Great Book

I just finished reading Giving Birth: A Journey Into the World of Mothers and Midwives by Catherine Taylor. This book is really interesting. Catherine is a journalist and really wants another child. She decides to do some research about midwives. The reader can follow her through her pregnancy. Taylor explains the difference between nurse-midwives working at a hospital and midwives working with homebirth.

I found this book by accident (or luck I should say) at the local library, and I can say that I am happy I did. I had never heard of it before. I have been in a lot of forums where lists of good books are exchanged and books such as Spiritual Midwifery, or Ina May's Guide to Childbirth to only name a few are always mentionned, but I never came accross this one. If you are pregnant, or are just a birth junky like I am, this book is a really good one to read.

Mini Woman!

I think that there is nothing cuter than a little girl who talks like an adult. I babysit this litlle 2 year old lady once in a while, and everytime that I haven't seen her in a while I am amused by her new expressions.

She made me laugh this time with a :"Oh my Gosh!!!!!!" with a big surprised face when I opened a drawer to choose some clothes and she found her "I am the little sister" T-shirt!

Then there was the :"Can you do me a favor?"
"Yes, what do you need?"
"Can you do me a favor?"
"Yes, what is it?"
"I need you to do me a favor"
"What favor do you want me to do?"
"......" (no reply!!!)

And then she came behind me and spanked me and said with a smile: "Spank that butt!"
Gee, I wonder where she got that one from! Could it be from her dad?!

Medical Journal

It is by reading Barbara's blog that I found this book: http://upalumni.org/medschool/ob-gyn.html

WARNING: This is written by a medical student and it is just horrible.

I think that Barbara says it very well:

It is a blog from a medical student and HORRIBLY painful. Please know this before going there. It made my stomach ache and made me livid all at the same time. And then it is also something I want everyone to read. Every woman. Everywhere.

To end on a better note, I have been following Emily Lynne's blog these last few days. Her aunt-to-be explains the situation here:

My sister is currently in the hospital/bedrest for preterm labor. She's been bedside for 2 weeks now and is finally 31 weeks. She's had her steroid shots and because her amniotic fluid is running low they have decided that next week if the baby hasn't been born, they will have to induce. Hers is a
complicated story.

She is only 20, married young because of the pregnancy, but honestly thought she and her beau had a chance of making a happy home. She moved states to live with him, the whole deal. Well, turns out he had a girlfriend on the side. She left him. But Oklahoma/Texas law does not allow for a divorce to occur until after the baby is
born.

The husband (soon to be ex) has kept everything baby related and the courts will not allow her to go after the items until after the divorce has been settled (months after the baby gets here).

My sister, hospitalized, thought she had more time to save and prepare for the birth of her baby. in a few months she has gone from the dream of a happy home,loving husband, SAHM, etc. to a working mother, trying to pay for the costs of a child andhaving to rebuy all the items that the ex has decided to keep out of spite.

If you go check out the blog, you can see that since she has started to receive help from the Internet she is doing much better. This shows how important the mind's well-being is in order for the body to function properly. I think that it is amazing that the level of her amniotic fluid has been stable ever since she has realized that Emily will have what she needs after all.

Evening at the Hospital

I, once again, didn't make it to the birtnNetwork meeting. I instead spent the evening at the hospital visiting my 19 months old niece who has pneumonia. The poor thing was so dehydrated that it took them 5 hours to be able to put an IV on. She has had an ear infection that turned into pneumonia and she ended up at the hospital yesterday because her fever would not go down, and she hadn't eaten or drunk anything all day and was just really limp and pale.

I am planning on visiting her today at lunch time, and I am hoping that she is feeling better now that fluids and antibiotics are flowing through her body.

When Husby and I arrived at the pediatrics unit and rang the bell to be let in, we could hear her screaming her head off as they were trying to insert the IV by her foot. About 15 mins later E (my niece) came out but my sister-in-law didn't...she had been pretty upset about her daughter's ordeal and almost passed out. It was really sad to see her so pale and upset. I am sure that seeing your little baby being held down and crying must be hard for the heart of a mother. Mom was fine after eating a little bit and relaxing.

I would have rather been at the meeting and have a healthy little niece...I hope that it'll be over soon.

Not so Tricky

Have you ever tried to trick yourself? I did.

On Tuesday night, as I was walking out of Meijer, I found it would be a good idea to walk through.....the cookies aisle! As I was trying hard not to look at them and to keep walking, just keep walking, my eyes were just drawn towards the "Sugar Free" cookies!

Yes I know, there is a ton of fat and they are hardly no less calories than the regular cookies, but what I am to do? Husby does call me cookie monster after all. So, of course, I bought a little package of 12 cookies.

