Chasing the Scootie Toot

A Glorious Mess: The Final Chapter

2012-02-14T11:33:00.001-05:00

Our many-part Valentine's Day creations are done! The last part was to cut up some of Lucy's finger paintings into hearts and have her glue them on the cards we made earlier. She fingerpainted with her usual relish, but the gluing quickly became dull. Alas. Regardless, they turned out truly beautiful.

For some reason the photo uploader keeps turning my pictures the wrong way!

Holy Hoodie, Batman!

2012-02-09T13:53:00.000-05:00

I was editing an Etsy listing and got some super cute pictures of Malcolm is his cute green hoodie!

A Glorious Mess Part II - Heart Stamps

2012-02-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

As I said in the original post, I had intended the soap bubble prints to be the foundation of Valentine's Day cards for family and friends. While the finished product was nothing like the example that I found online, they were colorful and fun, and 100% Lucy-created. So I decided to soldier on with the project. This was phase two - decorating the bubble-painted cards with toilet paper roll, heart-shaped stamps. This is a super-easy, fun project.

Materials:
One or two toilet paper rolls
Tape
paint
paper

Instructions:
-Smoosh the toilet paper roll into a heart shape and tape into place
-Squirt some (washable) paint onto a plate
-give your little artist the stamps and the paint and let creation ensue

Again, Lucy did her own thing. She did a few stamps like this:

But most ended up fingerpainted with hand prints like this:

Happy Valentine's Day...from the toilet paper roll...

Rolly Polly

2012-02-07T14:16:00.000-05:00


It has been a big week here for the littlest member of the Corbett family. Malcolm, currently pushing 18 and a half pounds, rolled from back to front for the first time on Sunday and on Monday, lo and behold, he sprouted his first tooth! Grow baby, grow!

Teething hurts. Stop looking at me.

Look, Mama! I'm a roller!

A Glorious Mess

2012-02-05T08:38:00.001-05:00

I was looking for a fun art project for Lucy that didn't involver her embellishing something I had made, or trying to create something along lines I had drawn. I am starting to realize that preschoolers don't really do "crafts" so much as they experiment with art. The best experience for Lucy is me just providing the media and letting her explore the process of making something.

This project looked like a lot of fun to me. And it was something where there was really no expected "product" so I felt like I could just let her have fun with it. Turns out it is easier said than done, this allowing the mess to flow without any expectations! The idea is that you make soap bubble paint solution and blow bubbles. Then you take pieces of paper and tap them on the bubbles to make fun bubbly prints. My big plan was to use the paper she decorate to make valentines for grandparents.

You need:
Bubble solution (see below)
a drinking straw
a dish
thick paper (any paper will do, but if you do this project like Lucy did, you'll need something that will stand up to a full-on dunking)
a smock for the kid (maybe one for yourself)
a washable surface to contain the mess
lots of towels

Here is the recipe for the bubble solution:
3 cups of water
1 cup of dish soap
1/4 cup of corn syrup
1/2 cup tempera paint

A word to the wise: use a dish that is AT LEAST 4" deep. This is a lot of liquid.

True to form, Lucy didn't care one bit about what the project was supposed to be! We mixed it up together in the kitchen. "Oooo, gooey!" was her comment as a glopped the paint into the mix. I spent the whole time we mixed telling her this wasn't for eating for drinking. We were going to do bubble painting! As the original poster of this project suggested, I poked a hole in the straw to prevent her from drinking the mixture instead of blowing bubble with it...it didn't work out so well. I put the dish down, gave her the straw and showed her how to blow the bubbles. Then I went the 12 steps to the kitchen to get the paper. Coughing ensues. I hear a pained (and perhaps a trifle betrayed) little voice say "It doesn't taste good!" No, sweetie, it soap mixed with paint doesn't taste good, even with corn syrup added.

So after a drink of water, much coughing and a little vomit, we were back to the project. Lucy wanted nothing to do with blowing bubbles this time (which I though would be the most fun), so I was the bubble blower. She dunked the paper, scooped bubbles, painted with the straw, spit, fingerpainted, splashed in the paint and generally did everything but the actual project. After a while I stopped trying to direct the mess and let it flow. What glorious fun!

You can see the remnants of her taste-test on her fac...

And then, an hour later, I notice it is raining on Lucy's art project. Sigh.

TV-Free Toddler - Tea Flower

2011-11-18T13:48:00.001-05:00

Today's TV-Free Activity: Tea Flower Watching
Materials: Clean glass jar, jasmine tea bloom (or other blooming tea ball), hot water, crayons
Ages: 2+
Time Filled: 15 minutes
Note: This is NOT self-directed. Close supervision required.

You may have noticed a lapse between posts. I must admit, I have fallen off the TV-Free wagon. This is because, simply, I have not slept in 5 months. I had foolishly hoped having a newborn would afford me better sleep than I had been getting while pregnant. I was enormously uncomfortable, besides just being enormous, and had to pee every 2 hours all night long. I had this blind, naive hope that Malcolm would be sleeping more than 2 hours at a stretch by this point, but he seems to have regressed to sleeping 90 minutes or less. So now, while I blessedly don't have to pee all night long, I am still getting up all the time to void liquid, just now it is from my boobs.

Anyway, I digress.

I fell on this activity purely by accident. I a fun craft in mind for today after lunch, but needed to stop at the craft store for some glitter and glue this morning on the way home from getting Lucy at preschool. Then, I realized how insanely difficult it is to "stop by" anywhere with two small children. So I was going to skip TV Free today (again) and clean up the kitchen while she watched 20 minutes of Dora. I was cleaning up lunch and noticed the box of jasmine tea blooms I had left out from when I went through my extensive tea collection a week or so ago. These "blooms" are dried jasmine tea tied cleverly so that when the are steeped in hot water, the ball opens to reveal a lovely flower, all while brewing a cup of yummy, fragrant tea. I thought Lucy would enjoy watching the flower bloom.

Which she did - look at her oozing excitement! :-P She actually did say "That's really cool, Mama!", so she did think it was fun to watch - only it was taking too long to hold her attention for very long.

What she DID enjoy was drawing on the hot glass with a washable crayon. She found a yellow crayon on the floor and started to draw on the jar. I was about to stop her (I thought she would have to push too hard to make a mark and possibly spill the jar of hot water), when I noticed that the heat from the water was melting the crayon. It was like she was using a mess-free paint brush! I am not sure if regular crayons would work as well as the washable ones since they are much softer than standard crayons. And the really cool part is that the crayon literally just wipes right off the jar.

I like this activity for a number of reasons. 1) It uses your senses - watching to flower bloom, feeling the hot glass, smelling the jasmine tea, tasting the tea. 2) It provides an opportunity to talk about being patient and delayed gratification (I am certain my 2 year old is not the only one who has trouble with this). 3) It is a different sort of art project - one that can be wiped off and done over again as many times as you want with little or no mess. I am sure there are other things that are at work here, but I am too tired to think of them. Lucy was really focused during this activity.

TV-Free Toddler: Washcloth Soup!

2011-11-03T10:04:00.002-04:00

Today's TV-Free Activity - WASHCLOTH SOUP!
Materials: A few large bowls, measuring cups, spoons, wash cloths, towels, water, ice cubes, things that float and things that sink
Age: 2-3 years
Time filled: At least 30 minutes, or until the water ends up all over the floor. I recommend using this as an enticement to keeping the water where it belongs, as in "once the water is gone, we are all done playing."

So this activity might not be for the faint of heart. It involves allowing you toddler to play with bowls of water inside. Well, here in the DC area it is an indoor activity, since the weather has turned cold already. If you are in warm country, feel free to take it outside.

Here's the set up: Lay a few towels down (a double layer might be a good idea). I had a few extra foam floor tiles, so I put those down as a water poof surface, in a vain attempt to save our hardwood floors. Fill a few bowls with water of different temperatures. Put out a bowl of ice, several mixing and pouring implements, and a bunch of wash cloths. Then start mixing! We talked about the different color washcloths, how ice is cold while the water was warm, how to blow bubbles with a straw, that the coaster sinks, but an apple floats. She poured and mixed and splashed and splashed and poured for a good long time. The main thing to remember in any sensory activity like this is the refrain "The ______ stays in the ______." The water stays in the bowl, the rice stays in the bucket, the beans stay in the bin, the WATER STAYS IN THE BOWL! OR AT LEAST ON THE TOWELS! THE WATER STAYS ON THE TOWELS, Lucy, or WE ARE DONE PLAYING WITH THE WATER! That is how it goes at our house.

Postpartum Haze: Impressions from Day One

2011-11-02T12:56:00.003-04:00

The feeling of his head in my hand as I waited for the last contraction to help push him out. Angel-soft hair. Little wiggles - he is moving! - as he works to get his shoulder free and join the world. A strong wave of pressure, a breathless second, a loud cry, my baby is born into my own hands.

Joy! The air comes back into my lungs, back into the room. Labor is over, life is beginning.

Catching my breath. Lucy is coming up the stairs, walking towards us. Kevin at my side, kissing my head, welcoming his son. Slippery little man in my arm, crying his little head off!

Out of the pool, onto the couch on shaky legs, surrounded by loving arms, beautiful women, ecstatic family. Is this umbilical cord a little short?

I feel triumphant, breathless, strong, a warrior, a goddess! To say "I did it!" seems trite and silly, but I did it! I made this! I birthed my baby, in my own house, on my own terms, letting my body do what it needed to do. Birth is in voluntary, you just have to allow it to happen. And I did.

Oh the perfection. Sweet-smelling, gooey little baby snuggling against my chest. The warm, safe presence of my husband beside me.

Hungry baby, latching on with no trouble, eat eat eat!

And then Lucy is with us. What happened to my sweet baby girl? Who took my little girl and turned her into this GIANT? She's HUGE! And what big TEETH she has! Lucy, "Want MAMA MILK! MINE!" Meltdown in the works. Oh dear, here we go. I am not sure I want to nurse this enormous wolf-child who somehow has replaced my daughter. But the wolf-child insists and I am blissed out on birth and baby, so have at it kid.

Tandem nursing for the first time. I am already stark butt naked in front of a roomful of people, why not sling a few boobs around for good measure?

The room clears out, we are alone, me, Malcolm and Kevin. Admiring our handiwork. My God, he is perfect. Are those pointed ears? Does he really have pointed ears?? My God, he is perfect. Sweet smelling. Soft. Squishy. Still covered in mayonnaise and goop, but wonderful to see, smell, kiss, cuddle. Bliss. Absolute bliss.

Mairi (midwife) makes eggs. Lots and lots of eggs with cheddar cheese in them. I devour a heaping bowl. Then more. Then toast and pineapple coconut water then chocolate.

I take a delightfully hot shower. OH GOD I AM SO HAPPY TO NOT BE PREGNANT ANYMORE! Oh God, what a smooshy, misshapen belly is left over from bring pregnant. It looks like someone took a purple marker to a lump of sloppy bread dough. Racing stripes. Don't look. There will be time for assessing the damage later. I am scrubbed and cleaned and in my cozy red bathrobe and snuggled back on the couch to watch Kevin watching his son. More bliss.

There is a minor amount of poking and prodding and checking and measuring done on me and my girlie parts. It feels like there must have been an atomic bomb that went off down there. I am glad I don't have to look at it. No tears, just a split, just swelling, little bleeding. Kat (midwife student) says "Seriously, Jenny, I was wondering if you lost any blood at all! But it's in the placenta." Oh. Okay.

Newborn exam. Malcolm does not like it. He's a big boy! 8 lbs, 14 oz! Lucy watches. Kat explains to Lucy what she is doing. Lucy cares very little. "Want to see Baby Muffin," she says, not fully understanding that Baby Malcolm IS Baby Muffin. I am now almost certain she thought that my belly button was the baby I was growing in my belly.

Bed, blissful, beautiful, cozy, clean. My bed. Ah. I cuddle up with Malcolm on my chest, skin to skin, and Kevin at my side. We can hardly sleep for being exhausted. We can hardly sleep from being so in love.

But sleep overtakes us and afternoon slips into evening. He sleeps on me all evening, all night long. I can't think of a sweeter day.

TV-Free Toddler - Driveway Paints

2011-10-30T10:00:00.002-04:00

Today's TV-Free Activity: Driveway Painting!
Materials: Cornstarch, water, food coloring, muffin tin or other small containers, paint brushes
Age Range: 2 years and up
Time filled: An hour or more if you can take it

Here's a step-by-step or making the paint. Please ignore the half-empty bottle of wine inthe background. I swear I wasn't drinking.

Fill each muffin...receptacle?...with a generous scoop of cornstarch.

Pour enough water in each...bin?...to completely cover the cornstarch. Stir well. You want it to be watery, not a gooey, thick mixture. I thought I remembered vaguely from cooking with my mom as a kid that the water should be either hot or cold to make the mixing easier. However, upon further reflection, this was to make mixing the cornstarch into GRAVY easier. So I don't think it applies here.

Mix in desired colors. I think using gel food coloring would make more vibrant colors.

After mixing your non-toxic, fully washable (and even edible...if you're into scarfing on straight cornstarch) paint, head out to the nearest paved surface and have fun! This stuff is great. After it dries, you can literally brush it off your clothes. It paints on like this:

And dries like this:

The colors are really much more vibrant that you see here. I have a crap-tastic camera.

Can you tell she picked her own outfit today?

TV-Free Toddler - Balloon Bonanza

2011-10-28T10:00:00.008-04:00

Today's TV-Free Activity: Balloons!

Materials: Several balloons
Age Range: 2-4 years; possibly older
Time filled: 15-20 minutes

We went to a friend's second birthday this past weekend. We left with a belly full of awesome rainbow cake and 2 goodie bags filled with, among other fun things, several balloons. So yesterday after she woke up from her nap, I blew them all up and let her have at it. Also fun to have on hand are cylindrical pillows to use as a bat and pieces of light-weight fabric to bounce the balloons around on. This one didn't last as long as I would have liked. She got bored fairly quickly and went from tossing the balloons to using them to hit the baby in pretty short order. At least they were balloons and not the drumsticks she tried to hit him with yesterday...

TV-Free Toddler - Dixie Cup Castles

2011-10-26T14:00:00.001-04:00

Today's TV-Free Activity: DIXIE CUP CASTLES!

Materials needed: Dixie cups - a lot of them (one box will do for one kid, if you have more than one, get a box for each)
Age range: 2 years through middle school age (and beyond - I still enjoy stacking the cups)
Time filled: 15 minutes to 2 hours+, depending on the age of the kids

Mama's Dixie Cup Stash

This is a fun activity for a huge range of ages. I used to do it with my 1st - 3rd grade kids at summer camp. I used it with middle schoolers in an after-school program. On days when I was totally taped out idea-wise, I would dump out a box of 400 or so dixie cups and an hour later, they were still creating amazing three dimensional castles all over the room. A friend of mine said they made it into a drinking game in college. So I figured what is good enough for drunk college students is good enough for my 2-year-old (they are so similar anyway).

So here's what you do: Open a box of Dixie Cups (or 2 or 3 boxes) and start stacking. Lucy doesn't have quite the hand-eye coordination required to stack pyramids, but boy did she have fun knocking down the towers I built for her! Look at the gleam in her eyes...

While I was mindlessly stacking cups into towers, Lucy started thinking up her own creative uses for them. She found an egg carton in the box of cups and asked "Lucy want eggs in here?" Umm...no... Of course, one refusal is never enough, so she said, with greater emphasis, "Lucy want REAL eggs in HERE! RIGHT NOW!" And again, no. So, being denied the opportunity to sling raw eggs all over the living room, she started putting the dixie cups in the carton and saying "Mama want eggs for dinner?" and then throwing the carton around, thus validating my decision not to give her real eggs to play with.

Her next project was lining the cups up in a row and stepping on each one while saying "CRUNCH!"

When she got bored of that, she moved on to crushing them in her hands. She also kicked them, threw them, jumped in them like a pile of leaves, jumped on them and beat on them with a drumstick.

All in all, good fun for about $3.00 worth of cups.

DISCLAIMER: What you see pictured here is about 10 boxes of Dixie Cups salvaged from my drama camp days.

An Interview with Children's Book Author and Mama Blogger Anna Deskins!

2011-10-25T10:06:00.008-04:00

Anna and her girls

Your children's book, The Adventures of Smitty looks magical. Tell us about it.

It's the story of a magical island of little creatures called Smilies and the mischievous little main character, Smitty. He's such a naughty boy. Haha! All the moms and kids I've shared it with have been giving me such a wonderful reaction. I cannot believe it. I have to tell you how excited I am to finally have a life-long dream come true. Writing The Adventures of Smitty was really about finding a story that I would want to read to my children at night. It has to be exciting but not scary so that my two daughters can go to sleep. Basically, I was looking for that perfect blend to read to my kids at night and decided, "Why not try writing my own?"

We've had a lot of changes in our life recently, so I want to make sure that when I put my daughters to sleep that they feel safe. I have short chapters because I know how busy we moms are but if you can just sacrifice 5 minutes at night reading to your kids, it makes a world of difference. Your kids will never forget it. And although we're running around the whirlwind of life, our kids grow up so fast, and that time that we'd rather finish watching what happened in our favorite soap opera instead of reading to our kids will never come again. I hope that The Adventures of Smitty and books like it help moms do exactly that.

Reading to our kids is so important! Now, You are recently divorced. How have you been able to continue writing when going through such a change?

Yes, it is by far one of the most challenging points in my life. To see a marriage you thought would last forever to not last forever was difficult for the two of us. I really learned a lot about myself and most importantly, it's brought me closer to my daughters. I think that's what really motivated me to finish this children's book no matter what. When you're going through changes in your life like this, you need something to hold on to. There's a part of you that wants to prove that you can make it, that you will be a success even if it's not with the partner you originally imagined building a life with. I had to keep writing, for my kids. I want to show them that they have to keep strong, no matter what.

We as women, as moms really need to stick together to support each other and our dreams. We're living in an age when I think we're finally realizing, although we want love, the men in our life aren't the answer to everything. We have to stand up on our own two feet and keep going. True love will happen, but until then, we have to keep moving forward. Our children depend on us and we depend on us.

In addition to being a children's book author, you're also a small business owner. How do you juggle taking care of two daughters and at the same time running a business?

Yes, I am a fashion designer and have a retail store. Any type of creativity is what I'm passionate about. That's why writing The Adventures of Smitty was so important to me. Let me tell you, running a small business in today's economy isn't easy especially when raising two girls at the same time. But somehow, it seems someone's watching over me because my dreams are coming true no matter what. To have that many moms glowing about my children's book, means so much to me. And I know my girls are proud.

When do you ever have time to write?

You mean, in between laundry, running a business, chasing my girls around the house, cleaning the house, and flying back and forth fromMiami to New York? Haha? That's one thing I've learned, when you really want to do something, you find a way. Things fall into place if you just go for it and that's what I want to encourage all the moms who are reading this right now. Whatever your goal is, you can do it. Don't let the challenges in your personal life stop you from going for your dreams. Just go for it and it's almost magical how things fall into place.

Where can we get a copy of "The Adventures of Smitty"?

Right now, it's available online by going to: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/94655 You can also visit my website:http://www.AnnaDeskins.com where you can read more about my writing process, my recommendations for other books and my own adventures in Mommyhood.

I'm so grateful for your support and the support I'm getting from so many wonderful moms who dream of writing children's books one day too. Writing The Adventures of Smitty has been such an emotional experience for me, a true journey as I was going through so many changes while writing it. It's truly been a blessing in my life. It, along with my daughters, and that guy upstairs have really pulled me through a challenging time.

Thanks for the interview, Anna. And let's go out and support a fellow mom by getting a copy of The Adventures of Smitty today. I know I will!

