little feet, big sky

I opened the box of Lansinoh lanolin to put in my nightstand drawer and being the kind of freak that reads all the silly packaging materials, I noticed a statement on the insert that suggested using Lansinoh while pregnant to help prepare your nipples for breastfeeding. Of course, being in the organizing mood at the time, I just went “huh, that’s interesting” and tossed out the insert.

But somehow, it creeped back into my mind as I was oiling the belly and breasts towards the end of this morning’s shower – should I skip the vitamin E oil on the boobs in the shower and start using Lansinoh instead? How exactly does lanolin “help prepare” your nipples prior to their future role as suckers-for-a-lifetime? Soften them? Toughen them? I’ve scoured the Lansinoh site for that insert message, but couldn’t find it or any reference to using Lansinoh while pregnant. Hmm, back to doing things the old-fashioned way…

Lanolin is an emollient, which translates to “softener” in my brain; Wikipedia seems to agree with me on that one. According to the encyclopedia god, emollients have three properties: 1) the oil ability to block moisture from escaping, 2) some humectant ability to help the uppermost layer of skin retain more water, and 3) lubrication for the skin against other things. (Like little vampire baby gums, I’d imagine.) So Lansinoh, being “100% pure lanolin”, works like a barrier cream to protect your nipples while breast-feeding from drying, cracking and such. In pregnancy, I’m guessing it probably helps to do something of the same so that you’re less likely to start out the gate with dry nipples.

So maybe I could still use regular food-safe body oils for a similar purpose while pregnant, but have you ever felt lanolin? The stuff is thick and gunky, and I supposed I’d better get used to it now. I like the idea of using a little expressed breastmilk to treat sore/dry nipples, but it seems that doesn’t always work for everyone.

If you have any experience using Laninsoh either while pregnant or while breastfeeding, please share! I’m a curious critter for this stuff… :-)

I have to admit, I’ve been struggling with the clothing issue in the past couple of weeks. I flat out refuse to buy more maternity clothes for just another four weeks. But I’ve noticed that even my biggest maternity tops are starting to rise up a little at the bottom as they valiantly try to cover my belly. :-( So last night, with 7 minutes to take a shower and get ready for dinner out at a small Italian place with friends, I randomly tossed on my cheap but reliable maternity jeans from Mimi Maternity, my white American Apparel bandeau dress and a denim jacket bought on sale from Old Navy Maternity. Voila! Insta-outfit!

I think I’ve covered what maternity clothing I had before, but now I’m actually near the end and should share what has worked for me, and what hasn’t. Tragically, I must admit that some of these brands are not at all eco-friendly. :-( In hindsight, I wish I’d been more prepared as my body changed, and therefore less desperate to just get something that fit. *sigh* Next time.

What’s worked:

• Cheap tank tops and tees from Old Navy. I bought half a dozen on sale and have worn them the most. They’ve held up awesome through machine washes and wear.
• Maternity jeans from Mimi Maternity. These have also held up pretty good. The “secret fit belly” elastic has probably stretched a bit, but it’s still perfectly elastic. I’ll probably pick up an extra one when we get to the next bun in the oven, as I’ve practically lived in these for the past 6 months.
• Spa pants from lucy. A nice variation from jeans. Looks like light cargos, but stretchy, breathable and comfortable. Though I do untie the drawstring when sitting down. Perfect for lounging, running errands or prenatal yoga.
• Organic underwear from American Apparel. Just so comfortable!
• Victoria’s Secret IPEX wireless bra. No, I’m not a VS fan – I only buy bras every 3-4 years and I had these already. But being wireless is a huge plus with expanding boobs, and these have been really comfortable to wear. I read somewhere that it’s the changes during pregnancy that ruin breasts, not breast-feeding, and the more you can do to support & take care of them while pregnant, the better.
• Random pajama bottoms, screw the tops. They don’t fit anyway and I figure going around bare-chested at night is good preparation for those early breast-feeding days, right? :-)
• Crocs & Tevas. Easy to slip on and off and comfortable to wear. Free shipping both ways from Zappos.

