10:14 a.m.||||2001-11-29
I took an intelligence test and the results aren't worth posting as I am not, apparently, a genius and that was the answer I was seeking. Time is an element and I took too much of it...listening the baby's chirps perk up and begin to sound as if he required me. Which he did, so I stalled on the test. My strengths are spatial and lingual problem solving but the mathematical logic problems...well, let's just say I passed college math.
At least one of the questions had a cultural basis...to answer it well one would have to have certain cultural knowledge. I thought that was the problem with "standardized" tests - whose standards? While I was able to answer it based on having been educated in a middle-class white high school, I doubt very much if the guy who sells crack next door would be able to....and that isn't a statement on him or his intelligence, but that test. And the kind of thinking that goes into making that test is possibly representative of the same hiearchy that keeps him down. Just read- mainstream.
So. This struck me as appropriate and amusing:
From Ariel Gore's The Hipmama Survival Guide ...
"Some Signs That You Need to Get Out More":
* You are beginning to think of someone you only know as "yip34@zap.com" as one of your closest friends.
* You send yourself mail just so you can chat with the mail delivery babe
* You have been wearing the same electric blue fuzzy robe your mother gave you for Christmas for seven days and there is nothing physically wrong with you.
* You honestly couldn't summarize the local weather pattern over the past few days.
* You talk to the guy who calls with the Toyota marketing survey - for an hour.
* You have found yourself lately pondering your spiritual connection with Montel Williams.
Oh my goodness....J is having a bottle he is holding, sort of, sitting in his high chair and he's almost asleep, sitting upright.
Mamas, you wanna know something weird? I stopped breastfeeding three months ago, when J turned, three months, and I STILL have milk, albeit very little - drops, we're talking - but milk! Why? It almost hurts my feelings. I tried very hard to breastfeed and to do it as long as we could. I was, however, so exhausted, and not able to eat much (I felt queasy a lot and unmotivated)and not at all able to drink the water required...my son had trouble settling in to nurse - although latching on was a problem at first, we had it down at 6 weeks - he'd wiggle and fight and squirm. I really don't know what happened and it upsets me to think about it, even.
I made the huge mistake of supplementing with bottles while trying to keep my milk up by expressing but I was so on edge and tense and those are feelings can be even worse in terms of stimulating let-down... ugghhhh. I got to the point where I felt like a failure, I was starving but nauseated all the time, trying to consume water and calories was a Herculean task and I was so involved with looking like the world's greatest and un-depressed new-mom, that I didn't seek the help I knew I needed. Part of it is that I have sometimes strange feelings about my own breasts - not an aversion to breastfeeding, which I think is beautiful - but a desire not to be reminded of my own...I do have abuse issues, though, and I think it brought up something unpleasant. So, after supplementing for like two or three weeks, one day I put him to the breast and he totally revolted - he went on strike. To try to get him to latch on seemed like I was torturing him and right there I just broke. I tried to keep expressing and giving it to him in bottles after that but when I was down to expressing 2 oz - in a whole damn day - I thought it's over.
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