What I've been reading

I took a break from reading childbirth and parenting books and read a few "fun" books from the library.

Up Until Now: The Autobiography
By William Shatner, David Fisher
When I saw this audiobook on the shelf at the library, I was totally excited. There are few things funnier to me than listening to William Shatner talking, even when he is not saying anything particularly funny. I just love the cadence of his voice. When I watch the original Star Trek series the character of Captain Kirk kind of annoyed me, but when I saw Shatner play Denny Crane on Boston Legal, I started to see the humor. "My presence is so powerful, I don't even have to speak". Then there was the album "Has Been" that Shatner did with Ben Folds which I bought immediately when it came out. It's one of the best albums! In fact, William Shatner has had a really interesting life and diverse career. He has a lot of funny moments but also the really poignant ones, such as the death of his wife Noreen - he has a track about her death on the Has Been album that I have often found too sad to listen to. One of the highlights of this book, for me, was his explanation of why he chose the last words he chose for Captain Kirk's death in the movie Star Trek: Generations.

Let me first say that I have quite the Trekkie roots (NO I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE ITERATION "TREKKER") and my nerdiness was at its peak when I was a teenager, right when Generations came out, in 1994, when I was 16 years old. I actually stood in line for an ungodly amount of time to see the preview screening. I am relatively certain that I was wearing some kind of costume. Anyway, although I always loved Picard more than Kirk (sorry, Shatner), I was very upset at the last words of Captain Kirk when he dies. Kirk spends his life flying around punching aliens in the face and teaching alien women "to love" and his last words are... Well, I will not spoil it if you haven't seen the movie but I was like WHAT!?? I have been bitter about it for years. It was never right to me. In this book, Shatner explains why he played it that way and suddenly I felt much better. It made more sense. I was not upset anymore. I wish I had someone to explain this to. How much better I feel after hearing that. And how nerdy I realize that is.

So, I would definitely recommend this audio book, even if you are not a Trekkie. He's just had an interesting life. And the audio version is even better, because of the way his voice sounds. Also, listen to the album "Has Been"!

Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons
Years ago, my college roommate made me watch the movie Cold Comfort Farm multiple times. We went around saying "There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm!" and "I saw something nasty in the woodshed!". So when I saw this book at the library, I had no idea it has been a book first! I picked it up and read it, and now I honestly can't remember if the movie was anything like the book or not. There are things in the book that I don't remember from the movie, but then again, I saw the movie around 10 years ago. But I loved the book! So cute. It might have helped that I was positively pre-disposed toward it from seeing the movie because I could see how it might be tedious at first for someone who wasn't. I love how it was so completely ridiculous throughout most of the book and then ended all wrapped up so nicely. So unlike real life.

I guess I'll get back to reading the kid-related books soon and let you know how those go. I am in a big line for The Baby Whisperer from the library.

Happy Earth Day!

I wanted to post a link to the amazing video on Oprah today, it showed this enormous belt of trash floating in the ocean between California and Japan. It is the size of Texas and is composed mostly of plastics, which never biodegrade! Unfortunately, Oprah.com keeps saying that I need to download Adobe Acrobat 9.0 in order the view the video - but I have installed it 3 times! So, no luck in linking to it. Maybe you might have better luck?

Once again, I feel guilty for using plastic sandwich baggies. I haven't used a plastic grocery bag in ages, I have so many cloth bags stashed in all our cars. But I admit, I use the ziploc baggies. I have looked at the sandwich wraps 100 times online and never bought one. I use them for so many things...but I know they are bad. I don't know why I don't just invest some money on reuseablebags.com ... they have great alternatives.

If I do carry through with this, I will review them for sure. I think I have been convicted!

Announcing the new family blog

Thanks to Christian's creativity, we have finally named and created the new family blog, which is where we'll be keeping most of the baby-related posts. He also did some fancy CSS manipulation to help me customize the standard Blogger template. I am sure we will continue to tweak it as we go along.