What’s not worked:

• Elastic-waisted pants. If they’re tight enough to keep the pants up, then they’ve been too tight for comfort once sitting down.
• My favorite SmartWool tops. Itchy on a nerve-desensitized belly. Really annoying over the course of the day.
• Shoes that require socks. I’m up for the Olympic-scale task of putting on socks no more than once a day. No more than that.
• Old Navy Maternity Hoodies. Ugh. Cut like a moo-moo, and ridiculously thin. Don’t waste your money.
• Nightgowns. Nothing is more infuriating than trying to turn or get comfortable in bed with a dress-like thing twisted and bunched up around you.
• Some underwear. Some of mine, the more fashionable ones, sadly, get tight around the legs at times. *sigh* Of course, this never applies to the “granny panty” ones, does it?

I was so about to tear into the spouse a couple of days ago for being self-involved and not more involved in getting ready for the homebirth when I happened to see this on his nightstand.

(In case you can’t read the full title, it’s The Birth Partner: Everything You Need to Know to Help A Woman Through Childbirth.)

Awww.

I spent the rest of the day instead telling him what a wonderful spouse he was and how much I loved him. :-)

4 weeks to go until my due date.

It’s interesting the things people start to say this far along. “Enjoy it!” “Are you tired yet?” “How exciting!” It hasn’t failed to amaze me once just how much we get involved in OPP: other peoples’ pregnancies. In this day and age where we’ve managed to make social interaction a resurrected art form, and in a city famed for its beautiful yet frequently fake denizens, when it comes to the pregnant woman walking down the street, everyone has an opinion and is happy to shout it from the rooftops.

“Aw, it’s a boy,” says a male parking attendant, as I hand him my keys.

“Well, we don’t know. We’re waiting to find out.” I say this with a smile, even though I dread saying it at all. Like Pandora’s box, this inevitably opens the discussion to guesses as educated as a backcountry grandmother from the 1800s. Without a second thought, everyone from cashiers to postal workers tell me with absolute confidence that I’m having a [insert gender here]. At first, I found the interest charming, but now, months later, the random nature of their guesses grates on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. This is my life, I think with annoyance, not f&%king Wheel of Fortune. Their guesses are for their own entertainment, a way to pass five minutes of a lifetime, and yet whether it’s a girl or boy means nothing to me.

If it’s a boy, will he be anything like my father? I pray not, and I’m not usually one much for praying. (My nephew has his smile and only now, years later, have I stopped being floored, half in horror, when I see it.) If it’s a girl, will she be like mother? Only the good, only the good, I half-chant to myself, imagining the genetic distribution of personality traits spread out before my belly like a roulette wheel. “Half angel, half devil, ” I half-joke to family and friends. (The spouse is the angel, in case you had any doubt.) A strong girl, a sensitive boy, a charmer, an adventurer, a sweetheart – I want to shake the next person that asks me “Is it a girl or a boy” and scream “It’s the personality that you should be concerned with!” God, if only someone would walk up to me and smile and say, “I’m sure your child will do something good for the world one day.”

But maybe I’m going about this all wrong. Maybe I should just be grateful that people seem to care at all. Like the woman that walked up to my sister when she was expecting and warned her about consuming mercury in fish while pregnant. She wished someone had warned her a decade ago when she was pregnant, that she might have prevented her son’s disabilities. In our increasingly self-oriented bubble lives, maybe I should be pleased to see Old World-style community support still kicking, somehow, somewhere in the interest of people around me. We’ve lost it all otherwise, in fear of litigation for being concerned for our neighbors, in fear of intruding on each others’ isolated lives.

“How much longer?,” the attendant asks, actually touching my belly. So far, almost no one has touched me without asking first.

“About four more weeks,” I say, somewhat alarmed at the touching, but slightly amused because he seems so genuinely concerned.

“Ah, so soon! You be careful driving,” he says. “Dangerous, and hot out.”

Perhaps the village hasn’t entirely forgotten its part in raising the child.

