A few notes to makers of infant clothing

From a darkened room in the middle of the night.

Sleeves. Pantlegs. Make them visibly and obviously different even when all the snaps are undone.

There's going to be a diaper in there. Leave room for it even if doing so spoils the elegant line of your garment.

Zippers are only more convenient if  I don't need two hands to hold the outfit on either side of the seam, one hand to pull on the zipper tab, and another hand to steady the squirming boy. Even if some of those can be the same hand.

Internal cuffs and hems that snag fingers and toes: bad idea.
(Oh, and clothes for preemies with a closure sewn across the crotch: a bad idea that can be fixed readily with a pair of shears)

The feet in footie pajamas? They should face forward.
Oh. Scratch that. Instead, just make it much more obvious that the snaps on your garment open up the back.

Also! — and this is Julie now — also, what the hell is up with the pockets? What exactly should I expect Charlie to keep in all those pockets? Keys? Identification? Cell phone? Smokes?

Tertia, do not say condoms.

I can't figure it out. One thing is perfectly clear: I am gonna freak the fuck out the first time I reach into one of his pockets before doing laundry and find a matchbook with a phone number written on it. I have told him and told him never to play with matches. But does he listen? I can only assume he's irresistibly attracted to a certain kind of dissipated floozy with a lush and yielding rack.

But why?

All I know is that the minute I start finding colored hankies* in those tiny pockets, it's time for us to have a talk.

_____
* Not safe for work, but then surely† you're not surprised.
† No, and don't call me...well, you know.

Fundies, slaves, junkies, gays, and 'Flakes

Tonight before he finally dropped off — making a clunk so loud you probably heard it and loosed your bowels in sudden fright — Charlie cried for an hour and a half. So you will forgive me, perhaps, if I am not eloquent as I sputter in rage about this article on "embryo adoption" from the New York Times:

Randy and Julie McClure had three children who were long out of diapers and no plans for more when they heard about a program called Snowflakes, which arranges for women to become pregnant with embryos left over at fertility clinics.

"We really felt like the Lord was calling us to try to give one of these embryos, these children, a chance to live," Ms. McClure said.

Mr. McClure, though, disliked the fertility business, which he felt created extra embryos that were often destroyed or aborted. He feared that paying fees to receive the embryos would be helping an industry "that I have real problems with."

He consulted a Southern Baptist church elder, who advised him, " 'If you want to free the slaves, sometimes you have to deal with the slave trader,' " Mr. McClure said.

Randall, Randall, Randall.

Slaves?

I don't even know how to begin. I'd blame Charlie for that but the very analogy is so overblown, so intentionally inflammatory, so breathtakingly...well, wrong that even had he not perforated my eardrum with his scalded-cat cries, I suspect I'd be feeling a delicate touch of nauseated disequilibrium.

Yeah, boy, those eight cells are pretty grievously oppressed there in the dark, chilly confines of their cryo tank — hey, that's just like being abducted from your homeland, enduring an endless voyage on a floating Hell, and disembarking to find yourself owned. Why, lingering in insensate stasis is every bit as bad as being branded, mutilated, and hanged for disobedience. Yep, postponing telophase? That right there is a dream deferred, my friends, and therefore a dream denied.

If a frozen ball of human cells not visible to the naked eye and a thinking, feeling, fully potentiated person are even remotely equivalent, I'll eat Abe Lincoln's moldering stovepipe hat.

As an aside, I might take the McClures' claim of altruism a little more seriously if, instead of "adopting" those embryos themselves, they'd paid to have them transferred to an infertile couple who truly desire a child for his or her own sake, rather than shouldering what sounds suspiciously like white man's burden to win points with the Big Guy.

Now: why am I using scare quotes?

People on this part of the political spectrum have begun calling the process "embryo adoption," echoing the phrase that Snowflakes uses instead of "embryo donation." [...] The adoption terminology irritates the fertility industry, abortion rights advocates and supporters of embryonic stem cell research, who believe that the language suggests - erroneously, they maintain - that an embryo has the same status as a child.

But for some conservative Christians, that is precisely the point.

