{End of January}

Reading:

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. This is about a bizarre future society where the roles of women are pretty disturbing. In a lot of ways it pivots back to antiquated treatment and attitudes toward women, but some are still ongoing in certain cultures. Anyway, not a light read, but an important one.

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay. I heard about this one on the What Should I Read Next podcast when it was recommended by an Aussie listener. Apparently this book is a pretty big deal in Australia, but it’s not really one most Americans know. It’s a mystery about three women who disappeared from a picnic outing without a trace, and I guess there was some debate as to whether it’s a true story. It’s a speedy read, and I really enjoyed it–a great combination of eerie and charming.

Watching:

I’ve been watching a lot more tv than usual what with the baby, so here’s a quick rundown. 

Freaks and Geeks. This series hails from 1999, and holds up so well. There are a lot of familiar faces (my favorite was a brief appearance from a tiny Shia LaBeouf) and so many funny moments.

Audrie and Daisy. A documentary about several teen girls who were sexually assaulted and then the social medias helped things get of of control. It’s about as cheery as it sounds. But a good one.

13th. A documentary about the evolution of slavery after the 13th amendment, particularly in relation to imprisonment. Again, cheery. But important. 

Bletchley Circle. A series set in early 1950’s England about a group of women who were formerly code breakers in WWII and now solve crimes. I like that, for the most part, they aren’t particularly gorgeous, brave, or outgoing like some female leads tend to be. They’re pretty normal women with pretty normal lives now that the war is over; they just happen to be pretty smart. But they have to be pretty modest even about that to not raise questions about their work in the war. Anyway, I like this show. 

The Crown. I’m only a couple episodes in on this one, but wow. It’s pretty to look at.

Listening to:

Again, more than usual.

Presidential. I’m a little sad this is already said and done because I’d have loved to follow along in real time, but I heard about it a year too late. Starting last January the Washington Post did an episode each week on every U.S. president from Washington to Trump. I’m only a few episodes in, but I’ve heard that it really brings to light how the nation has survived dud presidents in the past, and we can do it again in the future.

Twice Removed. This one makes me so happy. A family history podcast! It’s a pretty new one, so there aren’t a lot of episodes yet, but thumbs up. They have a guest and walk them through the more interesting parts of their family tree and end by introducing them to a living “mystery relative” that’s somehow relevant to some part of the episode. In the first episode I listened to the guest was Dan Savage, who I really dislike, but I really enjoyed the episode regardless. 

Sword and Scale. This is true crime, and I’ve really liked every episode I’ve listened to. But it’s a little dark and probably not everybody’s cup of tea.

Prime audiobooks from Audible channels. Audible channels became a perk of Amazon Prime a while ago, but I didn’t think I cared. But I just learned that I do care because they actually have some really good titles to stream–several from my to-read list that normally have lengthy wait-lists at the library. Right now I’m listening to Columbine by Dave Cullen, but only when I’m riding the exercise bike. It’s giving me a really good incentive to exercise.

Thinking about:

I read an article a while back exploring the phenomenon that occurred with BuzzFeed’s article on the family from Fixer Upper. I didn’t read that article from BuzzFeed (it circulated on my socials, but I avoid anything that looks like clickbait), but I gather that the Gaines family was attacked for belonging to a religion that doesn’t support gay marriage, and it was insinuated that they’d never take on a gay couple on their show, but that’s discrimination and so maybe they shouldn’t be on tv, etc. Anyway, the article I did read (written by a gay guy, incidentally) brought up some really good points about the issue of diversity:

“A 2016 survey from Pew Research Center shows public support of same-sex marriage is at an all-time high of 55 percent — and it is steadily growing. But the same polls tell us that nearly 4 out of 10 Americans — no small number! — are not on board with it. The minds at BuzzFeed are not naive: They know that the Gaineses and HGTV are going to have to come out with a public statement on same-sex marriage. They also know that if the statement is not 100 percent supportive of same-sex marriage, the network will be pressured to drop them.

