Going to go and have a nice long walk. It's nicer to walk around outside, but no one gets pissed off if you're reading while walking on a treadmill. It's not quite as easy (or safe) to do that out in the neighborhood.
All last night, all yesterday and the night before I had super regular tightenings, coming more frequent, but not painful and then about 5am, they fizzled out into nothing. Now I just have a massive stomach ache instead, which isn't half as encouraging, so I'm hoping a bit of time at the gym will start it up again. As highly unlikely as it is, I'd really like to pop this baby tomorrow, just so she can have that date (10/11/12) because that's pretty cool. She'd have that on all her paperwork forever.
It's so hard to tell though. I can feel my body doing all kinds of stuff that they tell you your body does to get ready - but the problem with that is, some women's bodies spend a month or more doing these things to get ready while other women get only a couple of days or even no warning at all.
I'm talking about it here only because no one here hassles me to hurry up, and there's no one else I can really talk to about it.
Weirdly enough though, Amanda, Obi's sister, has requested updates on the progress of my labour and stuff. Which, generally the midwives encourage you to avoid, you know, keep it off facebook etc - because if you work yourself up too much (or other people work you up) it can either stall your labour or more commonly lead you into exhaustion that much quicker - Exhaustion is one of the top two reasons homebirth women end up needing a transfer (about one in ten of my middies women end up with a transfer). But I thought it was nice. No one in my everyday world has taken nearly as much interest. And she's usually so self centered, so it came as a shock.
Yesterday was good for the most part, until the politics got involved. My best mate is waaay into politics. Which on one hand is good. I like being able to discuss this stuff with people - and it's one thing I can't get from Obi. I don't think he even knows the name of Canada's PM. But I've noticed as time goes on, my mate's not discussing any more - rather telling me that I'm wrong. I admit I'm not as up to date with it, obviously, because I don't care as much and I don't watch telly - but even on subjects I know a lot about, he'll disregard any research I can site because there's "a difference between correlation and causation". Yes I bloody know that, but you can say the same for half his research too - and half the political articles he follows don't even site their sources. So it's like, whatever mate
One of our biggest problems happens to be he's a feminist and I'm not. I'm also all for people taking responsibility for themselves, and relying on the family unit more - rather than the government. He sees that it's our government's job to do basically everything for us like bloody sheep and I can't stand that. Australia is one of the most over-governed countries already (of developed countries of course). We have a lot of dumb laws, high taxes (which I'm not even complaining about, I understand why tax is important) and as time goes on it seems we have less and less freedom. A perfect example of this is our government wants to make it illegal to birth at home - heaven forbid you have a half an hour labour and don't make it to the ER in time, because that'd be a criminal offense, and anyone with you could be charged for assisting you. Stupid. I feel in a lot of ways we could use more freedom and better education so that we all can use those freedoms properly.
He feels that women need more equality - and we can get that by the government looking after our kids for us from a younger age. You know, instead of making it possible for families to survive on a single income like they did in our parents day, we should just put our kids in government funded day care - a day care system that would be, essentially, starting primary school earlier - full on structured learning. Tell me, how long would it be before the laws changed and made it illegal not to institutionalize your child like that? (you already have to have them in school at 5 years old, after all). And of course, being about to become a mum, I've done research on childcare, and outcomes for children. There are whackloads of studies done that prove that one-on-one time with a primary caregiver is far more beneficial to a child's brain development than educational programs (the baby's brain is not fully developed. Many people think it's just empty at that point, but the organ is actually not all there yet. It's still growing). There's also a lot of government money being poured into researching the long term effects of the higher stress environments we put our kids in - like too many out-of-school activities/ tutoring/ social events etc. We're not always giving them time to do what they need to do most - which is play and observe.
I know it would be lovely for women to not have to choose kids or career. I know there are a lot of women having kids later because they want to get the career going first. I know that for most families who do have a stay at home parent, 90% of the time, that's the mother. But is that because our social system is forcing us to stay home with our kids or because our hormones tell us we want to? I know a lot of other mums now - and it's only a tiny portion of them that WANT to stick their brats in daycare. They are wired to want to be with their off-spring.
But of course, he tells me I know nothing about that - and that I only believe women want to be with their kids rather than in the workforce because society tells me that's what I want. Uhm. No mate. Fuck you.
I don't know how other women feel (feel free to comment and tell me!) but I don't feel like I'm at a disadvantage because I'm female. Yes, Australia needs to get with the times and pay women more (we earn 97% of a mans income because some archaic law is still in place) but other than that, I don't feel I lack options. If I were seriously career driven, I could have my husband stay home with the kids, I could have kids later, or (if I had parents) I could let them be there during the day. We could both work part time, or one of us could work nights (this is what my sister and her husband plan to do.) But honestly? I like being part of a society that doesn't expect me to work full time. I personally believe that it's mine (and Obi's) responsibility to look after our own brats or to not have them until we can look after them.
If anything I'd like to see more workplaces with creshes and more work places where there's a women's room for expressing milk and such. Taking my brat off me doesn't give me better equality!
But of course, I'm just some moron who's having babies rather than going to uni, so what could I possibly know? Meanwhile, this guy is always a bit miserable. I know our earth has a lot of problems, and it's great that he's doing everything in his power to change that (he's way into renewable energy and climate change, all that jazz) but he can't detach himself from it and enjoy what's THERE. Sometimes I really think people in general need to stop seeking perfection and work on acceptance. Sometimes going looking for problems is making problems.
I miss the days where I could say something and I wouldn't be labeled. No, I'm not a socialist, a liberal, a greeny.... I'm your every day slightly-better-educated-on-politics-than-most run of the mill voter. I am a representation of a regular person in society. Someone who doesn't care exactly what party's policy says what - someone who doesn't agree with everything that any of them say - like most people. This boy wants to lead our country one day, wants to be our PM. But if he can't listen to his mate over coffee about what normal people care about, whos to say he'll listen to any of the little people?
I already told him I'm not going to vote for him though. Because I like the monarchy. I don't want a president. Again, if it's not broke, don't fix it - but apparently we'd all be better off with our own head of state, and if that man was him.
Haha. Ok ok, end rant!Alright, managed to choke down that water. Off to the gym!
But, Costa Rica currently has a woman president (who everyone hates, but that's another story). So I guess that says something. Although I should add the general thought is that she can't get anything done because no one in the government respects her because she's a woman.
With my SO and I, if we ever have kids I would want to stay home. But the thing is, I want to stay home NOW. I hate working! Even if we never have kids our plan is for my SO to have such a banging ass job I won't have to work. Or at least only work part time. I don't know if it's society or whatever, but hell as long as I'm happy and my family is happy why should I care the reason?
Zephi...your friend seems to have bought into outdated thoughts on gender equality...maybe you should suggest he checks if his sources are using data from this century.