Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.
Dear Care and Feeding,
TW: This question is about miscarriage. I had my first miscarriage about nine years ago. It took over three and a half years to get pregnant again. Thankfully, I had an uncomplicated pregnancy and now I have a child. I’ve been trying to get pregnant again, but I’ve had two more miscarriages over the last few years. My current OB-GYN suggested a test to check my husband’s chromosomes, and it turns out he has something called a “balanced translocation”—which has no ill effects (on him) and often the only “symptom” of it is recurrent miscarriage or infertility.
Initially, I was relieved to get this information. I spent so long being mad at my body and now I finally had an explanation for what happened. And the fact that I have a child at all is literally miraculous. At this point, though, I’m pissed because “my body” and the things it has endured were basically the diagnosis for my husband’s condition. I had to have three heartbreaking miscarriages, one of which was incomplete and required surgery months later; I had to struggle with infertility for the better part of a decade without anyone bothering to suggest this test for my husband—a simple blood test, covered for the most part by our insurance—and I can’t understand why nobody proposed testing him nine years ago. As I understand it, if we want another child, we need to do IVF with gene testing of the embryos. I am now so exhausted, I don’t know if I have the strength to do IVF and endure another loss. (Not to mention the cost of such a procedure.) I guess my question is: Do I have a right to be mad about this? Mad that I’ve been told to “be less stressed,” take different prenatal vitamins, take lukewarm (not hot) showers, and “stop trying so hard,” when the issue was not even with me. Mad that I endured the physical and emotional torture of three pregnancy losses when it turns out all my husband had to do was a blood test we didn’t know to ask for. Mad that I may no longer have the heart to try IVF but I would have a decade ago. Would love some perspective.
—Mad, Mad, Mad
Dear Mad,
Of course you have the “right” to be mad. How you feel isn’t something you need permission for. I’d be mad too. We feel what we feel.
I’m very sorry you’ve gone through what you have. But hanging on to your fury about it isn’t going to serve you, and since you can’t turn back time, all you can do now is work through your feelings. I’d start by narrowing them down. You know what you’re mad about, but how about whom you’re mad at? The medical professionals who never suggested genetic testing? (That is absolutely fair.) Your husband? (Not fair, but also understandable.) Yourself, for not asking or knowing to ask for this sort of testing? (Also not fair, but understandable.) All of the above? Be honest with yourself. It doesn’t matter whether the target(s) of your anger are “reasonable” ones or not. All that matters is that you identify them, one by one.
That alone will begin to help, I think. But what will help even more is figuring out the answer to this question: What are you going to do about it? If I were you, and I found that I was angry with my husband in the wake of this revelation, I’d seek out couples counseling. I think that would be beneficial for both of you. You haven’t said anything about how he is feeling, now that he knows that his own genetic condition was responsible for your losses (it’s that absence of information that makes me think at least part of your anger is directed at him). My guess is he’s struggling in his own way, both with his own anger at your former OB-GYN(s?) and with guilt. At the very least, the two of you need to talk this through thoroughly. If you’re angry with yourself, therapy would definitely be of use to you. A good therapist can help you process these emotions, which—if left unexplored—may go underground and come back to bite you harder.
As to the medical practice—or multiple practices—that were aware of your multiple miscarriages and the unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant for nearly a decade even before those devastating losses, I am not litigious, but I am a letter-of-complaint writer. After an experience in labor and delivery that left me shaking with fury, I wrote a long, full-of-rage one to the hospital where my daughter was born, and this not only helped calm me, it also led to a change of policies and protocols at the hospital. Even now, over 30 years later, I feel good about the latter, which was an unanticipated benefit of my getting my anger off my chest. You may be in a position to help others in this way.
Want Advice From Care and Feeding?