It is called "A Family Is Us" and right now the URL is afamilyisus.blogspot.com. However, we do hope to buy the actual www URL sometime soon, since it is actually available! I guess no one has grammar quite as bad as we do.

I am creating a widget in the right column of this blog under the profile that will link to the family blog at all times in case you forget! So be sure to visit us there!

Nutrition tracking during pregnancy

At my visit to the midwife last week, she asked that I keep a log of what foods I eat for a week and then send it back to her. We also signed up for our Bradley childbirth classes, and in the materials we received, the instructor asked for me to sign up at BabyFit.com and track my nutrition on that site for, I think a week. So I thought I'd get both of these things done at once using the BabyFit.com site.

For a while when I worked for a health-related non-profit as a Business Analyst, part of my job was to take extensive notes on various nutrition-tracking web sites, so tracking my nutrition online is nothing new for me. Over the years, people have also accused me of not getting enough nutrition; either because I am a lacto-ovo-pescatarian or because I am underweight. I have used nutrition-tracking software and web sites over the years just to make sure that I am always getting adequate nutrition and the calories that I should.

In case you are wondering, every time I have tracked this way in the past, I have always been getting plenty of protein (which people had doubted because I don't eat meat), and I almost always have taken in more calories than the usual suggestion for women my size (most days, greater than 1,500 and closer to 2,000).

As for BabyFit.com, it is a visually appealing web site, the usability is good, and it has an extensive food database. I had no trouble finding many foods and it was easy to enter the foods I eat that weren't in the database using the nutrition labels of the products.

I've been tracking for 3 days now, and I have to say that at first I was depressed. The total caloric intake they suggest for me is much lower than what I am hungry for. The second day I tracked, I was within 200 calories of their "limit" before dinner. I was still SO HUNGRY!!! Then I felt guilty for eating, like I was somehow hurting the baby by messing up the caloric intake this web site says I should have.

But my body is hungry!! I make it a rule to listen to my body. I don't mindlessly eat. And when I do eat, I am eating the same things I ate before pregnancy: whole grains, fish (only 2-3 times a week), fruits, legumes, low fat dairy products, etc. For snacks, I have popcorn, string cheese, yogurt, fruits, and these awesome pretzels with protein that I found at New Flower Farmer's Market. When I resort to drinking fruit juice because I get overloaded on water, I make sure it is sugar-free. It is all very healthy stuff. I do crave pickles, which I find settling to my stomach. We do eat low-fat frozen yogurt a few times a week. I admit I ATE A BOX OF CABURY EGGS! Over the course of 10 days, not all at once. WHAT OF IT?!!!

Yes, this was the course of my feelings: guilt, hunger, indignant, and then defiant.
The baby is hungry, dang it!!
I ate a Cadbury egg, DEAL WITH IT, BABYFIT.COM!!

I have read or heard this phrase at least 3 times now: "Sugar is useless to the baby". While I am sure it is true from a nutrition standpoint, I have personally decided that this is crap. No, I am not going to overload on sugar, just like I was not in the habit of overloading on sugar before I was pregnant. But if I want one brownie, one cupcake, or one Cadbury egg, I am going to freaking eat it. And if BabyFit.com says I have eaten too many calories but my stomach is growling, I am going to eat, and no one is going to stop me. Our bodies have hunger cues for a reason.

** climbs down off soapbox .... goes to fridge to eat pickles **

The cat got high

We got a neat new rug from Crate & Barrel, one of our favorite places to get furniture. Since we have all wood floors, I think it will help to have lots of padding in the main living room for the baby to crawl around on.

What's funny is that apparently the new rug is giving off some kind of fume that only the cats can smell - I've kept the doors and windows open during the day and even the first night to keep the fumes away from us (and the baby in the tummy). However, I guess that the cats being so low to the ground can still smell some fumes because they act like LUNATICS around it.

Here is Samantha. They rub on it like catnip! And Gabby gets the crazy eyes and attacks everyone when she is on it!