TV-Free Toddler - Ice Cube Dump

2011-10-24T14:43:00.002-04:00

Okay, I own it. I have gotten lazy. We've watched a LOT of TV in the last few months. Somewhere along the line of slogging through the last three months of a super-uncomfortable pregnancy and then slogging through the last month of postpartum haziness, I forgot that a 2 year old shouldn't really watch as much TV as Lucy has been watching. I comfort myself with the flimsy tale that at least she hasn't watching actual TV with endless commercials driving my pure, innocent daughter into a foaming at the mouth consumer zombie. She watches the good stuff...like TANGLED and UP. And WALL-E and ELMO and DORA the EXPLORER and WALLACE AND GROMIT and CARS and THE LION KING and...well...you get the picture.

On a seemingly random - but I promise you related note - it is election season. This means busy season at the Capitol Steps. This means my husband is traveling a lot. This means I am alone with a ravenous newborn and a 2 year old a lot more than normal. And that all adds up to me being tempted to pop in another DVD and sit in front of the telly yet again while I nurse one or both of my children.

I WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN!

So my challenge is to find an activity every day (uh...or at least every other day, I'm not Super Woman...and I DO still have a newborn) that fills the following requirements:

1) Does not involve the television
2) Fill from 15-45 minutes
3) Can be at least partly self-directed by a 2 year-old
4) Isn't always an art project
5) Involves an exploratory or sensory learning experience.

I realize that this is a way of life from some moms. I envy the Super Moms who can somehow manage to always have a developmentally appropriate activity planned for their little ones, can keep a schedule, clean the house and cook a fully organic dinner from scratch with one hand tied behind their back while the other hand is writing their disertation. This is not me. I am a Slacker Mom. I embrace this. I don't read child development books. I let Lucy play on her own for long stretches (though I think this is actually a good strategy - she is excellent at entertaining herself and has a great imagination). Because we work in the evenings and rarely have time at that time of day to sit down and eat dinner together, she eats random meals that one of us throws together while the other is on the way out the door for a show (um...let's see...peaches, spinach, veggie burger and uh...yogurt. Done!). I can't manage to keep the bathrooms clean and I don't go to parenting seminars. Though I really think I could use a few. I wing it. I think we're doing okay, but the TV habit has got to go.

TODAY'S TV-FREE FUN: EMPTYING THE ICECUBE MAKER TRAY
Today's activity was actually a chore I needed to get done. We bought a new refrigerator when we moved into this house, a little over 2 years ago. About 6 months ago, I noticed the water from the fridge filter tasted...funny...Not like hard water, or a chlorine taste. It tasted like mildew smells. YUCK. I pull out the manual and see that the filter needs to be changed every six months. So we needed a new filter...a year ago. This, of course, immediately fell to the bottom of my list of things to do, since we also have a Brita filter on the faucet. A week or so ago, Kevin noticed that the ice was tasting funny, too. I am shocked that it took him this long to notice, frankly, since it is made with the same water that was going through the filter.

ANYWAY, we finally got a new filter. So I had to run water through it for 3 minutes or 1.5 gallons-worth. Then I had to get rid of all the ice in the ice maker.

So I handed to Lucy a big pastic bowl and emptied the ice box into it. Each time I scooped another cup of ice into the bowl she said "LOUD! Loud, Mama!" with a sort of shocked glee.

We went outside to "water" the plants with the ice. She picked a planter and dumped three full bowls of ice cubes into it.

Lucy loves to water the plants. This morning, she picked up a stick and was sort of waving it around over each of the plants as we walked up to the house. I asked her what she was doing and she said "I watering the plants, Mama!" See - great imagination!

After the second trip outside (with bare feet), she pulled out her special equipment - the froggy boots! These are about a size too big, so she had a little trouble walking in them.

On the fourth trip out, I asked her to pick a different plant to freeze with mildew-y ice cubes.

After we finished, she took a souvenier. I asked her to throw it away since it tasted yucky, but she said "Want to lick the yucky ice." Okay, kid, whatever. When we got inside, I noticed it was gone and saw that she had put it on the window sill. I guess even Lucy knows yucky water when she tastes it.

So maybe today's activity was a cop out. But kids love to help and I needed to get this job done. And, it filled those 20 minutes after lunch and before nap that I am always tempted to fill with an episode of ELMO'S WORLD.

Of course, now she is up from her nap an hour and a half early. And I am already wondering which episode of Dora I can stand to watch again.

Malcolm's Birth

2011-10-08T14:13:00.000-04:00

My sweet baby boy was born at home at 8:27 am on September 23, 2011!

I had woken up for 2 or three days feeling very energetic (despite sleeping very poorly)…and I tried very hard not to do anything useful with this energy, hoping it was a sign I would be having the baby soon. But I was still 2 weeks from my due date, so I assumed that it was a fluke and I would soon go back to feeling exhausted and crabby. On Thursday night, I went to be early without eating dinner, which was very weird for me, since I had been eating like a starving horse for weeks. But I just wasn’t hungry. I lay in bed reading, playing scrabble on my phone, re-reading the last 2 chapters in my Hypnobabies workbook. I was laying there for hours, not being able to sleep. I wasn’t having any contractions, other than the strong Braxton-Hicks I had been having for several weeks. Around 11:30, I started to feel a change in the contractions. They were coming regularly and starting to feel a little more “real”. Nothing urgent and nothing painful, just…real. So I started timing them and was a little surprised to see them coming 5-7 minutes apart. I tried to get to sleep, but it just wasn’t happening. I got up to use the bathroom and noticed some spotting. It wasn’t enough to be called a bloody show, but definitely spotting. Funny what thrills you when you are nine months pregnant! I was thrilled to see that little bit of blood! Maybe this was it!

I got up to walk around and have a few glasses of water to see if that would stop the contractions, but they kept coming. They were not terribly strong, but definitely regularly. Around 3:00 am, I sat on the couch in the living room trying to decide if this merited a call to my midwife when I had a really strong, long contraction, as if in answer to my uncertainty. So I called Mairi to let her know I had been up for a while with fairly regular contractions. She suggested taking a shower and trying to get back to sleep. So I took my late-night shower and oh did it feel good, but it didn’t do anything to make the contractions slow their pace. I tried really hard not to wake up Kevin, figuring this would put me to sleep, but also wanting him to get a good night’s sleep if this actually was it so that at least one of us would be well rested. I climbed into bed and he said “Are we having a baby?” So much for not waking him. I said I didn’t really know, but that we should try to get some sleep. We both lay in bed for a while, and finally Kevin got up and I rolled over to try to sleep again. All this time the contractions were staying regularly at around 5-6 minutes and lasting about a minute or so. At 4:00 am I gave up trying to sleep. I went downstairs and found Kevin watching TV and he asked if this was it. I was sort of thinking I was going to have another start-stop-on-and-on-for-days labor like I had with Lucy, but it was feeling pretty progressive at this point, so I said “I think maybe yes…” At this point, I could still talk through contractions, but I had to stand up and lean over the couch or stairs or something to work through them, so I knew they were getting stronger. I had stopped timing them, so I didn’t know if they were getting closer together or not.

So for the next hour and 45 minutes, we set up all the things that we should have had ready before I went into labor. We dragged the birth pool and supplies up from the storage closet. We dug out the electric air pump, the pool liner, the thermometer, towels, shower curtains. We tried to figure out how to turn on the electric air pump without waking up Lucy 2 hours early. We ended up plugging the pump in out on the deck and attempting to keep the pump outside and the pool inside, hopefully making it quieter, but in actuality, we were just allowing dozens of mosquitoes to pour into the house (this we didn’t discover until later in the day when we all ended up covered in red bumps). Of course, all efforts to remain quiet were thwarted by the fact that every 4 minutes or so, I had to drop what I was doing without ceremony and get on all fours to work through another contraction. After literally tossing the air pump across the room as another contraction started, I decided that it was time to call Mairi again. So at 4:45, I called Mairi and told her I never got back to sleep and the contractions were now strong enough not to talk through. She called Kat (the student midwife who would also be attending the birth) and they were on their way. I was starting to think I wasn’t going to have time to even fill the birth pool at this point. But I was desperate for the warm water, so I went ahead anyway, as Kevin laid out the shower curtain and towels on the couch, lit some candles and got snacks out for the descending hordes. I started filling the pool, and called my dad to let them know that if they wanted to be at the birth, they should get on their way as soon as possible. Apparently my mom was not convinced and repeatedly told my dad this was false labor and they should wait for another phone call before heading out in the middle of the night. I am so glad they didn’t! Then I noticed that I hadn’t put the liner in the birth pool. This wasn’t really an issue…but it sure would make clean-up a lot messier without a liner. There was already 6 inches of water in the pool, so instead of taking the time to drain it, I just put the liner in over the water and started filling again. And of course, I accidentally moved the faucet while I worked through a contraction and only noticed when the pool was almost full that it was only 80 degrees. Never try to do anything requiring any measure of precision when you are in labor.

Kat and Thaddeus (her 4 month old son) arrived around 5:15 and Mairi arrived a few minutes later. I sat and chatted with Mairi and Kat between contractions. I hadn’t gotten to practice my Hypnobabies as much as I intended, so while I was not experiencing a perfectly comfortable birth, it certainly wasn’t mind-numbingly painful. I sat on the couch and breathed through a contraction, and I remember feeling like the earth was opening up and pulling me down. I literally felt as though I was sinking down further into the earth with every contraction. Mairi said that was Gaia reaching up and embracing me. What a lovely image to get me through each increasingly challenging contraction. We finally got the pool hot enough and I jumped in and stayed there for the next three hours. I dozed between waves of increasing pressure, trying to remember my relaxation cues. I read a quote recently that said “birth is involuntary; you just have to allow it to happen”. It was so much easier – and much more effective - to just let all my tension go and relax into the pressure than to tense up and fight it.

Lucy woke up sometime before 6:00 am and came down to see what all the commotion was. She was so incredibly sweet the whole time. She brought me water and kissed me and patted my head and said “Feel better, Mama” and asked me what was happening. We had watched a lot of birth videos in preparation for her being at the birth, so I told I was just working hard to get our baby out, like the moms in the videos we watched. She seemed to understand and was perfectly at ease and really happy to be helping Mama to have the baby. Eventually, though, she wanted to get in the pool and when she wasn’t allowed to do that, she got bored and restless so Kevin took her to get dressed and play downstairs. I kept looking at the clock, knowing my parents were on the way and wondering when they would get there. I wanted Kevin with me, and I didn’t know what we were going to do with Lucy if this lasted all day, which I was fully expecting. I remember noticing that the sun was rising, seeing that it was 7:30 am, and thinking “30 minutes and my parents will be here to help…”

I heard ELMO’S WORLD starting on the DVD player, and then I heard my parents coming in the front door. 30 minutes had passed in what seemed like an instant. I had been having pushy contractions on and off for a while. There were super intense, 90 second or more, this-baby-is-coming-now contractions interspersed with gentler (relatively, anyway), calmer pressure waves. I was grateful for this unexpected pattern, since it gave me a chance to rest and gather my strength, even though there was never a full break between contractions. My dad and mom were talking loudly as a particularly long, strong wave hit me, and I remember having my one, less-than-zen moment of labor when I shouted at the top of my lungs “PLEASE STOP TALKING!” Actually, I might have shouted “PLEASE SHUT UP!”…you’d have to ask my parents. And I am sure I had more than one less-than-zen moment, I just don’t recall themJ At one point, after breathing my way through another pushy contraction, I opened my eyes to see that Kat had put Thaddeus in the bumbo right next to the birth pool. He was smiling and cooing like he was cheering me on. It was such a delightful, unexpected surprise to see his sweet little face smiling at me – it reminded me what all this was for!

A few minutes after my parents came, my water broke (according to my labor summary report, this was at 8:09 am). Clear water, lots of vernix, all is well! I don’t know how many times I pushed, or how many contractions I had after my water broke. I don’t remember having a conscious urge to push. Each pushing contraction did all the work for me. I tried just to let my body go limp and allow my uterus to do the work for me. I honestly don’t know how anyone could do anything BUT allow the process to unfold – it was so completely out of my control. I couldn’t control what sounds were coming out of my mouth, I couldn’t control how my body was moving, and I certainly couldn’t control what was happening in my womb. The impression I have from the last few contractions was of me, hanging over the side of the pool, body getting jerked downwards and arms flailing about as if I were being mauled by a shark or rolled by a crocodile or something. Kevin assures me this isn’t what happened, but that is the picture I have in my mind. These contractions felt like there was a very strong someone pulling downward on a rope tied around my solar plexus on the inside. On Kat and Mairi’s suggestion, I checked myself and found the baby’s head was less than an inch away from crowning! Soon, soon, soon!

I had torn pretty badly with Lucy, and really didn’t want to do that again, so as I felt the baby crowning, I covered his head with my hand and applied a lot of pressure where I felt the most stinging and pulling. Then suddenly, his head was out! Kat urged me to push again, without a contraction, to get the rest of him out; I guess there is only so long you want a baby’s head underwater before there is a possibility of him trying to take his first breath underwater – which isn’t a great idea. I gave some pretty hard pushes, but he was not moving anywhere. I still had my hand on his head, and I could feel him wriggling and turning, helping himself to be born. This was absolutely the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. My sweet baby and I had been working together this whole time so I could finally hold him in my arms. Mairi thought his shoulder was a little sticky (not quite stuck, per say, but not in a hurry to come out), so Kat gently helped the shoulder out while I waited for the next contraction. Ouch. One more wave, one more push, and Malcolm swam out into my hands. I pulled him to my chest and sat back, giddy and laughing and crying all at the same time.

At Malcolm’s huge first cry, I saw someone ushering Lucy up to meet her new baby brother (I have no idea who it was, who was actually there when he was born, or what might have been happening outside the little circle of me, the baby and Kat). She stopped at Thaddeus and patted him on the head – she might have thought he was the new baby - and came over to me and the baby. She put her little hand on his tiny head. It was so wonderfully, deliciously sweet to have my husband and my baby girl a breath away as we all met our baby boy together.

MALCOLM OLIVER CORBETT

SEPTEMBER 23, 2011

8LBS 14OZ

21” LONG

I am glad he didn't stay in for another 2 weeks - he would have been a ten-pounder, easy!

Later, Kevin told me that Lucy had been downstairs saying “Mama’s making lots of noise. Like a heffalump!”

We moved to the couch where Malcolm took to nursing like a pro – I didn’t even need to help him latch on! When Lucy saw Malcolm nursing, she immediately wanted to nurse as well (had to stake her claim on Mama, I suppose!). We had our first tandem nursing session ten minutes after Malcolm was born. I credit Lucy with helping to birth the placenta a few minutes later, and for the amazingly small amount of blood I lost.

Welcome to the world, little boy!

Talking...

2011-08-25T12:23:00.001-04:00

...and talking and talking...

Lucy is full of words. A few favorite gems from this weeks:

"Cheese is for yummy."

"We be careful with aliens."

"Want to see the thunder."

"Want to color, thunder? Here's some blue!"

"You want to have some mama milk, Elmo?" (how nice...she's offering my boob to ELMO)

Lucy: (loud fart) Someone has a toot!
Me: Someone has a toot? Who?
Lucy: LUCY! (pause, then very quietly) And a poop, too.

Baziza the Butterfly

2011-08-20T13:36:00.000-04:00

Lucy and I went to Brookside Gardens yesterday. It was a relatively pleasant afternoon and Lucy loves to go in and out of the "teeny little house" they have in the children's garden there.

So we are walking through the garden and Lucy comes across a little teething toy shaped like a butterfly. She was very excited. I said "Someone lost a toy." She said "He is SAD." I said, "Maybe. We should leave here in case they come back for it." Lucy apparently ignored me and picked it up and put it in her pocket, because 10 minutes later and about 200 yards from where we found it, there was the butterfly toy still in her hand.

You can see there Baziza in her hand.

Okay, whatever.

In the car on the way home, she starts saying the same word over and over. It sounds like "baziza". I don't know if she was trying to repeat something I had mentioned earlier (a flower name?) or what. So I asked her what she was saying. "BAZIZA! Butterfly is named BAZIZA!"

Huh. Where'd she come up with THAT one?

Then she goes on. I will attempt a verbatim recreation of our conversation.

Lucy: Butterfly is name Baziza.
Me: Baziza?
Lucy: Yeah. Someone is sad.
Me: Who is sad?
Lucy: Carlos!
Me: Um...who's Carlos?
Lucy: The boy and BAZIZA!
Me: The boy?
Lucy: Someone is sad he lost a toy Baziza butterfly. Name is CARLOS.
Me: The boy who lost the toy is named Carlos?
Lucy: Yeah.
Me: ...
Lucy: He sad. Make him feel better. (loud kissing noise from the back seat). There ya go, Baziza. There ya go. Feel better. Awww. (little pat pat pat sounds from the back seat. Apparently she is hugging the butterfly).

I have no idea where any of that came from.

Inherent Risks

2011-08-13T14:14:00.000-04:00

I had a very interesting conversation today with a family member. He has been having an abdominal aortic aneurysm monitored for several months. Thank goodness his most recent evaluation showed that it had stabilized and hadn't gotten any bigger since his last exam. He was telling me how he thought he needed to find a new surgeon since the guy he was with was pushing an angioplasty on him, which apparently would have done nothing for the aneurysm. His doctor said they could check it all out and place stents in if they found any plaque as a preventative measure. The aneurysm being the main concern, he declined the angioplasty, since any surgery carries with it inherent risks. If it wasn't going to help the aneurysm, he would just as soon not do anything that might lead to further complications. Since the aneurysm doesn't yet measure 5 cm (the threshold where they start to really consider the risk of rupture and the need to do surgery), he wanted to continue to monitor it closely instead of do anything of dubious value. Apparently, angioplasty is a cash cow for heart doctors. They can make like $10,000 in one 20 minute procedure, so some tend to push it on patients whether or not is is medically indicated. He was telling me of one case where a patient needed open heart surgery, but they couldn't do it because of all the metal stents he had in his blood vessels from several previous angioplasties. Oops. (Now, please understand I have none of this as first hand knowledge, just what my family member was telling me today, but this family member has a vested interest in getting his research from credible sources since his life literally depends upon it).

He then went on to tell me of his distrust of doctors in general and how he only goes if he has tried everything else and it still isn't working. So when he goes to a doctor, there is a good reason and he wants help, not more watchful waiting. So I said, as an off-hand comment, "And that is exactly why I have my babies at home". He sort of chuckled and said "Well, what you're doing carries some serious risks". I said "You are walking around with an abdominal aortic aneurysm. That is neither normal nor healthy! You just said there is a risk of it rupturing and you bleeding out in a matter of minutes. I am having a baby - which is both normal and healthy. How is what I am doing any more risky that what you are doing?" He didn't really have an answer to that. Looking back at it, I am slightly offended that his research and ultimate decision not to subject himself to unnecessary procedures - on a decidedly unhealthy condition - was somehow more valid than my research and similar decision, for a perfectly normal and healthy condition. **Le sigh** He has never made any negative comments to me previously about my decision to have my babies at home, and didn't even really make a negative comment this time. He has been respectful of my choice. Or perhaps he has just been silent - but that is good enough. But it is interesting to see a little window into his thoughts on the matter.

On the car ride home, I was thinking - and of course I am speaking in the grossest of general terms - that OBs are trained as surgeons and in the pathology of pregnancy. They rarely see normal, natural births. My pregnancy is healthy. I am healthy. I don't want to be operated on. Why would I go to an OB? My midwives are trained in normal pregnancy and childbirth. They see it every day. So if something is deviating, they know it and make sure the I see a doctor. Why would I take my normal, healthy pregnancy to a place for sick people (the hospital) where it is the standard care to hooked up to an IV and monitored so closely that you can even move around? Where I can't be sure if they are intervening in the process because it is necessary or because it is more convenient or because it is "standard procedure"? Why would I subject myself to procedures that carry with them dubious value for a healthy woman within the normal process of labor and also the risk of possible complications? It seems to me it is the exact same decision that my family member made regarding his heart, but for some reason when I make it about my pregnancy and baby's birth, it is suddenly unwise and unsafe. All medical procedures carry with them the risk of complications. I am choosing not to subject myself to them. If it is absolutely necessary, I am happy to go to the hospital, happy to strapped and poked and monitored and even operated on. If it is absolutely necessary. But until then, you can find me at home.

