Our Diego

N's (film) Debut

2012-01-23T18:34:00.000-08:00

After over 20 (I kid you not) uploading attempts on Faceboook, I've decided to bring you this glimpse of N and his first Christmas on the blog...

The Postpartum ABC's

2011-12-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

Twenty-six features of postpartum-hood. (Those who haven't been through it might want to glance at "T" first)

A is for Adorable - N. is. He and his sister together make it exponential.

B is for Boobies - they run my life. I woke in the middle of the night last night with my T-shirt soaked through. I thought I was having sudden hot-flash sweats. It took me till morning to deduce it was just milk.

C is for Cookies - Walnut chocolate chip specifically, homemade by our good friends. My assault on the baby weight will have to wait till that tupperware is empty.

D is for Diapers - which are failing me completely. He's pooped on me 6 times today. SIX.

E is for Engorgement. For those who have not experienced this unique affliction, take two large honeydew melons, fill with a high concentration of your most sensitive nerve endings, then pummel repeatedly with phone books, while inserting hot needles.

F is for Feeding -which is constant. See entries "B" "N" and "P."

G is for Grandparents - What a great invention! They come when needed, offer love, food, hands, gifts, and mountains of support. Their grandchildren adore them as much as they adore them. And for those few days we're in their presence, we have the option of being adults or momentarily, children (to them) again ourselves.

H is for Help. Not only does it take the proverbial village to raise a child, ideally it takes one to birth and recover too. N needed every person around him during his birth - Grandpa P to look after little T, Grandma L and Daddy to support mama, mama to birth him, and midwives Marla and Sandi to make sure it all went smoothly. Since then I've been a lump on the bed needing to be waited on hand and foot - something my folks and then B have obliged to do. T helps with cuddles, kisses, and running mama and N little house errands. B now has the veritable workload of cooking, cleaning, taking care of T full time, AND running around attending to my needs (water, food, more water, cookies...). I don't know what N and I would do without them.

I is for Ironic - Alanis could have made a whole sequel on the spit-up that comes right after you get that awkward long sleeve onesie on, the poop explosion that waits until just after the fresh diaper has been tucked into clean pants, or the phone that rings once sleepy eyes finally close.

J is for Jen - the person I was, the person I will be once again! After most of A-Z subside...

K - there's got to be one letter I can't answer ;-)

L is for Leaking - gives Wet T-shirt Contest a new and entirely unattractive connotation.

M is for Mama - which I love being enough to not mind A-Z.

N is for Nipples - sore, cracked, bleeding, leaking...

O is for Other Sensitive Areas - same.

P is for Poop. It rules my life. Yellow, sticky, prolific, but sweet-smelling (thank goodness!). That's his. Mine, let's not go there.

Q is for Quiet Time - which I have surprisingly a lot of. When B is with T at music group, preschool, playdates or the playground it's just N & I for hours, hanging out in the poop, pee & milk soaked paraphernalia of our bedroom (items I do try to get from the bed into the dirty clothes bin I should mention). Then there's the baby crying, T climbing over me to comfort him, general mayhem times. It seems to only ever be one or the other.

R is for Rest - Specifically bedrest for 15 days on midwife's orders. In turns it has been both welcome and ridiculously boring. But my midwife has assured me that like a 2 yr old that's just devoured your chocolate chip cookies, if I stray the evidence will out me!

S is for Stitches. Which is what happens when a 14" head is the second largest diameter you birth.

T is for TMI - because nearly everything about labor, birth and postpartum is TMI.

U is for Undergarments - suddenly my intimate attire has taken on the attributes of those of an incontinent geriatric. B has promised Santa will take this into consideration (hopefully he frequents Victoria's Secret & Patagonia? :)

V is for Vital Records - the place we need to get N's birth certificate before we can get his passport to fly to Canada next week. I'd been obsessing about this hurdle for weeks, so as soon as we woke up on Friday morning, I called. I don't think they were used to hearing "Hi, I just gave birth a few hours ago..." and while the offer of brownies was made (to which I got a polite "I'm sorry, we're not allowed to accept bribes ma'am"), the supervisor was sufficiently sympathetic enough to get us in at the first cancellation.

W is for Waking Baby - the ultimate no-no. Only exceptions: 1) to extract him from the middle of a poop explosion. 2) the house is burning down.

X is for X's - on his little puckered baby lips. Sweeter than any first crush kiss.

Y is for You did it. After T's birth I went from wanting to try a natural birth and a homebirth and even a hypnobabies birth with N, all without really knowing what we were getting ourselves into. It's nice to look down at him, recall my labor and his arrival without the disappointment and uncertainty we had through much of T's and allow myself a little "you did it!"

Z is for Zzzz's - namely, what I should be doing now instead of writing blog posts!

Noah's Arrival

2011-12-03T11:28:00.000-08:00

He's (finally) here!!!

The short version:

After the aforementioned waiting game, I finally

went into labor around/after dinner on Thursday night, labored at home with B, my mom and two midwives for support and gave birth to Noah at 3:57 a.m. in an almost water birth ;-) He clocked in at 8 lbs. 4 oz and was a whopping 21" long.

The full version:

Happily, all it seemed to take to get him to come was a good dose of maternal despair :)

Aprox. 24 hrs after writing my last post I was in my other (hospital) midwife's office hearing that I was now 3 cm dilated, 80% effaced and could go anytime! Woo hoo! Sure enough, a 1.5 hr walk with B, and some Olive Garden for dinner had me wondering if the odd mixture of intermittent tightening/gas pains/menstrual-like cramps I was feeling was finally N conceding to come (I'd

never been to Olive Garden, maybe this was a typical reaction!).

Not wanting to get anyone's hopes up I didn't say much about it. T went for a sleepover at the grandparents' hotel as planned and B and I headed home to watch some T.V. before an "early" night. Half way through our second program I realized that I was needing B to rub my lower back in order to concentrate - not exactly gas pains anymore! I began timing the pressure waves (aka contractions) on a handy phone app, while B started rushing around preparing the tub, supplies and calling our home birth midwives. I started listening to my Hypnobabies tracks but had to keep stopping to time my surges which were about a 1-1.5 min long and coming 3-5 min apart.

Mom came over after a call at midnight and the midwives arrived around 1 a.m. The one thing I dreaded after T - back labor - had returned with N, but while it prevented me from having a completely comfortable birth, the hypnobabies training meant that instead of being a screaming banshee like I was with T, I was able to make it through active labor with only "Shhh"-ing sounds during pressure waves, and B or mom rubbing my back. For transition (considered the hardest part of labor) I changed to low moans and "Ahhh"-ing and was able to cope in the tub pretty well. Hooray for hypnobabies! :)

Pushing, however, was a different matter! I'll spare you the details, except to say he was born half on the caul (very rare and supposedly good luck), but with shoulder dystocia. So while things got a bit hairy for a couple minutes as/after he was born, I actually didn't know how hairy until debriefing with the midwife today. Save to say, we had an incredibly experienced midwife team, Noah is a little fighter and things worked out fine.

Now that he's here I can say he's beautiful (in one mama's humble, unbiased opinion), a great nurser (maybe a little too great at times...), and has spent his first 36 hrs of life dedicatedly nursing, sleeping, pooping and when he's not snoozing, gazing around and being cuddled by his big sister.

She's taken to him with unbridled enthusiasm, though it's been a challenge to explain all the new limitations of having a little, live baby to receive her love, who's decidedly less robust than her resilient (plastic) baby doll.

It's been great reading the well-wishes and love pouring in over e-mail, text, phone and facebook. I've been urged to stay home for a few days (not how I normally roll as many readers know) but we're looking forward to a few visitors over the coming days/week and hopefully, a short-notice apt. at the office of vital records so N, T, B & I can make our flights to Canada next week! We look forward to as many of you as possible meeting him then, if not sooner.

The FSFM post

2011-11-30T11:53:00.001-08:00

Otherwise known as the Feeling Sorry For Myself post.

If shows of emotion are a good sign while waiting for a baby (heightened hormones? Stress release?), then I'm doing wonderfully! Since Monday when my in-laws had to leave SD after a week waiting to meet their new grandson, the waterworks have sprung frequently and liberally. I'm not proud of this. Trumping disappointment, guilt, anxiety and more disappointment, is an overall feeling of being upset with myself. I know better than this. I have people close to me who are unable to conceive or conceiving and then suffering the loss of miscarriage. What an idiot I am to be wallowing in self pity for having carried a healthy pregnancy to term but having to wait a few extra DAYS (maybe weeks at most) to bring him into this world?! Really, is that my biggest problem? I guess it is, and therefore I should be counting my lucky stars, not blubbering like a teenager who just got dumped.

So what's all the fuss about anyway? Sometimes I don't really know. But the emotions start to well when I have my midwife team tell me (like they just did this morning) with their best smiles, that while I'm "softening" and my cervix is moving forward, like it should, neither my dilation or effacement have progressed since our apt. last week. After weeks of trying every natural induction technique possible, I'm stuck at 70% effaced and only 1 cm dilated.

I know I should be happy there's been any progress, rather than disappointed that we're not looking at an arrival today or tomorrow or maybe another week or even more. Moreover, there is a side of me, as I've mentioned before, that -if we lived down the road from our families all in one country and this was some boring month with nothing going on - I would be fine to kick back and watch the world go by for another week or two, trusting the wisdom of my body and Noah to simply come when he's ready. Unfortunately, the world we live in has dates such as Christmas Eve - 3 weeks from this Saturday (the amount of time it will take Noah to get his birth certificate so we can leave the country); and Monday - the date my parents are both scheduled to fly home (though they've said one will delay their flight if baby's not here yet); and logistics such as the house my parents are trying to finish building before we (and other guests from as far as the UK) arrive for the holidays; bureaucracy such as birth certificate and passport wait times; and flight rules, fees and availability for Brent, me, Thea, Noah and my folks to try and make it to Canada for Christmas once he does come.

So yes, it upsets me to think we might not make it home by Christmas. It worries me the stress my folks will be under to get their house built if they stay to support us. These seem like real concerns that loom larger with each day I don't go into labor. But worse than this, in many ways, is how this is affecting my feelings about a birth we've painstakingly planned to be as positive as possible, and a son who I love and have yet to meet.

I know it's not Noah's fault. It's my body that's taking its time to get ready and if my disappointment should be directed anywhere, it should be at myself (which it is). But what can I do about it? I've read every list available on what to do to bring on labor:

Walking. Acupuncture. Evening Primrose Oil. Raspberry Leaf Tea (to help uterine tone). Wearing a compression band to keep Noah's head pressing on my cervix. Visualization. Relaxation. Spicy food. Hell, I even drank a hot water "tea" of 1/4 cup of melted chocolate chips and 1/8 tsp. of cumin based on word of mouth that it induced labor (yuck!). You name it, I've been doing it!! The only exceptions have been castor oil (I even asked, my midwife said don't bother yet because my body was still so unready) and membrane sweeping (midwives couldn't reach it with my dilation being so small), but heck, I'll even try them as soon as they'll let me!

In the meantime, writing this all down has helped diffuse the emotion (I do have pregnancy hormones as an excuse!) for the time being at least. Mom and Dad are talking about delaying Christmas, and filling our remaining waiting days with fun activities rather than obsessing with stressful thumb twiddling (and doing all of the above list over and over again). I see my only job now to be letting go and trying to recapture the positive anticipation of this birth and meeting our little Noah (I hope he's still little by the time we get to meet him! ;-).

Some final pregnancy musings

2011-11-20T13:09:00.000-08:00

Well it's not a birth announcement (yet). In fact, my midwife's latest prediction is another week. *Sigh* Theoretically I understand that 1) a week is not a long time; 2) neither is 2 weeks if it came to that; and 3) I should be enjoying luxuries such as a full night's sleep, long showers, one-on-one time with my hubby or T, or the ability to have a degree of personal autonomy (I do have a 2 yr old remember) without my life being ruled in 2 hr increments. But as with any big event looming, sometimes it's woefully hard not to obsess about when the big moment is going to come.

So whether N's going to make his entrance soon or not, I thought it might be an idea to get those last pregnancy musings out now (at least one of each, cuz it's late and I remember I should be sleeping!). After all, this may be my last shot at this with-child thing.

One thing I'll miss

Feeling him move. Sure, he feels like a pterodactyl stretching in there right now, and my ribs weren't happy to be his heel rests from week 30 - 36, but I remember the longing I felt when T's nudges silenced after she was on the outside. Of course I then had the magic of being able to inhale her sweet scent, see into her eyes, hold her hands or count her toes. But I remember walking down the hall at work one day missing her terribly and realizing that when she was on the inside I got to take her with me to work - everywhere - 24-7 she was with me. But once a baby is on the outside, they have to fit into societal norms of where they are and aren't welcome. They're also a lot more work. But I missed having her so close. And I know I will miss him just as much.

One thing I'm scared of

Not loving him as much as T. This is a hard one to admit publicly, and I only really do so because nearly every parent we know with more than one child assures me that this is a common fear that will be quickly and fully rebuked the first time I lay eyes on him. Furthermore, I know I already love him, tons, and just can't wait to meet him. So what's this nervousness? Maybe it's a little of my "oh my gosh, it's a boy" insecurities returning, or just some anxiety surrounding the memories of how completely we fell in love with T the moment we saw her and the disbelief that that kind of love can happen to a human being again.

One thing I can't wait for

To meet him. Everything from the first time we set eyes on him (what's he going to look like?) to the first kiss, the first smell, the first snuggle... But most of all, the slow revealing of his personality over each day, week, month, year to come.

So there you go. He's coming. No idea when or where (though I hope we have a good guess on the latter), but odds are he will be on the outside soon enough.

Looking forward to meeting you little one.

The Waiting Game... with deadlines.

2011-11-17T21:58:00.000-08:00

For all of modern medicine's advances, it still can't seem to accurately predict either a baby's size or his/her date of arrival (unless you're forcing the baby out)... which really isn't helping me much these days.

I've been full term for nearly 2 weeks, and tomorrow we'll be down to the final week before my estimated due date. At the moment my head is spinning with little tidbits from friends, birth boards or my midwives, like, "second babies often come early!" "Wow, this little guy has dropped 6-7 cm since last visit! He's either coming early or very quickly when he comes!" "With all the stress you've been under at work I wouldn't be surprised if he came any moment." "Oh, you seem so relaxed now, I think he'll hang in there a while longer." "You're a natural planner, I think baby will feel that and come right after your parents get here."

Usually B & I are advocates of just letting baby be, trusting that babies and pregnant bodies know best when baby is ready for the outside world. Unfortunately, we're fairly sure Canadian Immigration is not going to accept this as a suitable excuse for why our baby wasn't able to get a passport in time to fly to Canada four weeks today.

The problem isn't actually his passport, which we've worked out can be gotten in a day if need be. The problem is the birth certificate necessary to get the passport; which we don't seem to be able to request early and we were told in no uncertain terms takes 3-4 weeks (and that's WITH string pulling!)!

"Well, why not simply delay your flight?" the wise ones ask... Unfortunately, after $225-$300 in change fees alone, we still have to factor in the increased cost of 3 full fares that are going up daily as the holiday approaches, all from a bank account that could only afford flights on points in the first place. (If you're a wise one with money to give us, please call!)

So tomorrow I'm heading back to my midwife's office for her assessment and recommendations on how to get this N-arrival process going! I'd love to wait until our families are here next week (for many reasons, not least of which is the desire to not need to call any of our friends to request a middle of the night playdate for T!), but with our "latest possible" date looking to be this coming Wednesday, it doesn't leave N much wiggle room...(sorry for the pun, it's late).

Here's hoping my next post is a birth announcement!

"Pain-free" Natural Childbirth...

2011-10-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

Say what?!

I think that was my reaction the first time I heard about hypnotizing yourself for a comfortable, natural childbirth. It was when I was pregnant with T and a friend passed along her Home Study Course. She had tried it for her labor but lost concentration during a long and difficult ride to the Birth Center (they lived 45 min away). She admitted she had only done parts of the course and wasn't really expecting it to work.

Hmm, one point against.

Nevertheless, curiosity got the better of us and we made our own half-hearted attempt for a couple of weeks. But a combination of the cheesy scripts, the overzealous bolding and underlining every other sentence throughout the manual, and most of all, the doubt that came from not knowing if I could be hypnotized, or what this whole labor/birth thing would feel like, led me to conclude it was not the birth prep that I wanted to go into this scary thing called Labor with.

Fast forward to this pregnancy. The birth prep course we took for T's birth was helpful, but I wanted more tools to help me have a natural birth this time. We looked into Bradley, Lamaze, and finally returned to Hypnobirthing and its more robust cousin, Hypnobabies. Again, I was skeptical. Then I stumbled upon this Hypnosis for Birth board (and specifically birth stories likethese ones) on BabyCenter.com. Stories of regular women from all over writing in telling about their incredible, unusually fast, easy and most remarkably, comfortable births! I also started googling Hypnobabies on You Tube, and watching a bunch of women, silent or gently "ahhh"-ing through parts of labor that I was decidedly UN-silent through!

It turned out our homebirth midwife had delivered hypno babies too, and had her own stories of the remarkable relaxation the women were able to achieve through self-hypnosis. One lady she attended last year was lying quietly in her birth pool when Marla arrived. She raised her head after a little while to announce calmly, eyes still closed, "baby is crowning." A moment later, "Head is out" Marla came over to shine a light to check the baby's color underwater, which was perfectly pink. The baby was then born... completely healthy and fast asleep!!!

I'm not expecting one of these sleeping labors, or a 22 min dad-delivered-at-home birth because the family never realized they were in labor until the baby's head emerged. But it does give me hope that my labor could be much more relaxing and pleasant than it was last time.

Not that getting a fairy tale natural birth is simply a matter of watching a pocket-watch swing before me as B croons, "you are getting verry sleeepy..." It's actually a lot of work, listening to 1-2 x 40 min scripts daily, doing self practice 2-5x daily, practicing with your birth partner every other day, as well as a lot of reading. With my current work schedule and a 2 yr old that is a pro at distractions, I'm lucky if I do one daily script (usually as I fall asleep at night), and practice with B once a fortnight! So just like college, I'm 5 weeks away from D-day and nervous that I'm going to fail the exam due to insufficient studying.

Nevertheless, I'm hoping my subconscious is paying attention when my conscious mind is busy negotiating with a sleepy preschooler and freaking out about the piles of e-mails I still have to get to... And that somehow, when Noah's Birth Day is finally upon us, that this hypno-anesthesia hocus pocus kicks in!

Just for the record, I've already had one point in Hypnobabies' favor... I got a flu shot a few weeks ago and as the needle was poised above my arm I realized this would be a good mini test! I quickly got into the "awake" hypnosis mode, directing my anesthesia to my arm where the tip was about to enter. I don't mind needles but there's usually a pinch and ache involved. Amazed, I felt nothing more than light pressure at the sight of the injection. The nurse asked me if I was OK as I did my weird relaxation (I think she was worried I was going to pass out). I just wanted her to leave so I could jump up and down yelling to B that it worked!

What's in a name?

2011-10-09T17:37:00.001-07:00

I don't know if other families out there find it easy to name their babies, but for B and I this process has involved two rounds of months-long testing, trying, researching, shortlisting, trying again, and finally, throwing caution to the wind and choosing!

We wanted to name this baby as soon as possible, so T could learn the name and begin to associate the bump of mommy's tummy with the real, live, baby that will be hanging out in her house (a lot), come November. It still took us eight of this little guy's 9-10 months' inside to decide! And now that she knows, trying to keep it a secret until the birth has become futile.

The process to choose a name was made a little more complicated by the first and middle name we chose for T, honoring her two maternal grandmothers. We found ourselves in a complicated bargaining process - how to choose a name from each family, reversing the order of lineage that we used for T to be fair, keeping the second middle and last names to be the same for our nuclear family, and maybe, just maybe, fitting in a name that we really liked just in and of itself. All without burdening this little guy with a string of monikers so long he would have to risk committing fraud every time he filled out an official document.

So what is it already?!

;-)

Early on I fell in love with the name Noah. I don't know any Noah's personally but those I know of and hear of are sweet and caring, living up to their name's meaning: restful, comfort.

Which just left the middle name. After wrestling for ages with other family names that we also liked, I woke up one morning, turned to B and asked, what do you think about your name? Neither of us had ever suggested this, and B immediately choked up. That solidified it, leading us to start/continue a family tradition to give the first boy's father's name as a middle name (as B has).

It's now wonderful to be calling him by his name. T loves saying it, and telling anyone and everyone who will listen about her "baby brudder, Noah!" She especially likes talking to him when he's kicking (aka trying to stretch out my poor stomach for more space in these last few, increasingly cramped weeks!).

We can't wait to meet you, Noah.

Life these days

2011-09-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

Is kind of crazy.

I think every friend, relative and FB acquaintance is tired of hearing my repetitive response to "How are you/things/life?"

"Crazy." "Crazy busy." "Kind of nuts."

I'm 3 weeks into the 10 week mayhem that is my fall. The four Women PeaceMakers and the four Peace Writers they are paired with have arrived in San Diego, and while we all survived the 2 week intensive orientation training, I have returned to a mountain of unanswered e-mail and a 2.5 ft x 3.5 ft. white board To Do list, filled in emergency red. I feel like every day I wake up in the night or early morning, head filled with undone tasks, and then get to work only to find an avalanche of new requests coming in. I feel like I'm being buried in a sand pit; all attempts at climbing out are futile.

