little feet, big sky

It’s grey in L.A. today and hot cocoa stuffed with BonBonBar vanilla marshmallows is delish. Too bad I can’t figure out how to lick the inside of the mug…

The spouse is recovering nicely, thanks to lots and lots of vicodin. :-) My mother drove down for a surprise visit on last Monday, which was an unexpected godsend. She’s a nurse, so it was doubly good to have someone handy to keep an eye on the sleeping-all-day spouse as well as be able to hand the baby over once in a while. We lounged around for the most part, drinking tea and coffee and hanging out in the kitchen. The kitchen part is fun, because we both love cooking and it’s hard not to look at a jar of pecans and start imagining warm pecan pie. She woke up early one morning and cleared out and rearranged all my kitchen cupboards! Yea, Mom!

Now she’s spending the weekend with my sister, and the house is quiet. I’ve resurrected some old knitting/crochet projects and have filled up the recent downtime from Spice with laundry, the kitchen, crochet, tea and books. I whipped up some booties for her to wear under her baby legwarmers in some buttery soft , and frogged the newborn baby bolero I was making to make a sleep soaker instead. I also just finished Stardust last night and it was fantastic. (I’ve been a fan of Neil Gaiman since Preludes and Nocturnes, and aside from the Sandman books, my favorite book is still Neverwhere.) Now that I’ve read the book, I can add the DVD to my Netflix queue in good conscience.

My mother and sister are going for dim sum this morning and invited me. Given the recent drama, I’ll probably bow out, but dim sum! The spouse, being vegetarian, has a tough time finding something edible there, so I usually only go with my mother and sister. *sigh* I’ll just have to content myself with being curled up here with my tea, a blanket, cleaning out my rss feed reader and try desperately not to think of hot, steaming nor my gai.

I rented this from Paperspine on a whim and it’s become my new recommended-for-anyone-considering-a-baby book. It’s especially good for baby blues or PPD, and I even found myself waving a chapter in front of the spouse with a “Hey, read this”, as it explain something that I’d been trying to put into words for over a week now.

Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay is a humorous look at what your new life as a parent really, really is like. From childbirth recovery to picking out an exclusive preschool for your little monster, Stefanie Wilder Taylor tells it like it is. Underlying the constant witticism is some honest-to-goodness useful advice, from strollers and feeding, to in-the-trenches parenting advice that will help you survive the first year.

Spice hit 7 weeks this past Monday and wow, has it been a wild ride!

They say that colic in babies peaks at 6 weeks and drops slowly from there, and as usual, she’s been a textbook baby. Last week was a right mess, hence my impulse trip to see Mom and get away for a while. (Though, considering she came with me, I’m not sure what exactly I was getting away from. Hmm.)

This week has been a little better. The spouse has been a little better, which always helps. I’m sure Spice has been going through a growth spurt because she feeds constantly all day. I used to wonder what that meant. How could a baby feed constantly? Wouldn’t they need to come up for air? Or stop to sleep? In case you’ve wondered these same questions, the answer is, in fact, no. They can pause long enough to stare past you out the window for a few minutes and as soon as you reach to pull your shirt back down, they latch on with a vengeance. They are capable of disarming you with a half-smile, breathing through the corners of their mouth and then lazily feeding for another 20 minutes. And sleeping works about the same: cat-nap for a bit with the breast in the mouth and wake up as soon as they’re moved or wake up an hour later to start all over again. I’ve never been so damn repetitious in my life; “She can’t possibly be hungry again!”

But I was rambling about fussiness.

In the breastfeeding support group I was going to, the bible seemed to be Harvey Karp’s The Happiest Baby on the Block ($11). I remember seeing this on Amazon a few times, but skimmed past it thinking that since it was so mainstream, it couldn’t possibly be worth the $11 bucks. Ah, how wrong I frequently am. :-) The same day that I read it, I tried the 5 steps in the book and was amazed at how calm Spice was. And I also realized that we had been doing many of these steps unintentionally, but with the same calming results.

The 5 steps are basically swaddling, side/stomach positioning, swinging, shhh’ing and sucking. If you’ve been around babies before, it’s nothing new, but Karp’s technique is to put them together in a way that makes them more effective than each used alone. We had been swaddling occasionally with good results. Swinging was effective when I was wearing her in a wrap/sling. Sucking worked on the breast and with co-sleeping and nursing at night, we sleep on our sides, tummy-to-tummy. Her body is tucked so tightly against me, that it’s almost like being swaddled. No wonder nights have been so easy for us!

Do read the book. Spice is a relatively easy baby, meaning she often cries for food, a diaper change, or needing to sleep, and rarely for random fussiness or real colic. For the times she has actually been fussy, Karp’s technique has been a sanity-saver.

If you don’t want to plunk down the $$, read it in your local library or rent it from Paperspine.