“Think about that for a moment. Is the suggestion here that 40 percent of Americans are unemployable because of their religious convictions on marriage? That the companies that employ them deserve to be boycotted until they yield to the other side of the debate — a side, we should note, that is only slightly larger than the one being shouted down?

“Or maybe the suggestion is that, because they are public figures, they need to be held to a higher standard, one that does not allow them room for moral and religious convictions? But that doesn’t make sense, either.

“BuzzFeed is probably at the forefront of discussions surrounding diversity in entertainment. But do their reporters think diversity refers only to skin color? Does ideological diversity count for nothing, especially when it is representative of, again, a sizable chunk of the American public?”

It’s a great privilege to be free to have convictions, and I think we make more progress toward peace when we spend more time seeking to understand and empathize with other people’s (diverse!) convictions instead of focusing on why we are right and they are wrong.

{End of November}

Reading:

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. I grabbed this when I saw it at a thrift store because it’s been on my to-read list for a while and the wait list at the library always seems to be pretty long. And it’s kind of a long book, so that makes the wait even longer. The plot bounces back and forth between WWII era and the present, and I think the two perspectives build well on each other. It’s hard to describe this book without spoilers (and you definitely don’t want it spoiled), but it’s an adult daughter trying to figure out her dying, dementia-ridden mother’s past, especially during the war years. Discovering your family’s heritage is a theme I always appreciate, so I really enjoyed it, but it felt a little longish–it was pushing 500 pages. But I’ve had less time to read lately, so maybe it was just my life timing that made it feel overly-long. 

Watching:

Stranger Things. It’s been a thing for forever (ok, maybe only since this spring), but we only do Netflix occasionally since we already do Amazon Prime and Sling and really don’t need all three at once. So we wait around for a good occasion to get Netflix for just a month. And an upcoming baby paired with winter seemed like a good time to mix up our options. I’m really liking Stranger Things (it’s sort of X Files meets Twin Peaks meets E.T.) but it sort of gives me anxiety. But once again, I think it’s more of a life-timing issue than a content issue. I mean, I’m getting ready for a newborn and Christmas simultaneously. Elevated anxiety levels are to be expected.

Listening to:

Hidden Brain podcast. I’d heard much about this podcast, but hadn’t really had the time to start listening. And then my beloved How to do Everything randomly came to an end, so I had a good excuse to start Hidden Brain from the beginning. It’s really good–shortish, entertaining, and smart with real-world applications.

{End of October}

I’m a week late… it’s been an insane couple of weeks. I decided to do book 2 Suzuki training while I still only have one child–even though I’m taking a break from teaching for a while (between church callings, a toddler, and a newborn, I just literally have no time). I had to do 8 hours of observations of other teachers, and the due date snuck up on me. And that isn’t even code for “I procrastinated it.” The due date was several weeks sooner than I was expecting, so I ended up cramming all 8 hours in a two-week span. Fortunately, most of my students have already switched to other teachers so I have a tiny bit more expendable time, but still it was a herculean task to coordinate other teachers’ schedules with my limited schedule (considering I have a toddler to find a babysitter for). But it’s done now. Largely in part due to my mom randomly asking if she could come watch the small child. Heaven sent. And now I only have a billion other things to accomplish before the younger child comes. Oh, and there’s normal Christmas stuff to deal with as well. I’m considering adding “give up” to my to do list just in case. Anyway, here’s the brief rundown…

Reading:

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart. It’s the prequel to The Mysterious Benedict Society series (which I haven’t read yet), and I enjoyed it. It’s a kid chapter book, and it was a fun and smart read.

Listening to:

In the Dark podcast. It’s along the same lines as Serial season 1, but with a little less speculation and amateur sleuthing. But with good reason–this cold case was finally solved a week before the series was set to premier. They switched everything up to reflect this huge development remarkably well; it’s all so well told. It’s about the disappearance of Jacob Wetterling and the social and legal repercussions of his case.

