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Back to the drawing board

Published January 19, 2012 baby stuff 20 Comments

And let’s bring another edition of Naming Names to the table.

Wowsers. People are really bonkers about names. What’s in a name? Well, a quick google search can certainly answer that question for you. Or, at the very least, give you hundreds of opinions full of misspelled words, misplaced punctuation and confusing grammar.

As the due date approaches, the more I realize we do probably need to figure out a name besides Sweet Potato for the little sweet potato. As I think hard about a name for our baby girl, I have tried to be increasingly honest with myself. As I do so, I recognize how much I truly like the name Gertrude and specifically, the nickname Gertie. I mean, I really like these names. I know that many people, including several members of my own family, seem to think Gertrude is possibly the worst name ever created. Given such opposition, I decided to take my dilemma to the ultimate source: the internet. I googled “Should I name my daughter (my daughter!!) Gertrude” to see what the interwebs would tell me. Ok, I left out that parenthetical in my query, but let’s just pause: my daughter! Anyway, the answers I got were not pretty.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Some people chimed into others’ similarly posted question with responses that indicate that the entire world is not quite of one opinion on the name Gertrude. A few people are like me: they actually find it charming, full of character and truly sweet. Others, though, and the vast majority of the commentators, actually despise the name. In an effort to illustrate just how awful of a name Gertrude is, people pointed out the name contains the word ‘rude;’ the name is too heavy on consonants; and some 20th century murderer was named Gertrude (this same type of fact, though, doesn’t seem to stop people from naming their child Charles or Jeffrey or Andrew). Many people hinted that a mother who would name her daughter Gertrude should be simultaneously referred to social services and institutionalized. Someone actually stated that she would rather die than name her (fictional) daughter Gertrude. She. Would. Rather. Die.

Well. Now I know what the internet thinks of Gertrude.

As much as I love the name, and as much as Aaron really, really loves the name, I don’t want to give our daughter a name that the world almost collectively seems to hate. I especially don’t want to give her a name that she may hate. I’m not ready to complete scrap Gertrude, but I’m not sure I can get over all of the venom out there. Argh.

To epidural or not to epidural

Published January 15, 2012 baby stuff , bling blog 9 Comments

As I mourn the passing of the Packers’ glorious 2011-12 season, I am trying to keep my mind occupied with other things. After drying my eyes and taking out some crankiness on Aaron, I watched the Golden Globes. This effort was only moderately successful as the show wasn’t quite as entertaining as I needed it to be (though I probably expected too much by asking it to raise the bar in the wake of the worst Packer game of the season). As that’s now over, and I’m still feeling pretty morose (and AO is sleepily breathing quietly next to me), I’m going to try my hand at a blog post. A Blog Post to Move Forward with Life in the Offseason.

Lately when I hear the word ‘epidural,’ I find myself singing — to myself, in my head — “Epidural, Epidural, Ep-i-dural,” which is sung to the tune of ‘Rock Me Amadeus.’ Is this because epidurals and Mozart are two peas in a pod? Or maybe because ‘epidural’ and ‘Amadeus’ are the only four syllable words I know? Whatever the reason, the song in my head is quite catchy. And its existence also — not surprisingly — coincides with my rapid approach to the finish line. I’m staring down the barrel of under eight weeks until Baby Girl Sweet Potato makes her post-womb debut and I generally prefer to talk and think about and research mobiles on Etsy and Pinterest than read about what’s actually going to happen on The Day o’ Birth. I don’t think I can be that unusual in this regard. For one thing, I have always loved design and decoration more than human anatomy. For another, mobiles are cute and sweet and — to me, at least — gobs of goo and blood and who-knows-what and a baby coming out of me are anything but. This is not to say that I’m a complete ignoramus when it comes to birth; it’s just more that I’m not in love with the idea of what I need to do to get the Sweet Potato from one side of my body to the other.

