazy expectations she is having at any given moment. Dude, we get pretty emotional.

As for everything else, who knows? I was 22 then, I'm now 37. My body constantly reminds me of that too, with my uterus falling forward within weeks and my hips complaining all night long. I may have given up alcohol like before, but this time I've clung to one cherished can of diet Coke each morning. (I get up at stupid o'clock for my commute to my newspaper, and caffeine-free was a lot easier at 22.)

This pregnancy seems far more temperamental. I am thrilled to have conceived within three months of trying, especially at my age, but it has come with discomforts I hadn't experienced before. I didn't even know you could get varicose veins in certain places.

Before, I craved fish sandwiches. Specifically, with cheese, which I happen to think is revolting. I haven't eaten a fish sandwich topped with cheese since Gabe was born, but I couldn't get enough of them while he was in utero. This baby boy yanks his umbilical cord with constant requests for potatoes. Specifically, home fries. I will be eating those until I die.

I don't know if it's the potatoes or what, but this fetus is in constant motion and seems far more forceful in his movements. I was having a conversation with my supervisor the other day and let out in involuntary yelp after a swift kick in whatever now remains of my left ovary. I don't remember that part, but it's certainly possible baby boy No.1 was the Karate Kid.

Gabe's birth took three damn days. Medical paperwork records that, even if the experience hadn't burned indelibly into my psyche. I sure hope that part is different this time around. I sometimes wonder how much being an unmarried Medicaid recipient at a teaching hospital played into the decision to not give me a C-section, but it may just have been the natural length of time to squeeze out a 9-pounder.

There are no ways to control some of these pregnancy differences, but I've got that one covered in my birthing plan:

"Do not let me go that long in labor. You will regret doing so, I promise."

Saintly Sinners and Sinning Saints

Youth begin their time in God's Discovery Zone at Peace
Lutheran Church by reading from their favorite books.

Sometimes it blows people's minds that I'm a Sunday school teacher.

To bring their eyebrows out of their hairlines and back to their foreheads where they belong, I assure them I don't cuss in front of my class and am far more patient with them than I am with reporters on deadline.

Occasionally I will share that I just so happen to have a degree in religion, but only if I feel I can physically lift them off of the floor.

I teach at Peace Lutheran Church in Bowling Green, Ohio, where my mother happens to be pastor. (I am not a P.K. She was a farm wife, truck driver, homeless advocate, agency director, and seminary student through my formative years.) We are an ELCA congregation, and we take Lutheran theology pretty seriously, including Luther's emphasis on teaching the Word in understandable and accessible ways.

We take children pretty liberally.

Our communion table is open, which means there are no requirements and no restrictions on anyone desiring to share the Lord's Supper. As soon as a babe can chew solid food, and as soon as her parent decides, my mother will pop a piece of bread into her mouth.

She does offer communion instruction, and "first communion" days are held in celebration, but sometimes that kid has been partaking of the Eucharist for years. Other times that kid has received blessings -- "May Jesus bless and keep you forever," as my mom says, or "You are the apple of God's eye," as fellow congregant and supply preacher Pastor Meg says -- and it really is his first communion. We leave it up to the parents' discretion and children's desire.

Peace kids get to do a lot in church. They take turns holding the baskets for the empty communion glasses, they bring up the youth offering (in a brightly colored plastic tray shaped like a fish), they plan on building a prayer labyrinth, they sometimes walk with the pastor in the recessional and get to shout out the sending with her: "Go in peace, remember the poor," to which the congregation responds, "Thanks be to God."

Today, on Palm Sunday, they will pass out the fronds -- and likely chase each other with them later on the playground. But they get to do that too.

Youth build relationship with many different people at
Peace, including Miss Sheri during song practice.

During worship, some kids sit in the chairs with their families or friends, while some kids sprawl on the floor with their coloring pages. We keep binders of text-themed pictures and activities with a baggie of crayons on a shelf in the back of the sanctuary for them. Again, it's up to the parents' discretion and the children's desire (or level of cooperation).

