Nur noch zwei Monate...

Am Freitag wird es nur noch 2 Wochen sein bevor das Baby geboren werden soll... Im grossen ganzen fühle ich mich wohl. Doch letzte Woche, wurde es für mich etwas zu viel. Nicht schwanger sein - damit habe ich noch kein Problem - ausser wenn ich am schlafen bin... nein - alles andere. Wir müssen viel recherchieren - Kindergarten, Kinderärzte, Kindersitze für im Auto und dann auch Doulas...

Gibt es Doulas in Deutschland? Eine Doula ist nicht das selbe als eine Hebamme. Eine Hebamme arbeitet etwas mehr im Medizinischen Bereich. Eine Doula gibt geistliche Hilfe zu Frauen durch die Geburt. Eine Doula weiss wie sie die Frau helfen kann die Wehen durch stehen zu können. Angeblich, in Amerika, und vielleicht auch in Kanada, misschen sich die Ärzte in die Geburt auch wenn es nicht nötig ist. Sie handeln jedes Geburt als wäre es eine Geburt höher Gefahr wäre - ganz bestimmt damit sie nicht angeklagt werden. Je mehr die Ärzte sich in dem natürlichen Prozess von der Geburt einmisschen, desto höher die Chancen dass die Frau mehr medizinische Hilfe brauch und damit steigen die Chancen das Kaiserschnitt gebraucht wird. Und in Amerika haben mehr Frauen Kaiserschnitt als es gebraucht wird. Jedenfalls, will ich kein Kaiserschnitt haben wenn ich es irgendwie vermeiden kann. Ein Weg ist eine Doula bei sich zu haben durch die Geburt. Sie weiss wie Don mich massieren kann damit die Wehen nicht zu weh tun. Auch dass eine Dusche hilft die Wehen besser zu wieder stehen, usw.

Die Frau die wir ausgewählt haben - denn es gibt mehrere hier in unsere Gegend, hat 30+ Jahre Erfahrung. Sie ist Krankenschwester, und hat für 30 Jahre in New York als Krankenschwester in die Mutterschaft Abteilung gearbeitet und hat tausende von Geburten miterfahren. Sie weiss also auch über das Medizinische Bereich von der Geburt. Ihr Lebenslauf ist sehr beindrukend und dass gefällt Don sehr gut denn er war garnicht so begeistert eine Doula bei uns zu haben. Ich glaube er hatte dass Gefühle dass er dann vielleicht nicht so sehr an der Geburt teil nehmen wurde. Mein Gefühl ist dass sie uns beide helfen wird.

So, es wird jetzt Spät und ich bin müde... ich wollte noch mehr schreiben, aber dass muss bis zum nächstes Mal warten müssen. Hoffentlich wird es nicht so lange dauern bis ich wieder in Deutsch schreibe.

Don hat auch ein paar Bilder von mir genommen. Ich habe gemerkt dass ich etwas zugenommen hab. Nicht nur von meiner Schwangerschaft, warscheinlich mehr von die Schokolade. Gut ist es nicht, aber im Moment gibt es Schokolade überall denn es ist Halloween Zeit hier. Ich glaube auch dass ich etwas unter Stress leite da es nur noch 2 Monate bis zur Geburt ist... Ich will morgen zu Yoga gehen und da hoffe ich mich etwas entspannen zu können.

Also, bis zum nächsten Mal!

Some Pics form 'Day of the Dead' and the Beach

Got out fo the Condo on the weekend and staye of the computers (pretty much). Oceanside was hosting the 'Day of the Dead' festival in which the Mexican-American community displays it more holistic - 'death's just a natural part of life' approach to dying that they tie into Halloween.

Got some good shots of Tanya in which you can see she's coming along. Then we went for a stroll down on the beach.

Ode to my nutty wife

My wife's a nut.
Her belly quite stuffed.

Full of life, apprehension, suspension.
Diligently preparing, caring.

Temper's a bit quick.
With a husband so thick.

Thank God we'll be thru with this quick.

Nesting Instinct has kicked in....

and poor Don has to suffer because he has to help me clean the house.

We did our main cleaning yesterday. That means that while I clean the bathrooms and vacuum, Don cleans the kitchen and washed the tile and linoleum floors. I don't think he minds cleaning up the kitchen, but I don't think he likes washing the floors. Neither do I. I did give him the choice of cleaning the bathrooms (plus toilets) or washing the floors. He chose the floors....

