Update On Baby

This post is for anyone who is interested in reading about my pregnancy to date. About 2 years ago I had an abortion followed by a miscarriage. I wrote about both around the times they took place. Since then I have really wanted a child, but Withteeth and I needed to wait until we were in a better place in life. While we aren’t in the best position, it is difficult to see us getting their until we are in our 30s.We also aren’t in a terrible spot. So we decided to start expanding our family (it seems silly to say “start a family” since we’ve been together for years and we have two fur babies in the form of cats). This pregnancy isn’t what I would call completely planned. I was just starting to track my periods and the due date is in December. But it’s close enough.

Anyway, I missed my period in March. I didn’t go to the doctor right away because I was worried about another possible miscarriage. I initially suspected I was pregnant when I started feeling nauseous for no reason (both of my previous pregnancies came with early nausea, so I knew what I was feeling). A home test confirmed the pregnancy at about 4 weeks. I booked a doctors appointment for around week 6, but ended up having to go to a walk-in clinic 2 days early due to vomiting (I’m about to get a bit TMI right now, so if you have a weak stomach please skip ahead). I was throwing up once a day beginning at week 5. That’s actually how my mom found out. She came over and I ended up having to run to the bathroom to throw up. So much for waiting until the second month :P. By week six I was throwing up so much I couldn’t keep anything down, so I went to the doctor. They prescribed some pills, but didn’t give me a high enough dose, so my actually doctor upped the dose when I went to my initial appointment. A word of warning for those of you who are in the early stags of pregnancy or are trying to become pregnant: throwing up once or twice a day can be normal, throwing up more than that is not normal. If you feel like you’re struggling to keep food down, see your doctor. It is very bad for both you and baby if you aren’t getting the nutrience you need. Anyway, the pills I was prescribed helped a lot. At the initial low dose I was prescribed, I was throwing up about twice a day, but I was able to keep most food down. At the higher dose, I was throwing up about every other day. My doctor considered putting me on a second drug to completely end the vomiting, but all of the drugs already had me feeling fairly woozy (I’m still taking my antidepressants at my doctor’s insistence). I couldn’t really afford to take more drugs that would make functioning difficult.

In the end, I lost 6 pounds after becoming pregnant. While I still experience mild nausea, I rarely throw up now. I’m down to about one pill a day. Unfortunately, the morning sickness caused me to miss about a weeks worth of work, and the pills were making my sleep about 14 hours a day. I can now function with about 10-12 hours of sleep (I used to only need 8-10 hours), which I’m thrilled about. Other than the morning sickness, this pregnancy has been fairly typical. I’m gaining weight now, though I’m a bit smaller than I should be. But baby is a bit bigger than thy should be, so no worries there. Baby is also super active. I’ve had three ultrasounds and baby would not stay still during any of them. Baby kicks me constantly. I’m at 22 weeks and Withteeth felt the baby kick for the first time yesterday. I, however, haven’t gotten a break since week 17 when I started to feel the movement. All of my blood tests have come back normal. Baby doesn’t have downs or any of the other trisomies. Baby has ten fingers and ten toes, and is capable of opening and closing their fists. They also like to keep one fist in front of their face, much to the annoyance of the ultrasound technician. But I’ve definitely gotten some good pictures despite baby’s inability to stay still.

While I don’t feel as energetic as I’m used to, my anxiety is also way down, which is great. I’m able to gt some moderate exercise in, so I’ve been going for plenty of walks, but I can’t push myself too hard. I don’t feel as though I look very big compared to the average 5 month pregnant person, but I feel huge compared to what I’m used to. People don’t seem to recognize me as pregnant yet, but my stomach feels like I ate a basketball. My breasts are also rediculously sensitive and are most definitely growing. One more than the other. I don’t think I’ll ever have what most people consider large breasts (good riddance), but they are far too big for my taste already. My on cat seems to recognize what’s happening (she was a mama herself) and has been kind enough not to step on my stomach and breasts, but my younger cat seems blissfully unaware of the pain he causes as he tries to lay down on my stomach every morning. All in all, I’m feeling pretty good, but I’m definitely looking forward to getting this kid out of me (just not too soon).

Why Is Raising a Child So Controversial?

It seems like it is impossible not to do something controversial when trying to bring up baby. Something as simple as letting a 4 month old sip water can cause some people to threaten to call child services. Personally, I think it’s dangerous to assume that parents always have their child’s best interests at heart, and it’s even worse to think of a child as their parents property. That said, does everybody need to have an opinion on what I do from now until baby is…when do people stop analyzing everything?