Hypnobabies, Home Birth and Naysayers

2011-07-28T13:33:00.000-04:00

29 weeks

As I drag my gorgeous, luminous, beautiful (read:ballooning) body closer to my baby's ETA, I am starting to look forward to my second home birth. When I was pregnant with Lucy, a lot of people looked at me funny when I told them I was having my baby at home. They also looked at me funny when I said that I was planning a peaceful, comfortable birth with my Hypnobabies training. A few helpful people even laughed at me. Outright LAUGHED at my choice to birth differently than most people will tell you is possible. Ummm...thanks for your support...? When I told a friend of mine I was birthing at home she said, "I might have done that with my SECOND baby. But never with my FIRST. You just never know what could HAPPEN!" Then I said I was doing Hypnobabies (which is, incidentally medical hypnoanesthesia - the technique they teach to people who have life-threatening allergies to anesthesia but require major medical procedures), and that I was training my mind to feel the contractions as waves of pressure rather than pain. I said I was fully expecting a pleasant, comfortable birth experience. She raised her eyebrows with an "isn't she cute?" smirk on her face and said "Whatever! Good luck with that!" And again...thanks for your support!

What is it with people who insist on telling first-time moms horror stories about birth? Seriously? I know people want to tell their stories. This is how we connect - and the urge to connect and share is especially strong in mothers because birth is such a life-changing experience. But the seed of fear is insidious and it can grow out of control. Most of us are afraid of childbirth to begin with, and fear only exacerbates pain because you literally cannot relax if you are afraid. It defeats the purpose of the fear in the first place. You are supposed to be tense if you are frightened - that is how we survived as a species (Eh, there's a tiger coming to eat us. I'm awfully scared, but I feel so RELAXED! I'll get around to running in a minute). However, tension and fear are completely counterproductive to helping the body open in childbirth. And birth is not something to fear! It is something to relish and enjoy and triumph in! Yes, it is intense. Yes, there is an incredible amount of power surging through your body while you birth. And yes, it is probably the most challenging thing you will ever require of your body. But it isn't scary if you allow the power instead of fight it. And if you allow yourself (and train yourself) to think differently, it doesn't have to be painful. Really and truly. The human mind is incredibly powerful, and it controls the body. THE MIND CONTROLS THE BODY. Many wise people (including a certain Jewish carpenter) have said "As you believe, so shall you be". Think about that. As you believe, SO SHALL YOU BE. Want something different in your experience? Believe something different about your experience. That is what I learned from my daughter's birth. I didn't want it to be painful or traumatic or scary. I taught myself to believe that it wouldn't be. And it wasn't. Now it wasn't a cakewalk, either, but it was peaceful and generally comfortable and pretty damn easy all things considered, especially in comparison to all those running-down-the-hallway screaming-type births that they insist on showing you in TV. It was beautiful, and I can't wait to do it again! I am not in denial, either. I know things go wrong at births. You hear about it all the time. But that is why I have wonderful 2 midwives that I completely trust to tell me if something is amiss. That is their job. To make sure my baby is born safely. If something looks like it is heading in a worriesome direction, they will say, "Hey, Jenny, let's take this to the hospital to have a doctor check things out". And because I trust their judgement, I will say "You know, if you think it is a good idea, let's go". The goal for everyone is a healthy baby and a safe birth - not simply a home birth.

And on that note, here's another thing that drives me nuts. Why can't people just let women birth their babies where ever the hell they want to? Why all the hullaballoo about home birth? Women aren't stupid. Home birthers are not choosing the "experience" of birth over the safety of their child. People who believe that are idiots, plain and simple. What do they think we are telling ourselves? "The experience at home is so nice that I don't care if my baby dies"? What kind of jackass says that? The fact is, the research is there (and this link is just the tip of the iceberg). All the credible research shows that PLANNED home birth with a trained professional birth attendant - for low-risk, healthy mothers - is as safe, if not safer than birthing in a hospital. So quit telling me that I am irresponsible, irrational, foolish, or even dangerously putting my baby's life at risk and give me easier access to those trained professionals! Good lord. And while you're at it, can you please tell my insurance company to reimburse me for my low-tech, low-cost home birth? "Low-cost" should be a HUGE selling point to insurance companies on home birth. But certainly, we here in the US don't need to tweak our system at all. Our maternity stats are some of the best in the world, right? We have lower costs, lower maternal death rates, lower c-section rates, lower neonatal morbidity and mortality rates than the entire civilized world, right? Why change ANYTHING in our sleek as a shark, completely efficient, evidence-based healthcare system? Oh...wait...I was hallucinating again...

So...yeah. That was a rant. Sorry.

So I am planning a second home birth. A second Hypnobabies birth. I am very excited about it. Lucy was born in the water, and I am starting to imagine Muffin being born there, too. I am starting to imagine holding him for the first time in the quiet dark of the middle of the night. I am starting to imagine crawling into my own bed with my husband and my sweet little girl and my new baby boy - my beautiful family completed. I am starting to get impatient to meet him and see who he will be.

Ten more weeks.

Third Trimester, Here I COME!

2011-07-13T13:20:00.001-04:00

I had intended to do a better job documenting this pregnancy. Something seems to have prevented me from being as active a blogger as I would like to be these days...I am not naming any names, but she's short, blonde, cute and her name rhymes wth Goosey.

28 week belly!

Anyway, this past Sunday, I crossed the magical divide into the third trimester of my second (and what I hope to be final) pregnancy. Only 11 weeks and some change to go! Some people say they coast through the second trimester, barely noticing they are pregnant at all. This has not been my experience. I thought I would LOVE being pregnant. I really thought my body was built for it. I come from a long line of women who popped out babies on an annual or biannual basis. (** side note ** I had to look up "biannual" since I am never sure which one means once every 2 years and which means twice a year. Interestingly enough, "biannual" can mean either. And my mom and great grandmother both had twins, so it applies in either case). The problem I seem to have is that I have super flexible hips to begin with, and pregnancy relaxin just makes them SO flexible that it hurts. All those years of yoga...and I wish I were less flexible...

Anyway, I started to feel this pregnancy a lot faster than my first one. I guess it is because I got so much bigger so much faster this time. I sweat, at 25 weeks I was as big as I was at 30 week with Lucy. And I have the pictures to prove it! In my community care group (all the mamas in my midwives' practice that are giving birth in October meet once a month for these group prenatal visits), I am by far the largest belly there. Now, granted, I am one of the earliest due dates in the group and most of the ther mamas are first-time moms (it makes me really happy that so many first-time mamas are choosing hom birth!!!), but at the last meeting, I was seriously out-bellying every lady there, even the one due a week before me. I guess after you get everything all stretched out once, your body knows where to go.

Speaking of all stretched out...if I call my stretch marks "racing stripes" do you think it will make them seem less tragic? I was always so proud of my flat tummy. Even if I was out of shape everywhere else, my tummy was always flat as a board. Now I fear my abused abs will be covered by baggy, stretched out skin. It was already a little droopy after Lucy was born. I can only imagine the damage being done now by what feels to be the gargantu-baby currently populating my uterus. Is the fact that my two children can't even share stretch marks a bad omen for how they'll get along later in life (you know, when they are both extra-utero)? I mean, there was already a perfectly respectable (and well-hidden) crop of racing stripes covering the skin between my hips, but very sensibly not peaking up over the top of a bikini. Now they are creeping up to belly button level and I am getting mad.

They have managed to share pelvic girdle pain. Thank you, kids. When Lucy was born, she had her chin tilted up and her hand on her cheek. This is not the most efficient manner to enter the world, and I felt like my legs were going to fall off when I walked too much for a few weeks after Lucy made her appearance. They popped and swayed awful lot more after that epic birth. My hips will never be the same. And to prove it, I started feeling the same loosey-goosey hip feeling almost immediately after I got pregnant with the muffin man. Now I am worried about my legs falling off before I even give birth. I swear, my pubic bone is popping. This is a really unnerving feeling. I understand that the popping sound you hear in joints (think knuckles cracking or knees popping without any pain) is usually synovial fluid forming bubble and then bursting, thus getting the popping sound. In your hips, it is often the result of your iliotibal band or iliopsoas, rubbing over a bone. So what is it when your pubic bone pops? There is no joint there, in the traditional sense. The only time it supposed to move at all is when you are giving birth. So what is that hrrible sound I hear eminating from my front pelvis when I get out of bed the wrong way? Ugh. I do not know. I am not sure I want to, either. I DO know that if this baby gets too much bigger, I am going to be sitting on his head rather than on my ischial tuberosities. That is my favorite anatomical term. That and phalanges.

Things that help with sacroiliac joint pain:
Getting out of the car with two feet at a time
Not standing on one leg (this is tough, since I teach yoga)
Tightening up the abs and pelvic floor muscles when rolling over in bed
Avoiding breast stroke-style kicks while swimming
Sitting with knees together (HA!)
Sitting on a birth ball
Keeping pelvis tucked under and pelvic floor muscles engaged while standing or walking

Anyway, other than that, the second trimester was lovely. All things considered, I am feeling really well. Now onto the third! 11 weeks and 4 days to go!

Before I go, I would like to clarify...I don't HATE being pregnant. I LOVE the feeling of a little life growing inside me. I love the mystery of what he will look like, who he will be, how the birth will go...obviously I don't love mystery enough to wait to find out the gender, but gender is only one aspect of this completely unknown creature my body is building. It is just astounding on every level that I am MAKING another human being. FROM SCRATCH! I don't even make CAKE from scratch! The human body is such an amazing machine. So, I don't get morning sickness. I don't generally get heartburn. I don't get vericose veins or swollen ankles. I weather the pretty incredible changes of pregnancy very well, considering how active my job is and how demanding it is to have a toddler and grow a baby at the same time. I don't have much to complain about. It just hurts in my hips. Too bad you need them to walk.

Boys vs. Girls

2011-06-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

Last month, we found out we were having a BOY! Woweee. I was (and to some extent still am) totally floored by this turn of events. I am not sure why, but I REALLY was convinced we were having another girl. I grew up in a house full of girls. I have a daughter - not to mention a full 2 years worth of adorable, sweet, barely worn girlie clothes that will now never be worn in this house again (unless we decide to just put the baby in girl clothes...who would even notice? Newborns all look alike anyway). I don't know what to do with a boy. Seriously. What do you do with a boy?

I am a little sad Lucy won't have a sister. I am still getting over this, actually. I remember a friend of mine was pregnant with her second and when they found out it was another boy, she felt like she was in mourning, since she really REALLY wanted a daughter. I sort of regret finding out the gender, because after all the work of getting a baby out, I imagine would instantly fall in love with whatever was thrust into my arms. Or at least instantly fall into relief at being done with the whole process of pregnancy and birth. But there was always that little niggling fear that the first thought I would have as I discovered the gender was "oh, I wish it were another girl." (sort of like the dream I had that I gave birth to a cat - my first thought in the dream was "Oh, I was hoping for another baby...") That is not that first thought I wanted to have about my child.

So I am letting it grow on me. Boy. Son. Little BOY. Baby boy. Little brother. Be nice to your brother. Boy. Boy. Boy. Boy. My son. Sweet baby boy. Can you call a little boy pumpkin? Or is that a girl nickname? What about sweet potato pie? Probably not princess...I'll have to come up with a whole new arsenal of pet names. And I'll have to worry about him peeing in my face.

He's awfully cute though, isn't he?

Sentence Structure and the Talkative Toddler

2011-06-15T14:27:00.000-04:00

First let me preface this by saying I am going to brag about my daughter here. I am going to unabashedly tell you how she is incredibly verbal and has an astonishing grasp of language for her age. Before you roll your eyes at my first-time-momness, know I also have a little perspective. I have been teaching kids age 18 months-5 years for a long time now, so I do understand that being verbal doesn't mean she is advanced...just verbal. I know that just because she can talk a blue streak doesn't mean she is smarter or better than any of the other kids her age. I am not planning on getting "Your Baby Can Read!" or "The Great Speeches of William Shakespeare, Toddler Edition" (I am sure someone makes this product) and drilling rote memorization into her sponge-like little noggin. I am trying very hard NOT to be one of those "Montgomery County Power Moms" I often rolled my eyes at when I was teaching my mommy and me classes.

MoCoPower Mom: Junior 7 months old. He is very advanced. He needs such and such, so his Nanny here will be with him during this class while I set up his Mandarin lessons for next session. To which Nanny will accompany him as well.

Me: Um...okay.

MoCoPower Mom: Please don't use "um" in front of him. I believe it stunts his linguistic develoment.

Me: Sure. Your son spit up on your briefcase.

MoCoPower Mom: See how smart he is!

Montgomery County is full of very competitive mommies. I really don't want to be one of them. I personally think Lucy is so verbal because Kevin and I are home together a lot during the day, so she is exposed to more adult conversation than many toddlers are. Anyway, here ends the disclaimer.

Lucy has an amazing vocabulary. I thought I was just being a typical "my child is so smart" kind of mom. I mean, I know she is an early talker and would be considered very verbal for her age, but I recently taught a class full of 2-and-a-half year-olds that didn't have as many words as Lucy does at 21 months. I feel like it is a real privilege to have such a clear window in her mind this early. She'll be staring off in space, looking positively dejected, when suddenly she'll turn to me and say "Rode the carousel! Horsies went up and down! And zebra!" So she wasn't sad or scared or worried at all - just really thinking about that carousel ride. It is incredibly cool.

She fearlessly grapples with words like "calendula" and "helicopter", and 9 times out of 10 coming out with a perfectly respectable and understandable version of these words. Sometimes she gets a long word perfectly the first time - which is always pretty amazing - but then any other time she tries it is comes out like a mouthful of mashed potatoes - which is always pretty cute. Calendula turned into "Angela" and then "calandrela..la..la". Helicopter is now "heh-copter". She'll be halfway through a completely intelligible sentence only to have it devolve into gibberish halfway through and then come out clear again at the end - like her mouth couldn't keep up with brain ("Lucy wants to eat spagelti grushitmut bybye the doggie?"). But by and large, she is fairly understandable and talks in semi-complete sentences almost all the time. She climbs the stairs to the slide and says "Up the stairs, down the slide. Here goes Lucy!" Lucy looked at my husband this morning and said "Daddy is a peanut." Kevin said "I am?" Then she replied "Lucy is a peanut, too." She picks a tomato off the vine and say "Tiny tomato is green! Lucy holdin' it." (this, despite the dozens of times I have told her that we wait till the tomatoes are RED before we pick them. This little tomato picker is doing more damage to my garden than the bleeping chipmunks).

The other day, I listened to her conversation with Elmo in the back seat as we drove home from the park. It was quiet, then I hear "Want cookies." I asked "You want cookies?" More quiet. "ELMO, you want cookies? Yeah?" The subtext was clearly, "Mama, I am not talking to YOU." Then she went on, "You have a poopy butt? Change the butt, Elmo? Yeah?" Then she erupted in giggles and squeals and gibberish that had me in stitches the rest of the ride home.

Of course, this "advanced vocabulary" doesn't mean that she has a perfect grasp on language. I will hear her talking to her her stuffed animals, giving a running commentary on what she is doing. "Eating the kitty. Banana?" ("The kitty is eating. Would you like a banana?") "Sitting the mouse? Chair, mousie?" ("The mouse is sitting. Want a chair?") "Change diaper. On the floor. Elmo, change the butt!" ("Let's change Elmo's diaper on the floor!" The unfortunate phrase "Change the butt" is something she picked up from us before we realized how closely she was listening).

She is currently trying out the use of pronouns. This is incredibly cute, because she simply doesn't understand them, but hears Mama and Daddy using them all the time. So using all 21 months of deductive reasoning skills, she applies them as they seem to make sense. I can't tell you then number of times I have stood at the top of the stairs when her hands are full and say "Do you want me to carry you down the stairs?" So now, instead of waiting for me to ask, she'll look at her arms full of stuffed animals and say "Carry you? Yeah?". She says things like "You want cookies." I'll say "No, I don't want cookies". To which she'll repeat "You want cookies. PLEASE!" Oh, YOU want cookies, I see. Sometimes she'll start to squeal in frustration and say "HELP!!" and then whatever she is doing suddenly goes her way and she says triumphantly "You got it!". It took me a few times of her saying this to realize that she thinks "YOU" is another name for "Lucy". I will also frequently ask her "Do you want to come with me upstairs or wait down here?" This morning I came back from the gym and said "I'm going to go take a shower". Lucy comes running up to the gate and says "Come with me!" So my name is "Mama", but it must also be "me", since I frequently refer to myself as "me". She randomly applies "he" and "she", with no apparent rhyme or reason. She looked at a picture of Abraham Lincoln and said "She's sad. Give hugs and kisses." Then she proceeded to hug and kiss the picture of Abe Lincoln. I sometimes wonder if I should correct her, but then I remember that most children don't start to use pronouns at all until they are 2 years old.

She's advanced and all ;-)

In Memory of

2011-05-13T13:34:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, a dear friend of my husband and I's died suddenly. Carrie had a pulmonary embolism - a blood clot in her lung. Her heart stopped on the way to the hospital. Her husband was the one who called off the chest compressions after an hour of trying to get it started again. My heart breaks for him and I hate that he had to make that decision when it was his beloved wife they were trying to save.

She was way too young, with a young family and a whole life of possibility ahead of her. It seems dumb and random and utterly cruel for this to have happened. I have been trying to process it and assign it some sort of meaning to try to make it okay for it to have happened. But it isn't okay. It IS dumb and random and utterly cruel. Why is it fair for her 2 year old daughter to grow up without her mother? Why is it okay for her sweet, wonderful husband to lose his wife so suddenly? I haven't been able to even send a card to her family because I have been searching for words to say and I keep coming up empty. Empty words of comfort. Empty words of sympathy. Not that I don't want to comfort or that I don't feel sympathy - because I do - but the words feel empty because I have lacked any conviction of a greater meaning behind this tragedy.

But I have been giving it a lot of thought. And in my own way, a lot of prayer. I don’t pretend to know God’s will or plan or anything. I don’t even pretend to know that it is all a part of a plan of any kind. But I do know is that nothing in this life – good or bad or in between – has any meaning but that which one assigns to it. So I guess that means I can choose to search for the meaning to this heartbreak or I can choose to give it meaning. I can decide someone else has the meaning and believe them, or I can decide to give Carrie’s presence in our lives and her sudden, awful exit a meaning of my choosing. I know most people don’t think this is the truth of things. But I find that holding to this gives me a sense of power and direction to choose my path and rise above that in this insane life which seeks to drag me down. But it is also a bigger responsibility than just waiting for an answer to come. I truly believe God loves us and sees us and mourns with us and for us. But I don’t believe He is a capricious and cold-hearted God that would steal away a beloved wife and mother on a whim, or even as a part of a grand plan we can never know. Life has a flow, and things happen in that flow that don’t feel good and don’t make sense. Sometimes they are completely unfathomable, but that doesn’t mean we can’t decide what they will mean to us and use it to help us to become the next greatest version of the greatest vision we ever had of ourselves here on this earth.

Carrie was so giving and thoughtful and loving. I have decided to remember her when I think that I don’t have time or am too tired to do someone a kindness. And I will do that kindness in her honor. She was funny and warm. I have decided to remember her when I feel the urge to protect myself from getting to know people better. She was a true friend. I have decided to remember her when I feel old friendships fading from time or distance and I will take the time to reconnect - because she would have done that. When I try to think of the best ways to honor her memory, these are the things that some to mind. She was a shining example of what a friend should be and I hope that I can be like her in this way. I don't know if this is the meaning I have been trying to find, but it helps me to feel less sad.

