Ears Are For Hearing -- Unless They're Not

There's an interesting article on the front page of the WSJ today (you may need to be a subscriber to get to the article online, but I'll summarize) on cochlear implants for toddlers and the conflict they have engendered within the deaf community. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they have engendered conflict among parents of members of the deaf community.

By way of background, cochlear implants are gizmos that are implanted within the ear, giving a deaf person the ability to hear. The devices themselves have been around for a while, their quality constantly improving, but implanting them in the ears of small children is a newer development. Essentially, a deaf toddler can get the implants and then learn to hear and speak just like any other child. In all likelihood, they won't ever remember having been deaf.

Sounds amazing, right? Like giving a blind person her sight back or giving new legs to a paraplegic. But some people say that it's not a solution for a handicap, but rather the elimination of a person's -- and by extension a community's -- identity. Deafness isn't a handicap, this view goes, but rather a culture, a way of life. An expert on the deaf community from Northeastern University says that many deaf advocates believe that the deaf community is akin to the black community -- an ethnic group with its own language.

You can see the argument from both sides: 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. For these parents, their child's deafness is a handicap, one that leads him not to function smoothly in the world. Previously, the deaf child had to go to special schools, learn a special language, get special equipment to be able to communicate with the vast non-deaf majority of the population. I know someone who was born deaf to hearing parents -- his parents moved to another state to be close to a school for the deaf. His grandmother became a deaf education teacher. His father became an advocate for and consultant to the deaf community. He is now married to a hearing woman who is a deaf interpreter. If cochlear implants had been available 40 years ago, would this person have had the surgery to correct a handicap? I have to think he would have.

But then there's the other side of the coin. Two deaf people meet at Gallaudet University, get jobs in Sioux Falls, a town with a thriving deaf community due to the presence there of Communications Services for the Deaf, a Sprint partner that provides telecommunications services to the deaf community all over the country. They communicate with the world solely through American Sign Language. They fall in love, get married, and have a child. The child turns out to be deaf. The parents are now faced with a choice -- they can raise their child in their own community, speaking ASL, interacting primarily with other deaf people. Or their child can have cochlear implant surgery and effectively become part of an entirely different community -- a community where people speak and hear and live a very different life. They don't view themselves as handicapped. Why should they solve a problem that isn't a problem? Why rip their child out of the world they live in?

The article is an interesting one, and I encourage you to read it if you have a copy of the WSJ lying around. I can't think of any other physical handicap (and I do think of it as a handicap, even though I'm related to the deaf person I mentioned earlier and certainly don't find him to be deficient in any way) that engenders this kind of circle-the-wagons defensiveness among its community. Just to make my own views clear: if I gave birth to a deaf child tomorrow, you can bet that we'd be first in line for cochlear implant surgery. Not because being deaf is the worst thing that could happen to a person, but where a substantial physical handicap can be fixed, why wouldn't you fix it?

When Did I Start Needing Sleep?

For me, one of the more impressive aspects of early motherhood was the extent to which I could lead a perfectly normal life with absolutely no sleep. Even when I went back to work, I was up at 5 am to pump before the then-Metropolibaby woke up, then went to bed around 10:30 or 11 pm, got up two or three times during the night to re-insert a pacifier or change a diaper or something, and was up for good again at 5 am. And I never really felt tired. Or if I did, I didn't notice.

So now the Metropolitoddler is pushing two years old. She sleeps like a champ, rarely wakes up at night, generally is a rock star in the world of sleep. But if she wakes up in the middle of the night with a bad dream or an untimely poopy diaper, I find myself dragging for the next day or two. I am just wiped out by a night that, 18 months ago, would have been deemed a fabulous night of repose.

Where did all those Mommy-Don't-Need-No-Sleep hormones run off to? And when did they skip town? Please come back . . .

When You Wish Upon a Fire Hydrant

For the last few weeks, I've been telling my friends about the fulfillment of a wish I've had for a long time. The response to the fulfillment of said wish has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, so I thought I'd share.

In some ways, it's kind of a silly wish -- not a deep wish or a better-the-world wish or even an impossibly-impossible-but-fun-to-wish wish. It's a rather simple wish: to have a personal shopper at Saks Fifth Avenue.

