Baby Business

Esther added “The Business of Being Born“ to our Netflix queue. It is the only reason we resumed our Netflix queue, because the main distributor of the movie is in fact Netflix.

The movie was an interesting documentary about the loss or minimization of natural child birth. With Ricki Lake as executive producer and star, it does not glamorize birth without medication, instead the film brings to light the statistics of medical interventions during childbirth in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the world.

The numbers were incredible, and considering the infant and mother mortality rates that the U.S. has compared to European countries, even when babies are delivered under the auspices of a doctor as opposed to a midwife.The disappearance of the midwife, the documentary leads one to believe, is the point at which medicine became commercial and worried about the bottom line as opposed to mother and baby’s health.

The movie has brought some salient issues with our doctor to the surface, Esther is probably researching new practices as I write this, and provides a lot of food for thought. If you aren’t too grossed out by the birthing process, which I would have thought I was until recently, I would highly recommend seeing this movie.

Whoa! Hospital!

Esther, Jered and Uni took a trip to Mary Immaculate Hospital for our hospital tour.

Let me tell you: Whoa!

We had a list of questions all prepared and thought we would be asking them, drawing information from our tour guide. The opposite was true. We walked up to the Labor and Delivery wing and got to sit in a birthing room. It was spacious and we got to learn how the whole “birth” thing unfold. Not the baby birth mechanicals, the hospital delivery ones.Each birthing room has a shower (so Esther can soak), and plenty of room for her to walk around.

After the baby is born, and hospital staff gets the baby cleaned up, Esther and I will get to spend an hour with the baby in the birthing room before Esther gets moved to a postpartum room and I follow the baby to the nursery. Once the baby is in the nursery, the nurses do test and checks and generally make sure that the little one is doing well, we get separated from Uni for about 3 hours. I hope he or she doesn’t get lonely… maybe there will be some other babies in the nursery.

The baby gets to stay with us in the postpartum room, which has a recliner for me, so we all get to stay together, kind of a “sleep over at the hotel” deal. While on the tour I did learn a hospital term that I would like to adopt into every day speak: Rooms labelled “Nutrition” = kitchen.

All in all, the tour was very informative, the labor and delivery unit is very secure (don’t worry about all of the baby stealing stories) and the NICU is a level II (Esther says that’s good, I think level X is better. She says I’ve played too may games in my youth.)Finally, we get 4 people in the birthing room, Me, Oma (Esther’s Mom), Clayton, and… send us a note and we’ll consider having you there.

New names (maybe)

Esther and I have been trying to find the perfect names for our baby (see the last post on the topic). It is not easy, because we want our baby to have a unique name, but not so unique that they are stuck with a name like Quasimodo.

We have found out that one of our top girl’s names is actually very popular and we don’t want our child to become another Jennifer, so unfortunately, Sophia or any variation there of is out off the list.So here is the updated list:

Girls Names:

• Hazel Olivia
• Ella Flynn
• Sofia Wren
• Zoe Berlin
• Noelle Aspen

Boys Names:

• John Finley
• John Milo
• John Merlin
• John Morgan

Baby Notification System

So I have been thinking a lot about how to let everyone know when Esther goes into labor and when the baby arrives. Ideally, I would like as few steps as possible and I know that telephone trees don’t scale well. I have found a service, Pinger, that lets me record a voice message and then send it out to a group of people. They only catch is that Pinger sends a text message with the number for you to call. I want to test this before we get closer to baby time so down a little further is a contact from. Fill it out with your name and your cell phone number and I will add you to the test group. I am planning on sending out a test message March 1, so sign up before then. Remember, the phone number you send me has to be a cell phone, and you may get charged a couple of cents more on your next bill, but just think, you’ll know exactly when the baby gets here. You wouldn’t want to be left out over a few pennies right?

Ninja baby

This morning I got a chance to feel something amazing, the baby kicking. During our lazy morning in bed, just after Esther woke up, Esther grabbed my hand a put it on her lower belly. She’s done that before, but when she would ask if I felt anything, I could only answer no.

Today was different. When she asked me if I felt something, I did. A very odd feeling, like flicking your tongue against your inner cheek while touching your cheek with your palm. Very odd.

I guess it will only get stronger and more noticeable as we get further and further along. Eventually we should be able to see the movement, which means we will haul out the video camera to capture it.

Interesting Autism Study

Increasingly, I have found CNN the most useless news site in the internet. There was an interesting video today, which discussed the cause and detection of autism in infants.

Take a second (or 2 minutes and 53 seconds) to watch the video, I would have never thought that the child featured was autistic, which shows that with therapy and early detection, autism can be managed.

I think that when the baby is born, I will have to swear off main stream media. With the toy recalls and all of the scary medical information that comes out every day, I don’t know if my newly defined fatherhood can handle the continual scares and warnings. I worry I would put my baby in a bubble.Anyway, enough scary medical stuff… until delivery… 

Keeping Momma upright

While Esther hasn’t really started showing yet, she’s getting ready to and finally science has provided an answer to why pregnant mothers don’t topple over due to all of that front leaning weight

CNN has a story about it.

Evolution provided slight differences from men in women’s lower backs and hip joints, allowing them to adjust their center of gravity   

…

Harvard anthropology researcher Katherine Whitcomb found two physical differences in male and female backs that until now had gone unnoticed: One lower lumbar vertebra is wedged-shaped in women and more square in men; and a key hip joint is 14 percent larger in women than men when body size is taken into account.

Now I’m not a “big” guy… but sometimes Esther and I compare our baby bumps (I hate that term) and right now I’m winning, I am ashamed to say. Why don’t I fall over? Not cool hip and back bones… nope.

But what about men with stomachs the size of babies or bigger? What keeps them from toppling over?Their back muscles are used to compensate, but that probably means more back pain, theorized Shapiro, who added: “It would be a fun study to do to look at men with beer bellies to see if they shift their loads.”  

Spider-sense is tingling

Today, Esther and I went to Target, initially just to look. Esther decided that we should start registering for baby “stuff”. While she was getting the registry setup and the barcode gun, I was left to wander in the light pink, blue and yellow sea.

I was filled with a odd sense of being overwhelmed. I read a post from Rands earlier today which described my situation to a T.

[I] see the world as a system which, given enough time and effort, is completely knowable. This is a fragile illusion that your nerd has adopted, but it’s a pleasant one that gets your nerd through the day.

This is the problem that I am facing. The whole “baby” thing, and “being a parent”, those are two things which I have no clue on. It is not the “Will I screw my child up?” question. I think I’ve got that down, or if not, would I be able to tell? The real questions I have are things like:

• When does a baby need a pacifier, if it even needs one?
• Does everything need to be sterilized/bleach/sanitized?
• How does one hold a baby?
• How does one change a baby’s diaper?

You may laugh at this, but the last time I held or changed a diaper was the plastic training doll in Red Cross babysitter training.

The only thing I know is that I have an amazing wife / mother of my child and that with her, there will be nothing that we can’t over come together.