Carrie was family. Her family is our family. Please take a moment to say a prayer for them as they try to find the daylight again.

To Test or Not To Test...

2011-04-05T20:08:00.000-04:00

We got the first trimester screening done last week. This is what they call the Nuchal Translucency Scan. What they do is have a specially trained radiologist do an ultrasound of the fetus between 11 and 14 weeks. The NT test uses ultrasound to measure the clear (translucent) space in the tissue at the back of your developing baby's neck. Babies with abnormalities tend to accumulate more fluid at the back of their neck during the first trimester, causing this clear space to be larger than average. Having a thicker nuchal fold is a marker for Down Syndrome. They also look for other things and check out the heart and such, but the main measurement they want it of that nuchal fold. Then they do a maternal blood test to look for proteins and other blood markers that would further help identify babies with potential genetic abnormalities. It sounds great, but it is only about 85% accurate. This means that around 15% of women get falsely normal or abnormal results. So everyone has the possibilities of having falsely normal results, since it is a screening test which only assesses the risk of having a baby with Down Syndrome, Trisomy 13 or Trisomy 18. I was given a 1 in 5283 chance of having a baby with Down Syndrome and less than 1 in 10,000 chance of having a baby with Trisomy 13 or 18. Those are excellent odds, yes, and I am reassure, but ultimately it doesn't mean anything. We weren't going to get an amniocentesis to verify any genetic disorders. We weren't going to terminate the pregnancy with any of the information we received. Now we have the reassurance that we have a minuscule chance of having a baby with a genetic disorder...but it didn't rule it out completely. So why did we do it?

Kevin wanted to get it done to use the pregnancy to educate ourselves on a possible Down Syndrome baby. We now know the chance is very small, so we aren't going to do that. But what if...? We might have considered giving birth at the hospital if it were likely that this babe would have heart troubles due to Down Syndrome. But now we know that the chance is very small, so we aren't going to do that. But what if...? So really, what was the point? I know that some people would have had an amnio to confirm possible abnormal results, but we would have just worried about it for 6 more months, for possibly no reason at all. If I had been given a 1 in 12 chance of having a baby with Down Syndrome, how would I have spent the next 6 months? Crying? Stressed? Worried? Probably. And I STILL might have had a perfectly normal, healthy baby. Now I am happy and reassured, but I STILL might have a baby with a genetic disorder.

This is not to poo-poo the test. I think it is a good tool in many cases, especially for women who either have a family history of Down Syndrome or are older mothers. And it IS very reassuring. But the genetic counseling they give you before the scan when you get to the ripe old age of 35 is a little frightening. They show you this graph of exponential increasing risk as you get older. It is scary and makes me want to not have any more kids. And it makes you feel like you are old. When my mom had my older brother in the early seventies, she was called labeled as AMA - Advanced Maternal Age - at 28 years old! I must be having a positively geriatric pregnancy! Well, actually, according to official definition, I AM! GERIATRIC! At 34 years old! Anyway, I digress.

This baby - like its sister - will be born at home. I will have a natural birth, possibly in a pool. We are seeing lovely all-green midwives. We cloth diaper. I breastfeed (still breastfeeding my 19 month old). What made us decide, amidst all this return-to-nature, keep-it-simple child birth choices and parenting made us decide to go all high tech for information that is, generally speaking, fairly useless?

My question is - did you get the First Trimester Screening done? Why? Why not?

I guess we DID get a great picture of the little nipper, though. So that's something.

Early Pregnancy Again

2011-03-31T10:13:00.001-04:00

February 1, 2011

Five weeks and counting. I have a ticker for my pregnancy-obsessing buddy group on Taking Charge of Your Fertility . Those pregnancy tickers they have on sites like Baby-Gaga and Pregnology and 500 other baby/pregnancy themed websites make me obsess about every day of the pregnancy. Every day I look at my ticker and I see "I am 5 weeks and 3 days pregnant. Only 242 days to go". Then I see the little blob that is looking more and more like a teeny little human being - right now s/he has flippers. FLIPPERS! At FIVE WEEKS!

I like this one from Baby-Gaga. I like that it injects humor into the process. Right now, it says "Even though I'm only 3.5mm big, my brain is growing fast & I already have more brain cells than Paris Hilton. I'm 5 weeks & 3 days old, only 242 days to go! By the time this posts some time in March, it will be saying something about wondering if I have a hotdog or a hamburger. Referring humorously to the fact that on an ultrasound girlie parts look like little hamburgers and boy parts look like hot dogs. You can, of course get the straight developmental facts in the tickers. But you can get the week-by-week development anywhere! Give me the funny!

Because nothing feels funny right now. I want to cry most of the time. Lucy doing something cute makes me cry. Lucy doing something frustrating makes me cry. Stories on WTOP News makes me cry. Baby Signing Time makes me cry. Car commercials make me cry. Burned eggs make me cry. I can't turn around without something making me cry.

Also, I am crabby. I want to bite everyone's head off. Everything that comes out of my mouth is mean and snarky and acidic. And I can't even use the "I'm pregnant, back off" comment. We haven't told anyone yet, not even our parents. I want to wait till I hear that heartbeat. Which won't happen till 10 weeks or so.

Now, let me preface this next section by saying I love and adore my mother. She is wonderful and helpful and proactive and her energy is enviable. But she drives me nuts sometimes. We haven't told them we are pregnant yet because of wanting to heat the heartbeat first, AND we have a fun surprise. Which I believe is ruined now. My mom and dad were here this weekend while I was away for work (I had a trip Sat-Sun, Kevin had a show last night while I was gone and then left today for his trip before I got home, so we needed coverage for Lucy). My mom is a maniacal launderer. She won't stop. She digs through everything looking for dirty laundry to do while she is here. That is lovely of her, yes, and it is nice not to have to do laundry. But Kevin doesn't want her to do his laundry (something about his mother-in-law folding his boxers...) and I feel bad having her do my laundry while she is here doing us a huge favor. Plus I end up having to pick up and refold everything because my mom has some sort of thing against laundry baskets - everything is always stacked about 30 feet high on top of the bed, so it falls over in heaps before I get a chance to put it away. (God I sound ungrateful). So I have told her as nicely as possible to not do the laundry...which she does anyway. So today I get home and, shockingly, all the laundry is done and stacked on the bed (Kevin's boxers folded neatly). All of Lucy's laundry is done. I don't really think anything of it other than to say "Please, Mom, you don't have to do our laundry!". I go into my office after she has left and notice she has rearranged some things...probably searching for ONE MORE TOWEL to wash (though why it would be in my office, I do not know). On my desk are all my positive home pregnancy tests. I say "tests" not "test" because I have been obsessively peeing on things since 9 days past ovulation. I can't stop peeing on things - just to make sure I am still pregnant. Anyway, this sad pile of pee-soaked sticks - the proof of my obsession - has been moved...every so slightly. And on top of Lucy's pile of laundry is the "I'm Going to be a Big Sister" shirt that I was going to wash and stow away until we were ready for the big reveal. Folded neatly. See the plan was to take a picture of Lucy wearing the shirt and send it to our family. Or we were going to dress her in it, bring her over to their house and just wait to see how long it took for them to notice. She didn't say anything when I got home, but I think she would have to be an idiot not to have put two and two together. I am hoping she put on her Oblivious Hat and didn't even notice.

If I weren't pregnant, I would be able to shrug this off, but I AM SO IRRITATED. Or I was 20 minutes ago. My mood changes with the wind.

Laughing Horse

2011-03-28T09:30:00.001-04:00

I may have mentioned (a dozen times!) that I teach YogaKids classes at a local DC studio. I teach 2 classes, one for 3-4 year-olds and one for 5-8 year-olds. Often I find I dread teaching these two classes. It often takes me an hour to get there and an hour and a half to get back (class ends at 5:45 pm - smack-dab in the middle of DC rush hour). There are usually the same kids every session, so I feel like I am reaching ever deeper into my rapidly emptying bag of tricks to keep them interested. There is usually the one little girl, whose company I will lovingly call a "challenge" to enjoy. There are usually 2 or three boys whose company I will lovingly call "impossible" to enjoy. Then there is the group of three kids (a sister-brother pair and their best friend) who are just lovely...but having been coming to yoga class since they were infants, so they are SO comfortable at the studio. The tend to take liberties and listen a little less than attentively.

But yesterday was a class that makes it all worthwhile. In my 5-8 year-old class I had my three musketeers...and that's it. They are sort of a nightmare when it is just the three of them. They know all the songs and all the poses and are not shy about whining until I get so irritated that I let them do what they want.

Yesterday I stood my ground. I had a class planned that I thought was fun and engaging and I was going to teach that class if it was the last damned yoga class I ever taught, and they were going to freaking enjoy it if I had to tie them down and force them to have fun.

We had a many moments of power struggle - all of which I won. They pout, they whine. They grumble. But I still win. Triumphing over 3 6-year-olds. My great accomplishment. So we made our way through class. They were a little glum and I was a little crabby, but I will take glum over crazy day.

Then we came to the Rocking Horse Pose (Dhanurasana which is the Upward Bow or Floor Bow Pose).

Now I have a problem. When I do floor poses on my stomach, I laugh. I can't help it. I get the giggles and they don't stop. So I get into Floor Bow and I start giggling. Then they start giggling. We are all giggling madly, insanely, gleefully. It is wonderful. The rest of class is just a dream. The kids give me hugs before they leave. I go home still high on joy and laughter.

It reminds me that sometime my yoga practice isn't doing poses or breathing. It is learning to be patient and sharing the joy of life with my students. It is letting the laughter out when it needs to come out. It is being joyful and loving even when the situation feels less than ideal for being joyful and loving. This is why I became a teacher.

The Power of Belief

2011-03-25T08:47:00.003-04:00

My husband is not a religious man. But he believes in Drano.

This steadfast faith in a thick, toxic, foul smelling liquid completely confounds me. We have used Drano on every drain in our house at one point or another. Bottles of the stuff. Buckets of the stuff. Extra strength, Super Extra Strength, Professional Strength, Divine Strength. I believe the crabs in the Chesapeake Bay are dying because of our inability to keep our drains clear. When the tub was draining slowly, Drano. The tub still drained slowly. When the bathroom sink was draining slowly, Drano. The sink still drained slowly. Recently, we paid a plumber $500 to come snake two of our drains - this was AFTER the sacred liquid was poured out for our sins of having hair that detaches from our head and putting egg shells down the garbage disposal (which I will NEVER do again, so help me Drano!).

Last weekend, my devout Dranoite was headed away for the weekend to Vermont for work. Our bathroom sink had been draining very slowly for a few days, and getting worse by the hour. I am not sure how hair gets down THIS drain (since I don't generally wash my hair in the sink), but if the plumber had snaked this drain, I am sure he would have found hair. Maybe the sink actually grown its own hair to clog the drains when we are failing at the task.

Anyway, I digress.

The evening before he left, Kevin comes out of our bathroom with an empty bottle of Drano and says, with an air of confident purposefulness "The sink has been Drano-ed." My gut reaction was to say "Oh, thank GOODNESS! I'll call the plumber tomorrow." But I believe in the right of every person to practice their own religion without fear of persecution - not matter how ridiculous I think it is - and Kevin doesn't mock my faith, so I won't mock his.

Anyway, that evening I notice that the sink is indeed running a little better. I think "This is a first!". Now, this sink isn't running well, mind you, just better than it had been. But better is better and I forget all about it until the morning when I am washing my face. Apparently the "better" drainage I noticed the night before applied only to when you had the water running for 3 seconds or less. Not so much when the water was on for a shocking 15 seconds. I leave the sink full of water and got in the shower. And I now the shower is no longer draining. I am ankle deep in water after 3 or four minutes. Perhaps the Drano pushed the clog from the sink part of the pipes into the shared shower part of the pipes and was now clogging the shower AND the sink drain. I roll my eyes and start composing this blog post in my mind, ready to skewer my silly husband for his faith in this stupid, stinky, evil Drano crap.

And then, a miracle. In the space of about 10 seconds, I hear a loud gurgle and all the water in the sink drains out, and the water in the shower quickly follows suit. I am agog. Aghast. It was like Drano sensed my scorn and doubt and had to prove that Kevin's devoutness was justified. So while I am not a convert, I have a deeper respect for my husband's abiding faith in the power of Drano.

The sink and the shower have been running like a dream ever since. I don't believe that I will never shed another hair down the drain, or that our drains will stay clear forever, but I am ready to concede this one to Kevin. I have often wished Kevin would find comfort in a faith in something bigger than himself and this crazy world we live in. I had hoped that it would be something more like...say, God or Buddha or Life or the Benevolent Universe. But if he has found his faith in Drano, so be it.

Amen.

Early Early Pregnancy

2011-03-24T08:47:00.001-04:00

I am not going to publish this till March...but I wanted to start a series on my early pregnancy with Baby Corbett II.

So yeah, as indicated by the obsessive peeing I have done (see above picture) I'm pregnant again! I add an exclamation point to show I am excited, because my tone here is not one of excitement yet. I am tired. Bone tired. I forgot how early this set in. I can barely keep my eyes open, but if I lay down to rest, I can't seem to fall asleep. Or at least not in the time frame allotted to me for sleeping by Lucy. I am having this sinking feeling that pregnancy the second time around is going to be a lot harder than the first time. I am due sometime in late September/early October of this year.

Here are something I have been thinking of on this, January 23, 2011:

What in GOD'S NAME WERE YOU THINKING?? Do you REMEMBER how awful it was at the beginning? No sleep, cracked and bleeding nipples, screaming baby. Clearly not, or I wouldn't have done this to myself again.

I hope we have another girl. Mostly so we don't have to buy more clothes.

How long to I have to wait to tell people?

I am tired.

Is this cramping normal?

Will I get sciatica again?

Please God, don't let it be twins.

We have a lot of work to get done to get ready for this one. We have to clean out the utility room so we can have some storage for stuff that is in my office and in the downstairs closet so we can have some storage for what's in Kevin's office so we can combine my office with Kevin's so we can move Lucy to the bigger bed room because it only seems fair that the big girl get the big room because when they are teenagers I want to be able to say Lucy has a bigger room because she was here first and I don't want to try to explain to Lucy why her little sister/brother got the bigger, nicer room. Over thinking? Maybe. Also, the nursery is closer to our room, making it easier for me to get up 30 times a night.

God I hope I get a better sleeper this time.

The end. I have to take a nap. Or try to take one, anyway.

Things Don't Want to Forget #2

2011-01-07T09:04:00.001-05:00

Lucy says "Oof oof" when you ask her what a dog says.

This is also what she calls a dog.

When Lucy says "hair" is sounds like "HEEEair".

When she says "bear" it sounds like "BEEEair".

We took a walk around the block yesterday and she plowed forward, unsteady but giddy at being "asside" (translation: "outside"), saying "WALK WALK WALK WALK WALK!!" the whole time.

When she dances, Lucy will crook both arms out to the side and bend at the hips with her butt cocked to one side and sort of bounce up and down. If I can ever get her to do it when I have a video camera, I will post it! It is so funny!

She is currently into chewing on the noses of all her stuffed animals.

She called Cookie Monster "Elmo".

She calls any unidentifiable animal "Elmo".

She once patted my boob with nursing and called it "Elmo".

We were in the car yesterday waiting to get my emissions inspected. Lucy was in the back seat playing with her stuffed Cookie Monster toy. She was saying "Elmo. El-MO. ELLLLLmo! ELLLLLMOOOOOOOOO! Elmo. ELLLL-mo." Over and over for about 20 minutes. Then I heard the toy fall on the floor. Silence...then very quietly: "Elmo?

Lucy loves Elmo.

She has started whispering. Now occasionally I hear her whispering to herself "Baby sign...baby sign...Elmo...baby siiiiiiiiiiiiign."

Lucy crawls in her sleep. For various reasons, we ended up co-sleeping when we were at my parents house for Christmas. She nearly crawled off the end of the bed in the middle of the night. She also talks in her sleep and is a very restless sleeper. While it is cute, it is not conducive to a good night's sleep for me.

She is really ticklish.

Her laugh is like music to me.

Having aToddler is Like Having a Drunk Roommate

2011-01-04T09:49:00.002-05:00

"Having a toddler is like having a drunk roommate." My brother told me this recently as he watched my new walker lurch from one part of his house to another. The more I watch her, the more I realize this is true:

Lucy lurches to the chair "Dude, this chair looks GREAT!" She falls over "Whoa! What happened?" She pees in her pants. She belches loudly. She loudly insist on eating. She spits up after eating. She falls asleep randomly. She gets pissed off if someone tries to stop her from doing something clearly irrational. Occasionally, she falls over in such as way that it looks like someone pulled the (non-existent) rug out from under her feet (I LOVE that - it is so funny!). She does inappropriate things like put her hands down her pants and says "BUTTS!"

Yes, having a toddler is very much like having a drunken frat boy living in your house. Except she smells better...most of the time, anyway. Now I am learning that having an early talker is like having a drunken, foul-mouthed sailor in my house. Every other word that comes out of her mouth is a swear word.

Me: Lucy, what is this? (pointing at her shirt)
Lucy: Shit.

Me: (as we are nursing) Lucy, is it time to switch sides?
Lucy: Shit side.

Me: That's a clock, Lucy.
Lucy: Cock.

Me: Lucy, ask nicely.
Lucy: Ass.

Me: Lucy, this is a picture.
Lucy: Bitch. Sure.

Lucy: Whazzat? (this is her go-to question. She will repeat it ad nauseum regardless of any answer she may or may not receive)
Me: That's a button.
Lucy: Butts.

Lucy: Whazzat? (violently smacking her crotch during diaper changes)
Me: That's your bottom.
Lucy: Butts!

Lucy: Whazzat? (Grabbing her heel)
Me: That's your heel.
Lucy: Hell.

Lucy: Whazzat?
Me: That's your tooth brush.
Lucy: Titty. (this sounds more like "tee-tee")

Me: Do you want your teddy?
Lucy: Titty.

Lucy: Wadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupizzzat?
Me: That's a book.
Lucy: (long pause) Wadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupizzzat?
Me: That's a book.
Lucy: (long pause) Wadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupizzzat?
Me: That's a picture of a fox.
Lucy: Fucks.

And so on. Sometimes she does cute things with her words (who am I kidding, it's ALL cute) like split a one syllable word into 2 parts. Take "Book" for instance (or anything ending with a K). She'll say "Boot", then wait a second as she gets her mouth in the right position and then say "kkkkkkkk". But generally, everything she says sounds vaguely inappropriate to be coming out of the mouth of a 16-month-old.

One day a few months ago, in the midst of the airline scare with all the printer-cartridge-bombs on planes from the Middle East, I heard Lucy say "Imam", "Jihad" and "Yemen" in the space of 2 hours. I seriously considered reporting her to the FBI. I can see the interrogation now:

FBI Agent: So. Lucy Corbett.
Lucy: Butts.
FBI Agent: Ms. Corbett, your mother says you have been spreading jihadist sentiments.
Lucy: Shits.
FBI Agent: She says you mentioned a Yemeni Jihad in the days leading up to the attempted bombings.
Lucy: Boob.
FBI Agent: I am not sure you understand the seriousness of these accusations.
Lucy: (long pause) Wadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupwadupizzzat?
FBI Agent: I don't think you are taking this seriously, Ms. Corbett.
Lucy: Butts!
FBI Agent: We have ways to make you talk.
Lucy: Tit. Kkkkkk.
FBI Agent: That's it, take this kid to holding!
Lucy: Old.
FBI Agent: Now you're calling me OLD? You think you're some crafty little fox, don't you?
Lucy: Fucks. You.

Off to Guantanamo with you, babykins!

Requiem for an Old Friend

2011-01-02T16:12:00.002-05:00

On December 10, 2010 Kevin and I got new furniture. My old couch had been done nigh unto death at Lucy's birthday party by a hoppity, over-zealous four-year-old. It was time for it to go. But I felt like I had to compose a eulogy for this couch that has been in my home for almost ten years. Ten very formative, crazy years.