I'd be curious to know what adoption advocates — um, adoption-of-children advocates — think of this. If the McClures above are any indication of the sentiment behind embryo "adoption," I'd imagine it would rankle. While people who've adopted babies generally express reverence and gratitude, knowing what a priceless gift they've been given, the people discussed in the article who "adopt" frozen embryos seem to think they're doing those sad forsaken embryos some kind of favor. It's a little too close to the way some people tell adoptive parents how noble they are for taking in that poor unfortunate child of a filthy junkie.

Okay, that was unfair of me. The "filthy junkie" part goes unsaid. Usually.

But [embryo "adoption"] is not without risks. [Once] embryos are donated, only half survive the thawing process, and of those, only about 35 percent result in a baby. One mother died last year from pregnancy complications, said Lori Maze, director of Snowflakes.

Stop the presses! Pregnancy with donated embryos can be risky! Sort of like, um, any other kind of pregnancy. Thank you, New York Times, for the breaking motherfucking news.

In my opinion, it's disingenuous to mourn the embryos that don't make it through the thaw, or those that don't implant and become a continuing pregnancy, without acknowledging the waste — eggs that don't fertilize, embryos that don't implant, pregnancies that don't continue — built into even unassisted conception. (Disingenuous, that is, unless they're your embryos, in which case I'll hand you the Kleenex and pat your shoulder clumsily but with love.) Thanks to diligent work and a few blinding strokes of genius, science has been able to improve on nature's pregnancy rates, which hover around 25% for fertile couples in any given month. A 35% pregnancy rate isn't a risk; it's a triumph.

To carry an embryo, Ms. McClure [...] first had to undergo surgery to remove polyps. Then, most of the 13 embryos proved unviable, and one round of embryo implantation failed before she finally had a successful pregnancy using the final embryo.

Those embryos that proved unviable: were they "just [children] at an earlier stage of development" if they were chromosomally incapable of ever increasing beyond six or seven days' growth? Or of ever living outside the womb?

What about those that were normal but didn't, for whatever reason, implant? What if those embryos had found a more hospitable uterus than Julie McClure's? Would they have grown into fully developed children? Given the conservative aspirations toward a so-called "culture of life," can we say, if they were normal, that Julie McClure killed them?

These are philosophical questions that trouble greater minds than mine. Right now my own mind is fit for little more than doggedly counting aloud as I measure formula to make sure Charlie's next bottle isn't served chunky style, requiring a fork and a set of lobster crackers. But I do know where I stand on this issue. I do know that my failed embryos weren't people, no matter how hard the Christian right tries to convince me they were. If they were people, they'd be here now. If they were children, I'd have a houseful.

Couples adopting or donating Snowflakes embryos are mostly Christian, and most embryo donors are white, Ms. Maze said.

"Mostly Christian." Mostly. Hmmm. I would like to know which other denominations are represented. I asked Paul what he thought. He said in a doubtful tone, "Well, Christians...um...and then maybe Episcopalians..."

Couples must agree to adoption-like procedures: receiving families are screened and must undergo counseling, and Snowflakes allows donating and receiving families to designate criteria for each other, meet and maintain contact after birth.

Now I can hear you thinking, But this doesn't sound entirely unreasonable. I mean, really, if you consider...

Wait! Stop thinking! Time for a field trip! Fun with Google: snowflakes embryo adoption.

Not entirely unreasonable. Mmmm-hm. Now how come it costs prospective parents more to, ah, rescue unborn children with Snowflakes — at least $6800 — than it does to receive donated embryos — simply the cost of an FET plus legal fees? It seems that the additional cost pays to vet the prospective parents to make sure they're not, you know, fruity.

Those conditions were fine with Bob and Angie Deacon of Virginia Beach, Va., who donated their 13 embryos [...]. "With another program, to be honest with you, they could have been adopted by lesbian parents, and I'm totally against that," said Mr. Deacon, 35.

You know, I wish I had a clutch of embryos in the freezer so I could box 'em up and send 'em off to the lesbians right now. The only stipulation would be that any lesbian who conceived boy/girl twins would be legally obligated to name them Bob and Angie Deacon.