The package said that the serving size was 3 cookies for 10,000,000 calories. While driving back home I opened the package and start eating my 3 cookies....ok, what is one more going to do?? As i grab my fourth cookie, I realized that if I wanted to grab more I had to remove a little piece of paper that was separating them...and this is when it all happened. I had the great idea to try to trick myself into forgetting about the cookies (the key word here is try). So I hid the package into the glove box, and started to fantasize about the day I would find the package, and how happy I would be, and with a little luck (for my butt) it would have been so long since I bought it that I couldn't even eat them...

Of course I didn't stop thinking about the damn package all day Wednesday, and when at 7pm I finally grabbed it on my way to my mother-in-law's, I didn't just eat one serving size, but I finished it...

So my advice to you, internet, is: don't try to trick yourself, turns out you'll know about it and it won't work! Just enjoy them, and next time, try the feminine product aisle while leaving Meijer, it's safer.

Miscellaneous

We have finally heard our neighbors having sex for the first time last night! Remember how I was saying that our walls are thin? Well I guess if they are only going to have sex once every 4 months we can live with that...we are not planning on staying there for more than a year anyway.

I have signed up for my classes today for the fall semester: 4 classes with a total of 15 credits, 3 of them being from 6.30pm to 9.20pm...all that on top of my 8am to 5pm job of course! I am not going to be the happiest person next semester!

I am excited because I am going to a birthNetwork meeting tomorrow night. The topic is: Options in Birth Locations. The last time I went was about 3-4 months ago! It should be interesting.

I said in the title that it was going to be just miscellaneous subjects!
(What is it with me and exclamation point?!)

Week end

Nothing special happened this week-end, which is actually not a bad thing considering how crazy it will all become again when school starts again.

Husby and I went to have a beer at Friday's on Saturday night, and we had Pho (a vietnamese meal) yesterday for lunch. Those are the highlights of the week-end! Oh and I went to the local library and was happy to find a couple of recently written French books. I usually only find classics here, and even though they need to be read, it is nice to read something that talks about today's society!

I am really sad because a co-worker just called me to let me know that his brother-in-law's 18 months old grandson drowned in his home's pool on Friday...this is so so sad. I don't understand how parents are not more careful with swimming pools...there are no words strong enough to express the sadness of this tragedy.

Parenting

I sometimes worry that I could become pregnant by accident. It does happen, in fact it happened to my sister-in-law. Some other times I worry that I will not be able to get pregnant and how devastating that would be. Having a child is something really easy for some, and a little more complicated for others.

I have been reading blogs about couples trying to become parents. I am seating on the edge of my seat, looking forward to see Shelli and Narda finally meet their adopted baby, crossing my fingers for Cait and Jen and hope that their pregnancy will go smoothly, and I am realy excited for getupgrrl and her brand new baby boy.

Assuming that you don't have fertility issues, getting pregnant if you are a heterosexual couple is not that completed (I think that I figured out how it's done), but if you are an homosexual couple, many options are possible. All of the blogs that I read are about lesbians couples who are trying to conceive in-vitro. So when I saw my lesbian cousin last and asked her if she wanted children later and she told me that she would find a man that she considers a really good friend to use his sperm and be a father figure to the child I was kind of surprised.

Getting pregnant or adopting a child is only the beginning of a life-long journey. Every couple has to make decisions about how to educate their children, and it seems to me that an homosexual couple would have even more decisions to make than an heterosexual one. As an example, let's take the father figure that my cousin is thinking she'll give to her future child/ren.
First of all, how do you choose that person? She said it'll be a male friend, what if the friend/s that she thinks of is/are not comfortable with the idea?

I guess I am talking to myself here and just wondering what some people have to go through, but in the end I think that a single mom, or a homosexual couple who doesn't have an opposite sex figure and who gets along great is better for a child than an heterosexual couple where the parents don't get along, or who don't take good care of the child.

Midwifery

In my profile I say that I am intersted in Midwifery. Well indeed I am, in fact when I was thinking about a name for this blog Husby proposed baby freak! Well I don't think that I am a baby freak really. I do love them, but I think that I am more amazed by the way women create life (Ok, I guess men have something to do with it too). I think that a pregnant woman is very beautiful, no matter how big, how old (Well too old can be kind of creepy), what nationality, I just think that it is magical, and just beautiful.

I always thought that I would have my children at a young age. Not that I am old or anything, but I thought that by now I would already have children. It might have something to do with the fact that my mom had my brother at 20 and me at 22.

I think that it is great to have young parents. Husby has a different vision of parenthood, and I see his point, which is the reason why we don't have children yet. See, I grew up with a dad who was a musician, drummer to be exact, and my mom was the director of a day care center. Childhood was fun spending time at the day care, and going to see my dad play with his band at night. Husby on the other hand grew up with mom being a psychologist and dad an ingeneer. Not that he didn't have a great childhood, but his vision of being a parent is having a solid degree, a solid job, and being a role model to the children (we might even add a little bit of fear of the parents from the kids), where I basically see my mom (my dear dad passed away last year) more as a friend and always have. I think that my parents did a great job in educating us, but they were more hands off. They had no problem when I left their house at 18, whereas Husby could not even have dreamed of it.