But Withteeth and I already know we’ll be raising baby in ways that’ll make some people cringe. For starters, we won’t be taking baby to church. We aren’t Christian. We want baby to choose their own religion, or no religion, when they are old enough. We also intend to cloth diaper and won’t be waiting until baby is six months to start them on solids. If the baby is male, we won’t be circumcising either. And then their is the Homeschooling thing. But that isn’t the most controversial thing we plan to do.

The most controversial aspect of our parenting will revolve around baby’s gender. We don’t know the sex, though I could have found out weeks ago. We don’t want to know. For one thing, it’ll tell us nothing more than what’s between baby’s legs. For another, it prevents others from enforcing their own stereotypes on baby before baby has even entered the world. In other blog posts I have discussed my being genderqueer. That hasn’t changed. In fact, pregnancy makes my own gender more obvious to me. Because of my own gender, I want any children I have to feel safe expressing themselves however they prefer. For that reason, Withteeth and I have chosen to refer to baby as “they” until they choose a preferred pronoun. We have also collected an assortment of gender neutral clothes for the first two years (most of which were given to us by friends). Studies show that gender begins to develop between age 2 and 5, so we plan to allow baby to pick their own preferred clothes at that point. We also won’t be cutting baby’s hair until then. What baby wears and what they do with their hair will be their choice. After all, it’s their hair and their body. So what if they don’t look fashionable? I was too busy getting dirty to look fashionable at that age, and I can’t imagine my child will be any different.

As for how they identify, we don’t really care about that. We may have a masculine child, or a feminine child. More likely our child will fall somewhere in the middle. If they pick pink Disney princess everything, great. If they prefer trucks or dinosaurs, great. Many parents worry about such things. They think the child will be confused. Confused about what? What they like? Has anybody tried to divert the attention of a toddler away from what they want before? It isn’t exactly easy. Isn’t it more likely to confuse them if you keep forcing them to play with things they don’t like? Or wear clothes they hate? It’s certainly not going to cause me anything but a headache. No, when it comes to things like clothing, hair styles, and toys, I’ll let baby lead. I’ll save the battles for the things that matter: health, food, spending, education, etc.

How Young is Too Young to Start School?

Since Withteeth and I are interested in Homeschooling, on thing we have to think about is when to start what. Generally, school starts between age 4 and 6, and there are a number of different theories about when kids are ready to learn certain tasks. For example, kids in Canada and the US tend to learn to read before anything else, and most kids start to grasp reading around age 6. However, many kids are ready to learn math before they are ready to learn to read. So why teach reading first?

Personally, I’m not sure I actually want our kids to start school. I want them to learn, but I don’t want them to associate learning with school. I want them to think of learning as a lifelong endeavour. You see, in my family it is commonly believed that the biggest issue with the world is that people overthink. Many of my family members are more proud of their ignorance than they are of their intelligence. I think part of this is due to the fact that they associate thinking and learning with school, and not with progress. But I want our children to think of learning in association with progress rather than school. So I don’t know if we’ll actually use the word “school” in association with our Homeschooling.

It’s guaranteed that we will Homeschool at least for a time. I’m not sure when we’ll stop Homeschooling, be it for Kindergarten, Grade 9, when they start University, or sometime in between, but we’ll likely start as soon as baby is born. We won’t be pushing the child to learn anything they aren’t ready for, but babies learn so much so fast that it doesn’t make sense not to consider the first few years as part of their education. I expect the first year will consist of us reading to baby, talking to baby, playing with baby, and playing music for baby. So nothing we wouldn’t do anyway. As baby gets older, colouring will become part of the curriculum. Hand-eye coordination is necessary for later writing skills, so it makes sense to get them colouring as soon as they can hold a marker. Plus, who doesn’t love colouring? We have decided on a no TV policy until our child is 2 and no video games until they are 6. This is simply because we feel such things are unnecessary, and enforcing such rules will get Withteeth and I away from our computers. As such, any early curriculum we do will be based around books, workbooks, games, what’s available in the community, and videos once they are 2 and older.

Me being who I am, I have looked quite a bit into various types of Homeschooling. We like the idea of playing lots of games and doing lots of hands-on activities for learning. We also like the idea of reading and listening to books. Since I have ADHD and tend to fail miserably at sitting still (seriously, I’ve gotten up like 6 times since I started writing this just to move around), I know that action based learning was best for me. But we don’t want to use just one style. Not only will our children learn differently from on another, but they will learn different topics differently. As such, we also want to use workbooks and documentaries/films as well. This means that we will be doing an eclectic style of homeschooling. My preferred styles are Montessori, Charlotte Mason, Thomas Jefferson (or Leadership), Classical, and Unschooling. I’m not quite sure how I’ll work all that together, but I have plenty of time for trial and error.