I like to think I am tough but fair. Just ask Charlie, who is so grounded after tonight's histrionics.

And this kind of discrimination, this unapologetically religious mission is being subsidized by the United States government (also known as you and me, my friend, you and heathen me):

Health and Human Services has given grants to Snowflakes and other organizations specifically to promote "embryo adoption." Several groups that oppose the term embryo adoption, including the American Fertility Association, have also received federal grants and used the money to educate couples that embryo donation is one option among many.

I can only hope that the American Fertility Association is using their grant money to continue to fight the good fight on behalf of gay sperm donors.

And to wrap things up, we have a photo op, complete with using children to advance a political agenda. If Charlie's screaming earlier didn't cause you to evacuate your bowels in fear, maybe this will:

[...] To protest a bill supporting the use of embryos for stem cell research, President Bush appeared with the McClures and 20 other Snowflakes families, kissing the babies, some of whom wore T-shirts that said "former embryo," or "this embryo was not discarded." Federal and state lawmakers have held similar appearances.

It certainly scares the shit out of me.

...

A reader sent mail suggesting I mention these alternatives for those who'd like to donate or receive donated embryos:

There are also other agencies doing embryo donation that don’t get anywhere near the publicity as Snowflakes. Consequently, potential donors who are turned off by Snowflakes feel like they have nowhere to go and they either destroy their embryos or let them languish in storage forever. One way to help is to publicize the other alternatives every time you mention how troubled you are by Snowflakes.

It is unfortunate that Snowflakes, with its religious bent, gets all the press, because there are other organizations out there that do embryo donation (or even embryo adoption), that don’t charge such outrageous fees or require that families go through so many hoops. If you want to make a difference in this area, one way to do it is to mention alternatives to Snowflakes — I wish the NY Times article had done so. Here are some of the alternatives:

1. Donate/Receive anonymously through your own clinic or to another clinic that accepts outside embryos (Cooper Center is one). The downside/upside depending on your perspective is that donors/recipients know nothing about each other and have no way of contacting one another should there ever be a need (medical or psychological) in the future. Additionally, if there are multiple straws (12 embies divided into 3 or 4 straws each), they may be divided up to multiple families. Often the donors aren’t even allowed to find out if the embies they donated resulted in a pregnancy or not.
2. Donate to/Receive from a different agency. Agencies often will allow a full continuum of openness from totally closed (like the IVF clinics) to totally open (where you’ve met and know each other’s names, addresses, phone numbers) to everything in between (contact, but only through the agency). Among agencies that do embryo donation/adoption are:
   1. Theresa Erickson is a lawyer who runs Conceptual Options and she treats it more like a legal transaction/property transfer than an adoption. Of course it's so much more than a "property transfer," but for legal purposes, that treatment gives both parties the legal protection given the current state of the law. (There isn't really anything specific to embryo donation/adoption on the books YET.) Unfortunately, the waiting list at Conceptual Options is really long. I think they have about 25 couples/singles hoping to get chosen by a donor at the moment. Many on the waiting list have been on the waiting list for a year or more and have not been selected. The cost of the legal fees is generally about $2000 for the recipient family.
   2. For those wanting more of a religious affiliation but who are concerned about the costs of Snowflakes, there is Embryos Alive. They do not require a home study, but do require more information from donors including certification of medical health; copies of health, life, and homeowners' insurance; copies of driving records; etc. The cost of the agency fees (including legal paperwork) is generally about $3000-3500 for the recipient family. Due to a recent wave of donations, the waiting list is not that long (although, as is true with Conceptual Options, since the donors pick, it really doesn't matter how long you are on the list; it's more a matter of how much your profile appeals to the donors).
   3. Miracles Waiting is coming out soon (hopefully July) — this will be a resource center for both donors and potential recipients. I believe it will include a bulletin board to facilitate matching among donors/recipients.

Thank you to the kind reader who took the time to compile this list.