But that was just regular cleaning. No, the nesting instinct asserted itself yesterday after we came home from Costco - this was also after the hospital orientation. Don was putting stuff in the fridge and the fridge, in general, is not really organized, and it totally got to me and made me quite short-tempered. Quite short tempered.

Also, what's been bugging for a while, is the guest bedroom. To make it tidy before my mom came, we basically piled everything into the closet, which meant that there was no room in the closet for any clothing. Eventually we brought some shelves up and tried to organize a little more... but not very successfully. But now it's getting to a point where I feel a compulsion to get everything organized. And Don has to help me. Today we tackled the guest bedroom. We got all out paper work organized into folders, which cleared up a lot of space in the closet. Moved some of the kitchen stuff in there to the kitchen. Re-organized some boxes... and lo and behold, we have space, not only for hanging clothes, but also on the baker's rack shelf for folded clothes. Hooray. It's nice to be able to offer guests space to put their clothes.

Other projects that need to be done:
(1) find my wooden embroidery hoop. It's gotta be somewhere. Since I didn't find it in the closet in the guest bedroom that means
(2) tidy up the garage and go through all the boxes and look for my missing stuff. I'm also missing a pillow
(3) properly organize the laundry closet. We have the shelves now I just need to utilize them more efficiently
(4) tidy up the master bedroom - maybe even rearrange the furniture (don't tell Don) so we can fit the Pack'nPlay in there where the baby will sleep
(5) get all the cd's burned into our home computer which is doubling as our stereo/radio/television - and then alphabetize the cds in the guest bedroom
(6) line the shelves in the kitchen with the cork liner that I have. Makes a huge difference.

And I'm sure I'll come up with more stuff as we get closer to the due date.

Anyway, if you click on the picture of Don organizing the paper work in the spare bedroom - the guest bedroom, you'll see some more pictures of our place. Not the best pictures of the place - we haven't cleaned up the dining room table yet - but hopefully it'll give you an idea of what our place looks like... and how Don likes to decorate. Black and white. There'd be pictures up on the wall, but I haven't finished putting them in the frames. And I thought of another thing we need to do

(7) find lamps so we have more light in the living room, guest bedroom and baby's room

The Doula

We (mostly Tanya) have done some research into having a Doula.

What's a Doula? From the Web - "The word, "doula," comes from the Greek word for the most important female slave or servant in an ancient Greek household, the woman who probably helped the lady of the house through her childbearing. The word has come to refer to "a woman experienced in childbirth who provides continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to the mother before, during and just after childbirth."

A friend for mine at my work, Sharon, recently had her first child. Donny, her husband, was as skeptical as am I about the need for what I at first considered was just another 'consultant'; when the Hospital and Clinic we've been attending seem quite enlightened and are 'baby friendly' already.

Though Sharon and Donny had similar reservations, friends of their's had glowing reviews/opinions regarding the benefits of having a Doula and we were impressed enough with their thoughts and comments to explore further. In fact, Sharon's friend said that if Sharon did not want to have a Doula, they'd personally pay for Sharon to have a Doula - because it had been such a great experience for them.

Sharon had two of her sisters with her (both of them had had their own children already) and they both were impressed enough with having a Doula, that they said if they were to get pregnant again, they would both choose to have Doula's as well.

The Doulas plays the role of contant advisor / attendant - providing the nursing services you might otherwise expect the Hospital nurses to provide - but apparently the Hospital nurses are not able to provide the care you would like because they are dealing with multiple patients and have a tremendous amount of paper-work to attend to.

You meet with them several times before the birth event and page them when thing get cooking. The Doula then works with you to estimate / evaluate how quickly or not-so-quickly things are progressing and hopefully lets you stay at home untill the real action picks up and you really have to get going to the hosptial. Then, they stay with you 24-7 as you go through the birthing process and act as your advisor / proponent in dealing with hosptial staff.

They provide post-partem consulting services as well (some are lactation consultants as well).

So, that being said, we (I) am a little more willing to look into these baby-popping consultants.... Looks like there are some freaky 'new-agers' out there and also some more 'traditional' Doulas that may be a good fit us.

We've found one in-fact, who is European, has written numerous on-the-Web and conventional-print articles and more importantly attended thousands of biths, She is an RN, IBCLC, CD (DONA), LCCE, FACCE (whatever the rest of these after RN stands for) and is a speaker/educator who spent several decades in New York as a Child-birth expert and is a Doula extra-ordinarre. She's retired to the San Diego area to be near her son as heis a Marine at Camp Pembleton, thought she just can't fully retire.