Watching:

Spotlight on VidAngel. This movie is the true story of the Boston Globe’s investigation into the child sexual abuse cover-up scandal in the Catholic church. So very interesting (and sad). This movie is rated R, but with a few VidAngel filters it was pretty tame. I chose to keep the descriptions of sexual assault un-filtered (because that’s the whole point of the movie), and I didn’t think it was terribly disturbing–but I’ve heard many, many similar stories from various child welfare classes and in Good-Touch/Bad-Touch training, so maybe I’m not the best judge of that. I thought the descriptions were portrayed really respectfully (and sparingly), and they gave the message that there are safe places where victims can talk about horrendous things they’ve been through, which I think is important.

You Don’t Have to Share a Room with Your Baby

Maybe this is just the perma-grouch stage of pregnancy talking, but I’m bugged by some of the (really pretty benign) articles about the new SIDS recommendations. Namely the ones that put emphasis on the room-sharing suggestion.

My issues with this go several layers deep, but let’s start shallow: The official AAP report all these articles are based on only dedicates 6 sentences to this specific suggestion. This isn’t a little report, people. Six sentences is a drop in the bucket. And half of those 6 sentences refer to room-sharing just in terms of being safer than bed-sharing. One sentence states the convenience of room-sharing, and just one sentence refers to a startling statistic with accompanying citations (but more on that in a moment). If the official report can’t come up with more than 6 (not particularly well articulated) sentences on this suggestion, it must not be that important. Even if this is the only new addition to the recommendations, it certainly doesn’t warrant a full article highlighting the change.

What the report does describe at length is the risks of bed-sharing and also the dangers of falling asleep while feeding/holding a baby. It also devotes at least a paragraph each to about a dozen other recommendations for parents, including prenatal care, breastfeeding, immunizations, pacifiers, avoiding cigarette smoke, avoiding alcohol, avoiding overheating, avoiding breathing/pulse monitors etc. Several of these recommendations I hadn’t heard of before! All of this information in one report and journalists are choosing to do an entire article on a flimsy 6-sentence excerpt?

But let’s go back to that impressive-sounding statistic I mentioned. “There is evidence that sleeping in the parents’ room but on a separate surface decreases the risk of SIDS by as much as 50%.” Fifty percent!? Wow, that’s a significant decrease! But compared to what? Compared to bed-sharing? Compared to sleeping in separate rooms? It doesn’t actually specify, but the difference changes the meaning of the stat drastically. And given how much they they talk about bed-sharing in the subsequent paragraphs (and in the statistic sentence itself) I’d guess there’s a 50% decrease in SIDS when parents aren’t bed-sharing. Just a guess, though. I looked through some of the citations and couldn’t find which one had the 50% number.

Also, a 50% reduction may not be as significant as it sounds. Potentially it could mean that in the sample there was one case of SIDS that room-shared and two cases that did not. Fifty percent reduction! In a sample of 20 total babies this is kind of a significant fraction (but only kind of–the sample size is much too small to apply any sweeping statements to the general population), but in a sample of 500, that ratio isn’t really a big deal. Percentages can be so misleading without the context of the actual numbers from the sample.

Let’s also talk a moment about the logistics of this kind of research. The best type of research is randomized and all the other potential factors are controlled for. So to prove that the location of the crib is better in the parents’ room, participants would be randomly assigned where to put the crib (at a predetermined, exact distance from either the parents’ bed or the parents’ room). And then everything else across the participants would have to be the same–same crib, same bedding, same pajamas, same temperature, same feeding, same immunizations… all of the known factors in SIDS would have to be the same, and there are tons. The crib location has to be the only difference in the participants in order to conclusively say whether the crib location (and no other contributing factor) impacts SIDS.

But I can guarantee none of the studies were conducted like this. Partly because it’s unethical, and partly because it’s impossible. When measuring risk, researchers can’t make random assignments. For example, when measuring the risk of smoking vs non-smoking, it’s unethical to assign someone to be part of the smoking group when it’s suspected that smoking has a negative impact on health. It has to be voluntary. Likewise, crib placement would be left up to the parents, along with all the other factors that may or may not contribute to SIDS. And ethics aside, it would be physically (and financially) impossible to ensure that every single factor is the same across all participants. It’s just too much–this is sci-fi territory.