Don't tell Mom the babysitter's odd

A few weeks ago I was shopping at the local hippie food co-op and paused as usual in front of the big bulletin board at the front of the store. Between the suggestions from members — "Please bring back vanilla soy rBST-free fair trade tie-dyed hacky sacks!" — and notices of community events — "SolsticeAlive! 'Round-the-Stump Rondelé Kokopelli Naturist Invitational" — there is always something to make me leave the store humming happily, tripping merrily toward my SUV on my pedicured toes (lacquered glamorously in Love That Patriarchy Pink).

That day, what made me happy was this sign:

EXPERIENCED BABYSITTER
Caring young woman with
10 years of child care experience
B.S. in child development

Newborns to 4 years
$10 / hour

Not only did I tear off one of the tabs with her number, but I tore down the whole goddamn sign to be sure, absolutely sure no one else would snag her first.* And I took home that tab and called her.

We made a date for her to come over and meet us. She arrived punctually while Charlie was napping. She and Paul and I sat at the dining room table and conducted the world's most perfunctory interview. I believe the only questions I asked were, "Have you ever been in jail?", "Are you high on drugs right this very moment?", and "When can you start?"

She was perfectly pleasant, if a little...well, odd in speech and manner, prone to a silent smiling stare. I chalked it up to those drugs she was high on right that very moment and showed her around the place. When Charlie woke I introduced them. As we all played on the floor with Charlie in his baby gym, he didn't scream, shrink away from her, or indicate in any obvious way that he'd recognized her face from the "Wanted" posters at the post office, so I decided the babysitter would be Charlie's new best friend and invited her to come back the next Sunday.

"Oh, yes," she said, and played with the baby. Three minutes and several cycles of the musical star later she looked up and said gruffly, "Can you pay me?"

"...Huh?" I said, nonplussed.

"Pay me. Can you pay me for that time on Sunday?"

Now, where I come from, that part of the relationship is understood. She makes nice with my kid and pretends she finds him delightful; I slip her a twenty and pretend I called her references. But okay — in addition to the high on drugs part, I figured she must be nervous and eager for the work. "Oh, yes," I said heartily, and laughed a beefy ho-ho-ho as if she'd said something witty instead of something...well, strange.

Her first session with Charlie proceeded without incident. Paul and I were both home, loitering ever so casually to make sure she didn't turn him into her own tiny lackey. Charlie cried, but then he does, so I didn't worry. And, yes, I paid her.

The second Sunday he cried, but then he does, though I worried just a bit. I'd resolved to let them sort it out together. I equipped them with toys, books, and bottles, let the babysitter know that I was available for questions, and then sequestered myself in my sewing room where the hot hiss of the steam iron might drown out the yelling.

It didn't, not entirely. At the two-and-a-half-hour mark, I could stand it no longer, and loitered casually down the stairs — if "loitering" could be presumed to be locomotive, and if "casually" could be construed as tripping all over myself, falling ass over teakettle — and asked the babysitter if there was anything I could get them.

I meant more books, more toys, a warmer bottle. Her eyes brightened, and she said, in a guttural bark, "Do you have any food?"

"...Huh?" I said, nonplussed.

"Food. Do you have any food?"

Now you must understand that this was during a mere three hour engagement, nowhere near a mealtime, and I found both her timing and her manner worthy of a cock of my eyebrow. Eager to please, however, and interested to see what she'd do, I got out the peanut butter and the bread and watched as she put Charlie in his feeding seat and left him there crying while she made a sandwich.

I can do that. Paul can do that. God knows we do it all the time. Why, some of the finest sandwiches I've ever enjoyed were moistened with the savory tears of my son. I can even see a babysitter doing it when she's on a long shift and it's inarguably time for a meal break. But I can't figure out why she thought it was a good idea to do it while I was watching.

She finished her sandwich, collected her pay, and said she wasn't sure if she'd be able to come back — "but I'll call you to let you know as soon as possible." It's Tuesday and she hasn't called. It's not looking good.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm disappointed not to hear from her again. From the start I'd found her odd, but not in any alarming way. She was pleasant to Charlie; she clearly liked him and was even able to coax a nap out of him. Her services were affordable, even factoring in the astronomical cost of feeding her. And it was easy: one sign, one tab, one call.