At home (or rushing around at work, feeling contractions a little too often), I remember I'm also 7.5 months pregnant. And mom to a toddler. And wife to a fantastic, but lately neglected husband. While trying to plan a homebirth at the 11th hour, and do a homework-intensive self-study birth preparation course.

So, while I love my job (and this time of year is what it's all about), adore my family, am excited and thrilled and anxious about the birth of our son (including these rushed preparations)... it is making for a crazy life at the moment.

So if that's my answer to your question, I'm sorry. I expect you'll get tired of asking and I don't blame you. It will likely be the same answer for the next two months, after which our lives will be a whole new kind of crazy...

And I'm very much looking forward to that.

My first heartbreak

2011-09-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

They warned me there'd be a day where those dreaded words would come...

"I hate you Mama!"

I'm prepared for that. I imagine they'll be said in (hopefully) a fit of rage, after she hasn't gotten her own way... I hope she won't mean it; that what she hates is a decision, an action, not me.

What I wasn't prepared for was 8:30 p.m. on a Friday night, no rage in sight. A smiling, happy little two year old, brushing her teeth with me at the mirror, warm in her PJ's, about to choose a bedtime story...

"I want to sleep with Dada."

At first it didn't really sink in. There might have even been a moment of relief - boy, that makes things easier! Last week we bought (and I assembled) a huge, full-size twin "kids" bed from IKEA, complete with star canopy (it flips into a bunk bed when needed). The plan was to have B and I take turns sleeping in there with her, until she was back to sleeping through the night and he could put her down and go to her if she woke; freeing me to nurse and care for the newborn we'll have in 10 short weeks.

Tonight was supposed to be my night with her. Last night was B's, but she asked for me, so I joined them for the first few hours before slipping out to our more comfortable and spacious bed for a much-needed pass-out after a very long week.

I realized was a bit taken back by the certainty of this new request.

"You don't want to sleep with Mama?"

"No. T sleep in T's big girl bed with Dada."

Oh. She means it. She doesn't want me tonight. She'd prefer Dada.

I managed to hold it together till I'd conveyed the message and B had gone to put on his pajamas. Hiding in the kitchen in tears, I tried to reason with my emotions. Listening to them chatter as they got ready for bed, T telling him again about their day together, even including me and her "little brother" in an imaginary car ride, I knew I should feel happiness; pride that my daughter and her father had grown so close. That she felt so comfortable with him now. Even practically, that this was a necessary development that we'd been stressing and strategizing about in preparation for the baby coming. I should be thrilled.

Instead I felt like my first crush had just asked another girl to the dance. At the root of my heartbreak was the realization that her words had spoken to my biggest fear, that my desire to work would render me an absentee parent who's main function was to bring home a paycheck. That "Dada" would be the one to run to for comfort or to share celebration. The one she'd prefer read her a bedtime story or snuggled with as she went to sleep. The one she could trust to be there for her.

I understand this may seem trivial to many. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around why such a simple request hit such a nerve. Maybe I can blame hormones for my heightened sensitivity.

All I know is that about 30 minutes after I started this post, I heard a familiar voice call "I want Mama..." I don't think I even brushed my teeth before jumping into bed beside a squished B and a familiarly splayed-out 2 year old. I buried my nose in her hair and she threw her arm around my neck plonking her cheek on my forehead. I think it's the best sleep I've had in months.

Why homebirth?

2011-08-26T21:07:00.001-07:00

A little over a week ago we announced to surprised friends and family that 6.5 months into this pregnancy we're considering having a homebirth.

Many have been supportive. I think the ones who are shocked or just think we're crazy are biting their tongues a little longer.

To be honest, the decision has shocked few people more than B & I. For T's birth I thought our decision to birth at a Birth Center within a hospital had gotten us the best of both worlds: natural, home-like setting with emergency care a floor away. Truthfully, despite how badly I wanted a natural birth, the thought of going to a private Birth Center or having a homebirth with no option of medical pain relief worried me. I'd never experienced labor, I had no idea what it would be like.

After what then happened with T's birth, some people would think it all the more reason to go the hospital route again. So what made us head all the way across the spectrum to opt for a homebirth?

The answer came inadvertently from the doulas we were interviewing. All very kind, caring women who we'd be privileged to have at our birth, they each subtly (or not so subtly) asked us if we'd considered homebirth. I could see their bias, as one friend (who's a doula) put it, hospital births had burnt her out. She was tired of the fight, of the negotiation necessary to balance a mother's needs and desires with that of the litigation-fearing, rule-heavy, risk-management-focused hospital policies. Especially if you're hoping for an intervention-free, natural labor and childbirth, hospitals are a negotiation-heavy place to birth your baby. None of the doulas we interviewed admitted any of this in their interviews; all knew we were birthing at a hospital and were offering to support us night or day for the 6 - 18 - 24+ hours I was in labor.

But a couple admitted hearing something that we had not yet listened to from ourselves. Our feelings about T's birth, what went wrong (and what went right), and what we feared as a result: not knowing where we would birth or who would deliver our baby; losing privileges (like walking around, being allowed to eat, access to a birth ball, a shower or bath, having family or professional labor support present) that I was counting on to help me labor; being at the mercy of machines and invasive monitoring (not only if necessary but as routine procedures); and lowest-common-denominator rules that, if broken, would set off a chain reaction that would override our needs and wishes swiftly and possibly, completely.

To be clear, I will be thrilled to have pitocin, an epidural, forceps, a vacuum extractor, an episiotomy or a C-section if they are necessary to save my life or my baby's. For all the babies and families whose births have not ended in tragedy that otherwise would have, I thank God for creating NICUs and the doctors and nurses who provide that lifesaving care.

This decision was never about hating hospitals. I've quite liked the care I've received from the midwives at Kaiser. The decision is more about recognizing the politics and bartering that come with birth in the U.S., and in light of that, prioritizing what we wanted for this birth: relaxation, comfort, self-determination and trust to allow my body to do what it knows so well how to do. Of course I want a safe birth as well, but with the medical equipment and experience of the midwives we choose, and having two hospitals within 1.2 miles of our home should we need one, I'm confident I'll have that too.

This morning we're off to interview our second midwife and her team. So far I'm loving the luxury of hour-long appointments, a holistic perspective on the health of my pregnancy, including not only my obstetric care but my diet and emotional well-being; the ability to have a long-desired (and not available in any SD hospitals) waterbirth; the idea that 2-3 women midwives and attendants will be present to support me throughout labor and birth; and that as soon as we're settled and stable after the birth, they will leave us to sleep, rest and be together as a family (unlike the hospital which had nurses waking both baby and I to do routine checks every 2 hours day and night, even when we'd JUST gotten T to sleep). In addition to massage, aromatherapy and cranio-sacral therapies, some also offer mother and baby postnatal care for a full nine months after the birth!

I don't know that homebirth would have been right for us for T's birth. Maybe, maybe not. But despite sometimes considering what else 3.5-4.5K could buy us (a family holiday back to Belize?! A down payment towards the more mundane, but needed, deck repair or house residing we're VERY slowly saving up for?) this decision has felt very right for us.

A gift for him

2011-08-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

I realized after posting the last post that it was missing something. I hadn't really described my underlying sense of what was different with this pregnancy.

Becoming pregnant with T knocked my world's axis onto a new tilt. From the decision that we (eventually) wanted to get pregnant, my priorities began to shift. From the moment we read "pregnant" on the pee stick, the celebration (with its fleeting grips of hesitation and uncertainty) began. By the time I first felt her move I was head-over-heels obsessed with her.

For the last 6.5 months I've known guiltily that I wasn't giving this pregnancy (and therefore this baby) the same care, focus and attention I had given to T's. As you've gathered from my other posts, my attention has had the significant distractions of full time work, full time marriage and full time motherhood (as well as any other extracurricular pursuits) this time around. But regardless of the reasons, I did want, and do love this child, so it's not fair that this little guy has gotten the short end of the celebration stick.

I'll try to explain it more in the next post, but our decision to change our birth plan from a hospital birth to a homebirth has not been an easy or straightforward one (and until we sign with a homebirth midwife, is still ongoing). But to balance the cons (the significant out-of-pocket cost, some logistical considerations and the commitment to not have drugs nearby should I decide natural childbirth is for the dogs) were a number of pros... and one large (unsaid) hope:

Of wanting to give this baby this gift. A special birth, in a special place, surrounded by the love and presence of his family. Maybe in that small way, we can make up for the intensity of emotion that was poured into T for nine plus months of "first pregnancy/baby" anticipation. By investing in having the birth experience that we believe will bring the most joy and be most treasured by us, I hope he will see how special he is to us too.

The second time around

2011-08-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of friends who are pregnant or new parents, which -besides allowing me to welcome some adorable new babies to the world- has allowed me to reflect in their joy and anticipation at the incredible process of bringing a child into the world and adapting from our society's hyper-individualistic single/couple lives to parenthood.

It's also made me that much more aware of how different it is the second time around.

To set the foundation: this pregnancy was planned, and we're thrilled about it. That is, when I can remember I'm pregnant. It's a lot easier now that my belly protrudes like an engorged watermelon knocking into everything less than a foot infront of me, and little Mister is practicing his tap dance routine on my spleen at bi-hourly intervals. His birth is only 3-3.5 months away, so logistically, the preparations for that are on our minds as well.

But besides the joy and appreciation that there's a healthy little boy growing away, waiting to join our family, I sometimes have tinges of disappointment that I haven't been able to enjoy this pregnancy to the same level I was able to enjoy T's. The reasons for the difference are all completely understandable, and center primarily on the fact that there's not the novelty of a first time pregnancy, birth and transition to parenthood to celebrate. It's less novel for us, and it's less novel for those around us. I just wish that didn't translate to less excitement. Speaking as much from my opinion as a friend/relative of parents having their second (third or fourth) child, as that of a mother, I think the assumption is that second-time parents don't need as much support. They've been there, done that, know what to expect and already have all the baby clothes/toys/books/furniture/apparatuses.

In reality I'm only now appreciating the loneliness that assumption of aptitude can bring. Families stay for less time, friends offer less help (speaking as a guilty party!), and generally there's less of a circus made about the new arrival, though you're now balancing all the sleep deprivation and adjustments of a newborn with taking care of a (likely jealous) constantly-on-the-go 2 yr old as well! I do remember when T was a week or so old, B & I collapsing desperately into bed as Mom & Dad took her for a walk and thinking, "What on earth would we do if we 1) didn't have parents here, and 2) had a noisy toddler that was running around wanting to eat or play?"

We're now trying to get our heads around the fact that that will be our reality in just a few months. Our families will be coming (thank goodness!!), but due to unavoidable commitments in their lives, will not be able to stay for longer than 1-2 weeks at most. Luckily, we also have many wonderful people around us who I don't doubt will provide an excellent welcoming party and support network for us yet again.

And if there's one thing the last 2 years has taught me, it's that whatever comes, you adjust. Billions of families all over the world have chosen to have more than one child and lived to tell the tale; we certainly will too. We've got lots of examples around us, and my admiration and awe of those that have balanced caring for a toddler (or others) and a newborn continues to reach new heights. We'll just have to ask them for lots of advice.

Pet Peeves

2011-08-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

Finally, a post that has nothing to do with kids!

Well, almost nothing to do with them... I think the hormones of pregnancy do
contribute to my occasional oversensitivity, or as a former classmate puts it,
"Grumpy Pregnant Lady" syndrome.

So, to get the creative juices flowing, or just me back writing (we all fall off the bandwagon from time to time), I have chosen to share a few of my latest (and ongoing) pet peeves!

1) Toilet Paper Tantrums

In this case, I'd understand if it was a toddler thing. A fairly common hazard of potty training (or just having someone in the house who's newly tall and mobile enough to reach both the TP and the toilet bowl) is an overenthusiastic TP user who unravels half the roll into the water thinking, "What fun!" But to the best of my knowledge, my place of work does not have a hidden contingent of child labor. Nor does the pub we patronized in Portland. Nor do many other establishments where I have entered a perfectly good bathroom stall to find the bowl choked with white, soggy, 2-ply mush! There may or may not be a floater under there, but can't you FLUSH?! If this was consistently a plugged toilet reaction, "Ack! I just laid a huge dump and the toilet won't flush! Quick, cover the evidence in copious amounts of TP and no one will know!" it may be forgiven. But after I recover from the (now familiar) revulsion of having to stare at your soggy left-overs, a quick foot to the flush demonstrates that 9.8 times out of 10, these TP Overusers are just lazy, inconsiderate (to our future generations who will have to visit trees in museums because of your toilet habits) and rude! People.

2) (Excessive) Idling

OK, stoplights are permitted. Stop signs. At the airport where the pacing TSA /police zealots get their daily giggles for yelling at you to move. But hanging out in an underground parking lot with your exhaust spewing out around the pregnant lady huffing past to the stairs to escape? Not cool. Idling for 10 min while your hubby runs in to get milk so that your sleeping baby doesn't overhead in his carseat in 90+ degree temps? Granted. Unleashing half an hour of SUV exhaust so your middle-aged wife and you can listen to the radio or bask in A/C while you gaze at the ocean that is overheating due to your excessive carbon emissions? Nope. People!

3) Inability to use a Turning Indicator

Are you invincible? Cuz I'm not. And neither is this baby I'm carrying, or the rest of my irreplaceable family. So Mr. I'm too lazy/distracted/unskilled to move my hand 6" to flick a handle, signal before you change lanes/turn a corner/cut me off so I at least know you're about to do it! People.

4) Parking Hogs

If you want to waste the equivalent of a downpayment on a house on a bucket of bolts, fine. But unless you want to leave a $20 bill on the extra parking space you chose to occupy with the rear half of your diagonally-parked car to compensate me for the time and effort it's going to take for me to go find another space 5 blocks away, you may have to invest a lot more in re-painting the side I'm considering keying.*

5) Not being able to think of a 5th Pet Peeve

Just when you get a good list going, your brain craps out with writers block. I'm talking about pet peeves people! The things that really irk me that I should be itching to rant about. Not serious stuff like political or social beliefs, or the nit-picky little things like college-educated professionals who seem to have skipped every grammar class in their 16+ year education and still passed... but where's my long list? Four? Seriously? I mean, there are a few others: litterers; leaf blowers; people who drive through crosswalks while I'm crossing; text-and-drivers; talk-and-drivers; Harley owners (and others who don't seem to believe in mufflers) driving through residential neighborhoods with sleeping infants, especially when it’s mine; passive aggressiveness (because in addition to my conviction that it's an underhanded way to try to make your point, it's also contagious and what I dislike most is when I return the favor); good plots that are ruined by bad acting; other people's hair in my shower; always ending up in the slowest checkout line; blog sites that completely ignore all your attempts at formatting, to name a few. But how does a post dedicated to ranting look when I can't even manage a measly half dozen?

If there are some particular ways that you feel people step on humanity's (or just your) toes that I seem to have overlooked, feel free to add your own.

*In truth, I'd never really key a car, but sometimes I do enjoy contemplating it :)

On gratitude

2011-08-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

To quote the great Albus Dumbledore, "Help will always come to those who ask."

OK, it's not a literal translation, which has something about wizarding school Hogwarts, but for me, for now, it carries the message. One of the strongest realizations in my life, and certainly in my life as a parent, is that you get by with a lot of help from your friends. And family. And the other special people the universe brings to your doorstep just when it seems you really need them.

It feels like the more upheaval our lives go through, the more we feel the safety net that holds us. Lately, this has come in the form of kindness and generosity from just about everyone we know.

Our parents and siblings have provided unconditional love and shocking generosity (both financial and in-kind) over the last two years in ways that continually amaze me. Old friends have kept close, despite the stubborn miles we have put between us for the last many years; many choosing to take the time and expense to come visit since we moved here (it is a lot closer than East Africa or Central Asia). And with our move to a new, unfamiliar city, new jobs and new roles as parents, new friends have come into our lives just when we needed them, providing a social family to help us raise T and make this home.

Indeed, thinking back I really don't know how we would have made it through without these people bringing just what we needed (often more) right when we needed it most.

A little closer to home, every post in this blog speaks silently or overtly of my closest rope- B. With each passing year our lines have become more intertwined, finding ways to offer support and safety as we each navigate our lives as individuals, husband and wife, professionals and parents. When I feel myself falling he's the first (closest and strongest) rope I reach for; but more importantly perhaps, he's often the one I'm holding onto when my balance is already off. He steadies me like no other. I realize over and over that he's the perfect fit for me, a loving, caring, beautiful person, who has been as true a partner in parenting as he has been for our other adventures over the last seven years.

And then there's little T. Many of these posts focus on the challenges of parenthood. They definitely exist, but I hope the joys are at least equally as evident. In reality, they blind the challenges with a light that would outshine the sun. Even in moments of mothering frustration, looking at her, really looking at her, I feel that same painful tear in my heart that opened when I first laid eyes on her. The feeling of my heart expanding to encompass a person instantly, unconditionally, eternally. She makes me happier than I have ever known.

It all makes J.K. Rowling's fantastical plot seem down right ordinary. Title character's story arises from his mother's willingness to die for him. Check. Title character survives with help from his friends. Check. Aforementioned headmaster's magical proclamation that help will come to those who ask. It seems our universe is on the same page.

To the universe and all of you, thank you.

There were three in the bed and the little one said roll over!

2011-08-05T06:35:00.000-07:00

...I think I'm the one who fell out.

One of our more recent parenting/growing up transitions has been getting T from our bed into her own bed. In one of those strange twists of deeply ironic parenting fate, she went willingly! In fact, she flat out loved it. Guess who got her back in our bed, where she is currently snoozing happily, diagonally between B and the millimeter I had left on the mattress? We did! How did we get into this predicament? I'll tell you. How do we get out of it? Any experts out there, feel free to tell us!

First of all, I never planned to co-sleep.

Learning about it before T's birth I could see the pros and cons, but for me, the fear of being too deep a sleeper and rolling over and squishing my tiny, helpless infant was too great. Instead, I did a lot of research into the best bassinet I could find - which for us was a baby hammock. Ergonomically correct (i.e. good for baby's spine), a great way to reduce colic and reflux, mimicking the snug, constant, multi-directional motion of the womb, babies love it the reviews raved.

Evidently, T didn't read the reviews. Our first night home from the hospital we tried her in it. She stayed asleep for 5-15 min, but invariably, then woke. This went on for hours. Do you know how frustrating it is to get a baby to sleep over and over and over again only to have them wake up minutes later? Giving up on the hammock, we tried other locations and surfaces around the house. Nope. If she was touching one of us, she slept. If she wasn't, she didn't. The decision to co-sleep was made out of sheer exhaustion. Luckily, for us, it was a good one.

Even luckier was that my fears about not waking or being aware enough of her presence in the bed were unfounded. Along with all the other gifts new mama hormones seem to bestow, I was now constantly aware of her - whether she was hungry, whether she stirred (it didn't seem to go for when she had soiled herself, but oh well) - our bodies became in tune with one another. And while I wasn't sleeping as deeply, I was sleeping a lot more. After that first fateful night I could no longer imagine the effort and time it must take to wake up, go to my baby's crib, take her out to feed her (with little mouths that could easily take an hour), then get her back to sleep, and try to lay her back in her crib without waking her, before being able to return to bed. How exhausting! Over the first few weeks it got to the point where I would begin to wake as she was stirring, she'd latch and then I usually fell back to sleep before she was even done.

Our 3 neighbors in our small 4-unit apartment complex (without air con so there were a lot of open windows during the hot San Diego summer) marveled that they never heard our newborn cry at night. It's because she didn't. She got what she needed and we got what we needed. As far as newborn sleeping went it was as close to perfect as we were going to get.

However, like any season of parenting or other sleep arrangements, co-sleeping had its ups and downs. Teething, rolling, crawling and more teething, brought restless nights and the need to transform half our bedroom into a layer of wall-t0-wall mattresses on the floor. But as long as we adjusted, were patient, and realized that these stages too would pass, it continued to work for us far better than the alternatives. Thea got lots of sleep (if in 2-3 hr spurts), I never had problems with my milk supply (they say supply is largely determined/regenerated based on your stores between 2 am and 6 am), I was able to find the sleep-disruption manageable, and I cherished our night-long and early morning snuggles.

While we were happy, around us swirled controversy. Despite years of research that shows co-sleeping (when practiced without the risk factors of a very soft mattress, drug or alcohol use, and very deep-sleeping or obese parents) reduces SIDS, and its widespread practice over nearly every other continent than ours, mainstream opinion is currently against co-sleeping. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises against it due to its lack of safety for those with the aforementioned risk factors. Naturally, they can only recommend the safest sleep arrangement for the lowest common denominator to avoid getting sued. But among some parents a different prejudice lies: "you'll never get her out of your bed!" "What about your poor husband?" (assuming that this decision may be good for mom and baby, but what about the lonely dad squished to the margin and deprived of his marital perks)? "That must be so inconvenient! How do you get any sleep?"