They come and go out of the sacred space, toddling off to the nursery, hitting the potties, decimating the snack table. They sift through our noisemaker baskets for their favorite shaker or bells until they find just the right one to jangle along with the hymns. They cuddle with someone in the glider or rocking chair that are nestled in with the regular seats in our sanctuary.

They are there.

It's the surest way to teach a kid to hate church and to give up on it completely in adulthood by emotionally duct-taping them to a pew or throwing up barrier after barrier to whoever that is the pastor keeps talking about loving them so dearly.

We do have some boundaries. Gluttony at the snack table is met with a reminder that food is to be shared with everyone. The teaching areas are either open spaces or have doors with big windows, for safety and transparency. When kids are chasing each other with something more threatening than palm fronds -- like the javelin-ish stick Robbie found last week that probably served as a driveway marker at some point -- we stop them.

As for teaching, you're not going to find me drilling them on memory texts. You won't ever hear me tell them they are going to hell if they don't act right.

You will hear me ask them to sit still and be quiet if I am trying to give directions, and I admonish them constantly about closing up the glue bottles. Speaking of raised eyebrows, that's usually all it takes from me to redirect any wild behavior that threatens to knock 92-year-old Miss Norma off her feet as she dutifully washes dishes in the kitchen.

Hopefully you will see me sharing the Word in interesting and age-appropriate ways. Our crafts should be fun and meaningful. The kids should have some idea that God loves them, Jesus will always be there for them, and they have been called to take care of each other and the world around them.

We don't even call it "Sunday school" -- it's God's Discovery Zone and God's Explorers. We engage with the sacred stories and share our ideas, youth and adult leaders alike. We wonder, we laugh, we doubt, we dance.

Children's ministry at Peace is grounded in the goal of relationship building. If the kids are in relationship with people who have a relationship with Jesus -- the pastor, the Sunday school teacher, Miss Norma, another youth -- the kids are connected to Jesus.

They have the rest of their lives to "learn" about what that means. Almost a century old, Miss Norma is still discovering new connections in her relationship with Jesus and with those whom Jesus loves. That's why I don't let the kids run so fast they'll knock her over; I want them to be in relationship with her. It's not just because they're "in church" and that's not what kids are supposed to do "in church."

Frankly, Miss Norma is the dearest soul who has ever walked the planet, and she'd likely extend relationship to a kid even from the floor.

I don't get on the floor with the kids very often anymore. I'm too pregnant and they're too little to help me up.

No Booze for You!

Non-alcoholic wine (aka grape juice) is made more
tolerable in a high-heeled shoe bottle holder,
both a gift from girlfriend Beth.

I have an experiment in mind. I'd like to walk up to a bartender, literally bellying up to the bar as my pregnancy arrives anywhere well before I do, and order an alcoholic beverage.

I hope I would get a response akin to the Soup Nazi on "Seinfeld": "No booze for you!"

Like most reasonable people, I don't think a small glass of wine every once in a great while during pregnancy is the end of the world. Regularly having a glass of wine -- or four -- is a problem.

And forget dirty martinis, my favorite cocktail. Whether hard liquor is that much more damaging to a fetus isn't my issue. It just seems tacky.

Lots of moms recount tales of finding out they were pregnant after they had imbibed at some fabulous party, the details of which they can remember only because someone posted the pictorial evidence on Facebook. Many an obstetrician has soothed a panicky (and possibly hungover) mother-to-be with assurances that as long as she didn't continue such behavior, everything was going to turn out fine.

I was slightly surprised that giving up alcohol seemed relatively easy this time around. I am the parent of a teenager, after all, which can drive anyone to drink. (Prohibition was more difficult with my first pregnancy, as it pretty much crimped celebrations during my senior year of college.) I even cut back while I was trying to conceive.

