little feet, big sky

The Orbit Baby Infant Stroller System

Our Orbit came last week, and I couldn’t wait until the spouse got home to open the box. :-) It was super easy to put together. The top flaps of the giant box (love our UPS guy who generously carried it down 20-25 steps!) opened to reveal a quick-start instruction guide, which I only partly read. :-) I’ve watched the instructional videos online so many times that I was almost sure I knew how to piece it together intuitively!

Underneath was the stroller base, which I easily lifted out, pulled the plastic off, twisted the handle and “opened” up. The front wheels were missing, but my scan of the quick-start guide filled in that they were inside the cargo pod, the next thing to come out of the box. I pulled them out and snapped them onto the front of the stroller base. Next was to pull out the infant car seat itself. I was at first a little alarmed because it felt quite heavy to pull out of the box, but as I put it down, I realized the car seat was attached to the car seat base, which is the heavy bit. I detached the car seat from the SmartHub ring on the base, and plopped it down on the stroller base, rotated to lock and stared at the stroller.

OMG. We’re having a baby.

Yes, it took having the car seat/stroller to realize that. Totally bizarre.

I tried out installing the car seat yesterday. I’d been chatting with others who said it had taken them hours(!) to put together the stroller, or install the car seat, and I figured I should do a test run now and make sure everything was working. I carried the base out to the car and set it down in the middle of the back seat. There’s a level indicator in the middle of the base to make sure you install it at the right angle, and as I move the base around, I realized the little ball inside wasn’t moving around. Uh-oh. I’m used to liquid-based levels like this, so it took me about five minutes of waving the base around inside the car to realize there’s no liquid in this one! It’s just a little ball inside perhaps a groove, maybe with indents at each end. Anyhow, I got the ball moving around finally, and I’ll need to roll up a small towel as stated in the instructions to get the base at the right angle when I install it for real. For now, I just set it on the seat, attached the LATCH connectors as instructed and turned the “StrongArm” knob to get the whole thing super tight. Then I brought out the infant car seat and put it on the SmartHub ring, turned and locked it into place. So fabulously easy.

As with any new product there are often at least minor desireables, and the Orbit is no exception. Without having a baby to toss in and really test drive it, I have two tiny issues. (I think. Maybe I’ll change my mind when the baby comes.) One is that there’s this sunshade cover on the car seat, and when the car seat is installed, I feel it pokes up too much when I look in the rearview. I’ve ordered a headrest mirror from OneStepAhead.com so I can see the rear-facing baby when I look in the rearview mirror, but I worry the sunshade thing will partially obstruct the view. It’s removable, but I think that was meant more for cleaning, as it has these annoyingly hard snap buttons on the side. Just not something I’ll want to do a couple of times a week. And likewise with the carrying handles. They don’t quite fold flat against the top of the seat, and there’s this ghastly warning tag stitched into the padded part that wraps around the handles that you can’t remove, or even twist around so that it doesn’t show so obviously. Ugh. Beautiful car seat/stroller ruined by ugly red, white, and yellow warnings for the stupid and inept. Typical.

Still, I keep looking at other strollers or car seats I see out and about, and I have no regrets so far with the Orbit. We’re planning on co-sleeping, breast-feeding and baby-wearing, so there’s no expensive nursery to furnish, or crazy products to get – which means splurging on a nice car seat that will travel well (airplanes and such) is pretty reasonable. :-)

Some mornings, I wake up, roll my watermelon belly over so I’m facing the snoozing spouse and say flatly, “Next time, you’re going to carry the baby.”

It’s really strange to be pregnant over Mother’s Day. I’ve had a handful of people notice the bulging belly and tell me “Happy Mother’s Day” and it’s bizarre. Am I really a mother already? I certainly don’t feel like one yet! But then again, I think of qualities one would assume in a mother: protectiveness, putting a child’s needs appropriately first, etc. and perhaps I’m already doing that.

Our baby is getting cramped in there, I’m starting to tell. I don’t feel direct kicks and punches as much anymore, as they’re more like elbowing movements and perhaps the wiggling of hands and feet trying to find space. Really strange! :-) I can feel more and more up around my ribs and occasionally down around my hip bones. At the midwife appointment last week, the baby was head-down, so I can imagine that it’s feet poking the ribs and hands shifting around my hips. Awww.. like an upside down hug.. that isn’t entirely comfortable! :-)

I’m definitely feeling the weight now on my breathing. The other night, I was left to sleeping in a semi-reclining position on the pillows, half-sitting up, because I couldn’t get comfortable on either side. Oh, well. I hope this part passes soon.

The tiredness is back. Not quite the narcolepsy of the first trimester, thank God. More like when you’ve been on your feet all day long at Disneyland behind a six-year-old and an eight-year-old and how you feel as you crawl into bed at 1 a.m. – exhausted. I’m fine the next day as long as I don’t sleep too badly though, so it’s still manageable.

The itching is starting to get worse, but I’ve found a wonder cure: Trader Joe’s Lavender Sea Salt Scrub ($7). It’s lavender-scented oils mixed with sea salt and comes with a warning that even the non-preggo should take seriously – “Warning: Tub may be slippery after use.” :-) I rub it on as the last step in my morning & night showers, over boobs, belly, butt, thighs, lower back (which tends to itch) and at least elbows and knees, if not legs & arms. The lavender smell is soooo relaxing at night and the whole thing is a lot less greasy than it sounds, now that I re-read what I’ve written. I just don’t itch, day or night, when I do this, and it’s simpler and nicer than remembering to oil the belly after the shower. I’ve used oils (Mamma Mio, Bio Oil ($10), and this) since I was three months along, even though I didn’t really show much until at least four months. I think the whole stretch mark thing is combination of heredity and maintaining your skin elasticity through the stretching; I have some marks on my butt and thighs from pre-preg weight gain, and they’re still there, but I haven’t gained a single one so far from pregnancy. Woohoo!

Do Japanese women stop eating sushi while pregnant?

“The rules aren’t even universal: Whereas French women are advised to avoid salads (yet are not told to completely shun unpasteurized cheeses), American women are encouraged to consume vegetables, raw or cooked. And surely Japanese women would be shocked to find that raw fish is verboten in many parts of the world, including the U.S. — after all, it’s recommended for them. Talk about confounding!”

– Dina Cheney: Pregnancy in the U.S. Has Become Grounds for Serious Food Neuroses – Living on The Huffington Post