We persisted, though the worries that this arrangement may be hard to break once we were ready (which I imagined would occur sometime in the next half decade), did begin to nag at us. We'd already debunked the "if you keep nursing her to sleep and don't let her Cry-It-Out she'll never learn to self-soothe!" proclamations... As she approached her second birthday T was sleeping 6-7 hr stretches, often waking and self-settling with the help of her pacifier or just rolling over. But she was bigger, kickier, and taking up more than her share of our queen size bed (N.B. co-sleeping advocates insist a Cal King is necessary for co-sleeping. We've only slept on one during hotel stays and I certainly agree with the recommendation! Unfortunately, as our Tempurpedic Queen cost a quarter of what our car cost, getting a King, a new bed frame, and a new house as our bedroom would also need resized, just wasn't in the cards) and the desire to have her in her own space near us was growing.

Cue Working Mother's Guilt. Approaching rapidly was a much-lamented 2 week work trip to the Philippines. To make a long story short, we decided to hold off on night weaning (the prerequisite to getting our bed back) until that forced hiatus. And while I wouldn't recommend that any mother abandon their toddler or infant for 2 weeks to achieve this objective, it did work.

The good news was that the transition wasn't quite as bad as we'd feared. T was used to going to sleep with B and they cuddled happily in bed, sans "nummies." When I returned, meeting them at my parent's home in Canada, she was weaned and content to just "cuddle nummies" to sleep, after which we could lie her in a little nest of blankets on the floor and she'd sleep happily there the whole night long. When we returned home to San Diego, we moved a crib mattress to the floor of her room and offered a transition to her "big girl bed."

A little hesitant that we were rushing things, we began the first night by asking her, "T, where would you like to sleep tonight? Mommy and Daddy's bed or T's bed in your room?"

The enthusiastic response shocked us: "T's bed!"

From then on, every night and nap time, that's where she wanted to be. We should have been thrilled, right? Yes...and for a while we were. But getting up and down from a short, crunchy mattress shoved in a corner on the floor was awkward and increasingly difficult with my ever-growing belly. B could walk her to sleep, but when he did she rarely stayed asleep as he tried to bend down onto the ground to lay her in bed. Both of us started preferencing taking her back into our bed if she stirred or woke, even though she never asked to go there.

About a month later when my very experienced mother of 7 learned of our weakness on the phone she made pleading "suggestions" for us to keep T in her bed. We didn't heed them soon enough. Sure enough, T's answer began to change. "T, time to go walking with Daddy to sleep!"

"No, T go sleep in Mommy-Daddy's bed!"

Hmm... now what do we do?

It's less work to get her to sleep by just laying with her in our bed; it's much more comfortable for this midsection-heavy mama; and we sleep fairly well with her there where she wakes up 0-1 times, rather than 1-2 times in her bed. But with only 16 weeks until this little, needy guy will be joining us in that still-too-small bed, we know taking the easy path now is setting ourselves (especially for T) up for hard times to come.

Anyone have a Tempurpedic, electronic (silent) raising-and-lowering full size single mattress they're selling?

Hooray for Boobies!

2011-08-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Well they're lovely, aren't they?

T sure thinks so!

It's national Breastfeeding Week and I'd be seriously neglectful not to include a post about the art, science and follies of dispensing nature's perfect food. (For the squeamish: be warned, this post talks about B-R-E-A-S-T-S and nipples, though I'm sure you have them too in some form or other).

"Nummies" as they've been christened in our house have been loved from the start. Not that it was initially mutual...

New to the world, T latched on well... but as B & I settled down for a much-needed first night's rest, we learned (the hard way) that if T was sucking on something she would sleep. If she wasn't, she wouldn't. And neither would we. Still in the hospital, exhausted from an 18.5 hr labor, all principles about not giving a pacifier until 6+ weeks (if ever) went out the window. My nipples felt like pain incarnate (I later learned her mouth/palate was still too small and needed a few more weeks for her to get a deep enough latch). Still propped up in a chair beside the bed I so longed to be in at 3 a.m. B was ordered to get me three things: a pacifier, a nipple shield and X-strength Tylenol. I didn't care if his quest took him to the nurses' station, or the CVS 5 blocks away. I needed them STAT.

From that moment on our nursing relationship improved dramatically, and while it's had its ups and downs, T & I have been a dedicated team against the forces against us: the pain of letdown (which a new mom friend and I agreed felt like hot needles being inserted through your veins); the humiliation of the Milking Machine (I hate breastpumps. Necessary, yes. But the epitome of feeling like one has grown udders); the inconvenience of trying to pump at work; the daily torture of BFing while teething; the drama and controversy (and occasional inconvenience) of nursing in public; the acrobatics of newly mobile nursing toddlers; the prolonged sleeplessness of extended night nursing; to name a few!

But for those challenges what do we have? Nothing less than the most convenient, magical, nutritious way to feed and nurture our children imaginable.

There's lots more to say on the topic (including support to those mamas for whom formula is absolutely necessary to feed their little ones; and ranting for a bit on the whole nursing-in-public debate :) but my hour is long gone and I'm going to try to actually get some sleep tonight. What a novel concept.

The guilt of a working mother

2011-08-02T06:15:00.000-07:00

Oh boy, 6 am is early.

Especially after heading to bed at 11 p.m. and two wake-ups in the middle of the night when T stirred. Now that she's in her own bed, in her own room, all it takes is to go in and hand her back her pacifier (I'll address the pacifier at 2 dilemma in another post!) which has rolled off the mattress or sometimes, lie beside her until she falls back to sleep. It's the latter that is no longer as easy said as done.

Getting on and off a crunchy (waterproof) 4-foot long crib mattress on the floor when one is 5 1/2 months pregnant, slowly and silently so as to not wake a lightly sleeping 2 yr. old, is about as simple as a circus trapeze act. Last week a 60 sec. freeze when I was trying to escape caused my neck to seize up for 2 days.

So why doesn't B just lie with her, unencumbered as he is by a watermelon-sized midsection? Because lately she's been asking for me. And while there have been lots of parenting roles and periods where we've made that transition and accepted the short-term tears it brings, I, like many women who spend the vast majority of their days, most of each week, 47 weeks of the year, physically and/or emotionally unavailable to their children, have Working Mother's Guilt.

Before Thea was born I joined a local walking group to meet pregnant and new moms. It was fabulous. In addition to the wisdom (or just experience) of being 5 months ahead of me in their pregnancies, then births and the roller coaster of new parenthood, it gave me a wide variety of perspectives on different babies, marriages, family dynamics, and work arrangements (basically just different lives). Those wonderful women taught me a lot, including the challenges and dilemmas that all women (and men) wrestle with during this massive shift of axis to parenthood. One of those dilemmas was with regard to work - who was going to stay at home, who was going back part-time, who was returning to full-time (and when), and who was looking for an alternate career to better balance work and family. What I learned was that every single one of these choices involved sacrifice and compromise, either with their partners, financially and/or emotionally. This post can only speak to my perspective - that of a FT working mother. But I know precious few women whose choice -to work or stay at home or somewhere in between - hasn't involved some measure (hopefully fleeting) of doubt or regret.

For me, the decision to work comes from recognizing an aspect of my personality that I sometimes wish I could shut off, but can't - a career drive that has luckily found a job I love. While I love T exponentially more, I also know I would not be as happy a person, and thus as good of a mother to her if I didn't have the personal fulfillment my work brings. This isn't just theoretical knowledge either. My only bouts with depression have occurred during two prolonged stretches of unemployment. I didn't like who I became and hope I don't have to show that side of myself to my daughter.

The result is that I live with guilt. Guilt for not being there. While I recognize that stay at home parents don't (can't) spend quality time with their children constantly, the fact is that B (as a SAHD) is there for her; she has learned to count on him, and to expect my daily departure. Luckily, it is no longer accompanied by the tears it was when she was little, but sometimes her resignation to my daily leaving pains me (if not her) just as strongly.

You'd think I'd be used to it now. As I was not eligible for maternity leave after her birth, I returned to work PT when she was 5 weeks old. I was back FT within a couple months. And naturally I have adjusted from those first weeks, but there are always ebbs and flows; when it flows, it flows hard: long hours and weekends during the fall, a big event and a week at the U.N. in the spring, with new commitments popping up all the time. By far my hardest transition of all was my first work trip away from her this past May: a trip to the Philippines that separated us for 13 excruciating days, forcing T to wean. How do you explain to a 24 month old why Mommy disappeared? How do you convey the concept of days passing (and getting closer to a goal) to a toddler's under-developed sense of time? How do you let her know that she was not abandoned? That Mommy does love you and is coming back.

In addition to the physical hours I spend away from her, the fact that I have a 40-50 hr work week affects the rest of my life as well. I wake at 6 a.m. to write because time spent on the computer when she's awake sacrifices those few precious hours I do get to spend with her. Our time together in the morning consists of only 30 - 90 minutes, during which I have to shower, dress, eat, probably check work e-mail and get off to work. After work, it's at best, from 5:30 - 8:30. Recently I've also tried to attend prenatal yoga 1-2 evenings a week (sometimes the only 75 min in my day that I really remember I'm pregnant and focus on connecting with this baby). Despite how deeply I value that practice, there isn't a day I head out (usually within 30 minutes of arriving home from work) without the guilt of saying bye to T for yet another hour and a half.

However, there are benefits. Not just for our livelihood which currently depends entirely on my income. But ironically, in some ways, for my relationship with T. Working Mother's Guilt is like a dull ache that is always present. It influences the way I value my time and activities 24-7 so that I can capitalize on my preciously-short time with T. I make adjustments to my schedule, like only going to the gym over my lunch hour or if I can get off work early (or squeeze in a quick session before I'd be home anyway). I try to find activities that I want to do on which she can join me (like running with her in the stroller). And lots of times I just say no. No to a social outing; no to a work engagement; no to a workout I really should do because I left especially early that morning, or we haven't seen each other much that week and I'm noticing the effect on both of us.

I always rush home from work because when I walk in the door, she runs to my arms. That hug and kiss of welcome is the highlight of my day. We cuddle on the couch and I ask her about her day. We read some books or play outside. I consciously try to include her in our conversations and routine daily activities. She plays independently a lot, which luckily gives B and I some productive adult time together as well. But I think Working Mother's Guilt has made me consciously aware that while I can't have the quantity of time I want with her, I can make every effort to make it quality time.

Or course I'm not perfect. It's after work, B's at yoga and she's watching "Elmo's Potty Time" as I type. But I'm snug beside her on the couch rather than at my desk, and I try to stop every couple minutes to discuss Elmo's latest bowel movements. She chatters to me excitedly about the gorilla who is eating the restaurant and drinking out of the fire hydrant, and if I hug her close she will likely smile and say what she knows I love to hear, "I love you too, Mommy."

How to survive a beach outing

2011-08-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

Day 3.

Unfortunately, it really is Monday this time. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion my hour is going to become two, 0.5 hours. Or more likely, 10 min and the rest whenever I can find it... a toddler stirs.

Yesterday we did make it to the beach as planned, the parking gods even smiled upon us.

When I was pregnant we came to the beach nearly every weekend. "Glowing" (sweaty), giddy parents-to-be, B and I would gaze at budding architects constructing lopsided sand castles and little ones squealing in the crashing waves, marveling that soon, we would get to create blissful beach memories with our children.

Fortunately, like her self-professed water-baby parents, T loooooooooves the beach. With my island heritage, the grandparents' proximity of two blocks to a (much colder) ocean and our current home, which boasts beach-worthy (mostly swim worthy) days 365 days a year, our offspring will undoubtably have childhoods spent in the sun, sand and surf.

I think I just forgot what came along with the squealing wave jumping and quiet sandcastle construction...

Our days go something like this: after carting all our "necessary" beach belongings across Coronado's wide swath of white sand at T's starfish-like pace we finally pitch ourselves in front of the small morning waves betting on an ebbing tide.

Parents pitch umbrella and spread out blanket carefully so as to not invite sand. Place shoes to keep blanket from blowing up.
2 yr. old runs onto blanket, prancing feet catch the edges and scrunch a rectangle into an ameoba-like blob. Small shoe-shaped cakes of sand trail across the remaining spread.
Mom and Dad shake out blanket. Repeat #1.
2 yr. old returns. Repeat #2. Parents accept sandy, scrunched blanket.
2 yr. old's clothes are removed for sunscreen application and bathing suit change.
2 yr. old feels first smears of sunscreen applied to shoulders and streaks naked towards the ocean.
Mother chases 2 yr old. Sunscreen application is resumed, amidst protest.
2 yr old, dutifully covered in sunscreen, places hands in sand. Realizes hands are now sandy. Asks parents to wash them with water. Parents oblige.
Repeat #8 for the rest of the morning (intersperse with "patient" explanations by parents of laws of sand + water physics to 2 yr old.)
Spend lovely hour collecting stranded sand dollars with 2 yr old and tossing them back in the sea.
Try not to act dismayed when 2 yr old accidentally crushes live sand dollars in her excitement.
Wind picks up. Blanket becomes covered, food becomes gritty and sunscreen-covered 2 yr. old becomes coated in the consistency of gooey sandpaper.
2 yr old tries to rub sand out of eyes. Sand becomes embedded in eyes, caked in eyebrows, streaked across hair, cheeks and forehead, clings to lips and corners of mouth. All efforts to remove sand are futile.
Parents take now naked 2 yr old into surf to wash off. Giggles of glee ensue, as long as face-washing is avoided (that is wisely left to the freshwater shower by the bathrooms).
Stuff is packed, 2 yr old is carried for expediency and family moves for after-beach ice coffees and chocolate milk at nearby outdoor cafe.

Ah, yet another successful beach outing.

A shift of axis

2011-07-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

It's day two and thanks in large part to waking up at 7 a.m., dragging myself into the shower and mentally planning my workday before realizing it was Sunday, I've managed to begin my second day of writing (before 8 am) - hooray!

As some friends might have noticed, yesterday I modified a lot of this blog's right hand side "gadgets," keeping only a couple photos and adding more parenting websites. You'll also notice that the topics for my writing sessions might feature fetuses, infants, toddlers, and the person they make me (and B) fairly frequently. It's not because becoming a parent has become my sole identity. But having a child does shift your world onto a different axis, and at the moment I happen to know a lot of people who are going through that same primordial, irreversible, life-altering shift. As it's the process that perpetuates our species (and created each of us), there's a lot of things to think about. And with thoughts come opinions. And with opinions come differences in them.

One of the most irksome challenges of this transition to someone expecting and then caring for a child, has been the inevitable lectures that have come from others, advising and then evaluating everything from my birth choices to how I put my baby to sleep. Frankly, it is exhausting and discouraging to have to defend every choice you make as a parent (because no matter what you choose, someone will disagree with it). In the meantime, you're doing whatever you can to cling on to your own exponential learning curve, while the miniature being around whom your life suddenly revolves does everything he or she can do to communicate her own set of needs, dislikes and desires.

In addition to those "usual" challenges of parenthood, there is the complex cocktail of emotional decision-making that comes with our personal choices for me to be a working mother, to enlist a nanny, and now for B to be a Stay At Home Dad (SAHD).

And perhaps worse of all, I've realized through this process that I'm only human. No matter how much I cringe as others try to share with me the highlights and benefits of their chosen birth/sleep/feeding/working choices (or simply decry the alternatives), I realize the process of making our own choices for our family has influenced me to support them as well. Perhaps its the sheer strength of our love, devotion, exasperation or commitment to our children that makes choices on how we relate to them such hot-button issues? Does this much love naturally beget a similar level of passionate dedication to what we think is best for them (or us)?

B is currently most passionate about getting our family to the beach this morning before San Diego's most precious resource - parking - is nearly exhausted. And as my hour is almost complete I will leave discussions of certain choices to other posts. Let this serve as my prologue, a caveat that recognizes that some people will be offended by my choices (and reasons for them) because they do not mesh with their own. I empathize with you. I'll do my best to not vilify others who have not made the same choices we have.

Most of all, this entire blog is really just about me... a writing exercise that happens to be in a public space. But not a public space that I actually expect many people to read. I don't know how people become super-bloggers, but I have no illusions that my ramblings will go viral on Facebook. Hopefully those who are reading this are only a few friends, family, and the odd person who stumbled here accidentally, and the vast majority of you will forgive me for any bruised toes. After all, the only perfect parents out there are those without children, myself included!

Now, off to the beach!

A new page

2011-07-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

A writer friend of mine is in the process of sloughing off a few years of other pursuits to return to writing full-time. To help her do so, she's practicing a daily ritual of writing for one hour every day, even if that means an hour of writing "I don't know what to write. I don't know what to write. I don't know what to write."

It seemed like a brilliant idea, and what better time than when I'm 5 1/2 months pregnant, working full time and chasing a preschooler around? So at 2 p.m. on July 30, I begin what will likely be at least four months (now that I know how hard balancing a computer on your lap with a nursing infant can be) of daily drivel, sent out into the universe via the internet.

One reason why I chose this weekend to start is because I'm feeling a bit (pleasantly) lonely, as many of our close friends and family, here and abroad, are otherwise occupied with major life transitions. A birthday, a reunion, building a house and two new babies, to name a few. It's given us some needed time for reflection on the gifts of our life and the realization that in four short months we'll be receiving another small, loud, squirming, beautiful, sweet-smelling (most of the time) one of our own.

How is it nearly August anyway? With my work getting increasingly busy towards the chock-a-block mayhem of fall, B & I are feeling pressure to prepare for the baby yesterday. I've spent the past week contacting doulas and researching hypnobirthing classes, and trying to find the babysitter necessary for us to attend them! And while all three will punch a large hole in our very small bank account, the more I learn about the deep relaxation of hypnobirthing and read the responses we've gotten from San Diego doulas, the more excited I'm getting about this birth.

I mused the other day, listening to snippets about my friends' recent births, and thinking back to T's, about the learning curve of birth. That perhaps I needed T's wild, unpredictable, not-as-I'd-planned labor, to fully appreciate what I did need for that experience so that this time I can make sure I get it. For me, that means a dedicated labor support professional (i.e. doula), in addition to B's irreplaceable presence, love and assistance as my partner; a more mature, calm and flexible attitude towards birth; and perhaps the sanctity of planning on remaining in our home, or staying with our hospital-planned birth to allow for the kind of unpredictable variables (like that stubborn meconium) that popped up with T.

Regardless of whether our plan for a doula and study of hypnobirthing leads to a birth experience closer to the one I hope for, there's likely some truth in another story I heard recently. A mother of four asserted that while each of her births went differently, each contained a lesson she needed to learn for parenting that child. For those of us who believe birth is a natural, sacred process, it seems like sage advice.

That's my hour today. Hope to see you again tomorrow.

Do what you can. Or, let technology do it for you!

2010-06-27T20:56:00.001-07:00

The best of intentions still seem plagued by life's realities that as usual, have a mind of their own. So instead of devoting a few of my apparently weekly (or more-like fortnightly) posts to trying to update you on the events (or even just the highlights) of the past year, I'm going to let technology step in to alleviate my guilt at not being able to write long, descriptive, hopefully enjoyable-to-read posts.

Enter, the Flip video! For those few of you who have yet to discover the world's simplest camcorder, it really is a blessing for new parents - it's somewhat rugged (ours has been carted to Austria and back, been dropped numberous times and functions with blueberries shmooshed in its buttons) and simple to use (you can't get any easier than a big red button that means start and stop and two arrows for everything else)

I will get back to writing eventually. Soon even, I hope. But for now, short clips and captions of moments captured on film.

We will start more recently, at Thea's 1st birthday. Celebrated in Innsbruck, Austria with one of her favorite activities - swimming.

The haitus ends?

2010-06-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

I don't want to speak too soon.

I just finished a post that I started nearly a year ago and it was only a few lines! In a dim bedroom a few feet away, Thea is sprawled out on our bed; Brent's brushing his teeth in the adjoining bathroom. If I don't hustle, I will be sandwiched between them with little room to move, much less roll over and get comfortable. So I weigh rushing to stake out my spot on our ever-shrinking Queen, versus making good on my months-old promise to start writing here again...

I'll compromise with a short one.

I take some comfort in the fact that most of you are now on facebook, so you've been both saved from the weekly narrative of what's been going on in our lives, and kept up to date with the monthly photo journal of Thea's growth over 28 FB albums (28?!). Maybe you didn't even miss the cessation of Our Diego. This may really be about me. But after this past year, it's about time something was!

Just joking :-)

This past year has also been about more than just Thea, though it's hard to believe that is possible! As many of you know, it was not only Thea's first year of life and our first year as parents, but also the year of a new (long-term) professional position for Jen and the purchase of our first house. Add to that the usual excitement of trips and a nearly constant stream of visitors (and Thea-carers) and you have an easy candidate for Most Eventful Year in the lives of Brent, I or Thea!

So while I don't hope to recap all the fun and excitement of the last 10-ish months since I last wrote, I will try to update you on the highlights, or at least move on from this point forward.

If I can just get some rest (not curled up at the end of the bed?)...

Love,

J

My new life as a mom...

2009-07-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

Trying to lock my apartment with my car remote.

Overcoming my pet peeve of drinking tea that has gotten cold.

Walking around my house Lady Godiva style (minus the horse).

Curling up at the right bottom corner of the bed to sleep so that I don't disturb the twin giants (one big and handsome, one small and cute) sprawled across the top section of the bed.

Trying to remember what the inside of a gym looks like.