Unfortunately, I recently became a member of Chaine des Rotisseurs, a supper club of sorts that pretty much revolves around wine. Events can be rather steeply priced, to cover the cost of said elixir, which seems wasted on a woman who can't even enjoy it. Luckily, my local chapter's bailli is willing to give me a price break.

For most of my pregnancy, I haven't really craved any alcohol. Well, except for one colossally stressful night when my husband found me sobbing in the sunroom, a full wine glass in one hand and an unlit cigarette in another. He pried both away and wisely left me there to bawl it out.

But as my due date approaches and the weather gets more beautiful, I'm beginning to feel twinges. My fingers involuntarily curl as if around a glass stem. My ears hear imaginary ice cubes tinkling together. My lips pucker for a big swig of olive juice swirling in a vat of vodka.

Those twinges had better go away. I'm planning on breast feeding, and I've yet to find a sippy cup that doubles as a cocktail shaker.

Perhaps we'll have some success with pumping and bottle feeding, which could mean that mommy gets her own big girl bottle of booze for an evening. But I think that would just be a first step in me wanting it all the more and bringing an untimely end to breast feeding.

I'll have to let you know how the bartender experiment goes.

Code 10-10: Officer Needs Help

One of the sexiest things a woman can hear is her partner telling her children, "Hey, listen to your mother."

When my husband says this, I get momentarily distracted from whatever harping is causing my teenager's eyes to roll. I have to pause a moment and give a prayer of gratitude for what we all need:

Backup.

In the newsroom, we sometimes hear a dispatcher on the scanner asking if police need more units wherever they are responding. Co-parenting is a lot like this. Someone with impressive authority, quick response time, and serious weaponry is truly appreciated when a situation gets overwhelming.

Tangling with teenagers is not for the weak. Mine happens to stand more than a foot taller than me too, so eye-to-eye confrontations work only when he cooperates.

I usually hold my own with him quite well. He trends on the obedient side of the spectrum anyway. Yet he is still a child, and I am still a parent, and there are days when recalibration is needed.

Sometimes I'm off my game, or sometimes that kid simply loses his mind and thinks he can grumble or guff his way out of it. Either way, it becomes quickly evident that we are both in need of a rescue, me from floundering and him from himself.

Enter the other adult, and the power balance shifts with a heavy thud.

"Listen to your mother" is code for "Shut your mouth." It means the child has crossed a boundary, and the mother's partner isn't going to stand for it a moment longer. It means, "I don't care if she's cranky or wrong or irrational, I'm on her side, period. You have several years yet to figure out how you're truly going to become an independent person who is responsible for himself, but only one more second to realize that you are going to listen to the entire rant, nod your head, apologize, and then perform whatever rectifying behavior she wishes."

Depending on the sharpness of the tone, it also can mean that the child is about to raise the stakes -- and lose. The co-parent is signaling that while it may have taken that long to exhaust one parent's patience, the other one's fuse is shorter. The child has forfeited whatever reasonable and commensurate consequence the first parent was trying to mete out and is about to incur some serious wrath, not only for what he did in the first place but also for bringing distress to a beloved partner.

The phrase could just mean, "Good grief, I can't stand the sound of her high-pitched ragging anymore either, so just say yes and get it over with so I can watch TV in peace, please."

It's all good, as far as I'm concerned. It satisfies what I need in that moment, which is some help.

This is why single parenting can be challenging. Single mothers are not less successful at mothering than married ones. In fact, it may be the contrary because they have to try that much harder to keep it all together.

What's really missing in their parenting experiences is the other cop standing just behind them, badge gleaming and hand lightly resting on a holster. The confidence, the validation, the mere assistance of "Listen to your mother" is an advantage partnered parents have.

What my son doesn't know is that when he leaves the room after a conversation has been wrapped up by the utterance of, "Hey, listen to your mother," the gleaming-eyed shrew that was his angry mom suddenly melts into a love-struck, doe-eyed wife who smothers her husband with kisses.

It's truly a magical phrase.