For a long time now, well before I was with child myself, I thought, “Why not have an epidural?” I went through a period, when I was a child, when I would refuse pain medication or allergy meds — for things like headaches and, you know, my eyes swelling shut and things like that — because I thought that I was *strong* enough to just deal with it and that being so — strong enough — somehow meant something. I’m not entirely sure when I grew out of that stage, but I am so glad I did. I now take Advil when my head or uterus hurts (not while I’ve been pregnant, people – calm down), I take Zyrtex (the brilliantly affordable Costco variety) daily and in the last month I’ve been popping Tums — for the first time in my life — like nobody’s business. And I am glad that I feel comfortable and am able to take these brilliant examples of modern medicine. So, maybe not naturally but certainly not unnaturally, I also thought I’d go for an epidural and never look back. I had long been confused by women who rail against the epidural as somehow dangerous for the baby. Granted, I am obviously no doctor and, frankly, have a fifth grader’s sense of my own anatomy, but I still wasn’t sure how there would be nearly enough time for any harm caused by the epidural to reach an about-to-be-born baby. I now understand, though, that I was being too simplistic and not appreciating that anti-epidural women, or even women who are trepidatious about drugs and childbirth, have a range of concerns with medication at the time of birth. Of course there’s whether the baby will be affected, but also — and this seems to be the concern I hear most often — whether the drug will affect the woman’s experience with childbirth. It seems there are serious concerns about whether the epidural will prolong labor, increase the likelihood of a c-section, or cause the woman not to have the full range of her sensations and mental capacities so that she isn’t fully aware of what is happening.

I do think there is another component to the current and common aversion to epidural-y-ing it during the child’s birth. I think there are a lot of women who feel like I used to feel when I got a headache as a child; women who feel they *should* be able to labor without drugs or, “naturally” as they fancy calling it, and that they are a stronger or better or more womanly or certainly more motherly person for doing so. I think, though, that there are also a lot of women who choose to go drug-free for all of the reasons listed in the previous paragraph, and probably a million more I don’t know about, and because they simply want to know and feel what it is like to bring their child into this world uninhibited by any alteration.

I admit that this last possibility only recently occurred to me as I began to really think, for the very first time, about what I wanted to do when the time comes. Because, it seems, that the time is coming no matter how many mobiles I look at, no matter how many Packer games are won or lost, and no matter how much I worry about whether we are ready. And as I think about whether to epidural or not, I realize that I just don’t know. I definitely want the epidural as an option on the table, and I still tend to lean toward making the whole experience the least painful that it can be, but I also admit to a curiosity about what it will feel like, how much I can handle, and whether Baby and I would fare better meeting face to face, for the first time, drug-free.

So, I continue to read things like this. And I appreciate hearing from my friends who made the choices they made — I have friends who have epidural-ed, c-section-ed, vaginal birthed sans meds, and home birthed and I think they are all amazing. I try very hard to understand and respect women who feel very strongly about these issues, while recognizing that I cannot manufacture concern for issues that don’t worry me so much and that it doesn’t make me an insta-bad mom for concentrating my worry on things other than whether Baby Girl will be affected by an epidural.

The thing is, I don’t have to please or impress anyone else. Life is hard enough without adding unnecessary pain and stress. So, I think I’ll just keep reading and thinking and listening and, in the end, make a decision that I think is best for me and for Baby. And maybe even Aaron.

And … scene!

Published January 8, 2012 baby stuff 11 Comments
Tags: glider, Rubin's, Younger furniture

Ok, I know this is probably a dreadfully boring topic to you, but I feel compelled to complete the story and then I promise I will move on to something perhaps equally boring, but unrelated. After canceling the glider from Hayneedle that I was feeling luke warm about, we went to Babies ‘R’ Us on Friday evening to see if there was anything there we could work with. We found a glider from Klaussner (which is a US company but, from what I have read, assembles some of its frames in Italy and has some of its upholstery cut in Mexico) that was relatively cute, inexpensive at about $400, and available in a very cute robin’s egg blue fabric. We decided to just go for it, buy it and move on with life.