I'm not looking forward to starting back at square one just when it had started to feel like we might get some kind of short weekly break from the relentlessness of child care. And I'm also a bit taken aback, wondering why she might prefer not to return. She obviously liked the baby, so that's not it. I paid her asking price, so that's not it, either.

I am forced to conclude that she simply didn't care for my cooking. Great. Now not only do I have to find a new babysitter; I have to hire a personal goddamn chef for her to boot.

_____
* I can't believe I have to say I didn't actually take the sign with me, but if I don't, I'll get ten e-mail messages excoriating me for it, one high-fiving me, and one from an amiable-sounding chap named Floorboard D. Nuisance with the subject line, "Re: Hi Im Jenny! I jsut put my wbcam 0n l ine !!1!"

Truth in advertising

Charlie's onesie says it all.

(Thank you, ValleyGal, for the gift.)

Imperfectly normal at last

This is not an original idea, but I am reiterating it to help myself believe it: women who are mothers after infertility are just as entitled as anyone else to find it all a big motherfucking drag sometimes.

I spend a lot of time in self-flagellation (and not the fun kind, either). I feel like I should be better equipped to handle it when Charlie is difficult to please. I feel that infertility should have magically endowed me with an incorruptible shield of patience, a constant mindfulness of our good fortune, an unwavering gratitude — in short, an inexhaustible wellspring of goodwill toward the child I worked so hard to have.

But it hasn't, and it kills me. When I have to leave the room lest I speak harshly to Charlie, it's not anger at him that propels me. After all, he's a baby; it's his job to get on my nerves when his needs have gone unmet. No, it's bitter disappointment in myself, sometimes verging on disgust, for not always knowing his needs, for not always being able to meet them, and, I'll say it, not always wanting to meet them.

I'm not always the parent he deserves. The guilt of knowing that is punishing. Is it no more than the same guilt every mother feels? I don't know, but I do believe infertile mothers put enormous pressure on ourselves not only to be exemplary parents, but to love or at least appreciate every minute of it.

We do it because we know how difficult it was to become mothers at all, and we do it because of every unthinking acquaintance who reminds us, "Well, you asked for it," and we do it because we know that there are millions of women who would give anything to have what we do, relentless screaming and all. I am always aware that if I complain, even here, where I feel more comfortable than anywhere else, I'm surely hurting someone.

That's not normal. But then in most ways, infertile mothers aren't. We couldn't enjoy — could barely endure — conception. For many of us, pregnancy was a time of white-knuckled fear instead of pastel-tinted joy. And a lot of us were blindsided by complications, bed rest, hospitalization, traumatic births, and an unusually difficult newborn phase.

And that's why we should try to liberate ourselves from that special kind of guilt we carry around. We couldn't be normal before, but now, as we feel frustrated or exhausted, as we find ourselves only half as competent as we fantasized we'd be, as we realize we're loving only every other minute of parenthood, we are finally perfectly normal.

I wish I could say that being infertile, losing pregnancies, and having such an eventful pregnancy and birth prepared me in any special way for the everyday challenges of being a parent. No such luck. In the end, the struggle doesn't make us perfect and it doesn't make us saints. It doesn't make us anything but mothers.

Vocalizer Bunny

Charlie is learning about his upper register. Also about palatal-and-back fricatives. So instead of a baby who says "geh" or "owa" or "EH" we have a baby who sounds like shrieking metal in an extrusion press or Donald Sutherland alerting his fellow pods to the last original human or some second-rate demon possessing an ingenue. And he smiles while he does it.

Long ago I read about artificial-intelligence researchers who were trying to make self-organizing systems that taught themselves how to speak. One of the things they did to simplify their job was to eliminate from consideration the majority of sounds that their machines could make, on the grounds that those noises belonged to no possible human language and hence would never be uttered. Let me just say we got your utterances right here.

I think next week I'm going to teach him how to project.

Spa-M

From e-mail. Which of these things is not like the others?

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We don't miss much

A few weeks ago, my mother and I were discussing her upcoming visit on the phone. She said, "While I'm there, I want you and Paul to go away one morning, spend the night, and come back the next day." Her tone suggested that she expected an argument, but I was frantically stuffing clothes into a filthy torn plastic shopping bag before she'd even finished her sentence.