I call it "my" couch as opposed to "our" couch because it came from my apartment in Takoma Park. And before that, it came from my apartment in DC I shared with my college boyfriend. Kevin's couch (from his old apartment in Germantown) is in the mancave, alive and mostly well. Apparently, I broke the lounger on it a few years ago, but I have no memory of this, so I can't tell what is anyway completely different story.

When I told my friend we were getting new furniture, she said and I quote "But...what about the comfy green couch?" It was an enduring favorite in my house. This couch. Cozy. Green. LONG. Soft and inviting. Lately a little too soft and inviting, as most people needed a hand to stand up after sitting on it. More to the point, they were sitting IN the couch. Here is my history of and eulogy for the comfy green couch.

Another sster, The Pig and CGC, 2007

Comfy Green Couch (along with comfy green loveseat) was purchased at Value City Furniture in Woodbridge (or somewhere in VA). It was sometime in early 2001. The young couple who bought it had just moved in together in a hip but slightly seedy neighborhood in Washington, DC called Mount Pleasant. He had moved back to DC after living in Chicago with She (well, not WITH She, but NEAR She, anyway). She had just moved to DC from Chicago to DC to be with He. They happily settled into their new apartment. Comfy Green Couch saw them have crazy parties where people got into fights and brawled in the living room. Comfy Green Couch had crazy actors crashing on it at all hours of the day and night. CGC watched as She didn't get into the grad school program she applied to. CGC saw that He wasn't really doing what he wanted to do. September 11, 2001 happened. She came home to find him napping on CGC. He said "It's okay to cry." They both realized they weren't right for each other. CGC saw a long, ugly, drawn-out break-up happen and wondered who's house it would end up in. He left to go back to school and finish his degree. She got the couch.

Corbetts, Blanchards and CGC 2006

She moved the CGC into a nice big apartment in Takoma Park where it watched her struggle to get over her long involved relationship with He. At this apartment, it also witnessed quite a few crazy parties, had a number of hungover party-goers crashed on his comfy greeness. It witnessed the night She, her sister and 2 of their friends drank a case of wine, listened to Sting records (yes, records on a record player) and passed out on the kitchen floor. CGC witnessed She decorate her first Christmas tree away from home...and cry the whole time because she had no one to share it with. This was the genesis of the Christmas Tree Decorating Party that She still hosts every year.

CGC watched as She got a roommate. NK was the perfect roommate. She never spilled a drop of her ubiquitous bottle of red wine on CGC, nor did she ever leave anything lying on it that didn't belong there. NK was cool, clean, laid back, easy to talk to but not nosy, fun. NK was fun to have around for a summer, then she moved to Paris to teach English. As far as She knows, NK is still in Paris. Awesome.

Kali Frodo, Polish Ninja and CGC (AT hikers)

CGC saw as She's youngest sister moved in, stayed, made the place messy, made She's live richer and then left. CGC saw as She's other sister came and stayed while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. CGC witnessed the overpowering and constant stink of thru-hikers. CGC also witnessed their immense gratitude at access to a shower and soap. CGC

CGC saw as a new love came into She's life. It passively participated in more than his share of romantic romps and passionate interludes. It watched their relationship grow into something more than the summer fling it started out as. CGC was there (literally, right THERE) when She told him she thought she was in love with him, and he said it back. It witnessed them laugh and play and fight and make up and grow into partners.

It was there as they packed up the great little apartment in Takoma Park and the apartment in Germantown to move together to a house in Silver Spring. It watched them plan their wedding. CGC was miffed not to get an invite to the wedding, but nevertheless, it hosted She's family admirably at the impromptu, post-wedding party that happened in their house (unbeknownst to the bride and groom).

The Husband was laying on CGC when She came running out of the bathroom with a home pregnancy test saying through happy tears that she was pregnant. It watched her get big and fat and swollen as they looked for a house to buy. It was packed up one more time and moved to their nice house in Silver Spring and settled in to end its days in peace.

Sister, Mama, Baby and CGC 2009

It was there while She labored with the baby for more than 50 hours. It let her snuggle down deep in its comfy pillows to ride out yet another contraction. It let a nervous almost-new daddy ride out the long long labor in its comforting arms. It heard the Baby born a few yards away. It watched Mama struggle to breastfeed, but stick with it in the end. It tried in its clumsy, couch-like way to comfort her as she cried with exhaustion and frustration in those early weeks. It held the visitors who came to ooh and aah over the precious new life. It let Baby and Daddy snuggle up together to let Mama get some sleep. It watched Baby grow. It saw her first birthday. It was killed by an over zealous four-year-old jumping on the its cushions.

They ordered new furniture. They tried to keep it quiet around CGC, but it knew its useful life was over. They set it out on the porch the day before the new couch came. It snowed that night. It was one of the saddest sights - a loyal, long-suffering couch that watched so many important moments, out in the cold, under a light dusting of snow, watching as the Family put up the Christmas Tree and prepared to celebrate without it.

Thank you Comfy Green Couch. Every time I see you in pictures, I will have fond memories of your place in my life, and the all times - good and bad and everything in between - that you witnessed.

Sadly, I couldn't find any pictures from before 2006 (I think I had a film camera up until that point)...but there are many many photos of CGC in photo albums...since pretty much every photo take at my home during that time would have been on or around the Comfy Green Couch.

Year End Musings

2010-12-31T19:11:00.001-05:00

This is me and Lucy in December of last year

What a year! Last year at this time Lucy was barely 4 months old. I was chronically sleep deprived and really floundering as I tried to fit into my new role as a mom. Now Lucy is almost 16 months old, I usually get a full night's sleep (though I often feel tired anyway) and while I am floundering a little less, I still feel like wearing the Mama Hat is still a very intimidating article of clothing to don every day.

February 2010

Lucy started choking on a grape the other day and I didn't know what to do. The four moms in the room were all looking at Lucy and then looking at me and the first thing I said when I realized she couldn't cough it up on her own was "Oh God, I don't know what to do" and started crying as I grabbed my daughter and managed to do some gross approximation of the Heimlich Maneuver. I am still having nightmares about this - Lucy looking at me with "please help me, Mama" written all over her terrified face, and me not knowing what to do.

March 2010

It sort of slapped me in the face about what my real job is here. You're up, Mama. This is your job. You are the EMS, triage, and nurse along with teacher, maid, laundry worker, milk bank, cook, playmate, interpreter and sanitation engineer (read: butt cleaner). I sort of knew it before. I really know it now.

May 2010 with adoring Daddy

Regardless of any life-threatening situations, however, I have really grown into being a mom. I love it. I love watching Lucy turn into a little person with likes and dislikes and opinions and independent thoughts. I love watching her discover and learn. I love watching her learn to communicate more effectively. She now will say a word she knows, and if I don't understand, she does the sign. She's just so cool. The best thing I have ever done.

Silly July baby

Happy birthday, Lucy! September 2010

I love watching Kevin grow into being a dad. He is so good with her. So fun and loving and silly and strong and everything you'd want your dad to be. I love watching him watch Lucy play. I love him more every day. Our wedding vows said "I choose you today, as I chose you yesterday and I intend to choose you tomorrow." I am so incredibly lucky to be able to choose this wonderful man as my husband every day.

Thanksgiving 2010

I sometimes worry about money (who doesn't) and accidentally letting Lucy choke on/fall off of/run into something, but generally speaking, our life is pretty damn good.

So here's to 2010. It was a really good year.

And here's to 2011 being even better. Happy New Year everyone!

Things I Don't Want to Forget

2010-11-27T13:24:00.000-05:00

Time is just zooming past. I remember before I had a baby thinking how fast the seasons flew by, but the feeling that time is going in fast forward is compounded by this beautiful child I am watching grow up every day. I know full well that I will only have a sketchy memory of this time, so here are some things I hope never to foget.

Lucy covers her face with a napkin or a hat and wobbles about the house with her face covered. Sometimes she falls into me or the couch. Sometimes she trips on something, falls down and says "oos" (oops). And then she does it again!

One night recently, after nursing before bed, she did the sign for "thank you" then the sign for "sleep". I took this to mean, "Thank you for the milk, Mama. Time to sleep."

Speaking of sweet nursing moments, two days ago, se unlatched, giggled, kissed my boob, then went back to nursing. So sweet!

She has discovered her reflection - and LOVES the baby she sees there. The "baby in the window" is her reflection in the big picture windows in the living room. We'll say "where's the baby in the window?" She'll toddle over to the window and spend 10 minutes saying "hi" and kissing her reflection.

She likes to lift her her shirt up and show off her belly.

She says "mees" instead of "please".

When she really wants something, she desperately does the sign for "please" - rubbing her whole belly and chest with a look of utter pleading on her face.

She often toddles around the room with her index finger in her nose.

She is a Baby Signing Time addict. She'll sign "please" and say "Baby sign?". Then if I don't
it give it to her, she does the sign for "sign" and says "siiiiiiiiiiiiiign?" If I still don't relent, she does the sign for "baby" and the sign for "sign"...at the same time and then more "MEEEEEEEEEES?"

She loves putting things through the bars of her play space. She puts it through or drops in over and says "oos".

I am sure this will be the first of many of these types of posts. How does the heart hold so much, but the brain fail so completely at all the tiny details that make up the moments of our lives?

Adventures in Felting

2010-11-18T14:19:00.001-05:00

I have two small problems:
1) Lucy likes to hide and/or chew on the coasters that tend to float around the living room. This isn't so terrible, but one set of coasters is stone (not great for chewing on...chipped little baby teeth, here we come) and the other set smells like recycled tires, which I just don't feel good about her SMELLING, let alone chewing on.
2) I have a ton of scrap wool leftover from various knitting projects I have done in the last few months.

So to solve both these problems, I am knitting some coasters, which I will then felt. Cool! Here are some pics of my work in progress:

I knit them using Cascade 220 , size 8 double pointed needles (the pattern said to use size10.5 needles but I only had 8s), and using a simple pattern that I found for free online...that I can't find anymore...so here a reproduction of the free pattern that I found somewhere:

Cast on 6 onto dpn.
Divide stitches onto three needles (2 per needle)
Round 1: *k1 f&bl, place marker, k1 f&bl repeat from * (increase to 4 st on each needle)
All following rounds: k1 f&bl at the beginning of each needle and after each marker (inc by 6 sts each round).
Continue in pattern until there are 18 stitches between marker (if you use size 10.5 needles increase until there are 12 stitches between markers)
Bind off loosely.

Here's how mine looked:

After I knit all six (I still have tons of wool scraps left, but I was excited to try felting) I did a quick internet search on how to felt wool. I found a ton of different techniques, but the one I liked best was what one blogger called the accidental technique. Meaning who hasn't accidentally felted a wool sweater by machine washing it? Well, I hadn't, actually, but I got the gist of the process:

Put the wool items in a pillow case to avoid wool fibers mucking up your washer. Set the machine on the lowest water setting, the highest agitation setting and the hottest water setting. Toss the pillow case in the machine start the cycle and check on it every 5-10 minutes. Easy enough! I had to restart the cycle a few times to get the coasters to shrink to the size that I wanted:

They looked a little like wool fortune cookies.

Then I steam ironed them flat and let them dry under some heavy books:

And now here they are - cute as little woolen buttons!

I might still sew a water-resistant backing on them and maybe lanolize. But I am really happy with how they turned out!

Video Day!

2010-11-11T15:37:00.000-05:00

Here are some really fun videos of my little walker and talker! Like any good mom, I make Lucy parrot things for my own entertainment.

Walker!

Talker!

Family Photos!

2010-11-08T10:17:00.002-05:00

Nicole Pavey rocks! She is a family photographer in Fairfax, VA who has done photos for us the last 2 years. I hear you asking - "Jenny, why are you going all the way to Fairfax?". Excellent question! Last year I was looking for a photographer to do some newborn shots of Lucy. We found Nicole on Craigslist. She was advertising a special and I checked out her blog. The photos were beautiful, she was offering an amazing price, AND she was moving her studio, so she would come to US! We booked a session...and then we all ended up getting sick. We sadly missed that glorious window for newborn photos where the baby will just sleep and let you dress them up as a bear or a bunny or Diana Ross, drape them in bows and put them in baskets with fresh market produce, all for the sake of a few photos. We ended up booking a family session instead several weeks later and she was just wonderful! We walked around outside and got some nice candid shots:

Went to her studio back to her studio:

Believe it or not, this wasn't posed!

We got some perfect Christmas card shots:

And 2 of my favorite photos of all time:

So when we decided to get more photos this year, we went right back to Nicole! She has been super flexible about scheduling our shoot - our work schedule is always a little crazy, and this has been the cold season from hell. She is closing in on the last month of her own pregnancy, but she gamely followed up around, set us up on bridges and rocks, posed and snapped, clicked and captured some really sweet moments. The only thing we didn't like was our own choice of outfits:-) I just love the fall colors, and Kevin finally has his long-desired family shot of us all under a bright fall-colored tree!

Nicole Pavey Photography

Right now she is only newborn photos and a few high school senior shots. We were her last family photo shoot before her maternity leave...something about not wanting to chase families around with a 37 week baby belly **shrug**, but I just love her work so much, so here's my shout out to Nicole Pavey Photography.

Such a big girl!

2010-11-07T18:42:00.002-05:00

Lucy is growing up so fast! Such a big girl I have now.

She can take a few steps by herself now! (I can't believe how exciting that development was to watch. I mean MOST people can walk - what is so special about watching a drunken sailer-esque child learn to do what everyone does without thing? I dunno, but it's awesome.)

She can sign up a storm (I think she uses 20 or 25 different signs, in context and with intent).

All this signing hasn't hampered her vocabulary development. She can say a ton of words in her adorable little baby voice (Mama, Dada, hat, up, no, yes, iPod, hot, ice, meow, ruff, down, apple, outside, all done, octopus, socks, switch sides (a nursing thing..:-), shoes, leaves, tree, cheese, keys...actually those last four might all be the same word...).

She can take all her clothes off (this is not as exciting a development).

She can drink out of a regular cup (uh...closely supervised and only containing water).

She can put her own hat on...

Zom-babEEE

2010-11-01T13:09:00.000-04:00

Heheh.

A Few Pictures

2010-10-18T15:06:00.000-04:00

I have been dreadful about updating here. Things have been really busy, and everytime I am sitting still...I am knitting something instead of writing something. I think I might have a problem.

We had a fun visit from our friends from North Carolina! Here are some pics of the girls playing together.

Mind if I sit here?

Coffee Table Fun!

Try this puzzle piece - very tasty.

Baby K finds a comfy spot to sit and read.

Are you gonna eat these peaches?

What?

Shake that booty!

Just chillin' with Mama's iPod

Hi!

Blueberries at the park.

Notes from the Road

2010-10-09T09:09:00.001-04:00

I meant to write this post a week ago when I actually was on the road...but life sort of got in the way and here I am a week later just now having the time to get my thoughts in order.

Oh well.

So I just took my first overnight Capitol Steps trip since before Lucy was born. I was a little nervous about leaving her overnight - ALL ALONE (umm...you know, except her Daddy), without her MAMA! What was she going to DO??? Well, she was going to be absolutely fine, that's what she was going to do. So I may or may not have shed a tear or two as I kissed Lucy goodbye and gave Grandma and Grandpa some last minute (totally unnecessary, I am sure) instructions, locked the door behind me and got into my car. So I'm a sap.

But then a funny feeling overtook me. I really couldn;t place it until I was at Starbucks 10 minutes later getting my Iced Chai Tea Crack and breakfast wrap for the road. I gathered my food and beverage and was about the hightail it out and get back into the car to get on the road. I stopped and thought "Wait a minute". No one needed me ALL DAY. I didn't have to be anywhere until 5:30 that evening. My drive was only 3.5 hours. I could sit and read the paper if I wanted to. It was only 9:00 am! It was then that I identified the feeling:

Autonomy.

I could do whatever I pleased, without asking anyone if they needed me, if it was okay, if they had something to do that required me to be around. I won't call it "freedom" because I don't actually feel "unfree" (enslaved?) in my everyday life. I just feel - and with good reason - that I have to clear my schedule with others before I am can do what I want/need. So this feeling of absolute autonomy was a revelation. A really good one.

So I sat and read the paper. Ate my food, drank my drank. And when I was ready, I got back into my car and began my drive.

So the ability to make unilateral decisions about where to eat my scone notwithstanding, I had a number of fairly ridiculous revelations on this brief 30 hour trip to Christopher Newport University.

One. If you are at Starbucks, and your order starts with "I just want..." you CANNOT continue by saying "...a venti, quad, two pump vanilla, room for cream, no foam, extra hot cappuspresso in a personal cup." This is not an exaggeration. I may have gotten some of the components of this uber-drink wrong, but I swear the man went on ordering for 30 full seconds. "I just want..." is reserved for "a small decaf" or "a medium peppermint tea". You can't even say "I just want..." and use the official Starbucks lingo for drink sizes. It just doesn't go. This wasn't so much a revelation as the crystalization of a universal truth.

Two. My car CD player has a shuffle setting. For the last month I have been dealing with my CD player annoyingly going to from track 4 to, say, track 18 for no apparently good reason. I first discovered it when my mom gave me an audiobook on CD to listen to. I love a good audiobook. This one was not really great, mostly because it was written about high tech stuff and the internet...in 1998. So to say it was dated is an understatement. Anyway, I pop the CD in and am dismayed to notice it skipping around randomly from track to track, making the already fairly dull story incomprehesible. I couldn't figure it out, so I just manually moved the tracks forward and chalked it up to a faulty CD. When I was driving to Newport News, it was happening again. When I had heard the same song 4 times in an hour because the "CD was messed up", I happened to glance down at the display and saw the letters RAND underneath the track display. It was highlighted. "RAND?" I thought, "What does RAND...wait a minute..." Random. I pressed the button under the RAND and amazingly, the CD was no longer messed up. I have had this car for 6 years. My powers of observation are sharp as a tack. Of course if you are under 25 you are probably thinking "Why didn't you just play your iPod?"

Three. My phone takes video! Kevin sent me a video of Lucy eating dinner (SO CUTE!). I played it for everyone in the cast. And at some point I said "I wish MY phone took video"! T says "your phone plays video but doesn't take it? Weird." This gets me exploring a little. In about 12 seconds I have found the menu that takes me to the video setting. So yeah. My phone takes video. I have had this phone for 3 years. And yes. I have had the same phone for 3 years. Don't judge.

My laptop has an SD card reader. My camera battery died. I was irritated that I had to charge my the battery before uploading photos by using the apparently archaic and virutally barbaric method of a mini USB cable. I did a little exploring...and wait! Could this little slot on the front of my laptop - could that possibly be a card reader??? Why yes, it is! An SD card reader! Right there! I don't have to go looking for the USB cable? What??!? Too good to be true! I have had this laptop for 2 years.

I did the show in Newport News. I ordered a glass of wine. I watched TV. I slept for 10 hours. I got room service for breakfast. At 11 am I checked out of the hotel. I stopped at Starbucks (I just want...), I sat and read the paper...but I was starting to feel the autonomy slipping away. I missed my little girl. I missed my hubby. They were expecting me at home aometime around 3:00.

And you know what? It was good to know.

I Have a Weird Baby

2010-10-01T15:44:00.001-04:00

There are some things in life you just have to acknowledge. My daughter is weird. Not in a "poor-thing- have-you-seen-a-doctor" kind of way. More like a "what-are-you-doing-now-you-little-goofus" kind of way.