Klaussner Virginia glider

We sat at a desk with a saleswoman who filled out a form for our request and then, as she was asking us to sign said form, said, “And that will be ready for pick-up in about 10-12 weeks.” Zoinks. What a total glider buzz kill. The glider’s gestational period was longer than that remaining on baby’s! While this wasn’t the end of the world, it was far from ideal and led us to scratch the deal and, again, start over. Only it wasn’t exactly starting over, because, as you well know, I had been down this glider research path previously.

So, on Friday night, after writing my last blog post, I spent almost six hours looking at nursery gliders online. This may not have been so excessive, but I had already spent at least this amount of time looking at most of these same gliders on various other nights over the last couple of weeks. Basically, I was glider-ed-out and felt resigned to buy something I wasn’t in love with in order to close the book on the Glider Chapter of my life. I felt we had two final options: buy a made-in-the-US Little Castle Valentino glider in Pebble Grey (a soft, light grey ) fabric from the Posh Tots site for about $500 (which would take about 5-6 weeks to arrive, according to their website) or trek around to local furniture stores in the slim hope we could find something better that also wouldn’t take 12 weeks to arrive.

Little Castle Valentino glider

On Saturday morning, fortified with a mocha and a delicious egg, cheese and sausage sandwich (being pregnant is great!), we headed out for the Great Glider Search. We started at the inimitable Century House, where almost all things are beautiful, serene and beyond our price point. Actually, that last part is not exactly true. I have bought many a lamp from Century House — I believe I have six (I’m a bit of a lamp lover) — and many small gifts there, as well. It really is just a great place to look around and enjoy good design. Century House also had a couple of gliders that I had seen online from Monte, which I believe is a Canadian company. The gliders were nice, but at $1k they were just too expensive and, frankly, I wasn’t in love with them in person. I believe both were covered in microsuede and, while they may have been available in other fabrics, that is a turn-off for me. Oh, who am I kidding? If we were going to spend over $1k on a chair, it was going to be the beautiful Room & Board chair I mentioned in a previous post. We checked the sale area, but there wasn’t anything there that came close to fitting the bill (though Aaron was very attracted to a rustic-looking — unusual for the CH — hutch-type thing). After examining all of the gorgeous nursery decor at the adjacent gift house, we left and went to Target. This part of the Great Glider Search was really more about nesting (read: OCD organization for various areas of the house unrelated to the nursery), but we did manage to see one ugly glider in the baby area.

The next store we hit was The Comfort Shoppe out on Mineral Point Road, which used to be two stories of space overflowing with furniture, but has turned into a space that is more like a dark, depressing warehouse with a few living room scenes sprinkled here and there. Although there was no ‘Going Out of Business’ sign, the mood to the place suggested The Comfort Shoppe’s best days are behind it. We found only one rocker, which was also a recliner. Neither one of us was particularly keen on the idea of a recliner, but I liked the chair more than Aaron. The fabric was kinda cute and the scale of the chair was nice. It was also marked as 40% off its $900 price tag. Still, we didn’t love it, and barely liked it, so we moved on.

Next up was Slumberland, which was my idea and I knew was probably a ridiculous one, but I had visions of finding a diamond in the rough and telling a grand old story about my spectacular find. As soon as we walked in, we were accosted by a pushy saleswoman. I really hate to be rude to people, but I find the approach of salespeople at stores like this rude in and of itself. I very much appreciate a greeting and a general, “May I help you with anything?” or, preferably, a “Let me know if I can help you with anything,” I truly appreciate being acknowledged and salesfolks informing me that they are available to help me, should I need it. I cannot stand, though, seeing a salesperson running towards me, greeting me and, when I continue to walk around instead of stopping to ask a question, following me around with a ridiculous question such as, “Have you been here before?” What is the point of that? Is there something complicated about the showroom that renders it impossible to navigate without instruction? It feels only like a manipulative query — one designed to draw people into conversation, which is something I was actively seeking to avoid. I understand, both as a consumer and as a former salesperson, that there is balance to be struck, but I really don’t think it’s complicated. Anyway, I was already down on this Slumberland idea of mine and the first two seconds in the store did nothing but underscore my negative feelings. As you can probably guess, this is not going to be a story titled The Glorious Overlooked Glider We Found in the Corner of the Furniture Superstore. We did, though, find one semi-decent glider amidst the oversized monstrosities that took up much of the floor space, but the fabric choices were heinous, it wasn’t made in the US and, truthfully, ‘semi-decent’ is probably an overstatement.