I'll be the first to confess that I have not exactly regained my pre-pregnancy figure. The women of my family tend to be shaped like buxom fire hydrants, and mommyhood has definitely nudged me a little bit in that direction. I haven't thrown in the towel -- I continue to entertain the somewhat pie-in-the-sky hope that my size 6 days aren't entirely behind me -- but I hate the idea of becoming one of those people who dresses schlubbily because they refuse to spend any money on clothing unless they can purchase it in their dream size. So, armed with the conviction that I would buy whatever looked good on me regardless of what size was listed on the tag, off I marched into Saks to drop some cash on a new wardrobe.

The flagship Saks store -- whose location on Fifth Avenue I trust will surprise no one -- is an impressive but overwhelming extravanaganza of clothing goodness. Unlike Bloomingdale's and many other department stores, Saks is pretty much nothing more than a shrine to Things That Go On One's Body. None of this "housewares on 6, linens on 7" business, although there is a bit of a giftware section on maybe an eighth of one floor. Just makeup and accessories on 1 followed by many many floors of clothing, organized by designer and generally grouped by level of schmancyness. I like to shop, but I find Saks to be something of a shopping catacomb. Without an experienced guide, all is lost.

Enter the personal shopper.

The PS and I meet in her office. She's stylish and well-put-together, but not a goddess. That's reassuring -- who wants to be taught introductory physics by Albert Einstein? We chat for a few minutes about who I am, what I'm looking for, how I normally dress. I'm wearing black pants and a sweater that I think is rather cute. She looks me over and says that the project will be to create outfits that won't look like I just yanked pants and a top out of the closet and threw them on together. (Um, isn't that the whole point of black pants, I wonder, but keep my thoughts to myself.) She praises me for having regained my pre-baby figure and recommends that I start wearing some sort of minimizer because that particular asset doesn't really need any more emphasis than it demands on its own. (I told you -- buxom fire hydrants!)

And then off we go into the wild Saks yonder.

The PS bobs and weaves through the many many aisles of clothes, pulling jackets and pants and skirts and tops off the racks, holding them up to me for color, discarding some, keeping others, shouting sizes to her assistant (a chic Russian woman with funky glasses who seems unfazed by all of the data the PS throws in her direction), tossing a mountain of clothing over her shoulder. We do one floor at a time -- at the end of each floor, another assistant materializes who totes that floor's haul back to the PS's office. She leaves me in the kind care of a man in the shoe department with 20 pairs of shoes to try on for size while she finishes perusing every item of clothing in Saks. We meet back in her office two hours after we started, where three racks of clothing await us.

Then I try everything on. Many things don't fit, and Chic Russian Assistant dashes back to the floor to switch sizes for me, often before I've even removed the ill-fitting item. Some things look fantastic, some look terrible. I'm surprised by some of the things that look great -- jackets that I would never have given a second look on my own, pants that should look like every other pair of pants I own but somehow lie a little bit differently and more flatteringly. Within another hour, we've assembled an array of jackets, pants, skirts, tops, and shoes that can all be interchanged -- and that are all fabulous.

Everyone then decides I need a little quiet time before finalizing what I'm actually going to buy. The PS heads back out to the floor to pick up a few more odds and ends, and Chic Russian Assistant fetches me a turkey sandwich and fruit salad. When the PS returns, she hands me a list she's drawn up of all of the outfits that can be created out of the various items of clothing. Literally everything can be worn with everything else. It's quite impressive. Then we start to cut things out. The PS exerts no pressure -- if I say something is out, she removes it from the rack. I eliminate a number of the little shirts to be worn under various jackets -- I may be a Saks girl now, but I don't need a $300 blue silk knit t-shirt when I can buy a $30 Banana Republic t-shirt in the same color blue. I go back and forth on a particular brown skirt, which is the most expensive item in the lot -- ultimately I decide to buy it because it's just so gorgeous, and decide that if I vow to wear it once a week, I'll amortize the cost down to mere pennies in no time flat. Something of a rationalization, but it's a really great skirt.

Ultimately I make the final decisions. Four jackets, two pairs of pants, one pair of jeans, two skirts, one very nifty dressy blouse, one sweater, one shell, and two pairs of shoes. A successful shopping day for everyone. Saks, me -- everyone wins!