Once my mother was here and settled and versed in our routines with Charlie, such as they are, we reserved a room at the most expensive hotel we could find, tore out of town without filling up with gas, and drove to Montreal like we were being chased. It was a stormy day and the highway was awash, so we hydroplaned our way to the border at full speed, slowing just enough to wave our passports at the surly uniformed Québecois and to drench him in our wake.

At the hotel we were greeted with those three little words that make any traveler swoon: "You've been upgraded." And indeed we had: we were shown to a gigantic suite with 14-foot ceilings, two bathrooms, a separate bedroom and living room, floor-to-ceiling arched windows, and a gas fireplace that flicked on and off with a handy remote control.

"Never," I told Paul as I flopped onto the king-sized bed and made an angel in the down comforter, "am I ever going back."

We partook gluttonously of the hotel's free wine and cheese, then sallied out into a drizzly Old Montreal. We explored for a while, then had dinner — steak frites, more wine, and a generous portion of my favorite dish, mocking the patrons next to us sotto voce. (If you were the fiftyish gentleman next to us who was bursting with noisy bonhomie, merrily jingling the keys to his Hummer, and reeking of Donald Trump: The Fragrance, I want you to know I regret nothing.)

As the meal wore on and as time passed, the wine and the months of cumulative sleep deprivation took their toll; by the end of dinner, the expression of our scorn was reduced to monosyllabic grunts and uncontrolled eye-rolling. We knew it was time to go when the waitress solicitously asked Paul whether I was having a seizure and offered to slip her pen into my mouth to prevent me from swallowing my tongue.

We made it back to the hotel without incident, tongue intact, and I filled the Jacuzzi for a long soak. I'd hoped to find it relaxing, but the motor made a sound like a Harrier during takeoff and the jets were powerful enough to ultrasonically destroy any kidney stones I might have smuggled past customs, so I decided instead to wrap up in a snow-white hotel bathrobe and take my ease in front of one of the suite's three flat-panel televisions.

We were, however, in Québec, where French is the predominant language. Although I speak and understand French, I was too drunk and sleepy to follow the rapid-fire dialogue on eleven of the hotel's twelve channels, so we settled on the single English-language offering, which was showing a news program on Karla Homolka. And nothing, but nothing, soothes me into a relaxed, romantic mood faster than detailed descriptions of cold-blooded rape and murder.

Nevertheless, after we consumed three desserts courtesy of room service, sleep came easily to me. It was the first and only night of uninterrupted sleep I've had since Charlie was born — even while he was in the hospital, I woke, either to cry or to toil and chafe over the breast pump. I did not wake at all. I did not dream at all. And, no, I did not miss Charlie at all.

Did I think about him while we were away? Certainly. Did we talk about him? Some, but not much. And I have to confess I didn't miss him. To me, missing means wishing someone were with you, dwelling on thoughts of him, feeling reluctant to turn away from the picture that stays in your mind's eye. For a short twenty-four hours, knowing he was safe in my mother's care, I was ready to turn away.

The next morning we slept until the decadent hour of 9:30, then spent a leisurely morning walking, dawdling in front of gallery windows, and eating crêpes in the shadow of the basilica. It was with great reluctance that I repacked my torn plastic bag, pocketed the unused hotel toiletries, and called to let my mother know we were heading home again.

When we got back, Charlie greeted me with a wide, toothless, indiscriminate grin, the one I see when I pick him up after a nap, the one he uses to signal his eagerness to have another glob of cereal, the one he'd been giving my mother all week. He was happy to see me, for sure, but he hadn't known I was gone. He's still a young baby who can't, after all. So while I was busy not missing him, he hadn't missed me, either. And that was just fine with me.

Travels with Charlie

In a few weeks I'm making the yearly pilgrimage to points south for camp, the week when the women and children of the family get together in a cabin in the woods for Popsicles, cards, food, face-painting, matching clothes, illegal fireworks, and lots and lots of booze. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which of these are the adult pursuits and which are for the kids.