As we walked back to the car in the parking lot, I told Aaron about a glider I had seen in a nursery scene on Pinterest that looked so cute and perfect. The nursery designer had found the chair at a thrift shop for $9 and had a gorgeous slip cover made. I raised the topic of stopping at the closest St Vinny’s, but acknowledged repeating a story like that seemed next to impossible. We also ran through the idea of going to American or Steinhafel’s, but Aaron rightly pointed out that I wasn’t going to like anything those stores offered us. Frankly, I was pretty exhausted by this point and down on Madison’s nursery furniture options, so we decided to finish out our errands, head back home and buy the Little Castle glider online.

On the way, though, I turned left from Schroeder Road onto Whitney Way and I saw Rubin’s on the left-side of the road. I said, “Let’s just pop in and see if they have anything for us.” I had thought of Rubin’s before, as I had with Iconi Furniture on West Wash (a store I absolutely love), but was pretty sure they wouldn’t have any gliders. I figured Rubin’s would have leather recliners, but I didn’t anticipate finding any fabric gliders. Oops. Almost as soon as we walked in, Aaron spotted The One. The clouds parted, the sun came out, birds started singing and we just knew. An incredibly nice saleswoman came up to us and said, “Is there anything I can help you with or would you like to just look around?” Brilliant. Normally, I would have quickly taken the latter option, but I found myself saying, “Well, we are looking for a glider and are wondering about fabric choices for the one over there,” pointing to the chair Aaron was comfortably seated in. She showed me where the fabrics were, told me about the prices for different grades of fabric, showed me the other fabric glider they had (which was also a recliner, but the reclining lever was nicely hidden in the inside part of the chair — genius!), showed me the leather recliners they had (no thanks) and got me a flyer on the chair, which had a pic of the chair along with its dimensions. And all of this conversation and information was relayed in fewer than five minutes. She left us to look through fabrics, to sit in the chair and to look around — all the while, we knew she was aware of us, but not hovering and, in fact, helping others with their shopping. She was just the perfect salesperson — blending sincere charm and helpful information all in a warm and incredibly non-smothering way (if that makes sense). The chair was $809 and would take 6-8 weeks to make in North Carolina, but we were in love and told ourselves (a) the chair is just comfortable and smart-looking; (b) it’s made in the US; (c) we’d be buying at a local shop, which we didn’t think we’d be able to do; (d) while the chair is more expensive than the Little Castle model, it is cheaper than the Room & Board chair and we love it just as much as that one; (e) the chair is clearly a quality chair, not one we’d be unloading to St Vinny’s or on Craigslist in three years (something we were both pretty sure would happen with the Little Castle model); (f) we had already saved so much by buying the crib, mattress and dresser at Ikea, we could justify splurging a little on the chair; and (g) again, we just loved it. So, we picked out what I think is a gorgeous blue-grey fabric and declared ourselves sold on the chair! The incredibly sweet salesperson went ahead and knocked the price of the chair down to $750 because, she said, “It’s just so cute!,” pointing at my belly. Now, how do you not love that?

Younger Lucy glider

I am so in love with this glider that it’s ridiculous. I know part of my love comes from being done with this decision, but I think most of it comes from feeling so good about the decision we made. We were able to achieve our goals in buying this important piece for Baby Sweet Potato’s new room: a US-made product bought at a local shop, Rubin’s, with simply excellent customer see at a very fair price. I’m happy and relieved. And thus ends The Great Glider Search. Thanks for riding along with me on the tour.

**I apologize for the craptastic pics, but I couldn’t get to show up when I copied the image from another site, so I ended up taking pics of the computer images of them. Not ideal, I know.