Singing, driving, shushing, looking in the review mirror and searching for a soother in the diaper bag all at once, all without going off the road.

Learning to like the warm glow of streetlights that you can see by at midnight, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, etc.

Counting the hours till little Miss naps.

Counting the minutes until I can leave work to see her again.

Quick, while I have two hands!

2009-07-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

Brent is laying on the couch with Thea, awake and happy after an hour-long nap, preceded by at least half an hour of wailing (Thea, not Brent this time). I think we must have missed her initial "I'm sleepy" cues so that she was too tired when we tried to get her to sleep. Though with little ones, it's hard to get confirmation. Our only other guesses are that,

1) she's already teething (as evidenced by my chomped-on nipples and some tell-tale drool on her wrap yesterday). Which would be very bad news, as she's only 2 months old and her teeth likely wouldn't break through for months!

or

2) she's missing grandma Lois and grandpa Peter. I don't know if she's old enough to get attached to individuals, but if she is, the fun, loving & soothing that she has received from my folks from the day of her birth until Friday would certainly have left a mark. Brent and I are already missing their presence and support, so it's understandable that the main focus of their attention - Thea - is too.

But while I have two hands free I better make use of them and send out a quick update. Life with Thea, my parents, Barclay, and a revolving door of much-appreciated guests (Auntie Lindsay; grandma Diane and grandpa Elliott; Julia and Laura over from Germany; Lorna and Anne passing through; and finally uncle Mathew last week) has made the last two months fly by. Of course most of the excitement comes from our new lives being ruled by, as one new mom termed her baby, our "little dictator." We do worship the ground she walks (ok, lays) on, but I can't remember being this tired before in my life!

Hopefully the videos are giving a glimpse of what I am missing in blog posts. But for the moment, here's a synopsis of what's new in our lives:

1) A new wrap!

Yes, this is what excites new parents. Thea is already the proud connoisseur of no less than 4 baby wearing devices (a pouch, two ring slings and a Baby Bjorn), each with their own specialties! But that didn't stop us from making it 5 (the others have been mostly gifts and we got this second-hand, so it's not like we're boosting the US economy on these) with the addition of a Moby Wrap! Now the first time I saw a Moby wrap I exclaimed that it was one of the more ridiculous things I'd seen North American women pay money for. Retail cost: $50-70 for a 15 foot piece of fabric. That's it. No straps, ties, padding, or shape. Just a long, thin (30" wide) strip of stretchy cotton. Wearers often struggle to tie themselves up in it, dragging the ends on the floor, and then eventually getting their babies inside. In Africa we just used one rectangular piece of cloth, swung it over the baby laying on our back and tied two knots with the corners - one above the boobs, one at the waist and you're good to go! This Moby wrap thing looked like you needed a degree to put it on!

Well folks, I'm converted! That unwieldy strip of fabric is heaven. It holds baby snugger than the Bjorn in up to 9 positions, doesn't hurt one shoulder like a ring sling, and distributes the baby's weight so evenly you can barely feel it! And it beats the African kitenges by not squishing already delicate anatomy! So what if you look like Obe Wan Kenobi when you're wearing it?

2) Jen went back to work.

It was an easier transition with my parents here to take Thea in the mornings while I went into the office, knowing that she was safe and happy with grandma and grandpa. This morning was my first real try unassisted. Thank goodness she's such a huge hit at the office. This helps when, after arriving an hour early to work to nurse her in the car then walk around campus in the vain hope that she'll fall asleep, I had to bring her in still awake and making all sorts of noises not normally heard in a university institute. Luckily, tucking her in our new moby wrap with her pacifier had her snoozing peacefully within 5 min. As long as her 2-4hr morning naps continue, I should be able to get some work done (knock on wood!).

3)...

Well there was a 3, but now I can't remember what it was. Ugh. Mommy brain.

Oh well, best get myself to sleep now anyway. I'm lucky to only be working at the office 3 days a week, so tomorrow Thea and I will be at home and I just might get a nap in! Hallelujah.

Love to all of you,

Jen, Brent and Thea

2009-06-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

Well it seems that for the time being I've been reduced to one-handed typing, which leaves very brief updates and a fortnightly video for news! But hopefully you can see from the video that we continue to have lots of visitors, lots of fun, and that Thea is growing in leaps and bounds (I packed up her first box of outgrown clothes today *sniff* -even though she's now at around 9lbs - still the size of many newborns!).

Last week was especially eventful, as in the midst of a great visit from Julia and Laura over from Germany, Brent and I took Thea on her first flight(s) - to Vermont! A very last minute decision, but one we're very glad we made!

The next two weeks should be a bit quieter. I start work part-time again on Monday while grandma Lois and grandpa Peter enjoy their last two weeks with Thea (for now) before heading back to Victoria.

Well I better run... Thea just fell asleep which means I better try to grab some shut-eye too!

Love and hugs to all of you from us three.
J, B & T

P.s. Your generous greetings, gifts and congratulations have meant so much to us. We are so grateful that she can be welcomed into such an incredible, loving community of friends and family.

Thea's first video: Weeks 1 & 2

2009-05-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

Hello again. I know I'm long overdue for a post, and I have one half written, but since it's taking so long to complete, I thought it better if I at least post this for now...

Thea Weeks 1 & 2 ...

For Mother's Day - Thea’s Birth Story

2009-05-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

For those of you who wanted to know, I thought I'd post Thea's birth story today (though it's taken me since Wed to write it in one-handed hunt-and-peck, usually as Thea nursed).

Well, as our prenatal class instructor said, you never know what the birth fairy has in store for you!

After a few weeks of being convinced that my body had no idea that it even needed to go into labor, let alone how, I woke up at around 2 am on Tuesday morning with stabbing lower back pain. I assumed that the spicy Somali chicken dish Brent’s coworker had sent home with him (intended to get labor going) had given me some gas. And even though I was over a week overdue, it still took me an hour to accept that this probably wasn’t gas! I decided it was best to try to let Lindsay and Brent sleep (Mom and Dad were already moved over into their new apartment), even though I expected I was in it for the long haul (sleeping between contractions only worked when they spread out, which amounted to 5 min stints of shut-eye for only an hour). Brent finally found me slouched over the couch on my birthing ball in the living room around 5 am; Lindsay woke up at 8, both very excited when they heard the news.

My contractions were still irregular and not intense enough to indicate I was ready to go into the birth center (though I was still feeling them all in my back), so Brent and I decided to go to our scheduled 10:20 am prenatal apt at the medical clinic. We went for a walk (I stopped to lean on B during contractions) which unsurprisingly took us longer than expected so Mom came with us and parked while we ran in. Standing in line at the clinic’s registration desk I felt a gush of liquid rush down my leg (memories of grade 2 flashed back!). Oh no. I got into the office and ran to give my urine sample so I was well positioned when the big burst came! Unfortunately the excitement of knowing this was definitely Birth Day was soon erased when I noticed the undeniable meconium (baby’s first stool) in the amniotic fluid. In that instant we saw our dream of a Birth Center birth disappear. Our midwife delivered the bad news – while the meconium was likely just a result of the baby being post-due, it could mean she was in distress now, and they were worried she could have aspirated some in utero which would mean serious problems after birth. I was devastated. We weren’t allowed to go home; I had to be admitted to Labor & Delivery immediately. We called Dad and Lindsay to bring our hospital bag and the dozen things we had yet to pack to meet us at the hospital.

Unfortunately, from there things went from bad to worse. Cinco de Mayo turned out to be a "baby storm" day, so L & D was full. We were stuck in a tiny closet delivery room with no windows and barely enough room to fit us inside ( a room we had actually seen during our first hospital tour and I had announced "If that's where we'll be delivering I don't want to go to this hospital!"). By the time I was admitted my contractions were much stronger and closer together and still all in my back. I had always feared having back labor and I was told one by one that the coping techniques I was counting on were unavailable –no birth tub, no shower, no doula; I had limited mobility due to all the machines to which I was now attached, and it took them so long to track down a birth ball for me to use that when they finally did I could no longer move to use it (the room was too cramped anyway). Dad, Linds and Mom were all ordered to pummel my back as hard as they could to give me counter pressure during the contractions. They had to keep rubbing constantly though as even between contractions the pain did not disappear like it “should” do with normal labor. A further complication was that apparently I wasn’t getting enough oxygen (a doctor later stipulated this was a problem with the machine, not me) so every contraction machines would start beeping uncontrollably and I would be yelled at to breathe deeper/faster/more! I felt like I was getting plenty of oxygen, but the beeping and panic was destroying my concentration and breathing patterns to deal with the pain. My contractions became so strong and rapid that the midwife told me I was in transition (the last and most intense part of labor, right before pushing). Even though I was vomiting and unable to focus on Brent’s face anymore, I thought I could keep it up for another hour or two to have the natural birth we so badly wanted. But after two hours the midwife came back to check again and I was told I was only at 6 cm (transition is 8-10cm)! A door slammed shut in my mind and I told Brent to get the anesthesiologist. He tried to talk me out of it (like I’d asked him to) but I’d already thought it through. It was hugely disappointing to me to not have a completely natural birth, but with what we’d been dealt for this birth I felt I was at risk of passing out and having a forceps, vacuum or C-section delivery if I couldn’t get my strength back to push her out. Ironically, the nurses had such a hard time getting an IV in that relief didn’t come for another hour!

But then everything changed at once. 15 min after they finally got the epidural in they checked me and I was 9.5 cm. A big, bright room with huge widows became available that they moved me into. And then the midwife Brent and I had been choosing to see for the last two months came to visit us. She had been working at the clinic all day (that is who we had the earlier apt with) and was off work at 5pm. I thought she was just coming in to check on us when suddenly she returned in her scrubs! She continued to stay for the next 4.5 hours to deliver Thea and get me well and ready to go to recovery – all on her own time! It was like a different birth. My epidural was low enough that it started wearing off and I could feel the contractions in my left side. I didn’t mind the discomfort at all as then I could tell when to push. The pushing stage was slow and powerful and I had the energy and stamina to push her out and be completely present for her birth. I won’t give you all the “gory details”, but as a participant they weren’t gory, rather another example of the amazing capacities of the human body. Thea was born at 8:24 pm, wide awake and bright eyed, and gave a good strong cry when she came out, which allowed her to be handed to me instead of the waiting team of pediatricians (due to the fear of meconium in her lungs). Within 15 min she was nursing happily and then being passed around among all her waiting admirers.

For those who have not given birth, I can’t begin to describe the overwhelming surge of emotion that comes in those first moments - you can hear about over and over, but really there aren’t words to fully describe its intensity. Mom, Dad, Lindsay and of course Brent were all absolutely amazing. And while thoughts of having an only-child surfaced in the sore and most sleep-deprived moments, I think it's fairly safe to say how excited I'll be to do this all over again (and no, I'm not an epidural convert, even though I was very grateful for it at the time, we'll hope again for a completely natural birth next time!).

The days since then have been a wonderful, exhausting, overwhelming, awed blur. It is crazy how seemingly simple tasks get lost in the repetitive routine of making sure Thea eats, burps, relieves herself, is changed and sleeps. The latter seems to be one of her higher priorities and seems to have an inverse relationship to Brent and my ability to do so (especially since she only seems to be content to sleep at night when she’s touching one of us). But, we are so sickeningly besotted by her, that even at 4 am I have found an untouched store of patience I never knew I was capable of! The rest of the time we all just sit around making googly eyes at her and exclaim at the beauty of her smallest movement or expression. :-)

For those not on facebook, we will try to keep a steady stream of photos of her first weeks on our Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenandbrent/ (there is also a link under "Good Sites" on the right of this page).

Well there's always more to write, but it's 9 pm and I'm exhausted! It was a wonderful Mother's Day, maybe I'll write about it the next time I get time... sometime before Halloween I hope!

Love to all,

J, B & little T

Thea Elaina

2009-05-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, she's finally here!

We just got home from the hospital and are awaiting the arrival of her second set of grandparents, so for now, just the basics:

For the big decision, we finally decided to name her Thea (pronounced "ThAY-a") Elaina (like Elena) Smerdon Freeman. The names have family significance - after Jen's Grandma Dorthy and Brent's Grandma Elaine; as well as for their meanings and how they sound.

As for meaning, the baby name book we had said:

Thea - Greek, "goddess, godly" diminutive of Althea and Dorothea. Pronounced THEE-a, THAY-a, or TAY-a, this name of the Greek goddess of light and the mother of the sun, moon and dawn presents an appealing artistic image, sensitive and serene.

Elaina - French variation of Helen, from Greek, "bright shining one." A name that has connoted beauty since ancient times.

And the other standard details:

She was born at 8:24 pm on May 5th weighing 6 lbs 13 oz. and was 19.6 inches long. I'll let you know more details about her birth soon. It didn't go quite as planned, but in the end we were very happy with how she made her entrance, healthy happy and beautiful, into the outside world.

More photos coming soon too!

Lots of love to you all from Brent, Jen and Thea

While I'm waiting...

2009-04-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

I might as well make a cheesy video!

30 & overdue

2009-04-28T18:16:00.001-07:00

As you can all attest, it's a huge surprise that our daughter is deciding to make a late entrance considering she comes from two always-punctual parents!

So, so much for the midwife's prediction; she seems eternally comfortable in there and my body seems oblivious to the knowledge that it must perform any sort of big event any time soon. I have started to feel a few painless Braxton-Hicks "practice" contractions, but by "a few," I mean perhaps half a dozen or less in over a week - which is what most women start feeling at around 6-7 months. By these calculations I am convinced that my biological clock is planning our baby's arrival sometime in August.

Unfortunately, the medical establishment isn't too comfortable with 12 month gestations. They are set on inducing me with the evil drug Pitocin when I hit 42 weeks (May 11). That day also coincides with my loss of Birth Center eligibility, which would be incredibly disappointing. So, in the meantime we're trying to walk the fine line between letting her come when she's ready and "encouraging" my body to pick up SOME signs of impending labor!

In addition to the usual home remedies, I will be going to have my "membranes swept" (separating the amniotic sack from the uterine wall) on Thursday (yes, Brent's birthday, but if the baby hasn't arrived by then, he'll be at work) in the hopes of either putting me into labor or giving me a few hours of contractions which will hopefully move me closer to natural labor in the days/week to come. If that, acupuncture and caster oil all fail, our last-ditch attempt will come the following weekend when they'll try to break my water at least 24 hrs before I hit 42 weeks. The only issue then is that I will be on a 24hr clock to deliver, which may mean the dreaded Pitocin...

BUT that's all still 12-13 days away, so we'll take things as they come and hope that none of this is necessary!!! Who knows, maybe she'll come tonight?

Other than that, someone had a 30th birthday on Saturday...

And while I completely forgot it was my birthday multiple times in the weeks & days leading up to it, my family and Brent made sure I was well celebrated (though my current state of mind is that birthdays should be for celebrating the mother!). Brent made me his infamous whole wheat mixed berry and banana-chocolate chip pancakes from scratch, with a smoothie and cardamom coffee for breakfast. Mom, Lindsay and I had a girls' treat (we don't know why Brent and Dad didn't want to join!) of mani-pedis & a shopping trip. The day finished with Brent taking us out to a surprise dinner at a swishy sushi bar then back home for cake. I wish the rest of my 30's could be this spoiled!

Other than that, Mom, Dad, Lindsay and I have been gallivanting around and trying not to think about the baby's lack of arrival while Brent's been busy at work most days. The rest of the photos are from a hike in Mission Trails park, which was lots of fun but alas, did not start labor!

Hope you're all well,

Jen, Brent and the large, heavy bump!

The end of couplehood...

2009-04-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

No, she hasn't arrived yet ;-)

But in part to celebrate my last day of work on Thursday and partially in recognition that my mom arrives on Thursday and will stay until the baby's arrival (and a couple months after - thank goodness!) Brent and I decided to celebrate our last weekend exclusively as a "couple" this weekend!

As other "foodians" can appreciate, most of our celebrating revolved around eating out (and there were no movies in the theaters worth paying $21 for). So for a brief rundown:

After Brent got back from work on Friday we went out for a delicious Ethiopian buffet dinner, eavesdropped on the table beside ours' discussions of Zanzibar (which they had only visited for a day visit - which made us wonder how anyone could leave after only a few hours?!) and generally stuffed ourselves silly while reminiscing about travels past and hopefully future!

Saturday morning Brent woke me with his signature from-scratch berry pancakes before we went for an exhilarating walk to a park a few blocks (and two big hills) away from our house that has an archery range Brent is suddenly interested in (?!). Then came the weekend's highlight: an appointment at a spa in Ocean Beach for an indulgent 1.5 hr couples' massage and pampering foot scrub. Pummeled, scrubbed and soothed, we lounged at a cafe in OB watching the Nelson-meets-Tofino So-Cal scene passing by before taking a long walk on the surfer-and-palm tree beachfront. We got back to Hillcrest in time for our dinner reservations at a fancy Indian restaurant before heading home to a scrumptious mango sorbet and chocolate truffle desert.

On Sunday we took it slow with our usual schedule of grocery shopping, calls to our parents, a walk through Balboa, and in the afternoon/evening our second-to-last prenatal class. And while we had every intention of going home to cook, the late hour and aroma of something vaguely Asian convinced us to stop and pick up sushi on the way home. Ahhh, Heaven!

However, as I was on the elliptical trainer at the gym this morning I realized that had our daughter wanted to make an early appearance, I had inadvertently done about 8 out of 10 of the main labor-starting techniques (spicy food, big meals, strenuous hill climbs, getting a prenatal massage, squats, lunges, lots of walking and it was just after the full moon) over the weekend! So while I don't know how she could possibly sit any lower in my pelvis, it seems she may be looking to hold on to "life on the inside" for another week or two at least. Nevertheless, as I hit 38 weeks today Brent and I realized that one way or another, 4 weeks today (induction day if it comes to that) she will be in our arms!

In the meantime we're really looking forward to mom arriving on Thursday and Lindsay, my dad and Barclay arriving the following week. From there the arrivals should just keep coming...!

Hope you all are doing very well,

Jen, Brent and since I can't really think of another fruit heavier or rounder than a watermelon, she'll have to stay as that for now!

A lucky day for Jen

2009-04-06T17:55:00.001-07:00

It's been a great day so I thought I'd share some not-exclusively baby-related news!

First of all, today was preceeded by a great weekend, hitting the beach on Coronado island, attending our second birth-prep class, finding and committing to an apartment for my parents (and any other visitors who want to stay with them while they're in San Diego), and being spoiled with yet another baby shower last night!

However, the baby shower was quite a party and after getting home close to 11 pm last night, another one of my increasingly restless nights convinced me to "not work" from home today. I say not work because I only have 20 hours remaining on my current work contract and yet still have a lot of work left in my "plan-a-three-day-human-rights-arts-festival-and-raise-$22,000-to-fund-it" project for the institute. It has been a stressful balancing act and I was not looking forward to tying up 6 weeks worth of work this week to leave for an undesignated person to try to take over. As I was anxiously pondering my tight timeline, I received an e-mail from my boss saying she has secured funding for me to work part-time from August up until the festival in September! That was fabulous news. Though it didn't quite remove the pressure of how to leave things between now and August... Three hours later I get another e-mail, this time saying my boss has found more funding to pay me for a week or two before July 1 to "tide things over"! :-)!

Just when I thought it was really my lucky day, I was outside getting my laundry when my neighbor came out to see if we happened to need one of our few remaining 'wish list' items - a brand new changing pad!

Hmm... maybe I should buy a lottery ticket tonight!

I hope you all are having similarly good days.

Jen, Brent and the very heavy watermelon

p.s. thanks to everyone who's casting their chips in Baby Freeman's Date-of-Arrival pool, we love seeing your guesses (though there are some late ones that I hope will not win! ;-).

When is she coming...?

2009-03-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

The weekend of the baby!

This weekend was Brent and my first real dose of baby-mania. On Friday night her hammock arrived by UPS...

We spent Saturday morning driving around to pick up her stroller at REI...

and the hammock stand from a Japanese baby store...

Saturday afternoon the girls from my walking group threw me a faaaaabulous baby shower in

the park, tripling our previous clothes/hats/bibs/blankets/toys supplies with boxes of their hand-me-downs and a few bags of new things as well! Sat. night and Sunday morning were spent washing, folding and putting away her new items and starting to pack our hospital bag. And finally, the weekend was topped off by our first 3 hr. birth prep class on Sunday evening!

Suddenly her arrival has seemed to go from happily anticipated, to real and somewhat imminent!

Well not imminent, imminent! Yesterday I turned 36 weeks. Officially, that means baby Smerdon Freeman will be considered full term in only 5 days... but her due date is still just under 4 weeks away (27 days as my calendar reminds me).

Now due dates mean different things to different people. Many enlightened prenatal care providers will tell you you really have a due month between weeks 37 and 41/42. Your actual due date is 40 weeks (9 months + 7 days) from the first day of your last period (sorry for Too Much Information) and statistically has a slightly higher likelihood of you giving birth than on the other 27 days of your due "month." But many 2nd and 3rd time moms will "go" early, and many 1st time moms will "go" late. That said, you'll hear tons of stories of FTM's going early and the mother of 7 being induced post-term. So really, it's anyone's guess!