Submit your questions about parenting and family life here. It’s anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)
Dear Care and Feeding,
Without getting too much into the details, we have biological kids, and also my sister’s children in their tweens (whom we adopted after their home life fell apart). When our adopted kids discovered that we could be trusted, they started to be bluntly honest with us, which helped us help them, and involved a lot of stuff that was hard for them to share. That stuff was a crucial part of our being able to be good parents to them when they were minors, and I’m grateful for their trust. The thing is, all three of them (ages 19, 20, 23) continue to operate on this policy, and especially with the older two, I think there are things they tell us that I don’t need to know. Boundaries are more natural with our other kids, but I don’t know how to gently bring them into place here. How do I say, “I’m always here for you, and you’re safe with me, but don’t tell me the results of your STD test unless you need help getting medical care,” or, “I love you and I’m glad you feel open with me, but your sexual exploration with other men isn’t my business, just tell me you’re gay if you want me to know that”? I want to know them and their identities as they want to be known, and I’d be happy to help pay for safe sex supplies or antibiotics if it’s an emergency, but I don’t need all this info if everything’s going well. They otherwise seem pretty secure and on good paths in life. We talk regularly, and they come home for Sunday dinner, so I know they’re OK. My younger teens seem to be leaning toward what feels like more natural privacy as they get older, but I don’t know how to set that up here.
—TMI in Toronto
Dear TMI,
It’s true that a healthy separation process, which does generally begin to happen by our children’s teens, usually includes those teenagers starting to keep some things to themselves. But not always! This can be a matter of personality as well as the relationship between teen and parent. But yes, most teens who are secure in their attachment to their parents begin to create boundaries around certain matters. Your older kids, however, had a very rough start in life. It isn’t surprising to me at all that they aren’t separating from you emotionally and psychologically in the way their younger siblings are.
So now I want to ask you a question: For whose benefit do you hope they’ll stop telling you so much about their sex lives?
Are you thinking that it would be healthier for them if they began to set some boundaries? If so, I think you can tell them that—as warmly and lovingly as humanly possible. But please, before you do that, think hard about it. If it is a source of comfort to them—if it makes them feel safer, securely loved and understood, and calmer—to continue to confide in you this way, why put a stop to it? Is it mainly because it makes you uncomfortable to hear these kinds of things? And if it is, can you put your finger on the source of your discomfort? Is it that you don’t (ever) like talking or hearing about sex? Or is this specific to hearing about your kids’ sexual adventures and travails? Or is it just a sense of “this is not appropriate conversation”? Before you talk to your kids about this, it’s important to differentiate between their needs and yours. There’s nothing wrong with telling them (again, with compassion for them) that it embarrasses you to have these kinds of conversations (if this is the case). In other words, if you want things to change, be fully cognizant of why—and then be forthright with them about it. And if, as you ask yourself the questions I’ve suggested, you conclude that your unease is neither about what’s good for them or good for you—but is about what you think of as propriety, social norms, “how things should be” between parents and their grown kids—you might consider living with the status quo. These 19- to 23-year-olds may need some things from you that your other kids don’t, and may need them for longer than the so-called norm.
Catch Up on Care and Feeding
• If you missed Friday’s column, read it here.
• Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!
Dear Care and Feeding,
My mother-in-law is very sad and lonely, and I feel really bad about it. She’s 73, and my wife and I are in our mid-30s. Both my wife and my brother-in-law moved far away from her as soon as they possibly could, and her husband left her a couple of years ago for somewhat unclear reasons. My MIL is not a demon, but she can be, let us say, “frustrating to deal with.” Think: There is exactly one correct route to drive from X to Y, and if you don’t take it, I’ll use the spare time to talk about traffic. Or: Going to Restaurant Z means that ALL of us are going to order A, B, and C. This is constant, and the people around her, particularly my wife and BIL, find it unbearably grating. By her own admission, her hope in this life stage was to be a grandma matriarch, surrounded by grandchildren and loved ones. Instead, her daughter is childfree and her son is single, and neither of them will ever move back to their hometown. But their mother is clearly struggling and sad. This is not what she wanted (nor what anyone plans, I guess, for their golden years). We try to include her in things as we can, but we’re not exactly inviting her on vacation with us because we wouldn’t enjoy that vacation! I don’t know how to square this circle. How can I help someone who has passively pushed everyone away?