Then the fitter is summoned to the room. She pins everything. Shortens sleeves, shortens pant legs, narrows waists and upper arms. I had also brought with me a suit I'd bought at an outlet a few months ago on the theory that it could be altered into something wonderful -- she transforms the jacket from full-length sleeves to three-quarter length sleeves, narrows the entire torso, and reconfigures the pants. A mere (!) 5 hours after my arrival at Saks, I leave with a large credit card bill, a huge smile on my face, and no clothes -- everything is being altered and shipped. Two weeks later I have everything.

I'm now in my second week of my new wardrobe. Admittedly, I don't work in an atmosphere where one's clothing is particularly relevant (it's a group of traders, not exactly known for their fashionistaness), but I feel great in my lovely new array of stuff. And I no longer feel like the frumpomommy with the beautifully dressed toddler -- an awkward thing to feel like here in Manhattan where one runs into Uma Thurman and various Uma Thurman lookalikes in Central Park, impeccably turned out with their equally impeccable kidlets in tow. I mean, I'm still a fire hydrant and all, but at least I'm a cute fire hydrant.

Now, of course, I'm looking at the rest of my closet with a critical eye. I suspect it's the case that once you go PS, you can never go back. But really, who wants to go back?

Dueling Baby Books

I think Mr. Banana has one very important quality when it comes to child rearing that I wish I had - he generally doesn't care what anyone thinks, including the experts. I, on the other hand, have several baby advice books, and am referring to them quite regularly. When Baby Banana doesn't sleep, I read them. When he sleeps a lot, I read them. When he's getting his shots, I read them. When he misses a feeding, I read them. You get the idea.

These books are making me crazy, and I really should stop reading them, but I'm addicted. Dr. Sears tells me that if I don't carry the Baby Banana around with me 24-7 and let him sleep in my bed until he's 15, I'm a terrible parent, but doesn't give any advice for how I'm supposed to stay sane if I never put him down. Baby 411 tells me that I have to get rid of the pacifier (that we weren't supposed to use in the first place) and have him on a sleep routine by 4 months of age, but gives no advice on how to do this. The Nursing Mother's Companion says he's supposed to be eating less frequently by now, but gives no indication if it's normal that he's still eating 10-12 times a day, if this is harmful in any way, or if there's any way to get him to spread it out at all.

Basically, these books make me feel guilty for using a pacifier (even though it seems to be the only way Baby Banana will calm down and go to sleep at night), for having (much less using) a bouncy seat/swing/play mat so I can take a shower or go to the bathroom or answer my email or eat lunch, for wanting to spend time away from my child, for not finding nursing to be a religious experience, etc, etc.

But worst of all, the books never agree on anything. They contradict each other regularly, so I can't even feel guilty consistently.

I know, I know, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. Everyone has told me to ignore this book or that book, or all of them. I am fully aware that I should take all of this with a grain of salt and do what's best for our little family. But someone, some rational person, needs to write a real guide for real parents that gives the pros and cons of various styles and lets you decide for yourself, and most importantly, gives you the real-life implications of the decisions you plan to make. Even Baby 411, the most rational of the books, tells you you must do certain things, without telling you what will happen if you don't!

So anyone who has any real world advice about pacifiers, not wearing your baby 24-7, sleep patterns, nursing habits, how to figure out what size diaper your kid should be wearing, please feel free to let me know, or write a book. I'd really like to stop feeling guilty.

Lights, Camera, Grandparents

Mr. Banana's parents live near us, but mine don't. My mother, understandably, wants to make sure that Baby Banana recognizes her and knows who she is. To accomplish this (we hope), we have invested in some reasonably priced, yet truly wonderful technology - a web camera.

We've had it since Baby Banana was born, and have since convinced several other folks do get them, including Mr. Banana's sister (who will provide us with a niece in the near future) and the Metropolitans. Baby Banana seems somewhat confused by why we keep shoving him in front of the computer, but Grandma and Grandpa love, love, love seeing their baby grandson in real time, and soon, we hope that he will recognize and interact with them. We've also gotten the chance to see the Metropolitoddler and the expanding belly of my sister-in-law. Soon it'll be a great way for our niece to know us and her cousin!

For those who have long distance family, especially grandparents, I highly recommend investing in the technology. The cameras are under $150, and your computer likely already has the software in place (if you have a Mac, iChat couldn't be simpler). You'll make the grandparents very happy - and what could be better than that?