Review: BABIES

While I was biding my time, waiting for my child, Godot, to arrive, I went and saw "BABIES" the documentary.  I hadn't read anything about it, only that it was advertised as a "If you loved 'March of the Penguins' you'll love..." type parallel.  And who doesn't love penguins and babies and penguin babies and matinees? Exactly.

Well here is the rub.  WARNING:  Spoilers galore.  The beauty of "Penguins" for me was the raw and bright scenery of Antarctica, the honest portrayal of the life stages of the penguins, the struggle, the unique co-parenting and sacrifices made by the parent penguins, and then the sweet advent of the wee little pengies.

BABIES, however, has an agenda.  And I sort of hate documentaries that make up our minds for us ::cough Michael Moore cough::.  The contrast between First World Overparenting and Third World Primitive Parenting in BABIES is stark. The First Worlders just look like idiots with their parenting guides and music for munchkin classes, and the Third Worlders are portrayed as very "authentic" hard-working people who may not be able to swat every fly away or shoo every chicken from entering their tents, but they do seem to have an engaged clue about parenting.  I didn't buy it.  Parenting is not that cookie cutter, and every day presents its own struggles and opportunities to learn to be a better parent no matter where or how you live.

There are a lot of unanswered questions in the film, like where are the fathers in Namibia, and how long does the camera crew wait to intervene when one of the neglected kids is about to get hurt, and why is the US mother buck naked in her whirlpool???  There are also a lot of beautiful parts, too, but it is hard to appreciate the singular moments in each baby's life because the next scene will inevitably critique the previous scene, which is not quite fair and teeters on the simplistic.

I think it would have been more worthwhile to let the parents speak about certain decisions they had made or were making as parents and how responsive or unresponsive they were finding their children to these decisions, rather than offering slices of life - tantrums, breastfeeding, sleeping, crawling, etc. - that were quite narrowly open to interpretation.

But dang if those babies all edible.  I can't wait to nibble on Godot!

Insomnia, Outsomnia

Have you all watched this excellent program on Discovery Health called "I'm Pregnant And..."? It's a series on high-risk pregnancies. I've watched all of the episodes available on On Demand and now I'm begging for more more MORE addicted, anorexic, imprisoned pregnancies! More of your stories! On with the confessions! Show us yet more of those beautiful fleshy little miracle dumplings coming out of your cooches! I can't get enough of it! Loverpants does not approve of my addiction to shows on preggos addicted to meth, but it really is a good show. I've had the worst insomnia this past week (the last time it was this bad, I was pining over some lad which leads me to think that perhaps a Y chromosome en utero is upsetting my sleep?) so I've been catching up with heaps of reading and televizzling.

But I would appreciate it if the insomnia would depart this week. It's the last week of teaching this intensive course and I need to reserve some energy, n'ah mean?

One book I can recommend to you, though, is called by Live Through This by Debra Gwartney. Absolutely one of my favorite memoirs. It's about a mother whose oldest two daughters spend years as runaways. There is no question she shies from answering, no feeling that Gwartney denies feeling. It didn't feel raw and vindictive in the way that some memoirs do. Just very well written with a lot of wisdom gained from hindsight. Let me know if you check it!

***

I've wanted to brag on the seamstressing my mother-in-law did for us while we visited her over the holidays. She and my own mother are brilliant at the sewing machines. I am nothing if not envious!

I asked my MIL to make me a shawl and she set about to make me two! She completed one for me while we were there -- and with the leftover fabric, she made two for Baby Girl. Here she is modeling:

As you can see, she was STOKED about it.

I forgot that kids are better in pictures with props.

And the final picture is one purely for chasing away your case of the Mondays. I am now at the point where I have a limited rotation of maternity clothes suitable for work and church. It being the frozen tundra here of late, I have to layer on so that I am a roving clothes mound. This past sabbath, I could not help but take a picture of myself. I really try to look my best for church each week, but this week I was straight-up hobo. At least I showered.

Review: It Sucked and Then I Cried

I've been a fan of dooce for a long time, and the irony is, I probably became a fan around the time that she began gathering fodder for her book which I am giving a semi-mediocre rating herein. You see, I guess the fault was all mine. In buying her book, I thought it would just be more of the Heather that we love, telling a story that we all know. That crazed yet eloquent recovering Mormon out in Utah land going all hyperbolic about childbirth and post-partum with a few other anecdotes thrown in to make me feel as though we are BFFs and I'm (by reading her book) the only one to whom she's intimating these things.

But what I got was a story that I more or less already knew, with a somewhat diluted version of early motherhood that did make me laugh but more made me a little bit unimpressed. And the truth is that I am often impressed by Heather's writing and her original insights. I just found the voice here a bit unlikable, a lot full of vitriol (and not even in a funny way, kind of in the way that sometimes Rush Limbaugh and the QVC salespeople are scary). There were parts that I was full-on LOLing, but having been through my own pregnancy and birth and post-partum funk, I found the tone of the book super whiney at times, with very little perspective and sometimes the humor was just, as Boston youth are wont to say, "fawcin' it."

So my final words on this book review are Should Have Waited for Paperback. Anyone want to buy my hardcover?