little feet, big sky

I have someone over to help clean up the house before my in-laws get here in a week, but it’s still a lot of work and I’m exhausted. The past couple of days have been crazy, but I’ve managed to survive it!

Yesterday, we met with our midwife and everything looked good. We checked my iron levels in-house on one of those little handheld monitors, but it showed as suspiciously low so we drew some blood and dropped it at the lab to confirm. I should hear back from her today with the results, but I’m sure it’s fine. If not, I already have a bottle of Floradix Iron in the fridge. :-)

We used a fetoscope to hear the baby’s heartbeat yesterday and it was just beautiful! No crunchy electronic static, and no noisy interference from everything else in my body. Was very cool. 

My doula, Nicole, also came along to meet our midwife. It was a packed meeting, as the backup midwife was also there, but neat to have everyone in one room. 

I’ve decided against having the classic baby shower. I’ve hosted a few before and I think they’re cheesy and over-the-top. :-) I don’t like the games, do not want a diaper cake (cloth diapering!!), and honestly, do not want all the presents. The spouse and I are trying to get rid of things in the house, not get more stuff and we’ve made a conscious decision to get only the absolute bare necessities for the baby. Plus, it’s a eco-style idea to re-use, rather than splurge. Here’s some of the things we’re planning:

• Have a “baby party” rather than a “baby shower”. Set expectations right from the event title.
• Do online invites through Evite or MyPunchBowl. Save trees and postage while gaining cool event tools like picture uploading and tracking things for guests to bring.
• Ask guests to bring food instead of gifts, potluck-style. Again, using an online invite service helps here, as you can often specify list items like “2 entrees” on MyPunchBowl and have two separate guests each select to bring an entree and have that item disappear from the list of available items to bring. Neat!
• Specify in detail on the invite “No gifts, please” for moms, grandmas and other types that might need a more direct approach. :-)
• Optionally, offer a more acceptable way to give for those who just have to give something, like a link to donate to your favorite charity. Sometimes this helps cut down on the misc. gifts that people bring and whisper, “Oh, it’s just a small thing…” One idea is to have them make the donation in the baby’s name and bring a print-out of the donation with them. You can add this to the baby’s scrapbook for posterity, with a note that “Aunt Jo helped make the world a better place for you”. Personally, I’m going with Oceana; I can explain to our kid down the road that before he/she was born, our friends and family helped make things better for all the animals in the ocean.
• Instead of those god-awful cheesy shower games, think of ways to make the event memorable for you & the baby in years to come. Set up a video camera and a chair and let guests record messages to the baby. Have a blank canvas and paints setup and let guests contribute to a communal painting that can hung in baby’s area for years to come. You can also do this with the scrapbook, letting guests write their own messages to baby in the book. Keep easy-to-use scrapbooking stickers, stamps and color pencils nearby for guests to “pretty up ” their own messages.

Got a chance to test out a loaded car seat in my new VW GTI. :-) I was visiting my sister and we moved her LATCH-system car seat into my car so we could pick up my nephew from daycare in my car. It was super easy to set up. The lower anchor tether “bars” are well exposed in the seats, so there’s no digging around between the seat and the back trying to feel for it. Just snap in, tighten and go. :-) My nephew loved the ride, and kept saying “Roof open! Roof open!”

Can’t wait to set it up with the Orbit when we have our own munchkin. :-)