And nursery glider…take two!

Published January 6, 2012 baby stuff 3 Comments

So, after all of my fretting and griping about the glider, and after finally making the decision to pull the trigger on one, I came down with a serious case of Buyer’s Pre-remorse. I can’t say it was a full-fledged case of Buyer’s Remorse because I didn’t have the actual product in front of me to rue. But I was pretty sure I would be full of rue (rueful, if you will) when the glider arrived on my doorstep. As I was swimming in the flood of these feelings, I got an email from Hayneedle (the company through which I bought said glider) apologizing and informing me delivery of my purchase was going to be delayed until January 13. With the baby due in March, and the glider ordered at the end of December, I realize waiting until mid-January could hardly be called an inconvenience, but I took it as a sign (read: opportunity) to cancel my order and begin my search anew. I emailed Hayneedle to ask if the order could still be canceled and I was surprised to receive a reply from a real human being almost immediately. Real Human Being told me she would check with the vendor and get back to me in two days’ time. Well, the very next day there was an email from Hayneedle telling me my order had been successfully canceled! How awesome, I thought. What a great company, I exclaimed. And now I get to search for the perfect glider all over again, I mused.

Shoot. Now I *get* to search for the perfect glider all over again. Oops.

Back to the lab

Published December 30, 2011 baby stuff 8 Comments
Tags: gestational diabetes, three-hour glucose test

I’m up early (for me) this morning because I failed – or, rather, had abnormal results from – the one-hour glucose test I did last week. This failure on my part has sent me to the lab for a three-hour glucose test to determine whether I have gestational diabetes. From what I have read, gestational diabetes is both common and uncommon. Risk factors include being over 25 or 35, having a family history of diabetes and being overweight or obese before beginning pregnancy. Other risk factors appear to be being pregnant. Hmm. So here I sit waiting for the next blood draw…

Let me pause here to weigh in on a topic of semi-interest to me. It seems every profession has its own lexicon and its way of communicating with lay people. I am a lawyer and, while my work is not very complicated, it does have its own terminology and sometimes those terms can be non-self-evident to non-lawyers and require some explanation. For example, when I use the word ‘moot’ to describe a case, I mean that the case is no longer in controversy. The judicial branch can decide only cases or controversies, so if there is no more controversy between the parties, the case is moot and will not be decided by a court. The most common example of this is when there has been some sort of pretrial resolution to the matter at hand. As much as you or I may have wished to see how a judge or jury would decide a case, if there is no longer an actual conflict between the parties, the case is moot and is over as far as the law is concerned. Imagine my surprise then when I looked up ‘moot’ in a regular old dictionary the other day and found its meaning described as ‘open for debate.’ Well! Although this definition is not exactly the opposite of the legal one, it comes close. Anyway, the medical profession, not surprisingly, seems to have an entirely different language from my own, such that I sometimes wonder if we can ever be friends. Dr. Heather is particularly skilled at explaining things, but I have found her to be more of the exception than the rule. I do take some responsibility, though, as I’m sure I often ask the wrong questions. Awhile ago, when I lived in Richmond, I asked my doctor to take a look at a large mole I had had forever on my left leg, but which I felt had grown a little in the last year or so. She scrutinized the mole, scrunched up her face and said, “Well, it’s not symmetrical.” I said, “What does that mean?” She said, “It’s not the same on one side as it is on the other. If you folded it in half, it wouldn’t match up.” Uh, thanks. I guess what I should have said is something more like, “Does that mean it’s more or less likely to be cancer?”