For instance:

She likes to wrap things around her neck. I have watched as she wraps her shirt around her neck. I have watched as she wraps her socks around her neck...to the best of her ability, anyway, her socks being very short. More things she wrapped around her neck: my socks, Kevin's socks, her diapers, her diaper covers, random pieces of cloth, yarn, her jacket, spaghetti noodles, baby wipes, paper, magazines, and any number of floppy stuffed animals. There are even more things she has attempted to wrap around her neck, but due to their blind obediance to the laws of physics, they have refused to be wrapped. Such as: books, shoes, drumsticks (the ones used for playing drums, not chicken legs...though if she weren't vegetarian, I dare say she's have chicken grease on her neck), cups, various pieces of molded plastic (such as her driving toy, her rain stick, and the Alphabet Snail), my cell phone, the remote control and my iPod.

She likes the have wind blowing in her face. She's like a puppy that way. She has a little toy that blows air to rotate 3 levels of stacking donuts (its hard to describe baby toys sometimes...). She prefers to take all the stackers off and hold the base up to her face to feel the faux breeze. She gleefully signs "more" if I blow in her face.

Speaking of being like a puppy...she loves to chew on my shoes. I mean, could she pick anything more disgusting to chew on? Ugh. I suppose if she were chewing on her diapers.

She likes to make a funny little scrunched-up-nose face and puff and blow like she's trying to blow a booger out of her nose. She finds this very VERY funny. If you say "Lucy, what are you doing??", she'll stop, look at you, cock her head to the side and raise her palms up as if to say "I dunno, Mama!"

She doesn't mind being alone...unless I leave to go to the laundry room. She SCREAMS with either fear or anger when I head down the hallway without her. It's like she's afraid I'll get lost in the huge mountain of unwashed clothes and never come back. Actually, I'm afraid of that, too. So maybe it isn't that weird.

She likes to snuggle books. Books. Not stuffed animals or dolls. Books. I suppose I should be happya t her thirst for knowledge, but I am still not convinced you can learn the contents of a book through osmosis, despite my many attempts at this during college. She likes to eat them, too, but that's pretty normal, I think.

Speaking of books, the enjoys "reading" them to herself. She'll sit and turn the pages while animatedly talking (sometimes out and out screaming) and smacking the pages. Now I read her books with many different voices. And I also point out the different things on each page. So I think that she is making fun of me. Either that or I need to tone down my interpretation of Perfect Piggies by Sandra Boyton.

She will spend a great deal of time throwing a toy over the baby gate and then picking it up through the bars. Over and over and over and over again. And over again. And over. And over. Again.

Right now, my weird little girl is shaking a jingling stuffed animal while yelling at the toy box. Occasionally she'll giggle and do a little boogie woogie dance with her butt. I am sure she has a good reason for it. I am just sad that by the time she is old enough to articulate her reasoning, she won't remember why it was so much fun in the first place.

Lucy's Birthday Extravaganza Part I

2010-09-09T11:11:00.001-04:00

We decided to have a small family party for Lucy this coming Saturday. We thought the grandparents would have more fun if they had the baby mostly to themselves. For that party we have my parents, Kevin's parents, my brother older Jason and his wife Nancy, their two girls Abby and Charlotte, my younger brother Jon and his girlfriend Nita. Small, compared to say, Christmas, when we have our ENTIRE family together (1 daughter, 4 parents, 6 siblings, 3 spouses, 2 neices, and any significant others that are brave enough to tag along).

But, thought I in my ignorance, what about Lucy's little friends?? What about all my new mama friends? Shouldn't we have a playdate or something on her actual birthday so she can celebrate with all her little friends and I can celebrate with all my friends? I mean, we got through a WHOLE YEAR without inflicting any lasting damage on our baby! Well, any that we know about, anyway. So I decided to have a playdate on her birthday and invite some of my new mama friends and their little ones. And some of my old friends with their older children. And hey, why not open it up to their spouses if they are free on a random Wednesday afternoon? And then there is that neighborhood mom I haven't met yet, but I am desperate to meet moms in my area, so I'll invite her too!

So we ended up with 19 people at our house. We had Shannon and Liam (13 months), Corinne and Ethan (14 months), Kimberley and Simon (4 years), Edwin (2 years) and Aris (2 years), Lindsey and John with Cieran (4 years) and Ceinwyn (10 months), Adrianna and her mom with Natalia (15 months), and Leslie and Lyla (16 months). We were expecting 2 more, but they had a bad nap day and couldn't make it, and three others said they might be there. It was a full house. It was SO MUCH FUN!!!!!

Preparing for her guests...by brushing her teeth...

The birthday (cup)cake!

Eddy and Simon showing off their birthday present

Sweet Baby Ceinwyn.

Backyard pool fun

Lyla in the water

Ethan on the run! LOVE the wetsuit!

This is right before she gets sprayed in the face with the water spout:-)

Liam with his Cool Kids hat on!

Lucy had SO MUCH FUN getting thrown through the sprinkler!

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...okay, so did Mama:-)

WEEEEE!

Smiley baby!

The water table provided fun for the big kids...but Lucy wanted to get in on the act!

So serious...

Happy Corbetts

Lucy tearing it up

Birthdays are fun, Mama...but it is bedtime yet?

One Year Ago Today

2010-09-08T01:01:00.001-04:00

Getting Excited!

2010-08-21T19:08:00.001-04:00

Lucy is going to be a year old soon! My GOODNESS how this year has flown by!! I just can't believe it. I was sort of dreading the whole first birthday party thing. I didn't want to feel like I had to have a huge party for a baby, but I also want to celebrate the fact that we managed to survive our first year as parents. Kevin wanted to keep it just family, I wanted to invite all my mama friends and Lucy's little play buddies - who I am pretty sure she doesn't remember yet, but give her time!! I am pretty sure most of this has to do with making his parents comfortable...I believe they are slightly ochlophobic (afraid of crowds...which, ironically, we will have even if it is just family).

So we compromised. We would have the offical birthday party on the Saturday after her birthday and a birthday playdate on her actual birthday with my mama friends and their kids. So far the playdate is bursting at the seams with people! YIKES! It is on a weekday, so I assumed it would end up being small...I was mistaken!

I was going to totally keep it playdate-y only, with some snacks and birthday cupcakes, but now I am starting to think I might go overboard.

My little Belle at 4 weeks...

Getting bigger...3 months old

...and bigger...6 months...

...nine months...

...11 months...and counting!

RESTORE FREEDOM!

2010-08-16T14:06:00.002-04:00

I saw a bumper sticker today that got me so mad. It said "Restore Freedom! Fire Pelosi and Reid."

Now I am not in love with either of them. And I don't necessarily think Obama is a great president. I didn't want him as the Democratic candidate. I don't think he has been in office long enough to be a good or a bad president. He sort of inherited a crappy situation and is doing what he can (which, with the deadlocked Congress and partison bickering that are the hallmarks of Washington, is not too terribly much) to solve the substantial problems that this country has. Blah blah blah. That isn't my point.

My point is, how will firing two people in a vast beaurocracy do ANYTHING to restore freedom? Then I started looking at the other bumper stickers on this car. Anti-choice stickers. Anti-gay marriage stickers. Pro-W stickers. Okay, so WHOSE freedom do you want to restore? Your freedom to curtail other people's freedom? Your freedom to be a bigot? Your freedom to have a president in office who can wiretap you without a warrant? It just go me so mad.

WHY WHY WHY do people not understand that FREEDOM in this country means EVERYBODY'S freedom.

And yes, that means the freedom to do things you don't agree with. Let's take the abortion issue. I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-CHOICE. Just because I don't believe it is necessarily a good choice - and certainly not the best choice in many situations - doesn't mean I have the right to tell anyone what they can or can't do with their bodies. I don't want anyone to tell ME what I can or can't do with MY body (abortion, pregnancy, eating trans-fats, whatever). It seems to me that anti-choice advocates only call it a choice when people make the one that THEY would. Women are going to have abortions - right or wrong. At least with them legal, they can do so without rusty coat hangers and hack doctors in back alleys. And why in the world would many of these same people have a problem with birth control? Wouldn't having access to reliable birth control reduce the perceived need for abortions? Do these people really believe that we should just have as many babies as possible, financial, ecological, psychological consequences be damned? So now, not only do we not have the choice to end an unwanted pregancy, but we don't even have the choice to not get pregnant in the first place? What the hell? Didn't God give us free will? And if you have to CHOOSE to follow the path of righteousness for your own salvation, how is it worth anything if you have no choices to make? You can't legislate morality. You just can't.

How about gay marriage? I have a friend who recently married his partner. They are in a stable relationship. They love each other. He changed his name so they could feel like a family. They have engraved wedding rings. They have been together for years. They bought a house together. They are thinking of adopting children. Now my question is, how is this lovely man and his lovely husband doing anything to destablize the institution of marriage? MY marriage - shockingly, I know - has been not affected AT ALL by his marriage to his same-sex partner. Not one bit. The only difference is, they have to fight for the right to be at each other's bedside should one of them end up in the hospital. They have to fight for the right to be covered by the same insurance policy. They have to jump through hoops to make sure their property and assets don't go to some random relative when one of them dies. This is bullshit. They are human beings, living an authentic life true to the WAY THAT THEY WERE BORN. Homosexuality is not a choice or a lifestyle. It is who they are. So how is it right to tell them they are wrong or evil or not entitled to the rights that women and other minorities - hell, and redheads and the nearsighted and the people with birthmarks are entitled to? It just makes no sense to me at all. They are trying to live their life the way anyone else wants to in a land of supposed freedom.

I understand that most of these issues come back to religion. I understand that many people feel compelled to make other people in the world live by their standards. That, my friends, is crap. Everyone has their own moral yardstick, and it is not our freaking job to force ours on someone else. Feel free to proselytize - it is your right to say what you choose to whom you choose however annoying and intrusive I find it (First Amendment and all). But if people don't agree, you can't to force it on them. It is literally impossible. If you FORCE someone to do something, they are not choosing it in their heart. What value is there in that? It may have the desired physical effect (say a rape victim being forced to carry her rapist's child to term), but have you won any hearts to your cause? Almost certainly not. If anything, you have made a phsycologically scarred, or at least very angry enemy.

I don't happen to believe that people should be allowed to carry guns. But I am not going vandalize a gun-powners house, beat up his children, to go to anti-gun rallies or steal his guns in the middle of the night, because the right to bear arms is a Constitutional right and I respect that. Also, the people who don't agree with me all carry guns. But that's beside the point.

Incidentally, Jesus never said "Thou shalt hate the gays and take away their rights". Jesus ate with tax collectors and prostitutes. He healed with lepers. He loved those who hated him. He LOVED. LOVE. He didn't say "Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself - unless he is gay." Love, people. Love.

When are we going to understand that the cycle of violence and hatred that is ruling our world can never be overcome by more violence and hatred. Equal rights, freedom, choice, love. For everyone. That's all there is to it.

This was longer than I intended. It just makes me so mad that people can be so hateful. I realize I extrapolated a lot just from a few bumper stickers and I am as guilty many of the people I rail against. I am very intolerant of other people's intolerance.

Also, Pelosi is fun to make fun in The Capitol Steps, so that in and of itself is an argument to keep her around.

Say Cheese!

2010-08-10T13:59:00.000-04:00

I am a YogaKids teacher. I teach yoga to kids ages 2 years to 10 years. It is awesome in many many ways. Today reminded me why!

We were doing a class about colors and the first color we were doing was RED (it being the first color of the rainbow). So the pose we were doing was the fire engine pose. Now, I fully understand that there is no such thing as the fire engine pose in traditional hatha yoga. But YogaKids is not about tradition. It is about playing yoga, learning to move and control your body, exploring themes using yoga as a spring board and - most of all - having fun. We adapt traditional poses to be more fun and engaging. Kids - especially 2 year olds - don't hold yoga poses. So I often find ways to trick them into it without them ever knowing what good things they are doing for their bodies. For instance, when we do boat pose, we sing Row Row Row Your Boat. Then we do the second verse and hold the pose a second time while singing "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. If you see a crocodile don't forget to scream!" Screaming and laughter ensues and the kids have done 2 sets of a difficult pose for about 20 second each. Some adults won't even do this.

So back to the fire engine pose. It is actually Dandasana with Paschimottanasana or the Rod Pose with Seated Forward Fold. This is not a well-loved pose. So what we do is we drive our fire engine ("walking "on our bums) to the fire, hit the brakes (forward fold time!) and put out the fire. I will spray the "hose" and the kids roll over into Plow Pose...or some childish variation thereof.

Before we take off on this fire-fighting adventure, we buckle out seat belts. CLICK. We reach up tall and grab our imaginary steering wheels out of the sky. The I say, "Now, we need one more thing to start our fire engine! What do we put in the ignition to start a car?"

In unision, 14 excited little faces said "CHEESE!"

Yes, that's rights, my sweet little YogaKids. We need our cheese to start the car.

Stuff I Learned from Being a Mama #3

2010-08-06T09:00:00.002-04:00

Part 1 Prenatal Stuff I learned
Part 2 Labor, Delivery, Postpartum stuff I learned

So here is the last part (for now) in my First Year Survival Guide. Or Stuff I Learned from Being a Mama THAT NO ONE EVER FREAKING MENTIONED BEFOREHAND! This is what I have gleaned from these last 11-odd months with a growing, changing, demanding, wonderful, funny, frustrating little being. I know there is so much more to learn, for both of us. But here are some been-there-done-that things I wish I had known about before being in the thick of it.

Don't read parenting books. Seriously. They only served to convince my sleep deprived brain that I was doing everything wrong and I was a bad mom. Oy. If I could go back and change one thing, I would never read a single book on parenting techniques, parenting philosophies or sleep issues. I had sleep book overload. They all contradict each other and even baldly write that the other books and their authors are full of crap. Nice. And the worst part was, nothing we ever did ever changed the fact that Lucy was a frequent night waker. Some babies are natural sleepers, some are not. Eventually she outgrew the waking every 2-3 hours thing. She still doesn't sleep ALL the way through, but is usually only up once.

Letting your baby "Cry it out" is very very very hard (and should NEVER be done with a baby under 4 months old). When I wrote this post a few weeks ago, Lucy was still waking at night. I finally hit a wall. I could no longer function on only 2-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I had nothing left to give - to my daughter, my husband or myself. So we shut her door and didn't go back til morning. This was not in my original parenting plan, and it was the hardest thing I have ever done. It took about 5 nights. The first two were AWFUL. 2-3 hours of screaming. I had to will myself not to go running in to comfort her. The third night, she barely peeped at her usual wake-up times. The fourth night, even less peeping. The fifth night there was more screaming, but only 45 minutes. The sixth night (and most nights since then) - 11 1/2 straight hours of sleep. So it can work. It is hard.  It feels cruel. But we are all getting more sleep now, and we are all happier for it.
I also didn't realize that "sleeping through the night" for a baby means 5-6 hours. Not my own personal definition of sleeping through, but that is what the experts all say.

Don't ask other parents of young babies about when their baby reach such and such a milestone (er, especially sleep). It led to me being extremely disappointed when Lucy didn't sleep through at 3 months or 13 lbs or 16 weeks or 18 lbs, or whatever everyone else said. Your baby is your baby and will do just exactly what your baby is going to do.  I really REALLY wish I had just accepted that and not bothered asking anyone else what their baby was doing. "Does he/she sleep through the night?" is absolutely the cruelest question you can ask a new parent. And really, can't you just tell from how they look? A mama with purple bags under eyes and a fresh-from-the-grave-zombie look does NOT have a baby who sleeps through the night.

Don't rub it in if you do have a baby who sleep through the night. If someone asks you that question (especially the fresh-from-the-grave-zombie-looking mama), you can say "She's a decent sleeper" or "He does okay most nights". It's kinder that way.

Everyone has their different issues. Lucy's was (and to some extent still is) sleep. But she wasn't colicky, she didn't have reflux, she was a good eater. So even if Super Mom has the Amazing Mircle Sleeper, that mircle sleeper might be a screaming demon half the day where you have the angel baby who never cries.

Milestones are placed at different intervals for all babies. Focus on yours, not on anyone elses, or where the experts say a particular milestone should be. In that same vein, some babies are just more interested in on set of skills than another. Just the way you are intersted in yoga and your husband is interested in motorcycle racing. Until he gets himself killed, that is. Then he won't like anything. Not every "missed" milestone is cause for concern. For example, Lucy could feed herself large chunks of whatever I put in front of her by 7 1/2 months old, but was still dragging herself on her belly to get around. My friend's baby was still exclusively eating purees at that age, but could crawl like a speed demon. **shrug** They do what they are gonna do at their own pace.

Don't forget to eat.

Put down that parenting book. I'm not joking. Consulting a book for a specific problem might be okay, but trying to align yourself with one philosophy or another makes it that much more difficult when something recommended by "the experts" doesn't work. I found the best thing I could do was ask other moms in a online forum what their experiences were and if they had any tips. Sometimes they recommended a particular book or author, but more often, they told me what they did and how it worked. I found this to be much more practical.

Do your babyproofing way too early. Have a friend's toddler come check it out for you. MUCH easier than babyproofing while trying to corral a zippy little crawler.

Tracey Hogg (the self-described Baby Whisperer) is sort of crazy. Don't take her breastfeeding advice. Some of her scheduling ideas and her sleep advice are good, but otherwise, I would steer clear. Plus she calls her readers "ducky". As in "Take my advice, ducky, and you'll have a perfect baby who never cries and sleeps through the night at 2 days old. Plus you've already made a lot of mistakes, ducky, so stop being a crappy mum and do what I say." Okay, she never said that, but she does call her readers ducky.

Join or start a mom's group for moms with babies the same age as yours.  I walked my neighborhood for months and never ran into another mom.  I know they are out there, but I would have made no mom friends witout the group I found at http://www.meetup.com/ . I am so grateful for the women I have met.

Don't forget that you LOVE your partner and you were a couple before you were parents. Kevin and I have a rule when we go out together that we only talk about Lucy in the car on the way to wherever we are going. It was hard to follow at first, but it makes our time out without Lucy about us rather than about her.

The days drag. They really do. Sometimes I find myself wishing it were naptime. It is hard to find time to do things outside the house, let alone join in any scheduled activities, when your baby only has a MAXIMUM of two hours of really good, happy awake time. So I just try to remember how fast the months are flying. Soon enough we'll have all morning to go to playdates and take yoga classes and swimming lessons and baby macrame and baby jujitsu and baby Japanese cooking classes. Soon enough. Right now, she's happy puttering in the house or in the yard or taking the occasional outing to the fountain in downtown Silver Spring. It is much less stressful than trying to take a full courseload of classes with less value for her than for me. Plus she can't even get college credit for them til she's out of diapers.

On that note, you are not required to sign your baby up for any classes at all. They are more for you than for her. A reason to get out of the house. This, of course, is enormously valuable...if it is not a huge, stressful struggle to get to them every week. I have found that almost all baby classes, storytimes and activities are scheduled smack-dab in the middle of Lucy's morning naptime. This makes getting her to class a juggling act I am not willing to perform. I sort of feel like I should be out there with her everyday, taking music and yoga and mommy 'n' me classes, but I try to remember that not taking her to these things does not make me a bad parent. Perhaps I am lazy. Fine. But I am not stressed and Lucy is perfectly happy. So whatever. Of course if DADDY wants to sign her up for a class and leave me alone in the house every week, I would be all for it!

So that's it. Everything I know. There are major gaps in my knowledge. I look forward to filling them in as Lucy gets bigger and even more fun. I love being a mom and I love having a teacher as sweet as my little girl.

What do you know now that being a mom has taught you? What blindsided you? What did you see coming a mile away? Tell me tell me tell me!

Unsettled

2010-08-04T19:12:00.001-04:00

I had a dream last night that sort of freaked me out. I was in the hospital having a baby and the nurse said something was going wrong and they had to do a c-section. They didn't say what was going wrong, just that they wanted to get the baby out ASAP. So I said yes. I went through a pretty brutal surgery that probably bears no resemblance to an actual c-section. Or god, I hope it doesn't! I'll spare you the details, but it included kitchen scissors, twine and a shovel. Then they told me that I didn't actually need the c-section, but it was just so much quicker. I confronted the nurse and/or doctor (it was pretty vague, in the way dreams are vague) and I told her that I would never forgive her for what she made me do.  SHe just said over and over "I is so much quicker!" I don't remember there being a baby anywhere in sight. I do remember thinking "I was going to have my baby at HOME! Why did I go to the hospital?"