This will be my first trip with Charlie, and Paul is staying home. I've been spending the last several weeks obsessively imagining how it will go — you know, bumbling ineptly through airport security as I forget to declare the Swiss Army knife Charlie insists on carrying in his pocket ("I know, officer, but he really likes to whittle"), hastily installing the car seat in coach class while Charlie is temporarily stowed in the overhead storage bin for safekeeping, stealing his foil pouch of salted peanuts while he's engrossed in the SkyMall catalog, that kind of thing.

After a confusing few days when I thought I'd take him in the Baby Bjorn and carry his car seat in a travel bag on my back, leaving me no option but to balance the fully-stocked diaper bag on my head, I've decided that it's a better idea to take him in his usual stroller with his car seat hooked cleverly around one of the MacLaren's handles. This arrangement, while convenient on its face, is not without its problems; if I unthinkingly let go of the handles, the load on the back of the stroller is heavy enough that there's a significant possibility that Charlie will be vaulted high into the air as if launched from a medieval siege weapon.

Note to self: Do not let go.

I've also been thinking about how to feed Charlie en route. He's already started solids, so my working plan is to take several Ziploc bags filled with prepared food, borrow his Swiss Army knife, snip off a corner at mealtime, and neatly extrude the pâté de la maison directly into his cooperative maw. If I keep the Ziplocs tucked snugly in my bra, they'll even be perfectly warmed and ready to serve.

I must remember to bring enough for my other row mates. It would be rude not to offer to share.

Note to self: Buy bigger bra.

The most pressing concern has been how and where I might change a noisome diaper while we're on a plane. About this matter I've heard hair-raising stories from parents and childless passengers alike; it seems that many, if not most, aircraft are not equipped with changing tables in the bathrooms. I won't even consider changing a diaper in our seats, as I consider that the very nadir of discourtesy to the patrons in the immediate vicinity. Instead, I have worked out a list of alternate locations:

1. across the laps of the patrons in the palatially roomy bulkhead row;
2. the galley during meal service; and
3. the floor of the aisle of first class.

If none of the above are available, I will knock politely on the cockpit door and ask to do it there. I have every expectation that the pilot will find my request eminently reasonable.

So obviously I have pretty much everything figured out. I do have a question, though, about using a car seat on the plane. I bought Charlie his own seat because I didn't want to have to fight over which one of us gets to use the arm rest. I'll be taking his car seat on board and would like some confirmation: if he's usually in a rear-facing seat, does the car seat also face the rear on the airplane? Should I be concerned about whether it will actually fit that way? If the person in front of Charlie chooses to recline, will my small sweet son be smashed into paste? And will our car seat — a Graco SnugRide, measuring 16" at its widest point — fit within the narrow side-to-side confines of a coach seat? If you've traveled with this seat before, can you please share your experiences?

Also please tell me soonest what you think of my cunning plan to use Charlie as my emergency flotation device in the unlikely event of a water landing. Screw the seat cushion and the inflatable vest — I'm pretty sure babies are buoyant.

Putting the fun in phonetics

Dear Almost Every Mother on New York's Upper East Side,

I am sorry to deliver a bulletin that will send a seismic jolt through your entire worldview, but I must break this shocking news: despite anything else you might have heard on the subject, Peg Pérego, a popular brand of stroller, is not pronounced /peg pə-rā'-gō/.

I know. I know. You're shaken to the core. Though it pains me to cause you even a moment's disequilibrium, I assure you it is true. A quick and easy phone call to the company has confirmed that that accent over the first "e" in "Pérego" is there for a reason. The name of the company is pronounced /peg pâr'-ə-gō/.

In case the phonetic spelling is impenetrable to you in the devastating befuddlement my revelation has no doubt caused, I have created a handy rebus to make it entirely clear:

I hereby request that you immediately adjust your pronunciation accordingly.

Thanking you in advance, I remain

Yours,
Julie

P.S. I am still researching rumors that "onesie" is properly pronounced /ō-nē'-zē/, and "formula" /lē'-thəl poi'-zən/. I will let you know as more information becomes available.