What are we going to do-ula

We've made a bold decision. We're going to have a doula for the birth. If you don't know what that is, it's basically a woman who supports the parents through the birth process but who does not engage in any medical activity. So she will help the couple decide when to go to the hospital, provide massages, suggest positions, talk the mum through the contractions, help the couple make decisions about interventions, make sure everyone is getting enough water and nourishment and generally be a calm, steady hand at the wheel of the good ship Labor.

Given our goal of making the birth as natural as possible, having a doula has statistically shown to increase the mother's chances of avoiding pain medication, and more importantly decreases the chances of a C-section by more than 30%.

Another reason for K to want a doula is because she wants to take some of the pressure off me. I appreciate her concern, and agree that it will make my job a lot easier, allowing me to focus much more on being emotional support for her, instead of trying to remember a whole bunch of things that are not second-nature.

We had originally not even considered it because we felt the costs would be too high (we had a figure of between $1500 and $2500 in our heads). After a little research on my part, I found that although you can spend that much, there are many experienced doulas who charge as little as $600, even in the Bay Area.

So I started trying to compile a shortlist of doulas to talk to. Holy cow there's a lot of them! To make things easier I only looked at doulas with websites. Then I went searching for reviews on Yelp, parenting forums and other Bay Area parenting resources like the Birthways website. I ended up with a list of ten, from which we picked three to talk to. That's where we stand right now. We've talked to two, once of whom is coming for an interview on Sunday.

A Special Day

Happy Ten-Year Anniversary, dear N! I love you dearly and consider myself an extremely lucky woman to have you in my life. Thank you for all you have taught me, the ways you love me, and the many laughs and tears we have shared together.

I look forward to the next chapter together...

Buy shares in Glaxo

Here is the chart for Glaxo Smithkline share price for the last 3 1/2 months. Their share price has climbed consistently.

They make TUMS antacid tablets.

Here's the results of K's latest trip to Walgreens:


Coincidence? I think not.

Pregnancy = heartburn, at least in our house, and K has it bad, poor girl.

The downside to not knowing

Pretty much everyone has said that they think it's great we haven't found out the gender of this baby. And they're right - it is great, and we are awesome for doing things this way. That's right, we rule. And we doubly rule because we're not revealing name choices. So thanks to everyone for telling us how awesome we are, but we already knew it.

However, I've discovered a downside, and as K pretended to listen to me last night as she fell asleep I outlined the problem. For the sake of explaining this, we're going to have to use imaginary names in place of the spectacularly terrific real names we've picked, so I'll use grandparent names instead (that would be my grandparents, not the baby's grandparents).

As it stands right now, there are two outcomes. The first is that we will have a little boy named, err, Norman. The existence of Norman right now is just as real as the existence of the other outcome (Eileen). We can imagine what Norman and Eileen might be like, how they will look, how they will behave, what their personality will be like as they grow into fully-functioning citizens of the world. So we (or maybe I) have created in our minds these two people, whether we like it or not, and the fact we've picked names makes them both more real than if we hadn't. You just can't help but think of the future when you have a kid on the way.

Problem is, the moment the baby is born and the gender reveals itself, one of those two outcomes ceases to exist. I fear that this will be a loss of sorts. Will I be too overcome with joy at the birth of Norman to mourn the loss of Eileen (or vice versa)? How will this resolve itself? Will the presence of one completely eliminate the previously possible existence of the other in a way that I'll be unable to feel loss for something that never even existed?

I would like to hear from other parents who also refused to find out the gender. Maybe I'm just overthinking this and being generally weird.

Birth class via TV - the story so far

As I mentioned back here, we're skipping the traditional two-day $400 birth classes in favour of a more comprehensive, independent approach which includes some "a la carte" classes as well as books, DVDs and videos.

The story so far....

We lined up two videos from the library and a few DVDs from Netflix. First up was "The Joy of Natural Childbirth". This magnificent tranche of 80s documentary was hosted by Lorenzo Lamas (who K could have sworn was actually gay) and his wife. They and their 80s celebrity friends (including John Ritter, Kenny Rogers, Jane Seymour and the Famous Amos bloke) talk about their birthing experiences and then Lorenzo and his Mrs. show a bunch of exercises and techniques. Interspersed is footage of a "real" Lamaze class hosted by a woman with MASSIVE hair and lip gloss that is blindingly reflective. Finally, the Lamas' friends have their baby and actual footage of that birth closes out the film.

Yes, it was old. Yes, it was HILARIOUS. Yes, some of the content was actually wrong. And yes, many of the interviewees ended up not having a natural birth at all. However, there was one section in the middle where good ole Lorenzo highlights how important it is for partners to keep the mum as relaxed as possible. That was my main takeaway from this, although the refresher on the three stages of labor and the three phases of the first stage was useful, since it is a couple of months since we attended the class at Alta Bates.

Last night we watched "Laugh and Learn About Childbirth". This 2007 DVD (which Netflix warned had a "long wait", which was actually a couple of days) is an actual Lamaze class, hosted by an RN, lactation consultant and certified Lamaze instructor named Sheri Bayles. She's a little bit annoying, but she's clearly incredibly experienced, a great communicator and I'll begrudgingly admit she's pretty funny. The DVD is also endorsed by numerous Hollywood celebs with fake boobs, as you can see from the website, although it looks like the information is appropriate for women with real boobs too...