We also like the idea of Homeschooling all year round, and we like the idea of taking few breaks. Rather than doing four hours of Homeschooling a day four days of the week, we’d rather do little bits of school at a time. This may change as the children grow, but at least at first I think doing an hour of school work a day is best. After all, small children aren’t really that great at sitting still for long. And I still struggle to sit through hour long classes.  Withteeth also feels we should focus on on subject at a time. I’m not sure what my opinion is in that regard, but it can’t hurt to try. He also wants to focus on math first, which I agree with. We’ll figure out whether or not we’ll put the kids in public school as they approach school age. If they are ahead of their peers by then, I doubt we’ll bother. If they are behind or where their peers are, we’ll probably try public school and see how that goes. But, again, it depends on the child.

Now I just have to figure out how to make Homeschooling work while I teach. I should have my teaching certificate by the time baby is a year and a half. That should be a fun experiment.

For those of you with experience Homeschooling, what styles of learning do you prefer? When did you start Homeschooling and how often do you Homeschool? In general, what has worked for you?

Everybody else, thoughts? Opinions?

To Homeschool or Not to Homeschool

In my last post, I mentioned that I am pregnant. I’m a little over halfway through, and I’m definitely looking forward to being done with it. I was diagnosed with severe morning sickness at 4 weeks and spent about two months throwing up constantly. I’m still fighting the morning sickness, but it is now far more manageable. At this point I’m assuming I’ll have to deal with it until I give birth, which is not something I’m looking forward to, but there’s really nothing for it. Otherwise, everything is progressing as it should. But that’s all beside the point.

I also mentioned going into Education in my last post. I want to teach Elementary kids. But school was not a good experience for Withteeth or myself. He had (and still has) undiagnosed dysgraphia and dysthymia. I had undiagnosed (now diagnosed) ADHD, autism, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Had we been diagnosed, life probably would have been easier for us. But we weren’t. All of those disorders have genetic components, which mean our children could have on or multiple of them. To be honest, w aren’t so worried about the disorders themselves. We are happy with our lives. We know how to cop, and we can teach our kids to do the same. The problem is lack of understanding and ability to deal with these issues in general society, especially in Education. I want to help children who struggled like I did. I want to make their lives easier. But I don’t know how many of the teachers I’ll work with will have the sames goals or understanding. In short, I don’t know how willing I’ll be to trust them with my kids. For that reason, Withteeth and I have been considering Homeschooling.

Very few secular people accept Homeschooling as a legitimate form of education, but Withteeth and I both believe that the public school system needs to be reformed. We also don’t know if we’ll b able to afford a decent private school education. That leaves Homeschooling. We are both educated, and we have a number of friends in different fields to our own. As such, we have little fear that our child won’t learn something because we aren’t trained in that field. Not that the average public school teacher is an expert in every subject they teach. Since the main argument against Homeschooling is that parents aren’t qualified, it seems as though most people should should feel satisfied with that, but Homeschooling makes people uncomfortable. I can understand the discomfort, but I don’t agree with it. I believe that children should b educated in whichever way works best for them, and that way might be through Homeschooling. However, I think that Homeschooling should be regulated. I don’t think just anyone should be allowed to Homeschool, and I don’t think parents should be allowed to have free reign. Children need to be protected, and sometimes it’s their parents they need to be protected from.

What are your thoughts? Would you Homeschool? Should Homeschooling be allowed? If so, should it be regulated and how should it be regulated?

Some Changes to Come

Hello everyone, it’s been awhile. Withteeth and I have been quite busy. We have finished our degrees, Withteeth with a botany or plant science degree, me with a European History degree and a Philosophy degree. Withteeth is currently looking for work in his field while doing odd jobs to pay for life. I am going back to school to get an Education degree.

A lot has happened to us since we last posted. I went through a three month period where I was going through Mental Health evaluations because I was having panic attacks. While I already knew some of the issues, I hadn’t had official diagnoses done, which means I couldn’t get any government help. The official diagnoses revealed that I have autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Now that I’ve been diagnosed, the University I attend will be helping me through my last two years of studies. I will also be in the Inclusive Education program, which means I will be trained to help students who are both normative and who have various learning/developmental/mental issues, which is something I car deeply about. I’m also pregnant, which will make my career plans more difficult, but Withteeth should help make things far easier.

So why am I revealing all this when we have been absent for so long? Well, I’ve regained my interest in blogging. Things will b a bit different going forward. While Withteeth and I are still both atheists, and while we still care about atheism, it’ll be taking a backseat for the time. I’ve also become really disinterested in politics, so I doubt their will be many political posts in the near future. Instead, Withteeth will focus any posts he makes on Biology, since he is very interested in educating the public about it, and I will be focusing most of my attention on education, since that is my pet interest at the moment. I’ll also be focusing on mental health. Hopefully these changes won’t be so radical that they chase you away.

(Please forgive any missing e’s from this post, as my keyboard is not working properly)