According to my mother, I am destined to "go" late. Perhaps she was late with me, or she just thinks the full-moon on May 9 is perfect timing for her granddaughter's entrance. Since our little watermelon is a little on the small side and seems fairly content in there I tended to agree with her on the slightly late side.

Until today.

As our midwife palpated my stomach this morning, she checked the baby's position again and even confirmed with a quick ultrasoundic glimpse - baby's head is down, way down. She can still roll around, as she demonstrated by rolling her body from my left side to my right side during the ultrasound. But her head is deep down in my pelvis - also called "engaged," which means it will likely (hopefully) be stuck there now until birth. This also means that the pressure her head is now exerting on my cervix will hopefully/likely help it "efface" (i.e. thin from a few inches thick to paper thin before/as it opens) either by my due date, or very possibly, sooner.

So while I'm not going to get my hopes up and will still focus on April 27-30 as her likely arrival time (if not later) there is now an increased likelihood that the dates leading up to the end of April are just as likely as the dates after.

Which brings me to the point of this e-mail: time to start the betting! The Freemans got a bit of head start on this so here are their contributions:

Gavin - April 28

Brent - April 30

Grace - May 2

Diane - May 4

Elliott - May 7

Lois - May 9 (right mom?)

[But don't guess after May 11-14, as that will be induction time!]

So post your guesses as comments and we will keep track! And if you want to guess the same day as someone else, we'll just have to ask for times to see who gets it closer if you're right. And who knows, there could be anything from naming to bragging rights in it for the winner ;-)

Love to all of you from us,

XXx

A face a mother (and father) could love

2009-03-26T08:54:00.000-07:00

I know she looks a bit alien-like, but here are some photos Brent and I received at our 3-D ultrasound appointment last month.

The appointment was a secret at the time as it produced our birthday present for Diane, a video of her first grandchild, still in utero!

The video is more entertaining than the photos alone, as our stubborn daughter (further confirming that she will be a Taurus like her parents) spent 15 min of our supposedly 15min appointment with her hands and feet firmly in front of her face! The technician (wanting to get her outrageous fee for a 'successful' ultrasound) let our appointment go 5 minutes over in her attempt to jiggle, roll, push, and suggest to our daughter to please stop hiding so mommy and daddy could see her face!

Finally, when I jiggled her hands and feet, our little monkey finally obliged. Then we got all sorts of antics from her - eyes open, yawning, sucking her fingers and toes and even her umbilical cord!

I still find it a bit difficult to make a correlation between these images and the face we'll see in the birthing room, but we stare at her face lovingly nevertheless.

Love,

Jen, Brent and our little monkey

(Her eyes are open in many of the photos, and you can often see her umbilical cord, including the first and last ones where she's got it in her mouth)

In My Humble Opinion...

2009-03-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

It seems that not much inspires judgement in our society as much as parenting. Whether it be self-righteousness or self-consciousness, no one seems to be able to look at the act of creating, bearing and raising a child in this world without judging whether each act is right or wrong, good or bad, advisable or not.

I just came back from my weekly walking group where a new group of moms had gathered (my 4 usual companions were all unable to make it). Two were labor and delivery (L&D) nurses at a local hospital, one with two toddlers and one with a 7 week old baby. The other two ladies were young moms with 7 and 11 month old babies.

We discussed the usual topics of where they delivered, how their births went, what the transition to motherhood was like, etc. before the host of questions began for the pregnant lady (aka me) - when was I due, what was I having, did she have a name yet... when we got on to where I would deliver. As soon as I mentioned the words "Birth Center" their expressions changed: "Oh. You're one of the ones who is going to try it without drugs!" Knowing smirks were exchanged between the L&D nurses. They looked at me with a mix of humor and condescension, like parents humoring their obviously disillusioned child.

A little while later I was discussing feeding with the constantly flustered mother of the 7 week old (one of the L&D nurses) who casually slipped in - "well you're probably breastfeeding, right? I just assume because you're going for natural childbirth, you're one of those moms..." I tried to let that one go as I watched her formula-feed her infant a few minutes later.

Finally, as I was making my exit (completely bored) I asked whether I would see the women next week. "Sure;" one of the L&D nurses responded, "unless you're not here for a while..." [indicating that I may have delivered]. "Oh, I hope she'll stay inside for at least another month. She can't come before my mother arrives on April 16th - she would have a fit!" I joked. "Well, we'll be eager to hear how it goes if you do!" Another loaded glance passed between them with suppressed giggles, before the older one added, "We'll see if you earned your gold star!"

This conversation is just the latest example of what I have realized is another mark of new parenthood - a honed auditory filter and a passable fake smile as you receive the frequent barrage of advice from friends, family and strangers on the street once you are marked as being in the care of a child. The tricky part is getting the information you want out of all the stuff you don't. Which is where we come back to my original point on judgement.

For example...

1) The crunchy/non crunchy camps

A term used to describe how "hippie" you are, it is worn on natural mom chat sites like a badge. Everyone wants to know (or profess) how crunchy are you! Points seem to be awarded for your support of: natural childbirth, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, baby wearing (to do with carrying your baby around in a sling or wrap), attachment parenting, co-sleeping, your suspicion of traditional vaccine schedules, and feeding your child homemade (organic) baby food when they (ever) wean from the breast.

By most standards, Brent and I fall primarily into the 'pretty darn crunchy' category, but that doesn't stop it irking me that as much self-righteousness seems to flow from the crunchy camp as from the L&D nurses today.

2) The old-school/"modern" moms camps

In one example, I received warning today of the responses I could encounter if we choose to take our daughter out in public shortly after her birth. Depending on how I'm feeling postpartum, this had been something Brent and I were excited about. Apparently, women of the older generation in San Diego have been known (as many of the women attested) to chide new mothers for bringing their babies outdoors at such a young age - apparently they think starving alone in your apartment is preferable to entering a grocery store with a <1 week old baby. This can go the other way though too. Many 'modern' moms considering themselves baby-product savvy will refuse anything not directly off the highest-end baby store shelf for fear of quality, safety and style; looking down their noses at any moms that have not outfitted their children in anything but the best brand-names, and can spot your make of stroller a mile off. 3) The It's YOUR baby camp

This dichotomy may baffle me the most. For all the unsolicited, nosy, self-assured judgements that complete strangers feel free to make on parents, there seems to be an increasing lack of communal responsibility/friendship towards parents with babies or children in other areas. For example, I have witnessed, experienced and heard of numerous incidences of the general public's lack of courtesy with regards to both pregnant women and mothers with small children. The giving up of seats on buses, opening of doors to those with strollers, let alone assisting a stroller up stairs seems to be becoming a rarity. If your baby cries in a restaurant, airplane or store you are likely to be shot death glares more than sympathetic smiles. And then there's some individuals' reactions to breastfeeding in public! A friend of mine actually carries around a card that states California's pro-breastfeeding laws, while I have heard the laments of mothers in other states where breastfeeding in public is illegal!

Perhaps when our little one comes we'll post a sign on her stroller that reminds folks that the only perfect parents are those without children ;-)

Meanwhile, our increasingly heavy honeydew melon is now 35 weeks, weighs nearly 5.5 lbs (though her mom is carrying around 25 lbs!) and is about as long as she'll be at birth. Which theoretically could happen at any time in the next 6 weeks. There are less than 5 weeks till her due date, though she'll be full term in less than 2! Eek! I really don't think she'll be making her appearance until after her due date, but maybe we better go install the car seat just in case...!

Love to all of you,

Jen, Brent & our little honeydew

Maui Movie Madness

2009-03-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

Well, it's a movie of our trip to Maui. The madness part came in me trying to wrestle with Microsoft Movie Maker's quirky movie making program! How I wish our photos were on Brent's Mac...

Enjoy (and be forgiving or I may not be making another one)!

Love,

Jen, Brent and our not-so-little watermelon

Rude tram drivers, the Zen of gridlock and my obsession with vampires

2009-03-04T10:58:00.000-08:00

I'm on my lunch hour, so I thought I'd share with you a tale from my morning commute and my latest obsession...

Since Maui, Brent and I have been slowly readjusting to SD time until this morning, when we pushed ourselves out of bed at our "usual" wake-up time of 5:45am to make our first trip back to the gym (those macadamia nut pancakes aren't going to work themselves off you know!). I was taking the car today so that I can go to my prenatal yoga class tonight, so we went to the gym closer to Brent's work. I dropped him off at 8:15 and began the 15min drive to USD. Three blocks from Brent's work a police van blocked the main road to the highway, directing traffic up a side road. I went with the flow, thinking, like most roads in San Diego, that there would be a fairly straightforward parallel route - the cars in front of me likely knew it (or were being guided by their GPS's) so I'd just follow them. That's how I ended up in 15min lineup of drivers weaving through stop sign and crosswalk-speckled suburbia! By the time I finally made it onto interstate 8, I edged over to the fast lane only to be greeted by another wall of brake lights 3min after getting on the freeway! An accident was waiting to be cleared just before my exit, leaving me in solid gridlock for another half an hour!

For most drivers this would be an infuriating chain of events, but instead of letting my blood pressure climb with each lurching minute, I tried to take the gridlock as an opportunity to practice Zen philosophy (perhaps for the first time). I'm no expert, but I seemed to remember it has something to do with acceptance. I had a choice of how to approach my predicament: bang my head repeatedly against the steering wheel and get into fights with anyone who cut me off/didn't let me in as we inched along the 7 miles of asphalt until my turn-off; or, simply accept that there was nothing I could do to change the situation and refuse to let it bother me. I'd get to work when I got there.

Well the latter option worked for me all the way to the university. I had to park in the lower lot as I was so late, and faced the uphill climb up to the IPJ (the entire university is perched on a steep hill) with trepidation. I was carrying 3 bags and already tired from my workout. So you can imagine my relief when I saw one of the university shuttles approaching a stop on the hill that would take me up. The doors to the crowded bus opened and a young, athletic 20-something student got on ahead of me. Then I stepped on. That's when the driver said, "Excuse me, there's another shuttle coming in a minute that will have room." Um, me? The 8-month out-of-breath pregnant lady carrying 3 bags? Or the hoard of fit, Gucci-purse toting freshmen you're letting on? Evidently he meant me. And evidently none of the spoilt, rich, OMG-I'm-so-bummed-my-chauffeur-didn't-take-me-this-morning USD students felt there was anything wrong with me getting off the bus. There was no other shuttle in sight, and before the bus pulled away, I started heaving myself up the hill. Again, the driver seemed to see nothing wrong with this and passed me.

Perhaps I'm being irrational? Maybe this is just the hormones talking? But seriously, don't you think some degree of common courtesy could have either a) allowed me on anyway, or b) asked the young, fit, guy to wait for the next bus?, and either way, once they saw that I didn't have time to wait (already being late for work), wouldn't you let me on anyway? I had been so Zen up until then!

Well it's over now. I survived the sweaty (yes, it's hot here) lunge-like trek up the hill and into the office without a heart-attack or going into labor. So to take my mind off the indignation of this morning, I'm focusing on the 5 remaining hours I have until I can get my latest fix - of vampires that is. Well, a vampire book. Or rather, series. Ok, so I'm addicted to the teeny-bopper Twilight series! There, I said it! I almost added it as an entire section of my Maui post, just because it quickly transformed from a light beach read to an all-consuming obsession, even requiring a mid-week late-night drive two towns over to the Barnes and Noble to pick up the next book in the series (which I already owned, but had left in SD thinking there was no way I was going to get through a 500 pg. book amidst a week of activities in paradise!)!

As my friend Nicky surmised: reading Twilight saga is like eating a bag of chips - you know it's not good for you, and it's not making you a better person, but you just can't stop! I have also concluded that for women at least, the 17 year old main character Bella's first-person narrative has an eerily uncanny ability to return intelligent, adult women to our love-struck teenage romances (whether we actually had them or just wished we did). Bella, mind you can be a bit frustrating. In the second book in particular. But she's madly in love with a vampire (and I hope not a werewolf too!), so I guess she deserves a bit of a break. BUT, I better leave it there in case any of you are mid-series or about to be hooked! I hastily ordered the last two books within an hour of us returning to San Diego Sat night, but due to the weekend I've been forced to wait until tonight for my 2-day expedited shipping to get the books from Amazon to my doorstep (and be on my doorstep they better be! If UPS tries to misdeliver this package -like it has my last two- there are going to be serious consequences!!!).

Now if I were to skip my prenatal yoga class tonight I would only have 3 hrs until my fix...! Hmm... I guess I should get back to work then ;-)

Maui

2009-03-01T18:11:00.001-08:00

Yes it's a week of multiple posts! You lucky folks ;-)

On Saturday night Brent and I returned home from our last plane trip before we start travelling as a family of 3 (even though we know things will be irreversibly different after her arrival, we both refuse to refer to this as our last "hurrah"!).

Strangely, I didn't feel a huge urge to go to Hawaii before this trip, mostly because so many other destinations are already at the top of my (never ending) "as soon as time and money allows, I have to go there!" list. Well I stand corrected -Maui was fabulous! Much more than an over-touristed collection of luxury hotels and golf courses out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Maui was not only scenically beautiful, but had surprisingly (to me at least) varied terrain, and despite our trip coinciding with the height of tourist season, it was fairly laid-back!

A play-by-play of our 9 days would take a little too long, so here are some highlights, with photos to do most of the talking:

Beaches (of course)...

It's what most people go for I guess - the beaches. And I have to say, they are pretty nice. Not as crowded as I'd feared and often aquamarine with coral ridges encircling most of the island.

The snorkeling was good at most of the more sheltered beaches we found, and on the rest, the surfing (had I been in a condition to try it) looked like it would have been great (though a bit intimidating to try amidst all the pro-looking surfers).

Rainforests...

For some reason I didn't expect Maui to have rainforests (thinking any former foliage had long been cleared for condos, resorts and pineapples). Go figure. We rented a condo in the small beach town of Napili, at the foot of the tropical foothills of Maui's jagged north-western mountains. That range contained the Iao Valley state park, where the few meters of paved boardwalk failed to satiate us, leading all 6 of us to climb railings, ignore signposts and venture off on a (very well-worn but nevertheless forbidden) trail amidst the luscious, cloud-covered peaks.

Our other major excursion into tropical rainforest was on the must-see (but highly discouraged by car rental companies) 6hr+ out-and-back trip to Hana. The

road is the destination, with 45 miles of winding switchbacks along one of Maui's most rugged and exposed coastlines. If you keep your wits about you and stay ON the treacherous road, waterfalls, black sand beaches, monster waves and world- (or at least Maui-) famous banana bread await you!

However, there was one notable exception to the sopping greenery covering most of the island: Haleakala "Crater."

Venturing to the top of the volcano in the south east of the island was well worth the over 1hr switchback climb up to the 10,028 ft peak.

The 19 sq. mile "crater" (actually caused by erosion, rather than eruption, but filled with many smaller craters) looks more like a moonscape than the "volcano" archetype of active bubbling magma found on the Big Island. I was careful to not gallivant around too much at altitude, but the freezing wind left none of us really wanting to do the 3-8hr hikes at the peak.

Whales whales and more whales...

(look carefully, the photo below is a breech not a tail...)

I expected the sun, sand and surf, but what I didn't realize was that we were arriving smack-dab in the middle of whale season! And while I've been lucky enough to grow up around whales all my life, I have never seen such overcrowded abundance as the humpbacks mating and calving off Maui. As we watched the sun set on the beach our first night in Napili we couldn't believe our luck when we glimpsed a whale breeching a ways offshore. The next morning we were on our way to another part of the island and along the coast road we started seeing more splashes and spray fairly near to shore. Like typical tourists, we quickly pulled off at the nearest viewpoint. Well after about 10 min we'd lost track of all the spouts, tail and fin slaps and the odd breach (of jousting males) going on in every direction!

The real highlight came when we ventured out on a 47' catamaran to Molokini crater for Diane's birthday. The 5hr snorkeling trip included a 2-3.5 hr sail out and back from the crater, which ended up doubling as a whale watching trip. There were so many humpbacks that our two-man crew was grumbling that they were having to navigate a whale slalom course just to get back to the harbor!

You can see from the photos how close the whales were to our snorkeling site (the island in the background with the boats in front), so a part of me did consider venturing beyond the crater to see if I could catch a glimpse of them underwater (what do they tell you about not approaching mothers with young???). Luckily perhaps, it was soon obvious that that was a bit too far to go, but we got another thrill when, at the edge of the crater a diving expedition to see some triggerfish I suddenly had deja-vu from a grade 4 science movie... The water was filled with a cacophony of whale cries! Turns out sound travels better just a few feet underwater, so the more we dove, the more gentle mother-baby screeches we got to hear. Soooo neat!

Of course there's lots more I could write about, but for now I'll leave you with the photos instead. Maybe if I get really creative (and find a lot of free time) I may even try to make one of these "vacation videos" that my talented friend Cat seems to come up with!

In the meantime, it's back to work!

Love, Jen, Brent and our wriggling watermelon

Tegan's photos

2009-03-01T16:32:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been a little incommunicado lately...

I meant to post these earlier.

The story is that an incredibly talented photographer, who happens to be one of my closest, dearest and oldest friends (due to our 22+ years of friendship, not her age... though she does hit the big 3-0 this year just over a month before I do! What a geezer ;-) Tegan, somehow convinced me to wrap myself in a sheet and some mesh fabric (from B & my wedding no less!), then stand out on Willows beach (Victoria, Canada) in FEBRUARY! The results, as you can see, are some stunningly beautiful photos that she managed to take of me and the belly (in between the shivering)... (ok, the first one is in her living room, when we were still sane)

p.s. you can check out some of her other work at her blog, in my friend's blog list on the right of this page.

Back to work!

2009-02-12T15:05:00.000-08:00

Hello again from sunny San Diego (yes, I finally made it out of that blasted San Francisco airport and home to B!),

Just a quick post to tell you that as of next week you won't be hearing from me as often. I'll have a job!

After a number of weeks of waiting, something has finally come through with the IPJ! My main job will be to design and plan a 3-day Festival of the Arts to celebrate the 2009 Women PeaceMakers when they come next fall, to replace the annual Women PeaceMakers conference that we no longer have funding for this year (due to this lovely economy). It's a 6 week position (after the Arts Festival they have a few other WPM-related jobs for me), taking me half way through April when I'll probably be very ready for a couple weeks off before the little one arrives.

Speaking of the little one, she's doing very well. She enjoyed Victoria, if her very enthusiastic and nearly constant movement was anything to judge by. Though another explanation would be that she was restless without her dad's soothing touch around (Brent's warm hands seem to have an instant quieting effect on her - I just hope it lasts out of utero too!).

Week: 29, as of today only 74 days to go till EDD!

Size: my belly is still 40cm at its widest, but its roundness is extending upwards now. My weight on the other hand, seems to be jumping by leaps and bounds! Our daughter is now 15 inches long and weighs 2lb 12 oz. (I just wish that accounted for the extra 4lbs I gained in 10 days!).

This week's pregnancy complaint: It's taken a while, but I think I have to say I'm finally starting to feel my size! Getting up and down from the couch or worse, our bed (which is on the floor) has started to require extra effort, and bending over has become a bit uncomfortable. We're not yet at the can't-see-my-toes phase, but I hear it's only a matter of time!

Pregnancy news this week: Brent and I went to a newborn care class on Tuesday night. Little of the information provided was new, but it was good for Brent to try diapering and swaddling and I learned a new sideways football hold that is supposed to do wonders for calming a fussy baby. Though the real highlight came after the class... Brent and I had wolfed down a light dinner before going to the night class and at 9:30pm were feeling peckish. I'd like to blame the impetus on him, but we ended up on a dedicated mission to find an all-night diner. Denny's did not disappoint. We swerved (safely) off the highway at the familiar glowing yellow and red sign, and proceeded to order 2 make-your-own grand slam breakfasts, which allowed us each to polish off pancakes, hashbrowns, 2 eggs and oatmeal for me and a biscuit for B! At 10pm!!! Naturally we had to deal with the regret of looking at the piles of grease- and sugar-(aka fake syrup) covered plates when we were done, but it sure tasted good going down! I am trying to be healthy, but if you can't do that when you're pregnant, when can you? ;-)

For those of you who were asking, I'm happy to report that my glucose tolerance test came back fine, and I learned that I'm not anemic either.

But for now I should run. Brent and I are going to a couple's prenatal yoga class tonight in honor of Valentine's day, and I still have to write and send my own job description to IPJ's Executive Director tonight so that she can get the final approval for my position and I can start work on Tuesday!

I'll just finish with a couple more baby shower photos to tide you over (because as my friend Cat says, it seems weird to post an entry without photos); these are from my friend and photographer extraordinaire, Tegan.

Love,

Jen, Brent and we seem to still be on butternut squashes (which I think they used a few weeks ago as well!)

The Trials and Tribulations of Travel!

2009-02-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

Well seeing as I have a very unwanted 3 ¼ hours to kill, I might as well write a blog post. Maybe venting will help me calm down.

It’s 7:15pm and I’m sitting in the San Francisco airport having just missed my flight back to San Diego. I have only ever missed a flight once before and it was in an eerily similar situation on the return journey from my first “homecoming” visit to Victoria from Vermont and my forlorn fiancé, 4 years ago.