I got some acupuncture done last Friday. I’ve been having some joint stiffness and the midwife recommended trying some acupuncture and chiropractic care. She recommended this place that actually specializes in acupuncture and chiro for obstetrics, which was kinda cool and definitely made me more comfortable with the whole thing.

The acupuncturist was Jason and he was great at explaining everything he was doing. I’ve had acupuncture a while ago, but never with moxibustion, where they apply heat to the needles. It felt surprisingly good, though – warm and comforting at the same time. I have another appointment this week and will get my first pregnancy massage, too. :-)

I was recently reading an article on how in pregnancy, and it got me started thinking on chocolate. While I have had a bit of a sweet tooth while pregnant, it’s mostly been for fruits and smoothies. I’ve been overjoyed since discovering that Trader Joe’s stocks canned lychees, something I’ve only previously seen at the Chinese supermarkets like Ranch 99. (Seems like a few others were just as excited! , , 3) I keep them in the fridge and when I want some, I open the can, drain out the sickly-sweet syrup water, fill it back up with filtered water and let it sit for a half hour. Then I drain that water out, toss it in a bowl and chow down.

Oh, but this entry was about chocolate, right?

(Hmm.. chocolate-dipped lychees – that might require some experimenting.)

While the spouse likes dark chocolate, I’m a milk chocolate snob. Sometimes, I’m even a white chocolate advocate, but usually only for things like white chocolate macadamia nut cookies or Cadbury’s white chocolate buttons. (Does anyone remember English-made white chocolate mice?) Most of the time it’s milk chocolate and the good stuff, which though I hate to say it, is rarely American-made.

While I’ve been a fan of Scharffen Burger for a time, and even though I once swore that Telluride Truffle was the only chocolate I would consume until I died, I must admit there’s another chocolate maker that beats these two hands down: BonBonBar.

makes handmade candybars, and I tend to think of them as a replacement for crap like Twix or Hershey bars, rather than floofy chocolates you’d bring out only for company. (Though we do bring them out for company (or give them as gifts) and knock the pants off our guests everytime.) They’re locally made here in Los Angeles, as organic and local as possible and never with artificial ingredients, like high-fructose corn syrup.

My favorites are the Caramel Nut Bar ($5) and the Malt Bar ($5) in milk chocolate, though they have it in dark chocolate if you’re into that. available starting at $15 – a great idea to treat the next pregnant lady you’re looking to gift! There’s even hand-delivery available to certain areas of L.A.

And now that I’m done writing this, I’m going to finish off my last milk chocolate Malt Bar. :-) Time to get more!!

Dear god, I feel just awful.

Not physically. Physically, I’m fine. It’s just this blog I’ve been reading. As the spouse put it, it’s like watching a train-wreck.

I stumbled onto this blog while looking up other pregnancy and parenting blogs. For the pregnancy ones, I had looked up ones that referred to natural childbirth, hoping to find others working towards a natural, drug-free birth and hoping those search terms would also help me find other home-birthers. One of these blogs seemed rather promising, even though she’s a planned hospital birth, and I’ve been following it rather closely, as the writer is almost as far along as me.

Recently, though, it’s been painful. She sounds so determined to have a natural childbirth, but her recent posts sound like naive openings to Misconceptions, Immaculate Deception II or The Business of Being Born [add to NetFlix]. One of them was about choosing which hospital nearby to go with and, perhaps it was just omission on her part, but there was no mention as to c-section rates of either hospital (or the delivering doctor), staff policies on pushing epidurals or episiotomy rates, or anything like that. Her concern, as written, was which one would be more likely to have a birth tub available and maybe the pros and cons of recovery in the same L&D room. *sigh*

Now, I know how this sounds – crazy home-birther beating on other (hospital-birth) peoples choices, but it’s really not that. Reading one of her earlier posts yesterday, I was almost in tears. And I never cry over these things. (And it’s not hormones.) I’m just so sad & scared for her! I mean, she really, really wants a natural childbirth, and yet she believes the party line – that just by “eating right” and “exercise” and listening to her doctor’s advice, she’s doing enough and everything else is just chance. *groan* I know I have every chance of ending up in the hospital as her, but at least by then I could live with knowing we really tried everything possible first. I hear so many birth stories of women who only find out years later that there were more things they could have done first to safely avoid the hospital or a c-section. I want to reach through the computer and shake her and tell her that she needs to ask better questions, be better informed to make more relevant decisions if she really wants this to happen.