I woke up all weirded out. Now, I am not pregnant (that I know of, anyway) and I don't have any bad associations with my daughter's birth. Lucy WAS born at home, just like we planned, and I have only positive, glowy feelings about the whole affair.

So why the dream? I think it is because I am a member of The Unnecesarean, I Gave Birth At Home. Not Brave. Not Crazy. Just Educated., and a number of other home birth/natural birth type pages and blogs. I have sort of been innundated with it all since Lucy was conceived, and the obsession I have had with birth in general has not really subsided since Lucy was born.

I have started to ask myself if there is a reason for this. Am I supposed to be having tons more homebirth babies? Hah. Try getting my husband to agree to ONE more, let alone tons more. Am I supposed to be training to be a midwife? A doula? A childbirth educator? I just don't know.

I feel like I had such a good experience with my midwives and with my Hypnobabies course that I SHOULD be passing that information on. Too many women are afraid of childbirth. Too many women schedule their c-section to just get it overwith, not really thinking of the fact that c-section is a MAJOR abdominal surgery. So many people have it done that I feel like the risks are sort of glossed over since it is so completely commonplace. No big deal. But there are risks. Major risks. Not to mention tht fact that you then have to deal with recovering from major surgery while taking care of a newborn.

And childbirth is a rite of passage. It is truly nothing to be afraid of. I feel like moms should have a birthday celebration on the day of their first baby's birth. Not for the baby - but for themselves. Mothers are born when babies are born and that is a major rite of passage that I have never heard of being celebrated in our culture. In fact, when my next baby is born, I am going to have a belated Mama's Birth Day cake for me:-)

The ready access to drugs, the assumption that childbirth is going to be the worst pain imaginable, and the media portrayal of childbirth as a running-down-the-halls-screaming-clutching-your-belly emergency has made so many women forget that it is a normal, natural process that the body knows how to complete. Ina May Gaskin said in one of her books that childbirth is a natural process no more likely to go wrong than, say, digestion. Not that things don't ever go wrong - because obviously that is not the case - but generally speaking, they go according to plan - if allowed to unfold naturally. I think because the stakes are so high and the end result is so life-changing people want the comfort of medical supervision.

But it is often that very supervision that causes the disfunction of the process, leading to more and greater interventions. An induced labor is not natural. The contractions don't ebb and flow like they do in spontaneous labor. They shoot straight up to a peak and drop off. Natural contractions "wind up". They start slow, build to a peak and taper off. It is sort of like a fist closing slowly but tightly, and then relaxing. These are much easier to deal with. You have some warning. You can breath and relax in anticipation. They are are not as strong in general, so they are easier on the baby.

Current research suggests that some labor interventions make a c-section more likely. For example, labor induction among first-time mothers when the cervix is not soft and ready to open appears to increase the likelihood of cesarean birth. Continuous electronic fetal monitoring has been associated with greater likelihood of a cesarean. Having an epidural early in labor or without a high-dose boost of synthetic oxytocin ("Pitocin") seems to increase the likelihood of a c-section
         (Childbirth Connection)

As you all know, Lucy was born at home.  I chose a homebirth because I hate hospitals. Hospitals are for sick people. And I am blindly obediant to doctors. I doesn't matter if I have a gut feeling one way or another about something. I don't ask questions, I don't question orders and I KNOW this about myself.

Here is an example. A few years ago, I had an IUD inserted. I went to a new GYN for the procedure. She had never met me before. She knew next to nothing about me. I knew, from my own research, that she should have ordered a blood test to screen for any STDs or conditions that could potentially make inserting an IUD dangerous. She didn't mention it. I had been in an exclusive relationship for over a year, and neither of us had anything that we knew about, certainly no symptoms of anything untoward, and we were exclusive. So I didn't say anything. I assumed she knew what she was talking about better than me, even though I knew from everything I had read that if I had anything from a yeast infection to assymptomatic chlamydia, I could get a potentially life-threatening infection. And that is what happened. Two days after the IUD was inserted, it fell out. The doctor just put a new one in. That in and of itself could have caused an infection. A week later, I started getting pains in my upper abdomen. Then I got the period from hell. I was bleeding like a stuck pig - literally. I use a Keeper - which holds an ounce of mentrual blood. I was emptying it every 30-45 minutes when a normal flow is about .5-1oz every 12 hours. Then I got a fever. Then the pains were so bad I couldn't take a breath without crying. I couldn't eat.  I couldn't sleep. No amount or strength of pain medication could help. They brushed me off at the emergency room as having indigestion (?!?) and sent me home - twice, even though I said "I have and IUD, I am bleeding heavily, and I am in a lot of pain". The ER doctors actually called my primary care physician (who I LOVE, by the way, and is a wonderful, caring, sensitive doctor) and asked if I was a complainer or hypochondriac. I was finally admitted to the hospital on suspected appendicitis after 2 weeks of a steadily deteriorating condtion. I was diagnosed with a raging case Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) that had infected the lining of my liver (thus the upper abdominal pain) and caused my gall bladder to spasm (which, incidentally, was about 1000 times more painful than childbirth - and no one once offered me an epidural for THAT).  By that time, my period from hell was STILL going, and I had lost so much blood that they couldn't find a vein to rehydrate me. They almost resorted to sticking the IV in my NECK. My red blood cell count was so low that my enormously elevated white blood cell count looked normal in comparison. I was in the hospital for 8 days. I had a week of IV triple antibiotics, several months of residual pain, and chronic tendonitis in my hips (which is a rare side effect of the antibiotics). My "doctor" - and I use the term loosly - never cultured the infection, so we never knew what caused it. She never recommended that my partner be treated, too, which absolutely should have been done since many PID cases are the result of bacteria traveling into the upper reproductive track - which is what happened when she inserted not one but TWO IUDs. Three months later I had a recurrence - requiring more antibiotics - because my partner hadn't been treated the first time and we reinfected each other with whatever bacteria had caused the initial infection. Horrible. Painful. Scary - not only could the infection have gone septic, but it was entirely possible that I would be completely sterile from the scar tissue and adhesions that would probably form in my tubes and uterus from such a prolonged infection. And all of this happened because I didn't speak up and say "I read that you should have a blood test to make sure there are no latent infections - I would feel more comfortable if we did that first". That and an incompetent doctor. Fortunately I had no problems conceiving my daughter and the only residual reproductive effects was more shocking pain when the adhesions around my liver started to really stretch out at around the 30th week of my pregnancy.

Let me reiterate - I am not a doctor-hater. I would be dead without my oncologist (I had thyroid cancer in 1998). I would be dead without my primary care doctor's perserverence to get me into the hospital - even making a phony diagnosis to get someone to take me seriously. What I hate is that I don't question them. I hate that, though I AM an informed consumer, I don't have the confidence to DO anything about it. I do not stand up for myself in the face of someone with years of medical training and an "I know what's best for you" demeanor.

So what I needed was to stay in control of my birth experience without having to fight for it. I knew my midwives would tell me if things were going awry well before a problem occured and get me to a hospital if I needed it. I trust them. They know me, they know my husband, they know my home. They came to me for everything. no one ever wagged their finger at me or used scare tactics to get me to do something I wasn't comfortable with. And I got to crawl into my own bed after my marathon labor and sleep next to my husband. It was wonderful. It was empowering and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Here's the full story if you are interested.

So I am re-examining my calling in life. I know that becoming a doula or a midwife will require me to rethink a lot of things about my life. Like, do I ever want to be a real actor again? Do I want to keep teaching yoga to children? Do we have room for a new crazy career in our already chaotic house full of crazy careers? Is this all a passing obsession that will disintegrate when Kevin and I decide we're not having anymore kids?

So many questions...lots of soul searching to do...

And that dream totally freaked me out. Even more than the one I had where babies had to be stuffed back into their mom's belly every night to sleep. Ugh. Not funny at all.

Stuff I Learned from Being a Mama #2

2010-07-30T09:00:00.012-04:00

For the first in this series, go here. Also, TMI ahead.

So here's part 2. Stuff I learned during labor, delivery and postpartum.

Make sure you have a birth plan and make sure your caregiver has seen it before hand. I didn't really need one since "home birth" sort of implies everything I would have put in a birth plan, but if you are going to a hospital, know what you want and make sure everyone there with you knows, too. This includes informing the staff if you plan to breastfeed.

"We think the baby is too big" is not a good reason to induce. Weight estimates taken by ultrasound are notoriously inaccurate. A friend was told she had a baby too big for her pelvis - over 10 lbs in all probability - so she scheduled an induction. Wound up with a c-section and a 6lb 6oz baby. Nature knows best. My midwife said "I have never seen a baby NOT come out". Unless there is a medical PROBLEM, there does not need to be an induction. It is harder on the mom (contractions just take off into the stratosphere instead of gradually build to a peak) and harder on baby, which can lead to more interventions and complications, etc. etc...

Your estimated due date is just that - an ESTIMATE. Not an expiration date.

Less than 10 minutes before
Lucy's birth - still smiling!

You just don't know what you are going to want, what you are going to do, or how you are going to act during labor. Be flexible. That being said, you have the choice to allow it to be a horrible experience by being scared and tense. Or you can choose to allow it to be peaceful and gentle. Your mind is a powerful, POWERFUL thing. Believing that something is going to be pleasant, easy and uncomplicated goes a long way to creating that experience. I imagined the sensations of labor as pressure and opening, not pain. I imagined my cervix opening, actually saying "open" and "peace" during pressure waves. I grabbed onto the mantra "The wave always breaks" and said it over and over through deep breaths. And it did always break. It always passed. It was intense. It was challenging. And it was fine! Another mantra I remember repeating over and over was "You CAN do it, you ARE doing it..." I did a Hypnobabies class and actually had no pain during labor. Yes, that it correct. No pain during labor. Now it wasn't 100% comfortable, but I had no sensations that I would have called PAIN. And how did I achieve this improbable feat? I trained my mind to believe that labor was not going to be painful. And my mind believed me, so my body believed me.

The house was so quiet, calm and dark.
Perfect

Ask for what you need.

Eat. Drink. You need your strength.

A waterbirth is AMAZING. I would have stayed in that tub for the full 50 hours if I didn't need to stretch my legs occasionally.

Sing. It relaxes the jaw, which in turns helps to open the cervix. Ina May taught me that. Also, singing made me feel less like a moaning cow and more like the awesome, powerful birth goddess I was.

Pushing Lucy out

Everything - EVERYTHING - can wait till you have met your baby and held your baby and nursed your baby (if you so choose). Fight for it if you have to. It is the sweetest, most amazing moment you will ever have. Don't let anyone take it away to poke and prod and weigh and measure. It.Can.Wait.

Sewing up the tears hurt more than pushing the baby out. I'm just sayin'.

One thing that surprised me was how...disconnected I felt after that first heady moment holding Lucy. For a LOOONG time after Lucy was born I kept expecting her REAL parents to knock on the door and tell me they were there to pick up the baby that I had been watching for them. Not that I didn't love her and take care of her and feel the instinct to protect her...but it was just so WEIRD to have a baby. There was this total disconnect between the baby BUMP and the actual BABY. A friend of mine said after she pushed out her baby (no drugs, so she felt everything) they put it in her arms and she actually said "Whose baby is this?"

Your girlie parts will hurt. Get some rubber gloves and fill them with ice, wrap 'em in a washcloth and stick 'em right up there. Oh, you might also want to get a supply of cheap washcloths.

It might take a week (or more) for you to take a shit. And it will be more painful than giving birth. And I hear you can't get an epidural for a bowel movement. Not one person ever told me this beforehand, but EVERYONE I have mentioned it to afterwards has said they had the same experience. All I could think of was "WHY THE HELL DID NO ONE EVER MENTION THIS??".

Maxi pads sprayed with witch hazel and put in the freezer feel SO GOOD on tender areas that have recently squeezed out a something the size of a large butternut squash.

40 week "belly"

Postpartum bleeding is nature's way of getting back at you for not having a period for nine months. It lasts a long time and sucks.

Pregnancy hormones are nothing compared to the postpartum hormone crash. I forgot things and cried a lot, was utterly elated and completely defeated, transported and feeling stuck - all within an hour of each other. It passes, so just take a deep breath. Talk to someone if you are feeling more than just a little blue.

It took a while to get over the "My God WHAT HAVE I DONE" feeling that settled over me when my midwives and parents all left. I don't think this happens to everyone, but it don't be surprised if it does. The enormity of my new job just swallowed me whole. It still does sometimes, but now it is more joyful and anticipatory as opposed to a feeling of being lost at sea.

My deflated baby belly was not nearly as depressing as everyone said it would be. Every time I looked in the mirror I just made a point of saying "You look pretty darn good, considering" and it really helped. However, that doesn't work anymore almost a year later:-).

Breastfeeding will seriously melt away the pregnancy pounds. Melted away like butter. Awesome.

First attempt at breastfeeding...
neither of us took to it right away

Breastfeeding might be hard. Don't give up!! Ask for help! See a lactation consultant! Go to LLL meetings! Talk to a friend! There are so many resources out there for breastfeeding mamas - USE THEM! It is so worth it. http://www.kellymom.com/ is a wonderful resource for all things breastfeeding. Lucy and I had just about every newborn breastfeeding issue imaginable (thrush, cracked nipples, mastitis, tight bite reflex, oversupply, etc). Every single day I would say "I will just do it for one more day. If it still hurts tomorrow, I'll quit." I am so glad I stuck it out. It is such a joy. Of course now my daughter is a boobaholic who will be impossible to wean, but that's another story.

It took me MONTHS to realize that most of the shocking pain I had for when Lucy latched on the first several weeks was not, in fact, an incorrect latch (well, mostly, we had some latch issues at first). It was the milk letting down. OUCH OUCH OUCH! I would feel it when she latched (new mama boobs are really sensitive to a baby suckling, as they should be), but also randomly throughout the day as my supply tried to regulate. I only realized this in retrospect when the sensation mellowed out to the gentle pins and needles feeling it is now. Milk letting down can really freaking hurt at first.

Lansinoh is okay, but chilled gel nursing pads feel really really nice.

Don't get a Belly Bandit. Worthless piece of uncomfortable (expensive) crap. A belly wrap is not a bad idea in theory, but this one was so uncomfortable. Plus if recently giving birth isn't an excuse to let it all hang out, I don't know what is.

Don't get an ItzBeen. All it will do is make you obsess over how little sleep you've gotten and how demanding your baby is. I remember looking at that thing and crying "But it's only been 45 minutes since she went to sleep!" It made a challenging situation into what felt like a crisis. If you must use something like this, don't use it for timing sleep. Seriously, trust me on this one. Newborns are not ones for keeping to a schedule, especially when it comes to sleep. Now, if you happen to have a miracle baby who is a great sleeper from day one, knock yourself out. It might be helpful when baby is older and you are trying to get them on a schedule.

I don't like parenting books. They have done very little besides make me feel like a bad mom who does everything wrong. That being said, The Happiest Baby on the Block would have been a lifesaver if we had discovered it when Lucy was a newborn. GREAT ideas and tips for calming a new baby (0-3 or 4 months).

Get a swaddler. The Miracle Blanket literally calmed Lucy down the minute she saw it. Well, most of the time.

Everyone says "sleep when the baby sleeps". This is good advice, in theory. In practice it doesn't hold up as well. not that you should take every opportunity available to sleep - God knows you'll need it - but when the baby is sleeping, you get to be JUST YOU for however long the little angel is sleeping. And this becomes increasingly important as the gravity and enormity of your newly-acquired job starts to sink in. So my advice is do something - anything - that makes you feel normal. Wash the dishes. Sit on the porch alone. Go get a pedicure. Have a friend meet you for coffee without the baby. Anything that makes you feel like a normal person will do. I remember putting clean sheets on the bed (while crying, incidentally)just to do something mundane and normal.

Get someone to come help you for a few hours every day for the first 2 weeks or so. This would be a good time to take a nap. I thought we would want to be alone, just me, Kevin and Lucy, for a while. I was wrong. I wanted to be with my new family, but I also wanted someone to make me dinner and get me ice and fill my water bottle and take the baby away for a while so I could sleep. Kevin was too tired to do all this himself, so I was only too glad to have my mom and dad there to help. Believe me, you will have plenty of time with the baby and your spouse.

It goes so fast. I know it is hard to enjoy something when you have not slept, but enjoy your tiny little miracle. They get so big so fast!

It is okay to cry for no reason. I spent a number of days wandering around the house crying. It was cathartic. A little pathestic, yes, but cathartic.

Don't try too hard to enforce a schedule. It will make you crazy. You can try to follow a loose routine - wake, eat, activity (like staring at a mirror and changing a diaper - newborns are PARTY ANIMALS!) and sleep, but don't expect things to be the same every day for a while. Go with that proverbial flow.

Sleeping when the baby sleeps...for once...

That being said, I had every intention of being a feed-on-demand mama. Of course, having never done this before, I totally misread hunger cues. Just because baby is crying, doesn't mean they are hungry. I am going to venture out on a limb here and say Lucy was not hungry every 45 minutes. But I fed her nearly every time she cried. Oh, my aching (cracked, bleeding) nipples. If I had been a little more savvy about hunger cues (rooting, turning face towards me, opening mouth when you tickle their cheek), I may have saved myself some pain and frustration. So while it is important, especially when breastfeeding, to feed a baby frequently, every 2 hours is probably a perfectly reasonable place to start. If they are fussy before then, it is probably not hunger.

A good thing to remember as your baby get a little older (from about 3 to 6 months) is that infants only have 90 minutes to 2 hours of happy-awake time. They need their sleep! That might mean 3 or 4 four naps in a day, depending on when they wake up in the morning. 90 minutes of awake time, down for a nap. Don't push it - if he yawns or rubs his eyes, get him down for a nap - by hook or by crook, in my opinion! I would accidentally let Lucy get really overtired and it started a vicious cycle of overtired baby not being able to sleep because she was so overtired. It is a really hard pattern to break. They say "sleep begets sleep" which is totally counterintuitive, but I have found it to be true. If Lucy takes good naps, she will sleep better at night. If her naps are crap, I know I am in for a long night.

Ask for help. Accept help. Seriously. You do not have to do it all.

The first six weeks are hard. They just are. They are magical, exciting, awe-inspiring and beautiful. But they are really hard. It will get better.

And then all of a sudden you'll wonder where a whole year went. I hear that someday I'll turn around and wonder when she could have possibly graduated college, since she was just a baby yesterday...

We Add Up - World Breastfeeding Week

2010-07-29T20:24:00.010-04:00

Facebook has all kinds of ads that plaster themselves on the sidebars of my profile page. They usually relate to something I am interested in - yoga, camping, mom stuff. Occasionally I get the odd "get your degree in accounting FAST" or "Congress on Facebook", but usually they are tailored remarkably well to my tastes and interests.

So of course I completely ignore them. For the most part. I have been known to glance at them, but only on two occasions have I ever actually clicked an ad. One of those times was about 10 minutes ago.

I am a t-shirt junkie. I teach YogaKids and so am always looking for appropriate, comfortable clothing in which to teach. It is hard to find any exercise-type clothes that allow the range of movement I need while not giving the kids an anatomy lesson. My go-to outfit is now a pair of loose-fitting yoga capris and a t-shirt layered over a long tank top. This ensures that my copious bosom will not peek out of the top of the t-shirt I wear, and that my racing stripes (read:stretch marks) won't pop out of the bottom. Thus the search for the perfect t-shirt.

Anyway, tonight I saw a red t-shirt reading BREASTFEED above the words "Next week is World Breastfeeding Week - be counted!". First off, I had NO IDEA there even WAS a World Breastfeeding Week . Go breastfeeding! I will be proudly popping the boob in Lucy's mouth all week in celebration.