We'll meet with her this week to feel her out and to learn more about 'Doulism' first hand.

Hospital Tour

Went for Scripps Hospital for Delivery orientation this afternoon. No big relevations, but comforting just the same.

We met up with in the Lobby with eight or so other prego couples and listened to a 'talk thru'.

Some observations; in this session and other prep sessions at the same hosptial, everyone of the total of 20 - 30 couples has been white and between 25 - 40+ year old. A little surprising in that the local populace is at least 30% Mexican American or minority and we've seen soom younger parents.

Maybe its the fact that that I think the Hospital is tied to corporate HMOs and PPOs. Don't really know enough about the local health system to know if folks without Healthcare go to other Hospitals; but just interesting to observe that so far, we all 'look alike'.

The younger couples seem a little more anxious and more inclined to be comforting each other as the they learn about what they are about to go through. Though, at the same time, it also seems that most couples have read enough on the Internet and from books that whatever they have to tell/teach you, you've already read about it before.

Scripps has what they call a 'baby friendly' philosophy that is a good fit for what we are looking for.

After the baby is born, they don't wisk him/her off to a nursery, the baby stays with you in the delivery room and with you when they shuffle you down the hall to a post-partem recovery room.

The delevery ward is just off the main entrance to the Hospital and not connected to the Emergancy Room entance. It's security controlled so that you can only get in if your connected to a family having a baby. The babies get an ankle braclet that has an alarm that goes off if anyone tries to leave the ward with the baby so the prospect of abuctions is not something we'll have to worry about.

The delivery rooms have basinets and sinks where they can bathe the baby so they keep the baby in the room while they clean up after-birth, apply eye-drops and give the vitamin K shot. Also, we've learned from class videos that the baby usually is fully awake for about two hours after the birth and that they will accommodate our desire to have the baby spend those first two hours direcly with Tanya (and me) before he/she is expected to go to sleep for pretty much the balance of day one.

They have four delivery rooms and eight post-partem recovery rooms. The recovery rooms are set up for two moms - though it looks like you usually have the recovery room to yourself. If they have a 'rush' the post-partem rooms can also be used for delivery rooms.

We were only able to see one of the recovery rooms as the delivery rooms and seven of the recovery rooms were in use today.

If a caesarean is required, they have a surgery room in the same ward, so your basically in the same small section of the hospital for that event as well.

The rooms are pretty plain and 'hospitally', so though you can hang out for 48 hours post-partem for natural birth and 72 hours for caesareans, I think we will want to head home pretty much asap.

Were only a few people in the hallways attending for current births. Was one young guy that looked a little freaked out and I imagine he was in the 'waiting stage' and perhaps was not ready to be 'in the room'. Thinking, I'll be pretty anxious myself, but that I'll have no problems 'being in the room' as events progress.

Ode to my belly

Belly, belly, oh my sweet belly
You're somewhat firmer than a bowlful of jelly

You groove and you move
And sometimes you're quite smoothe

Othertimes you bump and you thump
And I can see quite a lump

Now I've become quite large
But I'm not yet big as a barge

So I carry you quite proud
And stand out in the crowd

Kann mann von Schwangerschaft platzen?

Obwohl es noch 3 Monate dauert bevor das Baby kommt, ich wundere mich morgens, wenn ich mein Bauch sehe, ob ich doch nicht vielleicht davor platzen werde... So gross ist mein Bauch vielleicht nicht, aber meine Haut scheint ziemlich stramm zu sein. Wie viel kann sich die Haut noch ausdehnen? Und danach, wird sich die Haut wieder zurück ziehen? Oder wird mein Bauch wie ein Luftballon ohne Luft aussehen? Ein Luftballon platzt auch.

Was ich auch nicht erwartet hab - wie mein Bauch juckt! Doch da hilft kratzen leider nicht. Anstatt kratzen muss ich sicher sein dass ich morgens mein Bauch gut mit Kreme einschmiere. Ganz gut.Abends muss ich auch einschmieren. Ich muss zugeben dass es nicht wegen Schwangerschaftstreifen ist dass ich mein Bauch einschmiere sondern nur wegen das jucken.