Anyway, I realize that having a degree and a good job are indeed really important, and that's the reason why I am working towards these goals before becoming a mom, even though I hope that I'll have my first before I turn 30.

To go back to my initial subject, which was Midwifery, I am addicted to learning more and more about it, and frustrated that I can't just start being a doula or being a midwife's apprentice. My dilemna is that:

1. I can't find the time to doula because I work a 40 hour job, and usually take 3 to 4 classes a semester and even babysit once in a while on the week ends.

2. I had already started my business degree when I found my passion for Midwifery, and I have one year to go before I graduate, so I might as well finish it.

To quench my desire to learn more about it, I read books, lots of books, I spend entire days on The Midwifery Today website, and I have a 3.5 inch thick binder that is almost full of information that I have printed about any subject relating to birth. My dream would be to go to the Farm and do one of their workshops. I try to assist to meetings given by the birthNetwork, a local non-profit group promoting awareness of the benefits and availability of healthy, normal pregnancy and childbirth through information and support, but with my busy schedule it is not always easy.

I believe in the fact that there is a right time and place for everything, so I stay positive, I keep learning on my own, and I am sure that one day the door will open itself and I will be able to explore my interest in a more hands-on way.

The Trash Can that Could...

My boss decided about a year ago to get a vending machine. Usually he gets the most expensive thing he can, like the trash can
that opens by itself, but this time he went for the really cheap stuff. The kind of machine that doesn't give you what you pay for.

Some of us around the office are better than other at not getting their good. Let's take,Grumpy, a coworker as an example. E-v-e-r-y s-i-n-g-l-e t-i-m-e he tries to buy something, the machine rips him off (it might have something to do with his nickname...machines can feel people)! It is funny everytime, but the best time was when his daughter was in the office and she went with him to buy something. Of course everybody warned her that her dad had no luck with the machine, which she probably didn't really believe until...well you know...somebody had to go and get the stuff out for him.

Some of us on the other hand are lucky. I actually put a one dollar bill in the machine today and expected to receive four quarters and instead I got 15! Which makes $3.75 for those of you who are not too good in math. It does happen quite a bit to me and to this other woman in the office, let call her Otay (I'll explain later). Now that I think about it, maybe it's not just because Grumpy is ...well Grumpy, that he doesn't get his food, we might actually have a male vending machine....or a lesbian one. Well you might say that it could very well be a really friendly female vending machine, but my ego likes to think that the fact that I am pretty has something to do with it!

Sleeping in...

What a wonderful thing.

When Husby and I moved into our apartment a few months ago we were worried that the paper thin walls would be a problem, but after waking up at 11am during the last few week ends and wondering what happened...we realized that it is not a problem, at least in that regard. Now, it is true that it is not really pleasant to be waken up in the middle of the night by the neighbor throwing up, although it is pretty funny to hear him singing in the shower, but this is another story.

I had forgotten for a little while how it felt. We lived at my in-laws for...too long, and it was really hard to sleep in. Not that they wake up too early during the week ends, but because of my psycho personality, I felt like I had to wake up as soon as I heard them to prentend I was not out until 3am/help them clean/mow the lawn/chat whatever the case was I just could not stay in bed for too long after 10am.

I think that that would be one of the things that will scare me when we are ready to start a family. I LOVE TO SLEEP. Maybe a lille too much, and not being able to sleep in once you have a child until he turns 2 scares me!

I have to admit that I slept a little too much this week end, even to my taste. I don't know if it's because I was sick the week before, if I am still a little weak, but I went to bed at midnight on Friday and Saturday, woke up at 10am, and took a nap! When i say took a nap, I slept from 2 to 5 on Saturday afternoon! It is a little disconscerning to me that I can sleep that much, but I sure try to enjoy it while it lasts...and starting September it won't be as easy to do.

The Blogs I Read

I have put the links to the blogs that I regularly read. I really enjoy reading these ladies blogs ( I don't know why I don't have any men's blogs....might need to work on that!) for different reasons.

Some have some realy incredible birth stories and their visions about birth and helping women during birth are inspiring. Some of them make me laugh so hard. I don't think that I could ever be as funny, and friendly as some of theses women! And then I have some blogs from couples ( I am not sure why but I only have lesbians) trying to conceive, and I am hoping that I will see them succeed.

I haven't put the links of the specific blogs that I am talking about within this entry, because I don't even know in "Internet's Laws" if I am allowed to have their links in my blog without having asked them. I see that everywhere and this is how I found these really interseting ladies, but should I have their permision?

I think that I am not going to take any risk and ask them.

Hello!

I read that a blog is created every second...I guess I am just a statistic!

I had been thinking about creating a blog for a while, and my husby's first question was: "Who is going to read it?"!!! Well I don't know if anybody will ever read it, but I like the idea of having one, and I'm sure that I'll have some fun with it.

So, here we go. To a new blog!