So looking at this ad, I thought "Hey, I'm a breastfeeding mama! I'll blindly succomb to this tailored advertising!" So I clicked.

It was an ad for the We Add Up campaign to fight climate change.

Secondly, I had never heard of the We Add Up campaign. You choose a cause that is meaningful to you (Buy Local, Recycle, Compost, Plant Trees, Organic, etc). The shirt has a simple representative logo on the back along with the words to describe it, like BREASTFEED. Below that are the words "No one can do everything. Everyone can do something". I LOVE that sentiment, by the way. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the do's and don'ts of saving the world, but everyone can do something, however small. The front of the shirt has the words "We Add Up" and a number on it. Your number is unique (so they say, I'll never REALLY know I guess)

Here is what the site says about it:

We Add Up counts you in for your commitment to help solve the climate crisis. Each tee is custom hand printed with a unique number. YOUR number is your position in our global count of people adding up to make change.

Tees are 100% certified organic cotton and sweatshop-free.

Money from the sale is donated to that specific cause. You can choose to have carbon neutral shipping They'll use sustainable gift wrap (a cotton, logo-printed bag) if it is going to someone else. Pretty cool.

ANYWAY, I never thought of the environmental impact of breastfeeding. I totally support breastfeeding as the best for babies. I totally support breastfeeding as best for mamas. I totally support breastfeeding as way the f*ck cheaper than formula feeding. It never once crossed my mind that breastfeeding was also the most environmentally sound way to nourish your baby. Again, from the site:

If you're trying to decide between the breast or the bottle, also consider the environment. Lots of waste is created from the production of bottles and cans for formula, during the production of the formula itself, plus the carbon cost of transportation to get the formula from the factory to you. Whether this is a new commitment for you or something you've been passionate about for a while, by wearing this tee you are committing to help build our sustainable future.

How is it possible I never thought of this? Am I really that thick? I use cloth diapers for Lucy. I am a vegetarian for environmental reasons. We recycle every possible thing. We don't even use paper towels in our house for crying out loud! If ever there was a time that the word "Duh" was appropriate, this would be it.

So next week is WORLD BREASTFEEDING WEEK! Breastfeeding mamas unite! And We Add Up is really cool. Plus they have a t-shirt for stopping climate change by showering together. Another thing I never thought of...for saving the world, I mean.

New Babysitter

2010-07-29T13:09:00.000-04:00

Our wonderful babysitter JP is leaving to back to school. We are very sad. I have been putting off finding a new sitter as long as possible. I hate looking for sitters. Eveyone around here is a college student and I don't want to have to look for new sitter over the summer. We have 2 people coming over today to meet Lucy, but I sort of dread the thought of it. I feel like we can't possibly find someone as loving, fun and responsible as JP.

**sigh** Where's Mary Poppins when you need her?

The Tiny Diner

2010-07-26T13:42:00.004-04:00

I got one of these last week on my mom's recommendation. She saw a young mom with her baby using one in a restaurant and thought I might be interested. This was after witnessing Lucy's whirlwind of terror at a Chinese buffet restaurant over the fourth of July weekend. To me, this looked like one of those things that looks cool and useful, but turns out to be a waste of money. Initally I filed it under "another product the baby industry wants to sell me that is actually totally worthless." I had been burned by these products before. The Itzbeen being the most notorious example.

I was totally wrong! This thing is GREAT! I bought it after Lucy's case of Coxsackie Virus made me rethink my liberal policies about what goes in her mouth.

Here's the skinny:

It is made of what the manufacturer called "100% waterproof material". So I don't actually know specifically what it is made of. It feels like rubber, but there is no latex, PVC or phthalates. It is very sturdy feeling without being too stiff to roll up compactly.

Notice the eggs in the scoop instead of her lap

The actual surface area is just about perfect for my daughter's radius of destruction. There is a little pocket scoop that hangs over the edge of the table and catches the inevitable dropped food before it ends up on little laps or the floor (not that it will prevent your tiny diner from tossing food on the floor when they feel like it). It rolls up into the scoop, nice and tightly, for a compact addition to the diaper bag. You can also roll up a bib in it so you don't forget, as well as contain any mess on the trip home.

The suction cups stick really well to the table. And there are A LOT of them. Lucy did manage to pull one of them up (only one), but quickly lost interest in that game when they all didn't come flying off the table for her amusement.

It is advertised as top-rack dishwasher safe, but I haven't tried that yet. Today was the maiden voyage. If I end up with a melted pile of green, rubbery goo, I'll update this post accordingly.

The thing I would change would be to add some sort of rim around the edge. Not that it would keep her from her usual food-tossing, but it would keep the mess a little better contained when she resorts to food smearing to let us know she's finished. Even after all that work we do on baby sign language.

Looking a little more closely at this adorable picture of Lucy, I realize that she is SOOO TIRED! She slept late and her nap schedule got all out of whack, plus we were waiting FOREVER for our food at IHOP. Over an hour for eggs and pancakes. She went all giddy with relief when there was food on her plate. She got that manic, "I am so hungry and happy there is food here that I can't control myself" look I recognize in myself when I am both hungry and tired. She was literally laying her face on the table and shoveling the eggs into her mouth, while hugging anything that didn't fit in her hand. It was cute...but a little alarming.

Little Miss Sobersides

2010-07-24T10:08:00.000-04:00

My dad called Lucy Little Miss Sobersides. She is so SERIOUS! This is surprising since Kevin and I are literally comedians. I mean, LITERALLY, they pay us to make people laugh. And we can't get our 10-month-old to laugh. Oh the irony.

Once in a blue moon, I'll stumble on something that gives her the giggles. I keep at it until she is in hysterics! Oh the joy of a laughing baby! I stop, wait till Kevin is around then say "Hey, Kevin, LOOK!" and I'll do whatever silly trick or noise that was cracking her up mere hours - nay moments - before...and she might smile. Maybe. But she has to really be feeling generous. It is as if she is saying "Yeah, Mama, that was funny yesterday. Show me your new material."

But..but...I don't HAVE any new material Lucy! I thought belly-zerbert-lift-in-the-air-wiggle-tummy-back-flip-juggle-fire-stilt-walking WAS my new material! I am apparently just not that funny. I just hope she doesn't tell my boss.

Now, if you look closely at a lot of Lucy's serious pictures, you will see a glint of the silly in her eyes. I choose to believe that she is paying a long-running practical joke on us. One of these days, she will break out laughing for no reason at all. She'll tell us how she had such a hard time keeping a straight face that one time when I ran around the house with a dead chicken on my head singing The Star Spangled Banner in Japanese.

...But occasionally, Lucy's true nature is revealed and the silly breaks through no matter how hard she tries...

Fishing and Wishing!

2010-07-23T20:35:00.000-04:00

Chances are you have heard about my wool cover obessions. One of my Facebook friends reviewed a wool soaker for GrandmaGift11 on the Fishing and Wishing blog.

I am obsessed. I want more woolies. Thus, I am blogging about this for an extra entry:-) I have covered this topic before - cloth dipes vs. disposable and mu new found love of wool!

Here are my own attempts at knitting a wool soaker...you have to scroll past the afghan post. Here is my post on cloth diapers.

Stuff I Learned from Being a Mama #1

2010-07-23T14:52:00.007-04:00

My friend is having her first baby in September. I had my first baby last September. She recently asked me if I had any words of wisdom for her. My immediate reaction was "WISDOM? What wisdom? I am making this up as I go!" Of course, upon further reflection, I realize that IS a sort of wisdom. It is a trial-by-fire-in-the-trenches-let's-see-if-THIS-works kind of fearless (sometimes) experimentation that has yielded some good results. It has, admittedly, steered me wildly wrong a few times. But the path of parenthood seems to me to be an old-dirt-road-looking sort of thing. Lots of people have passed before me and the path is very well worn, but everyone takes a slightly different course and leaves a slightly different mark in their wake. Also it's bumpy.

So here it is. Everything that I have learned in the last 19 months since I conceived my daughter. Okay, not EVERYTHING, but some little tidbits that I wish someone had told me beforehand. I am also realizing how long-winded I can be, so this wil be first in a series.   Some of this might qualify as TMI. You have been warned!

PRENATAL ADVICE FOR MAMAS-TO-BE

You just can't worry about everything. Everyone has another thing that could be harmful, that will be dangerous, that should be avoided. And the list is twenty miles long. You simply can't worry about everything. I am not saying ignore the list altogether (or the advice of your caregiver), but if you accidentally eat some non-pastuerized cheese or forget to nuke your deli meat till it steams, chances are everything will be fine.

Eat. Eat. Eat. But eat WELL. Don't be obsessive about the weight you gain. Your body needs to gain weight to support the pregnancy. As long as you are not packing on Haagen Daz or donut pounds, you are doing okay! Lean protein, veggies, fruits, grains, eat the good stuff. And then don't worry about it!

Don't look at the scale when they weigh you. It is just better that way.

That being said, there is only one time in your life that eating a pint of Ben and Jerry's in one sitting is cute (and pregnancy is IT), so if your health permits it, don't be a food nazi either.

Make lots of food beforehand and freeze it in single-serve portions. Or buy a bunch of microwave dinners (though the "real" food will be nicer - it will be like your mom is there cooking for you:-). Fill the freezer. Don't skimp. You will bless your forward thinking when Baby is 2 weeks old and there is not a scrap of fresh food in the fridge. And you will bless your forward thinking when Baby is 6 weeks old and there is not a scrap of fresh food in the fridge. Seriously. Freeze everything.

Consider your birth options. Do some research. Consider using a midwife for a home or birth center birth. Studies show that home birth - for healthy, low-risk mother and babies - is as safe or safer than giving birth in a hospital. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) and the insurance industry want people to believe that home birth is at best risky and at worst recklessly engangering the life of mother and baby. But this is simply not the case. The midwifery model of care (as opposed to the medical model of maternity care) is based on allowing a woman's body to work naturally.   The link above explains it much better than I would, but midwives allow the process of birth to unfold naturally. They are well-trained professionals who know, understand, and HAVE WITNESSED the process of birth from beginning to end without intervention and therefore are an excellent judge of when something doesn't look right or when something is perfectly normal. My labor took 50 hours from onset of contractions to the birth of my daughter. FIFTY hours. Contractions were 5-8 minutes apart for more than 30 hours. I was dilated past the "you shoud go to the hospital" stage for about 24 hours. If I had been at a hospital, I firmly believe I would have had a c-section. Lucy's head was tilted up slightly and was therefore not pressing and opening the cervix as effectively as if her chin had been tucked. But my midwives knew that everything was fine. The baby's heartbeat was fine.  I was tired, but not exhausted. I was eating, I was drinking and labor was progressing, however slowly. So we let it keep going. And everything was fine. She was perfect (Apgar score of 9 at 1 minute). She was beautiful. She was born in our family room, among our family, gently, beautifully, naturally. I also firmly believe that our breastfeeding relationship would have been toast if we had been in a hosptial. We had so much trouble at the outset that if either of us had been drugged, it would have been a lost cause. I could go on about this for a long time, so maybe I'll save the rest of it for another post. That you have a choice. Know your options, and make an informed decision. Some books to read:

The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer. Very informative look at hospital vs. birth center vs home birth.

Obstetric Myths vs. Researc Realities by Henci Goer. Just what it says.

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin. Beautiful natural birth stores along with...well...a guide to childbirth written by one of the country's best midwies. Also includes a CRAZY picture of a baby coming out FACE FIRST! Not for the faint of heart.

Journey Into Motherhood - Inspirationl Stories of Natural Birth Beautiful, inspiring stories of women giving birth on their own terms.

Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife by Peggy Vincent. This book clinched my desire to have a home birth. Wonderful, moving, inspirational, heartbreaking, uplifting.

Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin. More from Ina May Gaskin - wonderful.

Consider breastfeeding. Do the research. Best for mamas, best for babies. Get prepared. It is natural, but almost never instinctual or easy to begin with. Attend La Leche League meetings - they have them all over the country and the leaders are well informed and very very helpful.

The Nursing Mother's Companion by Kathleen Huggins is a great breastfeeding reference. I still reference this book from time to time, and it was a lifesaver in the early months.

Ask questions of your caregiver. Get REAL answers, not the "that's just how we do it" crap I got from my OBs before I switched. If you don't like the answers, or if you liked what you initially heard and they start to change to something less palatable the closer you get to birth, switch caregivers. IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO SWITCH. My friend switched at 37 weeks when her OB insisted on a scheduled c-section for her breech twins. 37 weeks. She found an OB willing to let her try a natural vaginal delivery, and that is just what she got. You are a consumer, not cattle. You have rights. Birth is a HUGE business. HUGE. A lot of hospitals are baby factories and you will just be another bed they want to empty out as fast as possible. Doctors want to cover their asses (often with good reason in our overly-litigious society), but it usually comes at the expense of mamas and babies. KNOW YOUR OPTIONS and YOUR RIGHTS. Make a decision, make a birth plan. Be willing to be flexible, but ask questions, ask why, be an active participant.

No matter where you choose to give birth, consider taking a birthing class. Even if you intend to show up at the hospital and immediately get an epidural, chances are you will be laboring at home for a number of hours before you are permitted to check in. If you have no relaxation or breathing techniques at your disposal, these are likely to be very long, uncomfortable hours. I took a Hypnobabies class and my labor - while inordinately long - was generally very comfortable. I had no pain (only what I would call discomfort), I didn't feel the baby crown (no "Ring of Fire"), and even though I tore, I didn't feel it at all. People swear by the Bradley Method, and there are many MANY other classes out there. Just don't think taking the class the hospital offers will be good preparation. From what I have heard, it is a "here's the epidural needle, who wants to sign up?" and admission procedures. I am sure this is not the case for every hospital, but everything I have heard from moms who have taken these classes leads me to believe they are not worth the time.

Take some time with your spouse/partner before the baby comes to talk about who you are and how you see yourself as a parent. It helps to be on the same page.

Spend some time with your spouse, just the two of you.

Unpackage, wash and put away everything you have for the baby. Nothing is worse than having a poop blowout and a crying baby and all the clean sleepers are on hangers, stapled together with those stupid unbreakable plastic tie thingies.

I liked taking baby bump pictures every week. Now I have a visual record of my changing body - and it is really cool! I also had a fun pregnancy journal called The Belly Book. It is a really cute and sweet keepsake of my pregnancy that I'll give to Lucy one day.

Get a fork lift to help you out of bed in the morning during your third trimester. Heh. If only.

Braxton-Hicks contractions can last for a long time. I walked around with a rock-hard belly for an hour at a time on occasion. Call your caregiver if they are coming on regularly or they hurt, but your uterus is warming up and conditioning itself for the marathon of birth. Don't let it freak you out.

Chamomile Tea will calm BH contractions if they are bothersome. My midwife said that the Amish have been known to keep an antsy baby inside for weeks just using chamomile tea. I would make an extra-big, extra-strong cup of tea, mix in some honey, pour it over a liter of ice and sip it all day long. Once again, always call your caregiver if you are concerned, but if she says you are okay and the BHs are irritating, chamomile is a lovely aid. And it helps you sleep.

Ask for help and accept help when you need it. Seriously.

More later on what I learned from labor and birth and the postpartum experience. If any of you other first-time moms have anything you want to add, leave a comment! I'd love to hear the things you've learned!

Part II

Part III

A Long Time Coming

2010-07-22T10:00:00.004-04:00

I have been working on this baby blanket since May...of 2009.

I started working on it on a trip I had last year to San Antonio, Galveston and a few other towns in Texas in mid-May. A friend's baby was due July 3rd, and I thought I could finish it before the baby arrived. I had it all planned out. If I did two squares a day, it would take me roughly 2 weeks to finish, giving me plenty of time to do any finishing work and send it off to the mama- and daddy-to-be before the little one arrived. Done and done!

Except that it didn't really work out that way.

I got to this square by the end of my 5 day trip to Texas (I should have been done with 10 squares if I kept to my schedule):

Yes. That's "B"

When I got home, we closed on our house. Then we spent 4 days painting and cleaning said house (which was in a state of dreadful neglect when we bought it) before we headed off to my sister's wedding in North Carolina. Rebecca's wedding was on May 30th, meaning I should have been completely finished according to my (as it turns out, completely unreasonable) schedule. I was on this letter:

So now it is June. We have until July 1st to be out of our old house. Which means we have until July 1st to complete any of the major upgrades we wanted to get done on the house before we moved in. We spent the entire month of June finishing our basement, cleaning up the yard, re-doing the front walk, painting and generally making the house pleasant and liveable. Which means that by the time litte KG made her North Carolina debut three weeks early, I was only on:

Oops.

After my self-imposed deadline passed, I took a much more laid-back attitude towards getting it done...meaning I stopped working altogether for at least 3 weeks while we cleaned our old house and moved into out new house and got settled in. So by KG's actual due date, I had progressed to here:

After we were mostly settled in, I started working again. Slowly. I was getting pretty pregnant myself by this point. I was tired. I had a house I was trying to settle into, a nursery to decorate, diapers to make, and - oh yeah! Work. So I took my time, now that I had missed the big event. I got hung up for days on a space holder square:

It was actually before the "G", but the "G" looked so quick and the spacer so...not quick that I skipped the spacer, and worked the "G" first. Perhaps it was a premonition. I ended up having to improvise a new pattern because I screwed it up so badly and dreaded the thought of pulling all the stitches out and starting over. You can't really tell, but this little square is out of proportion with the rest of them. **sigh** No one's perfect.

I doodled with this for the rest of the summer, working on it in front of the TV at night, before bed, after teaching at the arts camp where I was working. Number one on my list of bad ideas, by the way, teaching drama and yoga in August to small children while vastly pregnant.

Kevin left for the Berkshires for 2 weeks in early August. I was left at home with my mom, who came to keep me company and make sure I was taken care of should Baby Corbett make an early appearance. I worked on the blanket sporadically, but mostly just sat like a beached whale, wishing it were time to have the baby.

The night I went into labor with Lucy, I was stitching this square:

I was watching TV when the contractions started. They were pretty mild and I could still work through them. I wasn't entirely sure I was going into labor, because my body had been a Braxton-Hicks festival for weeks. They just seemed different. Anyway, when I put the blanket down, shockingly enough, I didn't pick it up again for about 2 months.

After I so blatently missed KG's actual birthdate, I though HEY! Christmas gift!! Yeah! So when Christmas rolled around, I was still working:

Clearly I was just not meant to give this thing away as a gift.

I remember working the "S" when we were recording the April Fool's Day radio show at the end of March:

The piano player said "You still working on that??" Yup. At this point I was pretty much only bringing it to shows to work backstage in my downtime. The same piano player said a few weeks later "I know you don't have many shows because you are still working on "S".

I decided finally that I would give this blanket to KG for her first birthday. Surely I could manage THAT.

By KG's birthday, I am here:

SOOOOOOOO CLOSE. Yet so very very far.

Lucy is 10 months old now. KG celebrated her first birthday on June 23rd (I THINK - it may be the 22nd. Or the 24th. Grr. I am terrible at dates). When we were recording the JULY FOURTH radio show at the end of June, I was on:

I told LW (the piano player who was mocking me in March) that I would SURELY FINISH before the radio shows were done. This was on June 25th and 26th. The whole cast of the Capitol Steps has been cheering me on...and making fun of me...for over a year now...DW said to me "You can't give that away now! That's a family heirloom!"

Last night, I put the finishing touches on the last letter:

I frayed the edges of the blanket. I ironed out the marks left by the embroidery ring (you can tell which ones I spent the most time on by how deeply entrenched the creases around the letter are).

So that's the story of the baby afghan. Now I am faced with the conundrum - do I keep it, hang it in Lucy's room and pretend it was never meant for anyone else? Or do I box it up with a copy of this post and send it on to our dear friend's and their now 13-month-old daughter?

Hmmm....