We learned A LOT. Stuff I didn't know included the six preliminary signs of labor, the three actual signs of labor, what to do when the water breaks, the new way of pushing (called "labouring down", as opposed to the older "directed pushing") along with a whole host of little tidbits of info (e.g. don't start timing contractions until she's having trouble talking through them).

All was going swimmingly until the section on cord blood banking, at which point the DVD turned into an infomercial for a company called Viacord. It was initially subtle, but by the end of the section it was blatant. We started wondering whether we'd been duped, taken advantage of, or whether this was just a practical way that she was able to get funding for this film. We decided that it didn't undermine the other info, but that we would simply ignore the blood banking section. It was a good reminder that EVERY birthing class comes with its own baggage, be it philosophical or financial.

We're now waiting for disc two, which covers medication, interventions, caesarians and the other stuff that we want to avoid but should know about. We also have another older VHS movie from the library called "Having Your Baby", which appears to be along the lines of last night's DVD in terms of content, only from the same time period as the Lorenzo Lamas video. The lip gloss should give it away...

Baby vs. Mexican food

This is a picture of a carnitas super burrito from El Farolito Taqueria on 24th Street. As you can see, El Farolito don't mess around when it comes to sizing their slabs.

Why is this important? Because this week (finally) the baby weighs more than an El Farolito burrito. Another massive milestone...

"Babymoon"

K and I had a chance to get away for the weekend on what we termed the "babymoon". It was a great weekend up in tranquil Mendocino. We had some good food, stayed in a delightful bed and breakfast, did a little walking and generally enjoyed each other's company, free from daily obligations.
It seems like this is a common thing - I've heard of a number of expectant parents taking a weekend off from the pressure of getting ready for a baby's arrival. It was really nice...

New toy

Baby has its first toy (well, the first toy we've bought specifically for it). We had brunch with our friends who have a charming little 6-month-old boy (who was born something like 8 weeks early, yikes!) in Rockridge on Sunday. Rockridge is home to a pretty cool baby-stuff store named Rockridge Kids. So after brunch we all went in there so our friends could point out what we should and shouldn't buy. They didn't bank of K's magnetic attraction to anything owl-related, so when she spotted this cute little burrowing owl hand puppet it was as good as sold.

This is our parrot Ozzie getting to know the owl. He was a little scared of it, even though he really shouldn't be. For what it's worth, burrowing owls are absolutely fascinating birds. The fact they don't live in trees is amazing (they take over vacant prairie dog burrows). They are also without a doubt some of the coolest looking birds too maybe because they have such silly long legs.

Buying the first toy was an unexpectedly exciting moment. Everything up until now has been about providing necessities for the baby. Here was our first moment of thinking about giving some joy to them. Happiness is the difference between being alive and living.

Classes - the decision

"We have to decide on birth classes" I was told by K on Sunday. Fair enough, it's something we've been dragging our feet on. She went to work researching the options whilst I tried to clear four years of crap out of the filing cabinet. When she was done we both sat down, looked over the snazzy spreadsheet she had created.... and got progressively more depressed. We realized we're in an awkward spot. We don't fit into the "natural childbirth"-type classes because we're dead-set on being in the hospital, and don't fit into the classes that will think nothing of assuming that the woman plans on having an epidural. As a result, nothing seemed to fit with our philosophy if for no other reason than each class seemed to be locked into one way of doing things.

What made things even worse is that they were extremely expensive, and we started to feel that they were aimed at rich entitled white San Francisco women. I will be the first to admit that we are both white and live in SF, but we are certainly not rich and hopefully not entitled. As a result, the idea of dropping $400 on this seemed like a joke, especially as we had taken two 3-hour classes already at a hospital in Berkeley that cost us $0. What was it about these classes at places with flowery names like "Natural Resources", "Day One" and "The Tulip Grove" that made them so much better than what we had already done? I could smell the BS, and the words "maternity-industrial-complex" came to mind. By the way, tulips are flowers and a grove is a stand of trees, so there's no such thing as tulip grove - one more reason that things just don't sit right about these places.

Adding to the misery was the fact that none of them included the childcare class (those were extra money), which was something I was very interested in doing. I have no idea how to look after a baby, so learning a thing or two in this area might prove useful when the baby has projectile pooped all over my vomit-stained t-shirt at 3am whilst crying at a volume that would make Motorhead cringe.

So, as anyone who knows us won't be surprised to learn, we're doing things differently. We believe that we should approach this like students of any subject should: thinking critically. We will expose ourselves to many approaches to the topic and utilize the tools at our fingertips. To that end, we've put together our own birthing and childcare curriculum. This is going to include DVDs and videos from Netflix and the SF public library; books; the fact we've already done two free birthing classes; and some a la carte classes at a place called Birthways in Berkeley that cover pain management in labor, breastfeeding and childcare (total cost of the three classes is $140 for what amounts to 10 hours of education). This all seems so much better than being tied down to the opinions and dogma of one birth educator who you're paying extortionate amounts of money to.