Books: Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, BabyWise, No Cry Sleep Solution

During the drive this weekend and while I was too tired to do anything in the first trimester, I got to reading and here is what I have so far:

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
by Ina May Gaskin
This has been a very reassuring and empowering book to read. The first half of the book is all birth stories, which are all very different but in each, the mother expresses positive emotions about the physical process, despite the pain. The second half goes through describing how a woman's body prepares and goes through the birth process. Also discussed are complications to the pregnancy, how they are dealt with in the hospital/medical world and how Ina May has dealt with those safely in the natural birth process. I borrowed this book from the library but I think that I am going to buy my own copy because I would like to re-read those birth stories as I get closer to my due date.

On Becoming Babywise: Giving Your Infant The Gift of Nighttime Sleep
by Gary Ezzo
Yes, we realize how controversial this book is. We purchased it on audiobook so that we could listen to it and discuss how we feel about it. Christian has done the research on the main web site for the opposition to this book, and during our date night one week, he gave me a good summary of the viewpoints discussed there. We have not finished the actual audiobook yet, still in process. We tried listening to it on our trip this weekend but the narrator of the audiobook has such a soft, sleepy voice that we kept either falling asleep (me) or tuning her out (him). While we agree with some of the tenets of the book, I can see how some of the things they claim might be a little extreme ("People will stop you on the street to comment on how pleasant your baby is"...really?! I mean, I am new to this, but even I don't have those unrealistic expectations). To balance out this book's viewpoint, I am also going to do some reading from the perspective of Attachment Parenting proponents, so that we hear both sides before we make decisions.

The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night
by Elizabeth Pantley and William Sears
This book was written by fans of the Attachment Parenting model. Strangely, there are a number of areas in which they agree with Ezzo. I have completely finished this book, it was easy to read. Mostly because it outlines a plan for putting a baby on a schedule gently and gradually and I don't have a baby yet so I got to just read it without taking any action. I like how it goes over all the possible things that could be keeping your baby from getting good sleep and offers solutions for all of those things. It focuses a lot on being patient and not making the baby do anything that is uncomfortable for it - exactly what you'd expect from attachment parenting model, I guess. But I do like that it is gentle because I think it's gentle on the parent as well. This is helpful for me to read now, so that I can try all of those things when the baby is here, to make sure it is in a good environment for sleeping. We bought this book also, and I am glad because I do plan to refer to it later.

So there you have it. I have a bunch of other books I want to read but will always take suggestions from anyone else who has kids or knows people with kids who have loved certain books.

Baby update: We went for our first real prenatal visit today and heard the heartbeat again! This time they found it right away, no trouble at all, and it was 163 bpm, whatever that means.

Too close for comfort

We just returned today from a 4 day weekend in Arkansas visiting Christian's family and telling them the news. There was also a big party/family event going on at the same time so we got to see a lot of people. I want to talk more about it but I need to have Christian upload some pictures to Flickr first, so I will save that for another day.

When we got back last night I went online to check work email and found out that my company had a RIF (reduction in force) on Friday while I was gone! I do realize that in this economy, that should not be a surprise. However, we are a very small privately owned company and up until now, we'd been told we were doing fine and there would be no need for lay-offs. We had 305 employees and they let 35 go, which is something like 15%, right? 2 people from my actual working group are gone now.

I'm not exactly new to this whole RIF thing, I graduated college in 2001 with nothing but Technology experience, right into the dotcom crash. I worked as an IT contractor (consultant) at a major telecom company (one of the top 2 out there - still operating). Since I was a contractor and not an employee, I didn't have benefits and the taxes I paid were extremely high. As I contractor, I knew that when they decided to let all the contractors go, they had no obligation to me - here today and gone tomorrow. You don't get a package or severance because contractors aren't company employees. However, I ate lunch with and hung out with the employees of the company at the time, who also knew they might be laid off any day. Every single day at lunch the conversation revolved around whether this would be the week that everyone would be laid off, who had heard what rumors, etc. This happened every day for at least 6 months. I had to stop eating with them! The speculation was so nerve-wracking. Finally, on the day I found out that I would not be coming back to work the next Monday, the entire department was laid off all on the same day. It was sad, but in the end, due to how long I had been hearing about it, it was kind of a relief to finally know for sure.