Brent and I just experienced an unpleasant déjà-vu as an urgent trip to the bathroom (during which time I paid careful attention to the announcements, waiting for them to even announce that my flight was boarding, let alone give a final call!) resulted in me arriving at my gate at 6:52pm (as I am watch-less I thought I still had around 20min), allegedly 2 minutes after the cut off boarding time!

It seems I wasn’t the only passenger who missed the flight; four other passengers were similarly caught off guard due to the lack of announcements. I guess I should be happy I can still fly tonight at all. Poor Brent will just have to come get me at 11:40pm instead of 8.

Furthermore, missing this flight was adding insult to injury after my arrival in SF. After going to the US citizens and permanent residents’ line, I was informed that there were new procedures for all green card holders. We are now required to give a full set of electronic fingerprints and be photographed upon entry. I complied of course, only to be told there was a “problem” with my fingerprints and I would have to go through a secondary immigration check. Naively, I thought that perhaps my fingers had swelled during pregnancy making the fingerprints harder to recognize. Oh no. To make a long and (once again) humiliating experience brief: basically, due to the fiasco Brent and I went through getting into the US when we first came to SD, I will now have to go through additional questioning every time I enter the US! I was informed that the only way to get the flag that is on my identity (including fingerprints) removed is to file a petition. Which the Homeland Security officer assured me would take a very long time. So, after thinking this mess was finally over, it seems that despite me having permanent residency, I could be denied re-entry to my new home at any time!

Well, not wanting to dwell on this travel debacle any longer, I’ll try and tell you instead about my fabulous 10 days in Victoria. As I may have mentioned before, it was a unique trip “home” in that I was without both a home and the integral presence of my parents. Luckily, many friends and family members were kind enough to open their homes (and beds) to the belly and I (and often, my frequent companion Lindsay too) and to lend the use of their cars, phones, occasional internet, kitchens and most importantly, their time, to yours truly. So despite feeling a bit like a wandering nomad, the people I was able to see made the trip well worth it.

A couple highlights were a trip to Mt. Washington with my brother Sean to hit the X-country trails (of which only 1 blue and a host of black diamond runs were open!) one day, and this Saturday when Linds and Nicky (with a lot of help from Nicky’s mom Madeline and Lindsay’s best friend Hana) threw me a lovely baby shower!

There were a lot of other great times (a pregnancy massage from Kathy, seeing 'Slumdog Millionaire' with Kier & Keenan, walks with Linds & Barclay, a little Rock Band, and a lot of tasty meals with everyone) but for the most part, 10 days rushed by faster than I could imagine. In the bustle of trying to see everyone, I had to reconcile myself with only being able to see most people once or twice, and there were even a few important people who I missed completely :-(

Nevertheless, the trip reminded me that I need to make the effort to make it home more often (though this immigration issue puts a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm). At the moment I’m planning on returning to Victoria with my parents for another visit in August. For now, I’ll have to “make do” with Maui next week!

Well this entry and a few games of spider solitaire seemed to have brought me to 45min before my flight, so I think I’m going to go plunk myself in front of the gate as I don’t think Brent or I could handle another missed flight!

So glad I got to see those of you who I did last week, and hoping to see more of you in person over the coming weeks/months!

Love,

Jen, Brent and our somersaulting butternut squash (more on her another time)

Inauguration Mania

2009-01-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

Well it finally happened - the US has a new president!

(Bye-bye Bushy!)

Of course, even more important than the fact that George W. Bush is finally OUT of office, is that Barak Obama, in all his intelligent, humble, far-sighted, even-headed brilliance has taken that powerful oath. And that the US has finally embraced an alternative to the seemingly marble-hardened mold of a white, upper-class man to lead it (now if some of its western neighbors could do the same...).

While I don't have a lot of experience witnessing American presidential inaugurations, it seems that the hope, pride, anticipation and inspiration shown by Americans for this specific American president is unique. Personally, I don't know how anyone who listened to that inaugural address could have come away unmoved! Boy, he's good!

Yes, it is an exciting time to be in this country and yes, you can see I am totally smitten with "our" new president! (Brent doesn't mind, he's pretty smitten too)

As for our lowly little non-country-ruling lives, I imagine most people won't appreciate hearing what we've been up to here as even if I avoid mentioning the exact weather conditions, the fact that I'm discussing a 14km hike in a park searching for water and then heading straight to Cold Stone would probably betray what the skies and thermometer are doing here... ;-)

Just remember, I only bring it up because I'm hoping you will come visit!

As for my ever-growing belly, it is doing well. I think our daughter has grown a fish tail though, as she seems to be doing less random kicking and more constant swimming around in there. It seems she's a water baby just like her parents!

Week: 26 - 96 days to go till DD

Jen's belly size: 40 inches

Baby's size: 14 inches (36cm) head to heels, and she weighs about 2 lbs. Think of her when you grab your next English cucumber!

This week's pregnancy complaint: "More water!"
Anyone who has spent any amount of time with me knows how much water I drink. And yet lately I can never seem to get enough! Unfortunately, this can be an early sign of gestational diabetes (diabetes that you get during and only for the duration of your pregnancy), which would suddenly put me in the high-risk category and would likely make me ineligible for the Birth Center since I would have to be monitored through the birth and if the baby was too large (an effect of poorly-controlled GD) it may mean I'd be giving birth via C-section. But I didn't have any of GD's usual preconditions (I maintained a good diet and exercise and there's no family history on my side) and I don't have many other symptoms. Luckily, I happen to be going for the routine test they do for GD a week today so I'll know one way or another then.

This week's highlight: Last week seemed to be a baby-filled week! We had a prenatal apt on Tuesday where we got to go over our birth plan with the midwife. She was very nice and B & I were happy to hear that the Birth Center supports (and will allow) everything on our "wish list" provided no serious medical complications arise. She also reassured us about all the things they will do and let us do if the birth takes longer, begins to slow down, etc. before we will have to consider any interventions. It was a bit of a shock though to realize that my appointments will now be bi-weekly as I'm beginning my final trimester in 2 weeks and then I will go in weekly for our last month.

I also went to a La Leche League meeting with one of Brent's coworkers, and to a Maternity and New Mom meet-up group in Balboa Park. Both were good opportunities to be able to meet other new moms and moms-to-be and hear about their experiences. The LLL meeting was very helpful for breastfeeding issues and support, and the Meet-up group was fun with quite a varied group of moms!

This week's fun fact: This week she opens her eyes!

I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who wrote after last week's post to encourage me to take a 7 month unemployed "maternity leave." I have started to reconcile myself to it more and more, sometimes with great gratitude that I've found myself with this time and sometimes with a pang of regret that I'm not off in the work world with everyone else. But it helps to hear many of you weigh in on the former side (especially those of you with first-hand knowledge of how precious and fleeting those first few months are). I'm sure it will fly by and I'll be back in a "9-5" (or more like 8-6) before I know it!

But speaking of work, I should really go finish my presentation for a conference I'm speaking at on Friday (my topic is on sexual violence in Congo). Next week should be my first real week without work to do and then on Friday I get on my much anticipated flight to Victoria!!!!!!! I'm sad I can't stuff Brent in my suitcase, but as it is we're trying to work out how he's going to convince his boss that with only 3.5 vacation days in his bank, he should be allowed to take a 6-vacation day trip to Maui next month... <:\

I hope all of you are doing well!

Love, Brent, Jen and our little cuke.

p.s. yesterday we also got a surprise visit from UPS with a HUGE box sitting on our doorstep! It seems that our little cucumber's uncle Gavin and auntie Grace sent her her own little chair for our apartment! Or, as uncle Gavin calls it, her "videoconferencing throne!" Thanks you two! XXx

25 weeks and planning for the future...

2009-01-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

Hello again everyone!

Well its only been a week, but I have some news to report!

1) I finally finished my work for the IPJ! Hooray! Yes, for anyone who was counting, that took over two months longer than I was getting paid for. Not that I'm the slowpoke, I'm actually the first out of the 4 peacewriters to have all her material in!

2) I finally booked my flight home! Jan 30-Feb 9 I will be flying to Victoria (sadly sans Brent who has to stay here and work so that he has enough vacation days saved for Maui next month) for a likely windy, cold and WET reunion home. Unfortunately, a lot of my close friends and family will be missing (Mom, Dad, Cat, Alec, to name just a few), but the trip is more than worth making to see everyone who will be there :-)

The end of one job and impending trips to Victoria and Maui have also made Brent and I consider my plans for the next 7-ish months. The US economy has brought tough times to my two main job prospects at the IPJ and IRC. I am still in discussions with both to see if any short-term work might be possible over the next couple of months, but to be honest, it doesn't look like much. And regardless of workers-rights legislation, I highly doubt any potential employers are going to be giving me one of the US's scarce job opportunities once they see my belly!

So, while I really hope to be back in a fulfilling and hopefully long-term position soon, I'm seriously considering taking my own 7 month "mat leave" for now. Of course if a fabulous opportunity were to come up before then, I wouldn't hesitate to apply for it! But the ability to stretch the US' measly 6-week maternity leave into something that will actually allow me some time with our daughter and postpone having to find and pay for decent childcare sounds pretty appealing as well.

Speaking of the pregnancy (so rare, I know), today we reach 25 weeks and according to some books I'm now in my 7th month. But according to the lunar calendar I'm still in my 5th month; I'll reach 6 months on Jan 21st (how can measuring a process that's brought human life into the world for a few thousand years be this arbitrary?).

(below: me doing some birth art)

Week: 25, 104 days to go till DD
Jen's belly size: Still 39.5 inches
Baby's size: nearly 13.4 inches (34cm) head to heels, and she weighs between 1.5-1.8 lbs. No analogy for this week, so we can use one of the suggestions from last week, e.g. a lanky butternut squash?

This week's pregnancy complaint: Just a couple lower-back twinges.

This week's highlight: I'm working out a lot lately: swimming 2x/week, walking 2-3x/week, prenatal yoga 2x/week and last week we also hit the gym and I went for a 3 mile (5km) beach run yesterday. I get tired a lot easier than I used to and I'm careful to listen to how my body is doing and stop, rest or slow down as necessary, but it sure is nice to feel strong and healthy. I was running in the warm sunshine on Coronado beach yesterday. I kept thinking I'd stop "just up there" but I always felt good when I got there, so I'd decide to keep going "a little longer." There were a lot of marines jogging on the beach at the same time and when we'd pass each other going the opposite directions I'd always think "yeah, now try it 6 months pregnant!"

This week's fun fact: I learned the other day that the uterus is made of 3 layers of muscle. The inner layer is horizontal bands that wrap width-wise around and are larger/stronger near the cervix, so that during the pregnancy they are constricted and hold the baby in. The middle layer has blood vessels. Then the outer layer is made of vertical bands that go up and over the top of the uterus. During labor they contract, opening and lifting the inner horizontal bands to expel baby. Hypnobirthers believe that if the mother is tense during the birth the inner muscles constrict, working against the vertical muscles and making labor painful. If you can stay completely relaxed only the outer muscles will work, making for a greatly facilitated labor. Haha, now let's see how easy that is to put into practice!

The following are some photos of Brent at a race he did last weekend. See how far away from the pack he is? (he came in 10th! :-)

Well that's all for now folks. While I might not be working, I'm sure most of you are!

Looking forward to seeing those of you in Victoria in just over 2 weeks!

Wish we could see the rest of you as well,

Jen, Brent and our little squash

p.s. Many of you have asked if there is anything we need for our impending arrival, and in light of the fact that everyone is so spread out we have decided to make an "alternative" gift registry online to let friends and relatives from both countries participate in a "virtual baby shower" if they so wish. http://alternativegiftregistry.org/view_registry_public.php?registry_uid=2701 (unfortunately we've found the www.alternativegiftregistry.org site goes down quite often, so sorry if you have to try again later - it is the right link!)

Though your kind thoughts and blessings for our daughter would be just as welcome!

Into the New Year at 24 Weeks

2009-01-05T10:07:00.000-08:00

Happy 2009 everyone!

Well to be honest, we entered the New Year at 23 weeks, but I reached 24 weeks yesterday, so that's what you get to hear about!

But let's start with the 'New Years' part of the title...

We rang in the New Year with Brent's parents, Diane and Elliott, with a parent and daughter-in-law trip to the Cabrillo Monument on Point Loma (a peninsula on the north side of downtown San Diego with a commanding view of the city, surrounding mountains and the ocean... and on the 31st, a good view of the smog blanket that also encompasses the city from time to time - yuck), a trip to see Brent and his office at IRC, a Vietnamese lunch beside B's office, and then the big highlight - a decadent four course meal at the Prado, a fancy restaurant in one of Balboa Park's historic buildings.

The next day we went on a road trip to the Anza Borrego desert, 2.5hrs north-east of San Diego. The scenery was spectacular both on the way there (through mountains with snow, down into the desert canyon) and in the desert. For some reason I thought it was going to be freezing in a desert in the winter, but instead we were stripping off as many layers as possible and cursing our lack of sunscreen. We hiked just over 3 miles in to a palm grove oasis and back, over boulders and through streams, even catching a glimpse of the elusive and rare mountain goats.

We topped off the journey with a stop at Ali Baba, a very ornate (e.g. silver and lace trimmed fabric billowing from the ceiling), authentic Iraqi restaurant in El Cajon, where IRC settles the vast majority of its Iraqi clients (in El Cajon, not the restaurant, though we think many families would prefer to camp out there for a constant taste and feel of home). The next morning, however, we had to bid a sad farewell to Diane and Elliott as they flew back to Vermont. Luckily we'll be seeing them again in Maui (their Christmas present to Gavin, Grace, Brent and I) at the end of February!

As you would expect, the advent of 2009 brought with it a lot of contemplation about what the year ahead will bring. The blessed relief of a new and hopefully fabulous President of the US, further insecurity for the unemployed masses (such as yours truly) in this hideous economy, hopefully a further increase in the growing recognition that Mother Earth is not doing just peachy-keen while we plug on with industry and consumption as usual (and that therefore we should modify our industries and consumption asap), and for us personally, the monumental change of bringing a new life into the world.

Population worries aside, it's been nice to learn that we're not the only ones going through this crazy transition either! A girl I went to high school with, Annie Vallance, is expecting twin girls any day now; one of the women Brent and I worked with in Uganda, Jodie Scott, (who has also transplanted down to the US and is finishing her Chiropractic degree out east) is expecting in late February or March, and I just found out that a good friend from university, Jenn Radford, is due this summer! And I'm sure that before 2009 is out we'll have a few more friends to add to that list :-)

As for our little one, she's doing well, making the most of her last weeks with space to move around in, and growing like the most delicious of mouldy cheeses. According to the baby websites her home (aka my uterus) is now the size of a soccer ball! So here's the weekly breakdown:

Week: 24, 111 days to go till DD

Jen's belly size: 39.5 inches (For the rest of the world that's 100 cm!)

Baby's size: 8.5 inches (21.5cm) crown to rump, and she weighs between 1.2-1.5 lbs. Their analogy for this week is...an ear of corn?

This week's pregnancy complaint: Now that my belly is definitely a belly, sleeping is becoming a bit more awkward and my lower back gets sore after sitting in bad chairs. There's a few others, but I'll leave it at that ;-) All in all, I'm still feeling good.

This week's highlight: Our little lady likes to hang out low so it's hard for me to see the bottom of my belly where I feel her most, but during prenatal yoga last night she was doing some stretching (maybe even jumping jacks) of her own and I could swear that I felt my shirt moving. I will have to get Brent to watch sometime to see if her movements are now visible through my belly. Yes, it sounds a little 'Alien'-ish but for her parents it's pretty exciting!

This week's fun fact: In just one week the baby's survival rate has jumped from 25-35% to 50%! But when you look at all that's still developing in her - her eyelids aren't open yet, her skin is still translucent and wrinkly from a lack of fat, and her lungs are only developing slowly at this stage, you can see why it's important to keep babies on the inside for as long as possible.

Other things that we've been up to this week:

1) Creating an alternative gift registry. This is a wonderful invention that allows couples an alternative to the big store registries. It allows us to put on our own versions of gifts (e.g. second-hand baby clothes or 2 nights of babysitting) instead of always having to link to new and purchasable gifts. Stay tuned, you'll be able to see what the heck I'm talking about soon!

2) Choosing a birthing class. We had signed up for a basic class at the UCSD medical center where I'll be giving birth, but have since chosen to do a longer and more in-depth course offered at the Best Start Birth Center. We were choosing between doing hypnobirthing (using visualization as a natural relaxant and pain coping tool) or Birthing From Within (which incorporates a philosophy of birth as a rite of passage rather than a medical event. Lots of art, crafts, talking about feelings and all that good stuff) as having a natural birth is becoming pretty important to me (provided everything goes well of course) and I would like some concrete skills to help me cope with the pain. I just got off the phone with the BFW instructor so I think that is the one we'll do.

I also wanted to say that my trip to Victoria has been postponed (due to rising airfares to go sooner), but not cancelled. I am planning on booking my flight on Thursday so I will have dates for all of you there in my next post - yay!

That's all for now. I have two final short assignments to finish for my contract at the IPJ (that supposedly ended back in November) which I'm determined to have done by Friday!

Until soon,

Jen, Brent and our corn on the cob (does anyone have anything better to suggest? Please?)

Christmas and 23 weeks

2008-12-30T12:53:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

While it may be 4 days late, I am now languishing in the over-full stupor of a delicious Christmas dinner, trying to find room for the pumpkin pie.

Christmas was pleasantly drawn out this year. Brent and I braved the mayhem on Christmas eve to finish our shopping (or so we hoped). Then on the 25th we acted as if it were our night-before-Christmas as Brent's parents flew in that night and we were planning on celebrating Christmas on the 26th. Unfortunately, neither of us had actually finished shopping yet and were both surprised to find that even the big stores respect the sanctity of the holiday and are therefore not open to late-LATE shoppers like us!

Then after a wonderful reunion with Brent's parents Christmas night, we celebrated Christmas together on the 26th, including a trip to Coronado to walk on the beach and explore the Hotel Del Coronado before an impromptu Mexican dinner at a place Diane and Elliott used to go to 30 years ago as cooking Christmas dinner at that point would have meant eating at around 10pm!

All the holiday fun has also made me a bit late with my latest pregnancy update. So to catch up, and use one of our Christmas presents (a tape measure), I've thought of a little weekly routine. So, here's week one!

Week: 23 (118 days to go till the due date [DD for short])

Jen's belly size: 38.5 inches and growing daily...

Baby's size: a very large mango - the kind that weigh over 1lb.

This week's pregnancy complaint: Bleedin' gums! Yes, that's literal. And they're so sore! Something about hormones and increased blood flow, etc. But strangely they can cause preterm labour so I need to get on the 3+ times a day brushing!

This week's highlight: Diane and Elliott are acting like great expectant grandparents. Diane has even felt her granddaughter kicking. And Christmas was good to our little mango too - a cuddly blanket (that I'm stealing from now till April) from Grandma Lois, a hemp onesie from Grandma and Grandpa Freeman, and a bottle for Dad to feed her.

This week's fun fact: If born now, she has a 25-35% chance of survival. We're hoping to go a full 17 weeks more, but it is reassuring to hear that her chances of survival go up rapidly from now on!

And I can finally post my most recent bump photos, even though they were taken a week late (at 22 weeks). The growing-shrinking thing has finally stopped and I think I can now consider myself officially "popped" :-)

Finally, here are some more photos of our week:

A visit from Brent's Aunt Joyce, Uncle Randy and cousins Kirsten and Alison from L.A. and part of our Christmas present to Diane and Elliott - a day of brunch, the Farmer's Market, a trip to the zoo, a football game and sushi.

Lots of love to you all,

Jen, Brent and our big mango xxx

p.s. For those of you who heard about John's debacle trying to fly home from Uganda (which summed up amounted to incompetent British Airways staff, a ridiculous shift of responsibility from Canadian officials onto airlines to verify the visa status of their passengers, and ongoing ignorance and systemic racism against refugees), he has finally been granted permission to leave the country and will be on a flight home tomorrow.

Puerto Vallarta

2008-12-15T15:14:00.000-08:00

Hola!

Well I'm sitting in our dim living room, beside our one baseboard heater, watching the rain whip down from a cold, windy winters sky. It's hard to believe that around 26 hrs ago I was sweltering in a Puerto Vallarta pool in my bikini! Nevertheless, it is December, and if we're going to celebrate the holidays this year, I'd prefer the weather would cooperate with something winter-like!

We had a great 8 days in sunny PV. For years I have feared Puerto Vallarta as an endless wall of high rise resorts and timeshare sharks. We were greeted instead by a beautiful mid-size town nestled against lush, jagged hills, set on a beautiful half-moon bay.

We started out with three nights at a little local hotel in the old town of PV, set amidst cobble stone streets and overrun with bougainvillea.

Our friends Sean, Michelle, Booy and Mike all flew in the same day we did, so the 6 of us caught up over dinner on the beach and wandering the

streets of PV, watching the festival of the Lady of Guadeloupe celebrations until the wee hours. The next day Sean and Michelle moved to the resort where the wedding was to be held, but

Mike and Booy (who were staying at a place down the road from us in PV) took to the fantastic restaurant attached to our hotel, so breakfast chez nous became a daily ritual.