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. :-)

The Pregnancy Book by William and Martha Sears is, by far, my favorite book to refer to during pregnancy. It’s broken out by month, and covers what to expect roughly each month. Of course, pregnancy is not textbook, so there’s a lot of wiggle room between what’s covered this month and what I’m experiencing, but it’s close enough. (And the index at the back is quite thorough for looking up something specific when you need it.)

I love that the Sears mentality and “voice” in this book (and their entire library) is so non-judgemental, for a book catering to natural pregnancy. The material is relevant to home, hospital and birth center births, and you get the feeling that they are genuinely after what is best for a healthy mother and baby. Everything is covered in here, from diet and nutrition, to exercise and emotional support. I had really painful leg cramps at night for a while and was able to look it up in the index, read through suggested diet changes and some stretching exercises and haven’t suffered from it since. (The trick is to slowly and gently flex your foot so your toes are pointing at you; something I can even do half asleep now if I feel a cramp coming on!)

Honestly, this book puts “What to Expect…” to shame. If you know someone newly pregnant, give them this book instead. :-)

I was about halfway through Tina Cassidy’s Birth when I stopped, slipped in a bookmark and put the book away.

I’ve been reading for over the past year like the information whore I am, and I’ve reached my saturation point. Where before I’ve been happy to gobble up new information, research, tips and theories, I guess I’m at a stage in my pregnancy where I’m starting to believe that from here on out, it’s how I feel about things rather than what the numbers say. I’m trusting more in how I feel when it comes to eating, sleeping and moving around. I’ve stopped calorie-counting to make sure I’m eating enough because I was previously worried about not gaining enough, and I’m so much happier for it. I don’t keep junk food in the house other than tortilla chips and some trashy chocolate and I have this rule that if I want cookies, I have to make ‘em myself. :-) I’ve stopped counting how many hours I sleep at night and don’t begrudge myself the occasional afternoon lie-down.

I’m nervous about saying this, because I’m sure there are others out there that will read this and say, “Hey, that sounds good, I’m going to stop reading up more on childbirth.” Please, please – keep reading until you’re genuinely sick of it. :-) When other parents remark on how confident and comfortable I seem for a first-time future mom, I can’t help think it’s thanks to all the books I’ve read and stuff I’ve learned. I loved what I read in Birth so far, but the more I fixate on how much as gone wrong in the history of pregnant women, the more depressing my own outcome seemed. Maybe I’ll pick it up again in the coming months, but if not, I know I’ll finish it later.

I’m 23 and 5/7 weeks pregnant and the hardest thing about being pregnant so far has been… other people.

I knew I didn’t want a hospital birth even before the spouse and I started trying. I’ve never been in a hospital for more than a few hours in the ER for an ear infection and I had no intention of starting now. I knew I wanted a midwife, but it wasn’t until I got pregnant that the hub and I started to talk about a homebirth. A few weeks looking around on Google and making a few phone calls turned up some interesting information: no birth centers within safe driving distance. So we started shopping for midwives and found one that we liked, met her and happily signed up for a midwife-assisted homebirth.

I knew this was going to be an unorthodox decision among family and friends, but I had no idea just how much. Perhaps if this was our second child, or just not our first, I wouldn’t have been swamped with other people’s opinions. Most people, primarily other mothers, would instantly exclaim “Just get the epidural – don’t wait!” To this I would often smile and half-joke “Well, I’m having a homebirth, so that’s a no-go for me!” Their expressions were often comical, somewhere between confusion and disbelief. I guess for most, homebirth is just not in their vocabulary.

Even my mother had a strong negative response. Her reaction was as if I’d just stated that I planned to find a barn in the mid-West to have my baby when I go in labor. It’s more than a little frustrating, because if you look at the numbers, homebirth is safer than a hospital birth if you’re not a high-risk pregnancy. And in all honesty, few women are truly high-risk. Doctor-assisted prenatal care has nothing on my midwife. :-) I’ve had monthly prenatal visits (my home or hers) for well over an hour each. I have my pulse & BP checked, urine for protein, prenatal blood screening, ultrasounds at 8 and 20 weeks, and an AFP screen. Plus, I have her home and cell numbers for any questions or concerns. Bloating like mad? One email gets me a reply with tons of natural tips and solutions. Funny pain in the side? A quick call to her cell gets a warm, friendly explanation and advice. The thought of going to to a doctor for prenatal care sounds like a nightmare!

The average c-section rate in hospitals in the U.S. is about 46%. My midwife’s is under 15%. I believe the best way for my child to be born will be quietly and gently at home, surrounded by his or her loving parents, two qualified and experienced midwives, and a doula. He or she will be gently dried off and half-wrapped in a blanket to keep the skin-to-skin contact that newborns find so soothing. The midwives will assess the baby and me to make sure we’re doing well and we will be left alone to enjoy the new addition to our family.

If you’re newly pregnant, or planning on it, I highly suggest two books: Immaculate Deception II and Misconceptions. If you’re the too-lazy-to-read type, then netflix The Business of Being Born.