Casual Friday?

Three packets of yellow dye later and he's one his way to work as Paulie Bleeker!

I'm trapped in B's Dissertation

My intent is not for this to turn into a pregnancy blog, and I will shortly move those posts to a new blog,* but I've developed a new appreciation for B's dissertation. I've decided that pregnant women and the people who sell things to pregnant women are like Mean Girls x1000. Some examples...

Bad Mothering Lesson #1: This morning while Googling to see what "moderate consumption" of Splenda means, I discovered some interesting responses. Most start something like this.

If you love your baby and yourself, absolutely not! My [mom, doc, friend, sister] who is a [doctor, midwife, scientist, general know-it-all] says it causes the baby to develop...

• cancer
• ADHD
• drug and alcohol addiction (I'm not really sure how babies are born alcoholics, she didn't elaborate on this)
• birth defects
  
• seizures
• anger management issues
  

Apparently, Splenda also premantenly inhibits one's ability to use capital letters and punctuation as well...

after about a week i started stuttering i couldnt finish a sentence without stuttering

Since most of these contain no research to back up their claims, I asked at my doctor's appointment. The first thing she said "DON'T Google that. There are a lot of nut cases out there." Point taken.

Bad Mothering Lesson #2: Sitting in the doctors office.

Me: eating a string cheese because I scheduled this appointment for 8:15 in the morning and was running late.
Other Pregnant Woman: Where did you find organic string cheese?
Me: It's not organic.
OPW: Do you know what's in that stuff?
Me: (annoyed that this woman is talking to me) umm...non-organic milk.
OPW: I can't believe any woman would eat that stuff and risk her baby's life.
Me: Thanks. I'll look into that.
OPW: I just don't know why anyone would intentionally ingest all of those poisonous chemicals.
Me: Maybe because they are busy or have jobs and don't live in a utopia and have to make choices that aren't black and white.
OPW: where's utopia?

OPW woman gets called back.

Bad Mothering Lesson #3: Shopping for maternity pants

Me: do you sell these in short lengths?
Saleswoman: we have 2-3 styles in short, but babies really prefer these?
Me: excuse me?
Saleswoman: these pants are the most comfortable for the baby, but they don't come in short. You'd have to have them hemmed or wear heels.
Me: I'm really just interested in pants that are comfortable for me, so I'll try the short ones.
Saleswoman: (sighs and points me to the pants) we clearly need to find you some maternity tops as well.
Me: no, that's okay. I'm only looking for pants today. I still have several tops that fit.
Saleswoman: (semi-under her breath). you girls today just don't understand how dangerous it is to put your own comfort over the comfort of your baby.

I seriously think this woman might be unstable. I don't even know how my oversized t-shirts are dangerous, but I knew better than to ask. So, I left everything in the store and went to Target.

Creepy Dolls

Last night Greg and I got totally enthralled in a very weird show. BBC America's My Fake Baby is a documentary about women who buy dolls made to look like real babies. At first, I was thinking that life like dolls were a little creepy in general, but as the documentary revealed this to be a creepier trend then what I could have imagined. The women who buy these dolls often treat them as "real" babies. They buy them clothes, push them through stores and parks in "prams," and transport them in carseats. The dolls can be ordered to custom size and weight and many feature breathing, heartbeat, and "wiggle" mechanisms.

The women who make the dolls consider themselves artists, and I can support that. The majority of the dolls featured look incredibly life like. In many ways these artists are no different than artists who create sculptures or wax figures. That said, their "art" seems to be fueled by consumers (only women in the documentary) who probably would be better off spending the thousands of dollars on addressing the bigger issues in their lives. One woman had an doll made to look like her grandson who had moved to New Zealand with his mother. Throughout the documentary, the grandmother cites her motivation for getting the doll as "no one can take this baby away from me." For most of the documentary, the grandmother talks as though her grandson had died, rather than being alive and well in another country.

More disturbing to me than the woman with attachment issues is the other woman who is featured. This woman cited her love of the dolls as a replacement for her own children because she would be unable to handle the "noise" of a real baby. This woman flew from London to Washington DC for the "delivery" of her 4th baby. Besides the very weird notion that bringing home the doll is equivalent to giving birth, this woman spends two days in the hotel room "bonding" with her baby before she discovers a defect in the doll and then declares that the doll has to be returned because she can't have a "baby who isn't perfect." Okay, so maybe it's not a bad thing that this this woman doesn't have a real baby. I'm still not comfortable with her attachment to the doll, but the more I saw of this woman, the more I was glad that she wasn't rejecting an actual baby.

While all of the women featured in the documentary were British, according to this Today's Show report, the trend is now becoming popular in the US. I'm seriously thinking of teaching a "living doll" book in 170 next semester, just so I can talk about this show.

Excuses

I haven't blogged in forever for several reasons, but mostly because of this....

Baby Baumann is scheduled to arrive in May 2009.

Bingo!

I saw references to Palin Bingo in several people's status messages today and decided that researching that was a better use of my time than grading. Currently this site has 4 different bingo cards to choose from and a blank card if you want to make your own. If you are interested in a more bi-partisian bingo game, you can find a set of cards for both Biden and Palin here.