While three days wasn't nearly enough time to explore all PV and the surrounding area has to offer, we did manage to get in a whale watching/dolphin/snorkeling boat trip, discover a fabulous vegetarian buffet and buy some souvenirs - including a sink! (Brent's folks just remodeled their kitchen with tiles bought 30 years ago in Mexico when Diane was pregnant with Brent, so we figure we have some time to find a house for our sink ;-)

I even got to practice my Spanish more than I expected - cab drivers, servers and shop keepers were all very obliging.

Then on Tuesday we moved to the Playa Fiesta resort, 5km south of PV. It was great to see 20 of my longtime friends who are now scattered between Victoria, Toronto, San Fran, London and Cairo. And the resort was beautiful - a 42 room boutique hotel on the ocean with very attentive, friendly staff. The only downside of the 5 days was that nearly 75% of the wedding guests (including the bride) fell victim to vicious tummy trouble. We later learned that some of the staff at the all-day open bar were rinsing used glasses in tap water and promptly refilling them for further consumption! Brent and I thought we escaped it (thanking our built-up immunity from countless G.I. bugs in the past), but he has been feeling under the weather since our flight home last night. Hopefully it's only a cold!

Some of the highlights of the 5-days at Playa Fiesta included a boat trip with the girls to a private island for Michelle's bachelorette party (and a snorkeling boat trip and night out for the boys for Sean's bachelor party), S&M's beautiful wedding ceremony and celebration on Friday,

and a Karaoke finale on our last night!

Another hit of the week was the wedding's youngest guest - Erika and Tim's little guy, Aiden. He's nearly 7 months old and a very playful and easy-going baby. Even the guys in the group had caught baby fever by the end of the week! Hopefully over the next few years we may have more little ones in the group ;-)

Speaking of which, I also received a lot of comments on my belly. At first they concerned how "not pregnant" it looked for how far along I was and then later, people were commenting on how much it had grown by the end of the week! I hope that was due to a fetal growth spurt rather than all the buffet food we had! (According to the baby sites, she is now the size of a large banana!)

Brent and I also took the hours we spent by the pool to make great progress with the colossal job of naming! We managed to get through the entire girls' section of the Baby Name Bible (around 27,000 names) to come up with a final "shortlist" of only around 40! Then on the plane home last night we each wrote private lists of our top 10, then compared them for overlaps in the car ride home. We're now down to our top half dozen, which to us seems like great progress!

However, despite a fantastic holiday, it does feel good to get "home." I was sad to not be joining many of our friends as they migrated from Mexico to celebrate Christmas with their families in Victoria. But NEXT WEEK we have Diane and Elliott coming for Christmas here on the night of the 25th! We are very excited and are looking around for fun Christmas-y things to do with them over the holidays.

I also looked into flights to Victoria this morning while I was on the phone with Lindsay, Mom and Dad in England. To my surprise I found a cheap fare from Jan 8-20, so now I am trying to see whether or not I will have a job in January that will allow me to run away for 2 weeks! Look out Victoria, my big belly and I may be looking to couch-surf after all!

I hope all of your holidays have started well :-)

xox Jen, Brent and the banana

p.s. It turns out my green card actually works too! Crossing the border back to the US was FINALLY a simple process!!! YAY!

Off to Mexico with our little Mia...

2008-12-05T15:20:00.001-08:00

Just a quick farewell as Brent, I and our little cantaloupe head on our first international trip - to Mexico!

Tomorrow we get the privilege of waking up at 4am to be on the road by 5:30am to hit LA traffic around 7:30 and hopefully make it through the city to LAX by 9 for our 10:50am flight to Puerto Vallarta (factoring in our usual tardiness and more traffic than we imagine, we'll probably get there around 50min before our flight)!

We have our good friends Sean and Michelle to thank for the excuse as they are FINALLY getting married (a little joke since they've been strong and steady for a decade now) next Friday, an event we would be loathe to miss.

We're tacking on a pleasant 3 nights in PV's "Romantic Zone" at a little local place before heading to the beautiful Playa Fiesta http://www.playafiesta.com/ for Sean and Michelle's 5-day celebration. I'm incredibly excited to be seeing many of my Victoria friends again and of course the snorkeling, kayaking and jungle hikes won't be half bad either ;-)

Finally, the reason for my reference to 'Mia' (aka Mia Hamm - one of the few women soccer players of international repute) is due to our daughter's early soccer practice, apparently going on with my tummy as the absent ball! Either I was too oblivious to feel the initial "fluttering" of her more gentle movements, or she simply skipped that stage and went straight to kicks (which my prenatal books told me were not supposed to start for another 2 weeks). Either way, after her first three little boots back in week 17, and a week to rest, she now begins a regular tootsie drum roll nearly every morning and afternoon. I only feel bad that her dad's not usually around for them, and when he is, his warm hand on my belly has an instant soothing effect. Nevertheless, until they reach my internal organs or ribs I am loving them!

I've also started pre-natal yoga classes at a women's hospital here. I think most of the women are silently wondering if I'm an impostor as they pose with their beautiful, round bellies and I come in with nothing. Counting by weeks (as opposed to lunar months) I'll be 5 months on Monday. Where's my belly? Lately even the more substantial "evening belly" seems to be shrinking! I don't have any worries about the baby, and none of my health care providers have said anything about her size or growth, so I think it's my size that's the issue, not hers. However, if I gain the estimated pound a week over the rest of my pregnancy I'll be right on track for the lower end of the advised weight-gain spectrum. So, I guess the bulk of my maternity-clothes-days will just be in the latter half of my pregnancy!

Well I should get back to work. Yes, the job that officially ended a month ago continues. Only a few more stories to go though...

Hasta luego,

Jen, Brent and "lil' Mia"

Congratulations! It's a...

2008-11-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

Well, here's the post some of you have been waiting for! (And no, we're not just going to come out and announce it right away, hee hee ;-)

(Left: me at 18 weeks)

The lead up to the ultrasound yesterday was an interesting process. Brent and I started talking about what sort of family we'd like to have a few years ago. It included a veritable gaggle of both girls and boys, biological and adopted (though don't go thinking Brangelina yet). That image still holds true in many respects, especially with regards to sex. But when we got pregnant we realized that both of us were secretly hoping our first child would be a girl. So were both sets of grandparents! But as the day when we hoped to find out grew closer, we started considering what if we are having a boy? Brent was a lot better at relaxing his hopes to accept either sex, hoping most of all for a healthy baby. I found it a bit more difficult (though of course having a healthy baby was the primary concern!). As yesterday grew closer, I thought about my two adorable nephews, Keenan and Hux, how wonderful Brent must have been as a little boy and how much I loved growing up with older brothers. I started imagining what it would be like to have a little baby boy, name him, play with him etc. And I can finally say that when we went into the appointment yesterday I was genuinely excited about having a boy as our first born.

The exam itself was a bit of a let-down. Rather than watching and learning about the baby as we'd done during previous ultrasounds, this appointment had so much for the radiologist to check that he kept the screen turned toward him and just went from measurement to measurement. Even though Brent could see the screen he said he rarely knew what he was looking at. As the time went on, I got worried that maybe the radiologist didn't know that we wanted to know the sex so he might not be looking for it, so I interrupted him to clarify that if possible, we'd love to know. He said ok, but then kept fairly quiet for the rest of the exam, evidently frustrated that our baby's head was stubbornly nestled down in my pelvis (I think it was the baby's way of accommodating what WE wanted to know by sticking its bum up in the air ;-).

Finally, 3/4 of the way through the appointment he turned to me and asked if I had any feelings about what we were having. I didn't want to say girl in case I was wrong. I finally admitted, most often a girl, but sometimes a boy too. Then he said, "If you were having a boy, what would you name him?" I jerked up, "We're having a boy?!" The radiologist smiled and just repeated the question. We flubbed around telling him we had lists but... He waited patiently then finally said, "You're having a girl." I jumped up and grabbed his arm unable to tell if he was still joking. "Really? A girl? Are you serious?!" The poor guy! He finally showed us "proof" on an ultrasound (Right: our cute baby's bottom from below with an arrow pointing to her lack of penis) just so that I would finally believe him.

So while I'm happy to say that we really would have been happy having a boy first, we're ecstatic that we're having a daughter! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now comes the very difficult task of choosing a name... But as Brent says, at least we only have to choose one (for now)!

Looking forward to your reactions :-)

Jen, Brent, and our cantelopette

Belly update

2008-11-18T13:16:00.000-08:00

Hello again,

Trying to finish up my last few narratives, I'm facing constant distraction from the web's millions of baby websites. After weeks of focusing on work, my tummy and a long-awaited release from deadline pressure has turned my brain to baby-land mush.

Pregnancy, impending childbirth and then the even larger future responsibilities of parenthood sure do come with an array of adjustments! This month the physical side has gotten more interesting. My body is morphing in ways it has never done in its past 29 years. I'll save you most of the details to prevent too many "Too much information!" comments. Save to say that itchiness is a major factor!

And then there's my tummy. It's definitely grown (I'm in around 70% maternity wear now), but its size keeps changing! Brent and I marvel as it does this daily growing and mysterious nightly shrinking routine. I seem to be waking up with close to a flat stomach (well, its only really flat when I lie on my back, but even standing it's just a lower paunch) which then expands over the course of the day into a serious Buddha-worthy belly by nightfall! And it's not giggly like I've simply had too many deserts and not enough gym, you could practically bounce pennies off it (maybe we'll try that tonight). What's the deal? A one day "pop" would be fine, but as I wake up the next morning excited to show off my finally obviously pregnant bump I look and it's gone! Here's the photos to prove it (and no, I'm not just sticking my stomach out in the second one, that's relaxed!):

I have my 4 month prenatal appointment this afternoon with a new midwife (I'm trying to switch between them so we can meet all 11 before Birth Day), so I'll have to tell you how that goes a little later (I'll try to remember to ask her about the growing/shrinking routine). But next week is the big news, we hope. On Tuesday morning we go for our 18-20 week ultrasound. I feel like we've been spoiled with 2 ultrasounds so far but I am not about to turn down another opportunity to see our little one! This one is a big deal for doctors to make sure that everything is growing correctly (no third eye, arm, etc), but it's also a big deal for us (in addition to our hopes that everything is in fact growing right!) as we will finally have an opportunity to HOPEFULLY learn whether we're having a girl or a boy! Of course this depends most of all on whether the baby cooperates. But if so, we're hoping that the radiologist is skilled enough to make out the distinction, as we're having the ultrasound at the earlier end of the range.

Now while we're incredibly excited to find out, and we're making no secret that we want to know early, I should warn you that we've decided to sit on the news a little while before we share it. I'm sure we'll have feelings about either sex and we'd just like to process those alone a bit before we make it public. Sorry for the wait, but the bonus may be that when we're ready to let the sex be known we may have a name to go with it!

In the hopes of avoiding a sea of highly gendered clothing, toys and accessories that are so ubiquitous in the baby market that you are practically forced to get something that screams GIRL or BOY, we considered waiting to tell everyone the sex until after any potential baby shower (my sister Lindsay keeps hinting at something in Victoria in early April. I don't know - ask her!). However, as many of you have been sweet enough to hint at baby gifts, which we would greatly appreciate (especially used and hand-me-downs as we seem far from that trusty barrage from family and friends who've had children being all the way down here), maybe it's just better if we make a general request? As you all know us, we hope you will understand our desire to raise a child with some independence from the pink-flowers-dolls and blue-trucks-tools dichotomy. That doesn't mean pink, blue, dolls and trucks are banned, just that we'd like to encourage our little girl to play with trucks and tools if she wants (who knows, maybe her vocation will be as a structural engineer), and our little boy to explore his passion for art, dance and drama (in case he's inherited a long lost ballet gene that neither Brent nor I were blessed with). Hmm... watch me say all this and then buy the first frilly princess dress I see when we have a girl or the cutest little fireman outfit for our son's first Halloween costume... ;-)

Nevertheless, we do appreciate it :-) Our only other request is for anything made from organic, hemp or bamboo fabric (or again, used clothing, blankets, etc are great, as repeated washes often remove most of the chemicals) so that our little one can focus on filtering the most polluted air in the US rather than also being swaddled in the world's most chemical intensive crop (dear sweet cotton) as well :-) Did any of you doubt what hippie parents we were going to be? Hee hee...

Well that's all for me for now. Our little 'something-larger-than-an-apple' has a hankering for sushi tonight!

Love from B, me and the tum.

A "relaxing" vacation to Sequoia National Park

2008-11-17T12:18:00.001-08:00

It started with a Facebook ad: an autumn scene in the mountains with a cosy luxury log cabin to stay in. It was about 85 degrees in my sun-drenched office in late October, and as thousands of snow birds started their migration south, all I wanted was to snuggle up by a log fire and drink hot cocoa with the cold winds of fall howling outside. I clicked on the ad (which I never do) and an hour and a few phone calls later, Brent and I were headed for a five day vacation in Sequoia National Park with two nights at the Wuksachi Lodge in the central eastern mountains of California.

For weeks Brent and I anticipated this much-needed break from our hectic work schedules and the beautiful but monotonous heat of San Diego. So two days after our much anticipated immigration hearing and a day after I finished my 10 week, 50-60hr/week contract at IPJ (lately Brent's schedule hadn't been much better), we were very ready for the 7hr journey north.

Our troubles began before we even got on the road. In sending our car in for a pre-trip lube-oil-filter the shop investigated our annoying 'check engine' light and suggested we get the spark plugs replaced. This took $120 and 2/3 of our first day. Then, as we finally packed the car at 3pm Brent got a call from the hospital. An Iraqi refugee who has been in the hospital since he arrived 3 weeks ago was finally being discharged. His case manager was not answering her phone, so Brent had to deal with it. So, off to the hospital we go to get the family a taxi. Once the family realized we weren't going to drive them home (a 1.5hr round trip) they decided to get a friend to pick them up. Another hour gone.

Hitting LA in rush hour was unavoidable at that point, so we spent the next 2-3 hours crawling through LA's freeways, stopping at an In-N-Out Burger for what we'd been told was a FABULOUS veggie burger only to be informed once inside that their veggie burger was simply their regular burger minus the meat. I reluctantly agreed. Brent ordered their other veggie option - a "grill cheese sandwich" - and was given their burger with cheese and no meat. At least the fries and chocolate shake were yummy while going down, but regretted a few hours later.

Our biggest excitement of the evening however, was Brent sitting in the parking lot of the In-N-Out, clad in shorts, a thin T-shirt and sandals, realizing that he had forgotten ALL of his clothes! We both agreed he'd "pulled a Jen." ;-)

We drove as far north as we could then spent that night in a motel as our last daylight hours (useful for setting up our tent) were spent in LA traffic.

The next morning we set off again, making a long pit-stop at a large outlet mall to buy Brent some warm clothes.

We finally reached the park entrance at around 4:30pm Sunday night. We had only booked Monday and Tuesday nights at the lodge and were planning on camping. But seeing as it was almost dusk we thought we could try camping, or simply see if we could tack on an extra night at Wuksachi. We paid our fees and entered the park, only to be greeted by a sign that reminded us that there was no fuel inside the park. Our tank was 2/3 full, but the 3hr round trip to the lodge, plus driving around the park gave us reason to pause. Brent erred on the side of caution and we headed the 5 miles back into the village of Three Rivers (pop. <100)>

By Monday morning we were desperate to get into the park. What had planned on being a 4-5 day vacation in the mountains had now shrunk to two. As we approached the gate again we were told that chains were now REQUIRED at mile 14. The Lodge was at mile 23. We looked in dismay at our sports tires (NOT all-terrain) and eventually succumbed to the fact that we would have to turn around for yet another 10 mile trip into Three Rivers and back AND pay $30 to rent chains. Another 1/2 day gone.

FINALLY we entered the park, driving the twisting, winding roads up the mountains till we were in snow. The roads, however, were completely clear and dry. Throughout our entire trip chains were completely unnecessary! Ugh. But the scenery was beautiful. We checked in at the stunning lodge then headed back to the largest grove of Sequoias in the park. Heading out on our first trail we glanced a few feet in front of us to see a mother black bear and her cub scamper down the hill and onto our trail! No trail for us!

(the photo to the right has the two bears on the trail if you can make them out)

Our remaining days in the park can better be described in our photos. We hiked miles of trails (some with fresh bear prints) in the snow then went back to relax in the lodge with hot baths delicious meals and hot tea a plenty. It turned out to be the perfect, relaxing getaway after all!

Our journey out was luckily much less eventful than our journey in, with the exception of encountering a very large, very live tarantula on the road down the mountain and hitting complete grid-lock once we reached San Diego after a 10hr drive back. We spent an hour and a half in viewing distance of our neighbourhood!

As this post is already ridiculously long I will once again opt to wait until the next post (soon) to relate the normal stuff, like my evidently confused belly.

Love and greetings to you all!

Jen, Brent and our little apple XXx

A time of Change!

2008-11-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's a shameless reference to Obama's historic victory, and the childlike hope that has swept across the vast majority of this country and the world. It's finally a good time to be in the US again!

And be here we will!!! Yesterday Brent and I went to our long-awaited immigration hearing with a suitcase full of photos, cards and paraphernalia from our four and a half years together in order to prove the legitimacy of our relationship. We had every official document we have each ever been issued, photocopies for the US citizenship and immigration folks to keep, and even our hospital papers and ultrasound photos. Brent in a suit and me in my nicest maternity wear, rushed downtown with all of our things to find parking and then navigate the huge federal building for our 10am hearing. It didn't help that the room number they gave us was WRONG, but we still arrived at 10am sharp. Unfortunately our friends Jan and Don who ironically had the same interview date and time we did quickly informed us that my name had already been called! It didn't help that our lawyer was also nowhere to be seen.

Five minutes later they called my name again and in we went, without our lawyer! We were taken into a private office by our female interviewer and asked to swear the 'I will tell the whole truth...' oath. As we sat down in our lawyer bustled, out of breath and apologizing profusely - her earlier court case had run late. Then, before we had even sat down she blurted out "So, did you hear she's pregnant?" The interviewer looked at me as Marci began asking me when the baby was due and how I was feeling. Well I don't know if that's what did it, but after being asked if I had or ever planned on engaging in the usual crimes (prostitution, terrorism or overthrowing the US government), the stamp was out and suddenly the magic word APPROVED was being stamped all over my documents! Hallelujah!

The whole thing took about 15 min, we didn't get to show her a single document or photo and we were out before our friends Jan and Don had even gone in! A little later Don was thankfully granted residency as well and so the four of us went for sushi to celebrate :-)

It was sure quite the week last week. The immigration hearing came just days after the election and was the day before my last "official" day at the IPJ (though that is where I am writing from now, one week later!). Then the following day Brent and I starting driving north for a MUCH needed celebatory/recouperation holiday in Sequoia National Park. But that will be the next post ;-)

Take care everyone, more news soon!

xox Jen, Brent and le petite pomme!

Fall in Southern California

2008-10-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

So I'm not trying to rub anything in, because given the opportunity I would love to be bundled up in a warm sweater in a big comfy chair with a hot cup of tea and a book watching the leaves fall and hearing the drizzle of rain outside. Honestly, the cool crisp air of fall is sounding mighty appealing right now. The only time I get to be bundled up in a blanket these days is in my ridiculously over-air conditioned office.

The weather here has made a nearly imperceptible shift to cooler mornings and nights, but the days continue to range between very warm (26/75 C/F) to hot (28+/80+). Our longest rain shower (pictured below) lasted 30 min, and it is the only rain we've received since it first rained shortly after we arrived (ironically, San Diegans deal with rain much like Victorians deal with snow - incredulous disbelief and then terror at how to drive/walk/avoid it, bordering on the dangerous!). I think I can also count the number of "cloudy" days we've had since arriving on one hand, and again, those only lasted half a day at most. I know it's hard to complain about eternal summer, but after living in Uganda, we were excited about a return to seasons on moving back to North America. So first we moved to Victoria, land of serious spring, lukewarm summer and fall (winter was there somewhere, but it melted within an hour), and now we live in a desert.

Nevertheless, we try to do what we can with what we're given, so this last weekend we took a half-day break from work and went hiking in Torrey Pines with my coworker, Alicia.

While I seem to be doing a good job of complaining about beautiful sunny weather, for those of you who need a break from the northern blah's, our door is always open!

But for now it's time to hit the sack. Brent went to pick up an Iraqi family from the airport last night and then spent all night in the emergency room as the father needed immediate treatment and in the process the doctors discovered a blood clot in his lung. Needless to say, coming home at 7:30am and only sleeping for 3hrs before heading back to the hospital and then the office has made him one very tired boy. My last couple nights of 10-11pm returns from the office (more interviewing in French) seem positively civilized in comparison!
So, till next time, please enjoy the leaves, rain and cold for me, and if that's not your cup of tea, let us know when you're planning your vacation here!

Bonne soir,
Jen, Brent and now...the peach!

Ultrasound #2!

2008-10-15T21:49:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update on our first trimester ultra-screen - good news!
From the nucal translucency, nasal bone and blood tests everything looks normal, and our risk for Down Syndrome and Trisomy 18/13 both dropped considerably!

Another highlight for Brent and I was to watch our baby sliding up and down the uterus walls, convulsing in hiccups! Apparently they are very very common in utero. I hope they weren't annoying the little one too much, but its parents found them equally adorable and hilarious!