I won’t. Most of our friends already think I’m a fruitcake for wanting to do this at home. You’d think California would be more open to it, but there’s like 15 midwives that do home births here in Los Angeles. Yes, most of them know each other. And home-birthers often know each others’ midwives, too, as we all shopped from the same pool nine months ago. So the knowledge of home births, the awareness of it as an option, is virtually non-existent to most people.

Anyhow. I can’t decide whether to keep reading her blog, or to stop. I really hope it all works out for her, but I’m scared that the odds are stacked against her and that is just too painful to watch. *sigh*

A couple of months ago, I wandered into a Pottery Barn Kids and saw these adorable onesies. They were plain white and had a single cute embroidered shape on each – a yellow duck, an orange giraffe, etc. I picked one up to see the price and nearly died of sticker shock: $28 for a single 0-3 months onesie!

After picking myself up off the floor, I put it back with disdain; hell, I could make that! So what if I’ve never embroidered anything real before? Life is for learning, right?

I ordered Sublime Stitching ($14) by Jenny Hart from Amazon, swung by a local Joann’s for a few handfuls of DNC embroidery floss and an embroidery hoop, picked up some cheap onesies from Target, pulled out my old sewing box and got down to business.

Of course my first one was a bit of a botch, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it. T-shirt material is a slight pain to work with – if you stretch it just a little too much on the hoop, your threadwork with sort of crumple inwards when you take it off the hoop. And if it’s not stretched enough, then you have this hill/valley up/down thing going on every time you push or pull the needle through. In the book, Hart mentions using stabilizer to avoid this, but cautions on the use of readily-available iron-on stabilizer. She mentioned that an older technique was to use tissue paper, which I tried, but it kept tearing on me. In a desperate pinch, I grabbed a nearby tissue, folded it in half and used that – voila! it worked like a charm. I think it’s just soft enough to be a little flexible not to tear so easily.

• Buy the book, Sublime Stitching, from Amazon. ($14)
• Or, order patterns, kits and more from sublimestitching.com.
• Order floss and hoops online from Joann.com, or visit your local Joann’s.
• Pick up cheap onesies from Target (5/$10), or organic sweatshop-free onsies from American Apparel ($14).
• Make a cup of tea & get started. :-)

I had another appointment with our midwife yesterday morning. (We’re setup for appointments every two weeks now.) Everything looked good, so yay! She said that she started to get tired and heavy around this time, too. She guess-timates that the baby is about five pounds about now, give or take a bit, which is pretty good for 34 weeks. I’ve been cleared for visiting my mother up in NorCal next week, and I’ll probably drive up, taking breaks along the way. (I hate to fly these days, the way TSA is.)

I finally got around to ordering the birth tub yesterday. Today, it’s Errand Day, picking up groceries (as I’m finally tired of eating out) and picking up birth supplies from a list the midwife gave. And I absolutely have to call pediatricians today to set up some interview appointments.

And that’s it. I’m sure by the time I’ve done that, gotten home, put away groceries, made dog food and done a load of laundry, I’ll be wiped out. I’ll have just enough energy to make some rice & curry, or pasta-something for dinner and will crash shortly after. *sigh* Nothing to be done about it, I guess – this is what the end of pregnancy looks like: a messy house, lists of things to do and one tired lady who look like she swallowed a watermelon whole, passed out on the couch.

I happened to be at one of these new-fangled L.A. tech social events recently, Lunch 2.0, hosted at Yahoo! in Burbank and was totally tickled pink to see this in their vast parking structure, directly across from the elevators.