Habt Ihr vielleicht über die Schlange in Florida gelesen? Diese Schlange hat ein Krocodil geschluckt und ist geplatzt! Doch vielleicht sind Leute doch anders. Es gibt ja Leute die riesig dick sind und es ist noch niemand geplatzt. Also glaube ich dass ich mit mein kleineren Bauch doch keine Sorgen zuhaben hab.

Sonst geht es mir ganz gut. Das Baby bewegt sich und ich kann "Dinge" in mein Bauch fühlen. Don meint dass er Elbogen und Füsse fühlen kann. Ich kann nur runde Dinge fühlen in verschiedene viertel meinem Bauch. Und da muss ich mich auch wundern. Wie bewegt sich das Baby dass es mich überall aufeinmal Stosst? Vielleicht will das Baby mich wissen lassen dass es ein Sportler wird. Wir haben am Radio Eishockey gehört und das Baby schien ganz activ zu werden. Wenn Baby ein Eishockey Spieler werden würde, da wäre Don ganz happy. Doch ich glaube wir müssten zurück nach Kanada ziehen und damit is Don nicht so begeistert. Ihm gefällt das Wetter hier in San Diego viel besser.

Ich muss jetzt gehen denn ab 28 Wochen soll ich die Bewegungen des Babys zählen. Es soll sich mindestens 10 Mal in einer Stunde bewegen. Wenn nicht, dann soll ich den Arzt anrufen. Bis zum nächsten Mal!

AAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!

Never let an old lady who can't see touch your knitting!!!!!!

EVEN IF YOU NEED HELP!!!!

AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

I finished my first bootie yesterday and it looked a little funny. She, one of the knitting shop owners, a woman who is quite old and seems to be almost blind, took hold of it, said it was lopsided and started to take it apart to see where the problem is. Because of the way the bootie was knit there were different ends in the same area and she got completely confused, started undoing different sections, got confused and totally mucked it all up. It was all I could do not to snatch it away from her and run out the door screaming! Then she complained about how small and tight the stitches were... I was using small yarn and US 3 needles (small needles)... so yes, the stitches were tight. After watching her struggling with the bootie for about 20 minutes and seeing it get further and further unravelled and disordered, and hearing her mutter about not being able to see, I finally asked if she wanted me to undo the stitches and I finally got it back. I was able to repair the damage, and while I did that I got a lesson in how I was knitting the wrong way and that the person who taught me taught me wrongly. That annoyed me to no end. My knit stitch may not be the standard way of knitting, but it's perfectly fine - and it's straight.

And my purl stitch... well, I'll admit I do purl incorrectly resulting in a twisted thread. But not because my mom taught me wrong, but because I'm not doing it correctly. I remember her telling me that I wasn't purling correctly when she taught me, and I ignored her and went my own way. It looks almost the same. Almost. For those in the know about knitting, I wrap the yarn in a clockwise direction when I purl rather than counter-clock-wise. This causes the stitch to get twisted. As I said, it looks almost the same.

Anyway, when I finally got back to where I had been with the bootie, with the exception of finishing off the last two rows, I gave it back to the old lady to look at... with much trepidation - didn't want her to muck it up again. She took a look at it and was surprised that my stitching was straight. I know she got confused between the moss stitch section and the garter knit section, plus the knitting of 2 stitches together when she was previously taking it all apart. And I know I knitted it together correctly. Anyway, as she said, I learned something by doing this... not that I knit and purl incorrectly, but to try not to let her get her hands on my knitting! Not unless I have the huge needles all the other women seem to knit with.

Still, I'll got back to the knitting shop because it's nice to meet other women and to socialize. Much as I love Don, sometimes spending time with other women is really nice too. Plus I'm enjoying knitting. It requires you to be really precise which fits in with the side of my personality that is more ... well, less flexible. And it's nice to create something.

Another picture of Baby Isaak

There has been some consternation over the ultra-sound picture that I chose to put up on our blog. Granted the baby looks freaky, but that's the reason I put the picture up... Under promise, over deliver... a standard practice in project management where you promise less than you expect to be able to deliver, so you set low expectations, and then your over deliver, making the customer really happy. Based on this principle, not matter what the baby looks like when it eventually arrives, it'll look better than the freaky picture. But to appease the masses, here is a much better picture of the baby...

On another note, I've "cleaned up" our blog and removed many of the pictures Don had posted. Instead, some of the pictures have links to other pictures. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which pictures are the links... Have fun. I'm off to knit baby booties.