It's a little different here since we're so small and we hadn't heard anything about it until it happened. And weird for me since I wasn't even there when it happened. Today was our annual Employee Update meeting where they go on and on about our sales performance and profits, etc. The entire 4 hour meeting they only mentioned the RIF once, in passing. It was just very odd.

Pregnancy clues

I am pretty horrible at keeping secrets about myself. I have no problem keeping other peoples' secrets because I actually have a terrible memory. But for me, it was so difficult not to tell anyone about this pregnancy!

When we first found out we were pregnant, I felt like my blog was really just a dead giveaway. I mean, take these clues for example:

1. Posts about food - 1, 2, 3 ... obsessed with food much? Heck, yeah. I ate constantly! Oh, wait - I am still doing that...
2. Cleaning out the guest room. Um, because that is where the baby is going to live.
3. Balance ball - related to preparing for natural birth. Also to make up for the fact that I had been too tired to work out like I did before I was so exhausted all the time.
   
4. Decaffeinating tea. What sane person would go cold turkey off of caffeine like I did? Not this person, it's just not sane. But I did. And I had horrible headaches for days.
5. Stopped taking meds for GERD. This is right up there with the insanity of going cold turkey on caffeine. The pain this could have caused is really unbelievable. I am so thankful for papaya enzyme. And it was the women at the birth center who recommended it to me!
   

If you follow me on Twitter, you might also have noticed several Twitters about Baked Cheetos and pickles, and the lengths I went to in order to obtain them during the first trimester. I burned out on the Baked Cheetos but I am still lovin' me some pickles.

Here is a question that you might be too shy to ask, so I will answer it for you:

Will this become a "mommy blog"?
It is not my intention to use this blog to chronicle all things baby-related. On this blog I am going to stick to conscientious choices and the way we will continue to do things as "green" as we can. I will also keep reviewing books and movies and talking about food, I am sure. I will be starting a second blog at some point for baby-only stuff. There will indeed be overlap between the blogs, but I will dual post if that is the case.

I don't have a good, clever name in mind yet for the new family blog...now taking ideas!!

We are pregnant

This is the official announcement for all my Twitter, Facebook, and bloggy friends!

We are due October 17, 2009.

I am sorry I haven't been able to tell some of you, especially those who have asked me straight up "hey, are you pregnant"? I believe I told you "we are trying and we will let you know". I want you to know I did not want to be deceptive, but Christian and I made the decision together that we were not comfortable telling everyone until we were safely out of the first trimester. It's a safety thing, and a peace of mind thing. We hope that you are not insulted or offended, we did not intend to be hurtful.

We will be giving birth at the Birth and Women's Center here in Dallas.
All of my prenatal care will be done there, and I will be giving birth naturally with their help. I'd strongly encourage you to visit their web site. We heard the heartbeat there on Monday! It sounded nice and strong to us! They were so nice and let us come in and hook up to the machine even though our official appointment wasn't until next week!

We will not be finding out the gender.
Just think how fun it is going to be to announce the birth - it will be the first time anyone knows the gender, including us!

Yes, we will be doing cloth diapering.
I am sure if you follow this blog, you saw that one coming. I will make sure to blog about it.

Yes, this is why I haven't blogged much lately.
Most days I have been so tired I feel like a truck hit me. And when I am not tired I have been nauseated. Nausea - it's not just for mornings! But I think that in this 12th week it is getting better.

I will do a follow-up post tomorrow with more answers to any questions. Feel free to leave any other questions for me in the Comments and I'll include those answers in the next post.