—Mother-in-Law Mirth Mission in Monterey
Dear Mirth Mission,
I admire you for being so concerned about your mother-in-law, who doesn’t sound like much fun. But I don’t think there’s much you can do. We dig our beds; we must lie in them. Children don’t turn on their parents for no reason.
If you are the one person in your mother-in-law’s life who has any patience for her, you can develop your own relationship with her (over the phone and through letters and cards or email and Facebook), checking in with her regularly and being a part of her life. That will help her feel a little less lonely. It won’t fix her thwarted desire to be a grandma-matriarch, but that isn’t your problem to fix. You can be her friend—that’s about it. Since you don’t have the lifelong baggage that her children do where she’s concerned, it will certainly be easier for you to reach out in a loving way than it is for them.
If what you’re really asking is how to get her to change so that others, especially your wife, will want to be an active part of her life—forget it. You can’t. And if what you’re really asking is how to get your wife to be more forgiving, less reactive, and make more of an effort with her—forget that too. We can’t make other people change. We can only control our own behavior. So if your MIL’s loneliness is something that makes you sad, do what you can to ease it.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m a godmother to a 4-year-old, and I have a question about sharing, and in particular, making children share their toys. I am very involved in my goddaughter’s life and I babysit often. She is quite shy. When people drop by, her mother insists that other children be allowed to play with her toys (this is a small town, so it’s normal that people just drop by, with or without kids of their own). Sometimes these kids are strangers to my godchild or they are children she doesn’t like very much, and she is clearly uncomfortable (she’ll hide behind me, for example). How can I support her in this situation? On the one hand, meeting new people is good for her, and the other children just want to play. On the other hand, those are her toys! If someone came into my apartment and just started using my PlayStation, I would be unhappy about it, too. But I’m an adult: My mom can’t make me share anymore. It’s also possible that Oldest-Daughter-Syndrome colors my view on this. I usually just stay by her and try to follow her lead. Is there something else I can/should do?
—What’s Mine is Not Yours
Dear What’s Mine,
I’m not a big fan of forcing a 4-year-old to share all her toys with anyone and everyone. My own approach was to let my daughter designate (if she wanted to) certain “special” toys that she didn’t want to share, so that she’d have some agency at her playdates, but she was also prepared in advance to share everything else. The major difference here is that the children she played with were those of her own choosing by the time she was 4—and she played at their houses, with their toys, too, so the concept of fairness was an important piece of the puzzle.
You could suggest (out of the child’s earshot) something along the lines of what I did, but if the child’s mother is adamant about this, there’s nothing you can or should do, and I would tread carefully if you do bring it up in the first place. You can help your godchild, though, by validating her feelings about being obliged to share toys with children she doesn’t know/like. You may not be able to do this while these spontaneous playdates are occurring, but you certainly can right after they’re over, especially when you’re babysitting and the two of you are alone. “That must have been hard for you” isn’t a bad place to start. “I don’t much like it when people come to my house, especially when I don’t even know them, and start messing with my stuff! How did you feel about that visit?” Just offering her the chance to be heard and empathized with will go a long way toward making her feel better. Then you can go on to talk about the benefits of sharing (even when it feels weird at first). For example: Making a guest happy can make the host feel good; making new friends is exciting, so it’s probably worth the sacrifice of sharing toys temporarily; what goes around comes around, etc. The bottom line is that being a supportive presence in this child’s life is your job as godmother (telling her mother how to raise her isn’t).
—Michelle
More Advice From Slate
My daughter is a junior in high school, and we have been gradually ramping up the college discussion with her over the past year or so. We have been able to save up a s**t ton of money (and so have her grandparents) so that financial aid will not be a big factor in her deciding where to go. The problem is that she has her heart set on the university that her father and I both attended—a university that no longer considers legacy status. And while she is definitely qualified, I definitely do not think it is likely she will be admitted
"behind" - Google News
September 03, 2023 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/PgiCYyz
Parenting advice: I finally discovered the real culprit behind my volatile pregnancies - Slate
"behind" - Google News
https://ift.tt/eLmpG6I
https://ift.tt/wQjUA4h
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Parenting advice: I finally discovered the real culprit behind my volatile pregnancies - Slate"
Post a Comment