This sort of thing happened to me again this week when I spoke to the nurse who told me that I had failed the one-hour glucose test. I asked her if she had any statistics for me, such as the percentage of women who fail the one-hour who are then diagnosed with gestational diabetes. She answered, “A lot of women fail the one-hour but pass the three-hour.” Very scientific. She then proceeded to tell me what the three-hour test would entail. She said there would be four blood draws and if I fail two of the four, I have gestational diabetes; if I do not fail two of the four, I definitely do not have gestational diabetes. I don’t know about you, Dear Reader, but this explanation made about zero sense to me and sounded a wee too close to junk science for my taste. So, I quickly took action and scoured the omniscient World Wide Web for information on this three-hour test. I soon realized that the explanation the nurse gave me, while technically true, was overly simplistic and, consequently, head-scratching. I am sure she was trying to conform her vocabulary to something I could understand, but her explanation had me only baffled. What I have learned since then, and what my basic brain has come to understand, is the following: gestational diabetes occurs when hormones from the placenta interfere with the pancreas’ ability to produce enough insulin to combat the glucose a pregnant woman ingests. For whatever reason, the condition usually sets in between 24-28 weeks of pregnancy. Because there isn’t enough insulin, extra glucose passes through the placenta to the fetus and that glucose is stored as fat in the fetus. The fetus can then become too big, which can lead to labor problems. Although there appear to be other complications with gestational diabetes, the major one is babies that are too large, which increases risk to the mother and ups the likelihood of a c-section. So, the test. Passing the one-hour test means there’s no need to do the three-hour (I passed the one-hour test I took at around 12 weeks). The three-hour, on the other hand, is considered diagnostic (though I read a bit about how some docs think it’s not very reliable) and it goes like this: the preggers lady (me, in case you got lost) fasts for 12 hours and then comes into the lab to have some blood taken. The glucose level in the blood is tested. If this number is too high, the woman immediately *fails* the test because, obviously, there is a problem: her glucose level is too high when she hasn’t had glucose in 12 hours. Ok, so assuming that test comes back in the normal range (the nurse told me she had had only one person fail blood test #1 in her nine years of lab work), the woman is given The Orange Drink. The Orange Drink is about eight ounces of sickly sweet Gatorade-like fluid that must be consumed in three hours. Women complain about the orange drink they consume for the one-hour test, but let me tell you that it is nothing compared to The Orange Drink I just drank an hour and a half ago. The drink for the three-hour test is twice as sweet as the other one; it’s just loaded with sugar. Note the capital letters to emphasize the difference. Anyway, ok, so the drink is consumed, the time the woman finished it is noted and blood draw #2 comes one hour later. So, I had my second poke about 30 minutes ago. This blood is then tested. Another draw is done an hour after that and that blood is tested and then there is the final blood poke, #4, which comes yet another hour later. The results of the blood test are then examined and if the woman has acceptable levels of two of the three, she is considered to be in the clear. On the other hand, if her glucose levels are still too high in two or three of the tests, she is diagnosed with gestational diabetes and the fun diet begins. So, basically, the test just measures how the pregnant body deals over time with a lot of glucose. The “if you fail two, you’re done” explanation is, as I said, true, and also now makes sense to me. I assume the most likely blood test to fail, for women who still go on to pass the test, is the blood draw at the one-hour mark; perhaps her body deals well with the glucose, but it takes just a little longer.

So, here I sit waiting for two more draws. It’s not so bad. I have wireless, a new laptop (MacBook Pro! Hallelujah!), Baby Bargains, The Botany of Desire, and some water — thank goodness the lab tech gave me a little bottle of water because I am still trying to get the artificial orange taste out of my mouth. And Doc Heather just stepped away from her hospital patients to check in on me and chat for a bit before she had to go because some loud alarm on her hip went ballistic!

I’m incredibly nervous as I really do not want to have gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes can be an indicator that the baby will develop diabetes at some point in her life.* I know lots of women have dealt with it, it’s not the end of the world, the chances are the baby will still be really healthy and fine and that soon this will be a distant memory. I know all of that, but I still don’t want it. I worry I’ve already put my baby at risk for all sorts of physical shortcomings and mental problems, just by virtue of her coming from my womb. I don’t want to her to have to start off with one more.

*Since writing this, and while waiting for Blood Poke Four: The Final Chapter (for today), I read gestational diabetes is not an indicator for a baby’s future in the land of diabetes. Obviously, I need to do more research.

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