So the best researchers can do is ask as many questions as possible about decisions parents make and hope to notice some trends. And even then, trends aren’t a slam dunk. Repeat after me the stats 1010 mantra: Correlation does not imply causation, correlation does not imply causation. Even if a researcher notes, “Hey, SIDS happens 50% less often in the people who room-share vs people who put babies in a separate room!” this doesn’t necessarily mean room-sharing itself reduces SIDS. It could be that in the sample, people who room-shared were also more likely to breastfeed than non-sharers, and breastfeeding caused the reduction. Or maybe the non-sharers just coincidentally happened to over-bundle their babies more often than room-sharers and that’s the cause. But more likely it’s a combination of multiple factors. Hence the medical mystery that is SIDS–apart from cases of suffocation, it’s not known what causes SIDS, so it’s also not known what prevents SIDS. It could be environmental and preventable, but it could also be something inevitable due to undiscovered physical problems with the baby.

Lastly, with all research complications and poor reporting aside, this recommendation of room-sharing is basically saying, “If you listen to your baby’s every breath while he sleeps, SIDS is less likely to occur.” Which is true, but not actually helpful advice. Constant, 100% vigilance is not a sustainable parenting method. It’s not possible! And frankly, it’s not safe. Sure, you might reduce the risk of SIDS by never sleeping, but you simultaneously increase the risk of car accident, falling asleep while holding the baby, forgetting the baby in the car, and just a multitude of bad decisions. As parents and human beings in general, we have to be ok with allowing a certain amount of risk in our lives, and in the grand scheme of things, the placement of a baby’s crib is a really low-risk parenting decision.

The point is: put the crib wherever works best for you, and don’t feel obligated to share the room because it’ll magically protect your baby from SIDS. Some parents prefer sharing a room with their babies–maybe the parents sleep better having them in the room or maybe they like the convenience. And some parents share out of necessity. But for some of us, not sharing a room works best. Do your thing.

{Mid October}

Reading:

Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier. Based on the cover of the copy I got from my library, you’d guess this was a trashy paperback romance. Not so! It’s a spooky, mysterious modern Gothic. And it has (tasteful) romance, but I wouldn’t really call it a romance novel. There are a lot of parallels with Jane Eyre (a complicated, wealthy husband with a very hushed past, etc), but it definitely has its own spin. The narrator (who remains unnamed) is so likable and also a familiar flavor of insecure. My heart hurt for her during some of the things she felt and experienced.

I also finally (after 8 months) finished Don Quixote! I mostly listened to the audiobook checked out from the library, which meant sometimes I had to be on a waiting list for a while between checkouts. But even then it was 40 hours long! I wouldn’t read it again, but I can see why it’s important. It’s so very meta. Ironic, clever, funny, mocking, contradictory… you name it. Really pretty masterful. But if you read it, read the Spark notes.

Listening to:

One Last Thing Before I Go, Act 1: Really Long Distance by This American Life. I generally make a practice of avoiding tear-jerky things. Motherhood messed with my emotions and I just don’t want to feel the feels. But this story makes you love your fellow humans.

Working on:

Staining a stupid bed frame. Yeah. I’m fairly significantly pregnant and staining something. My husband and I had a miscommunication about which bed frame belonged in which room, and he took great pains in setting the already painted one up in the wrong room. And I didn’t want to put the ugly bed frame in Little Boy’s freshly painted bedroom (another situation where one small project inadvertently led to a much bigger project). And I had some leftover Polyshades from my bathroom vanity I redid a year ago… so that’s what I went with. Fortunately it’s a 2-in-1 stain and poly and you only have to sand the gloss off the existing finish, not strip it completely. So it’s not much different than paint. But geez. Not a fun job for the girl who struggles to get socks on her own feet. But it’s mostly done now. Apart from a few nooks my foam brush couldn’t reach. Jury’s out whether I’ll actually do that in the next year.