Since that all went well, I/we need to hit the hay. I thought I would finally post some photos though. Here are photos of my belly at 8 and 12 weeks (can you tell which is bigger?) and the ultrasound images from today. The spinal and different-looking head with fist shot are in 3-D imaging. I asked the technician about it today and he was very proud to tell me that 3/4-D ultrasounds had been developed at UCSD by the radiologist reviewing my test results today! He said they were not done for aesthetic purposes though, only if a medical need was identified... then proceeded a few minutes later to switch our equipment and image to 3-D! Apparently it doesn't really look that amazing until the third trimester when you can see the whole face and body in perfect detail.

Love from J, k & B.

Thanksgiving a deux

2008-10-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to wish friends and family north of the border (or Canadians in other territorial borders) a very Happy Thanksgiving!

The kiwi and I are enjoying the "holiday" in the apartment eating a bowl of veggie chili and Brent's homemade cornbread while I take a brief hiatus from my never-ending backlog of writing. Brent, on the other hand, flew to San Francisco this morning to schmooze it up at a $1000-a-plate fundraising and awards dinner. One of his Case Managers, Amina, won the award this year, so she invited Brent, the other Case Managers and she even yours truly to the event! Unfortunately, IRC wasn't inclined to fork over the $1000 for my seat as well as a plane ticket to get me there ;-) Well, I hope they have fun!

Despite the lack of family or turkey dinner on my Thanksgiving, I have had a lot to be thankful for lately. Last week I told my supervisors at the IPJ about my pregnancy and then took one of them aside to let her know that I was also interested in working at the IPJ in the future. To my surprise, she told me that she was happy to hear that, as she liked my work, knew I was staying in San Diego and had already been dropping my name around the institute! So that's very encouraging news! However, the IPJ is in the process of hiring a new Exec Director, and has only recently hired a new Senior Program Officer (a Harvard law grad and Human Rights Watch's French West Africa correspondent), so it will likely take them a little while to get those two people settled in and to decide in which direction they would like the institute to go. Nevertheless, if I keep my foot in the door, that could mean some great opportunities in the future! YAY!

Other than that, it is also time to ask all of the people who have written to us lately, for a three week break before I will be able to reply. The final 3 weeks of this position are going to be absolutely crazy as we try to meet a string of final deadlines. After November 7th, however, (provided our immigration hearing on Nov 6th goes well) my life should quieten down immensely (at least until I get work again) and I'll be able to be much better about keeping in touch.

However, impending deadlines and way too much work did not stop the IPJ from taking the PeaceMakers, writers and a film crew to Sea World this weekend! Despite the absurd commercialism (SeaWorld is now owned by Anhauser Busch) and the moral quandaries I have with animals being held in captivity performing tricks for humans, it was a lot of fun! I felt 7 years old again.

Ok, as always, there is lots more to say, but I should get back to work! I'll probably try to write quickly again later in the week after our second ultrasound :-)

Enjoy your turkey, tofurkey, or at least the pumpkin pie!

p.s. yes, as the photos indicate, it's still in the high 20's to low 30's here. Which is great until we start missing fall.

Where (and how) to bring our baby into the world

2008-10-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, back to the kiwi (Brent's parents felt this was a good metaphor for this week as a kiwi is small, fuzzy, sweet, and "smiles on the inside." Brent however, would like to make clear that it does not refer to any parentage from New Zealand)...

One of the biggest decisions we had to make once we found out that I had a baby in me was how and where to get it out (at the appropriate time of course). This led us on a complicated journey through the unfamiliar (and in my opinion, crazy) US medical system, as well as the gamut of available modern medical options. We had to choose who we wanted to deliver our baby (midwife, OB-GYN, large practice, small practice, individual, team, etc) and where. Did we want a home birth, a private birth center, a hospital (and if so, which hospital), or somewhere in between?

Luckily, Brent's health care plan through IRC (which we pay a small fortune for) allowed us a lot of choice and for the entire birthing experience, we will likely only have to pay one $20 co-payment! So it came down to choosing, not only with whom and where we wanted to have this baby, but we realized we also had to decide how. What was our childbirth "philosophy?" How did we feel about natural childbirth or pain medication or episiotomies or induction or what would happen to the baby in the moments after it was born? (Trust me, the list goes on and on...)

Interestingly, as we learned more some of our opinions solidified while others became more flexible. As any midwife, doctor or mother will tell you, when and how a baby is born seems really to be up to the baby. But within that necessary "wait and see what happens" range, we realised that if possible, we would like a natural birth experience, but that being our first child, we would also like the reassurance of the best medical expertise and equipment should anything from pain medication to a C-section or NICU III (neo-natal infant care unit level 3) be necessary.

We found a close-to-ideal solution in the University of California San Diego's Birth Center. The birth center is located within the UCSD Medical Center, which is the regional hospital for SD county. This means a homey, holistic birth center is on one floor, while state-of-the-art medical equipment and 17 of the US' top 100 doctors are on the next floor. The hospital is also only 2 miles from our house in the center of Hillcrest, perfect for visitors :-)

As long as we have an uncomplicated pregnancy, we will be able to deliver in one of the birth center's four birthing suites: big spacious rooms with tubs and showers and birthing balls, etc. to help with labor. The biggest benefit to the birth center in our eyes is the degree of control it provides for the mother (and father). We toured two other hospitals and they all had a fairly rigid set of policies and procedures regarding what would happen when you arrived at the hospital and throughout the birth, who could visit and when, who could be in the room during labor, what the husband was and wasn't allowed to do, etc. While touring both the regular labor and delivery suites and the birth center at UCSD, the staff made it clear that in the LDR (labor delivery and recover) area, you had to follow the rules. But if you wanted to make your own decisions, go to the birth center (BC).

While that sounds great to us, we do realize that there are a lot of scenarios where we may not have that choice, or where our options direct us away from the birth center. If our pregnancy has complications before the birth we won't be able to deliver at the BC. If our pregnancy has complications during birth, we will be transferred out of the BC, but our midwife will come with us, and assist the OB-GYN. If I decide I want an epidural (they do do injection pain meds in the BC if you want them), they need to move us out of the BC for increased monitoring, though again the midwife will continue to provide our care. And, (the one that worries me the most, as I feel I could rationalize the others) if the birth centre happens to be full we may have to deliver in LDR, though they will ask to move a woman who has already given birth out of a BC room into a special LDR post-recovery room if it will allow someone coming in to deliver in the BC.

The only "downside" to the birth center (besides possibly finding it full) is that we don't get to choose who delivers our baby. Eleven UCSD midwives work at the BC on 12hr shifts. This means that while I've been seeing the same 2-3 midwives for my prenatal care, I could have any of the 11 be there for the birth. Not that that is really that different for an OB-GYN. Your doctor could be away or sick and then you get a stranger. Or, even if he/she is around, they often only show up for the 30min-4hr pushing phase, and the rest of your 12+ hour care is done by nurses you've never met (not hacking nurses Mike, nurses are wonderful!). So, I think it's a compromise we're willing to make.

Most of all I like the midwifery philosophy that birth is a normal, natural process that our bodies know how to do. Sure things can go awry, and maybe they will, but I feel a lot less scared going in to 12-72hrs of unfamiliar discomfort/pain with someone reassuring me that my body can do this. Which reminds me, another bonus of the BC is that it has a volunteer doula program. A doula is a birth coach. She does not get involved with any of the medical side of things, but provides constant moral and logistical support for the mother and her support person/people (e.g. massage, encouragement, or going to get food for the dad so he doesn't have to leave the laboring woman). Equally importantly, she stays with you for the entire duration of the labor, no matter how long it takes (and I thought spending 3-5hrs at a hospital with a sexual assault survivor was an involved volunteer position!). You can hire a professional doula, but this is a great opportunity to have someone in addition to Brent, Mom and my personal masseuse (and wonderful sister) Lindsay on hand if needed, without an additional expense.

Ok, well I'm sure I could go on and on, but this post is getting novel-length! And the kiwi is hungry... a lunch of mac and cheeze (Annie's organic) and chocolate chip pancakes is sounding good!

xoxoxo
J,B &k

One of those days...

2008-10-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

And now for something unrelated to the little Kiwi.

Yesterday I had one of those days. The days when you're up at the crack of dawn because your mind won't stay quiet long enough for you to drift back to the precious dreamland you are longing for, and by the time your head finally hits the pillow that night your exhaustion is manifesting as physical pain throughout your body. Yes, one of those days.

I have been busy for weeks now, but since last Monday it has really been non-stop. This weekend I tried to relax with some coworkers on Friday night, but then spent the entire weekend indoors (despite Brent leaving me to go enjoy the gorgeous 27/78 degree weather on the beach!) typing on my loaned computer. I had my second deadline yesterday, and as usual, it required evenings and weekends in addition to our M-F work week to complete. So I arrived yesterday morning at work, disappointed to learn that we had a meeting scheduled for the morning (the deadline is at the end of the day). Working through lunch I pushed to finish the last of the writing and begin editing.

In the middle of the afternoon, just as I was starting to make progress, in to our office burst the director of the MBA program (our big beautiful office [I'll post photos of our balcony and stunning view later] is upstairs in their larger set of offices, rather than downstairs with the IPJ staff). She was demanding to know if we had received visitors that afternoon. No, we don't often have visitors. Then out pours an incredible story of how three staff members have just been robbed while in the office! They had gone to a meeting in a small office at the front entrance but closed the door. The two work study students who normally sit at the front desk had both left for about 30min (sounds suspicious to me!). The thief had brazenly come in through the main door and proceeded to go into the various private offices, look under their desks, retrieve their purses, remove only the cash from their wallets, replace everything and then leave!

However, we do not think he got away undetected! One of the other Peace Writers and I were sitting at our desks at the time, with both of our office doors closed (we sit in a large communal office with two entrances). As we were working, the far door opened just a crack. We called out to the person to ask if we could help them. A man opened the door about 6 inches and quickly asked if "Leah" (or some short woman's name beginning with L) had passed by. We said no, no one had been in there. He quickly shut the door and left. Once we found out about the theft we asked the other staff about him. He had come right when the theft had occurred, no one with a name starting with L works at the MBA office, and no one recognized his description as anyone that should have been there. Also, the fact that he used our other door meant he had moved through the whole office before reaching that door, which is where most of the thefts occurred. So, Bianca and I have become number 1 witnesses! Unfortunately, after my experience with campus security following the theft of my laptop I have little to no faith that anything will be done about this, even though over $400 was stolen.

Following all that drama, I had to keep writing late and eat dinner at my desk. I was still at the office because that night my Woman Peace Maker, Sylvie, had her filming session. This is a three hour interview from 7-10pm conducted by our Exec Director, Dee, on camera. I was reluctant to stay for such a late night especially after a deadline, but I wanted to support Sylvie and I thought I would just be sitting in a plush chair watching the interview. How wrong I was! After make-up and prepping all the equipment, Dee started asking the first few questions. English is Sylvie's fourth or fifth language, and while she is understandable, she occasionally misuses words, and the flow is often halting as she searches for words she doesn't know. Completely understandable for all of us that have tried to learn other languages! But for the film crew, this was disturbing their search for eloquent, flowing sound bites. So they stopped and asked if we could try the same answer in French. None of them speak French so they began quizzing me on how it sounded - how was the content? Did it flow? Was it more articulate? Before I knew it, they had decided to conduct the whole interview in French! I was told to switch places with Dee and suddenly I was conducting the 3 HOUR interview IN FRENCH!!!

Needless to say, by the time Brent came to pick my up at 10pm my brain was a pile of french mush. There had also been some emotional parts to the interview, and at one point Sylvie had broken down. Nevertheless, after she composed herself, she decided that she wanted to continue for the remaining hour. All in all I think it was a good interview, but because of the language and time, I have already been told that they would like one and possibly two more interviews with her - and once again, I'll be conducting the interview, at night, in French!

By the time I got into bed last night I think my body was ready to sleep for a week. Is it really only Tuesday?! I'm seriously considering putting me head down on my desk for a 20min catnap!

Well, after all that 'feeling sorry for myself' I'm sure you'll be happy to just hear about the Kiwi again ;-)

Hope you're all well,
From a sleepy Jen & Kiwi (and Brenty too)

Growing

2008-10-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

Greetings friends,

This has been a wonderful week. Sharing our pregnancy news has brought a flood of well wishes from friends and relatives in over half a dozen countries. While it certainly has its drawbacks, technology does have its advantages as well! We now have small established communities of friends and coworkers in San Diego, for which we are very grateful, but there's nothing like the familiar voices of friends and family that we are currently still far from. It's a nice reminder too that the well wishes aren't just for Brent and I, but that they represent a lot of people our baby will meet during her or his lifetime, and that these people are already wishing her (or him) health and love as she or he grows.

And speaking of growing... While in many ways I feel that we just started this crazy journey, supposedly I'm already down to the last two weeks of my first trimester. • According to the "experts" our baby is now 2 to 3 inches long (though they failed to give us a fruit analogy this week)! More importantly, it has graduated from being tadpole-esque to finally looking like a miniature person. The baby's face has formed, and it now has fingers, toes, toenails, and tooth buds, and its mouth can actually suck and swallow.

As for my growth, that's continuing as well! Apparently I won't "pop" (i.e. the bump that you can no longer suck in) for a few more weeks yet, but some rearranging of my organs and water retention has contributed to giving me a more rounded belly than I am used to! I already find myself gravitating towards my stretch or low rider jeans and longer, looser tops. I purchased a few maternity clothes items when my mom was here visiting, but I'm realizing that really, not much of my current wardrobe is going to fit me in a couple months!

Quite a few of you had asked about how I have been feeling (very sweet of you), with encouraging words that the morning sickness of the first trimester would soon end. Actually, I'm very relieved to report that I have not been sick once (knock on wood)! That's not to say I've been feeling fabulous the whole time, but luckily my queasiness has only been in relation to strong smells (such as the women I ride to work with's perfume), and some meals that suddenly seem completely unappetizing. Brent has taken to suggesting dinner, and then being wonderfully flexible with my humming and hawing until I figure out what my body is telling me I can/should eat.

The past couple of months has also involved a very steep learning curve to learn about what I should be putting on and in my body, and what I should be avoiding. These include the stricter rules about substances known to cause birth defects, but Brent and I are also trying to include the much larger list of "questionable" substances that are banned or discouraged due to studies and regulations in other countries.

So for those of you that are looking to get pregnant in the future, here's a glimpse of what you can choose to/not to alter:

Food - No booze, second-hand cigarette smoke, unpasteurized cheese (goat's cheese, many delicious soft cheeses, and all smelly cheese), sushi (unless cooked), deli meats (don't mind that one), caffeine, and even some herbal teas. I'm also cutting back on processed and packaged foods and trying to at least eat organic dairy (suppossedly the most important food group to go organic in, health-wise).

Beauty - In short, I had to scrap all my cleansers and creams. Some of this was doctor's warnings (Retinal, a vitamin A compound in anti-wrinkle products and some food is known to cause birth defects), and some was European studies suggesting a link between parabens and lauryl/laureth sulphates and cancer. Salicylic acid, an acne treatment found even in Aveda products is also a no-no for little embryos.
•
Exercise - I'm still trying to figure this one out. Many books/doctors seem to be advising slightly different things. Walking and swimming (at a lower intensity) seem to be encouraged all around. After that many folks suggest not engaging in impact activities (ie jumping up and down, running, racket ball) during weeks 6-10 especially, and possibly up to week 18, as there is an increase in the rate of miscarriage. Others say it's fine. Not wanting to take any chances, I've switched from running to walking for trimester 1 (and I'm trying to get to the pool), and then will get back into jogging (but only 2 miles at a time?!) for trimesters 2 and 3. Sit-ups and most other ab exercises seem to be off-limits due to having to lie on your back, or invert yourself in some way, both of which are supposedly bad for you (though I'm trying to figure out if this is only during later trimesters). I think I can still do the plank though...

Well I could go on for a while, but you get the idea. I'm sure there are a few women reading this going, what? I did such-and-such through my whole pregnancy! That seems to be the good part... babies seem to come out just fine 95% of the time, nearly regardless of what their parents partake in :-)

For now it's back to a weekend of work as I prepare for my second assignment deadline on Monday (procrastination from my job's increasing workload may bring about most of the blog entries over the next month). I hope you're all doing well, and thanks again for all your congratulatory e-mails, they've been so nice to read.

Anyone have a suggestion for a new 2-3 inch fruit analogy?

xoxo J,B & jumbo strawberry?

p.s. sorry we don't have any photos to post, most of our recent ones were lost when my laptop was stolen :-(

A 'little' announcement!

2008-09-30T18:16:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone,

Well I think it is time to let you know the rest of the story of what has been going on for us these last few months.

It has to do with exhaustion...
A few extra calories...
A rapidly increasing bra size...
Not being able to eat many of my favorite foods...
And a big Birthday week (or two) at the end of April...

Yes, we're PREGNANT!!!!

Brent and I are over the moon. So for the next 30-odd weeks you will be able to read about this exciting, strange (and likely, at times, scary) journey as I go from Jen-size to whale-size, and Brent and I prepare to make that no-turning-back transition to having a child. (Don't worry, for those of you who are sick of everyone having babies left, right and centre, there will still be interspersed news of the rest of our lives as well)

We decided to let you all know now because we just had our first ultrasound. I had my first prenatal appointment last Friday, and rather than giving us the comforting reassurance we hoped it would, a smaller uterus size, low position, and undetectable heartbeat combined with a slight decrease in my (fortunately) negligible symptoms, to create some suddenly scary looking bogeymen where previously we'd seen pink and blue visions of cherub faces.

While it made for a very anxious weekend, the midwife on call insisted that to ally my worries, we should go in again this week and have an ultrasound rather than waiting the 2.5 weeks until my first one was scheduled. So with much trepidation (and a weekend of feeling like my skin was no longer breaking out, my breasts were shrinking and my food aversions were dissipating), we went to the clinic today and were greeted instead by the most amazing dark, fuzzy, black and white image we have ever laid eyes on.

Our baby was indeed there, looking much larger than I had anticipated, with a fluttering healthy, strong heart. While we watched she (or he) began to move, and even started showing off her (or his) kicking abilities while Brent and I gazed with true parental (dumb-struck) love. The midwife (a wonderful man who has been practicing for 26 years) quickly printed us a clandestine image, then at Brent's request, switched the ultrasound machine for a Doppler, to listen to the baby's heart. After a few minutes of searching, it was found up near my bellybutton, a loud, clear and rapid tum-tum-tum-tum... going at 180 beats a minute (scary to hear what my heart would sound like after an all-out sprint).

Our baby did not feel inclined to lay flat, however, so the midwife was not able to get an image where he could measure the length completely, and therefore let us know the baby's actual gestational age. It seems that the smaller uterus and position may be due to a slightly "younger" baby than we thought - perhaps by up to 5 days. Our original due date was, ironically, April 27! Smack in between Brent's and my Birthdays! So after we have our next ultrasound, we will hopefully be able to have an accurate due date (give or take the standard 2 weeks of when the baby will hopefully decide to make her/his appearance).

Well, there's lots more to say about this crazy process we've embarked on, but we have around 30 more weeks to bore you with all of that, so for now, baby, Brent and I need to have some breakfast and get to work.

Love to you all, and thanks for sharing our news and putting up with our excited parent-to-be ramblings :-)

Jen, Brent and the strawberry (baby websites' current size-metaphor)

The crazy month of September and some good news!

2008-09-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

It has been a crazy few weeks full of fun, but I am totally tuckered out and it's all just beginning!

First there was our trip to VT for a long Labour Day weekend to celebrate Brent's grandfather's 90th birthday with many of his extended family who I had never met and he hadn't seen in ages. There were family dinners, lunches and brunches, poolside BBQs, housework and backyard camping complete with smores, farmer's markets and birthday cake. What more could you ask for the last weekend of summer?

Then we returned to a flurry of activity -Brent returned to the busiest month in the US resettlement calendar, I started my new job at the International Peace and Justice Institute (IPJ), and my sister Lindsay arrived for a visit, all on the same day!

The weeks since then have been a blur of ups and downs - it was wonderful to have Lindsay here before she embarked on her long-awaited trip to do a pilgramidge hike from Leon to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. Then it was an equally wonderful surprise to have my mom come back for a week to see us before she and Dad head to England for the year. And I have been absolutely thrilled with my job at IPJ - my woman PeaceMaker is even more impressive in person than she was in theory. A lot of my life currently involves writing about her, so while I intend to tell you more about her, now is not yet the time to do so. To give you a glimpse: my days at IPJ generally involve 2 hours of interviewing Sylvie in the mornings, then returning to our beautiful office overlooking San Diego and the ocean and transcribing the interview for up to 4 hours. Then if there is any time left at the end of the day, I can start preparing my writing assignments on the DRC conflict and extracting stories to write from Sylvie's life and work. So it's fun and challenging but also incredibly exhausting. The staff and team I am working with are fantastic though. I'm still a bit shocked at how well the PeaceMakers and the Peace Writers are all getting along with eachother, with their partners, and as a larger team.

The IPJ is also keeping our lives interesting with other events - fancy lunches, city tours on double-decker busses, and then currently, our participation in the IPJ's annual international human rights conference, for which we also have access to the VIP events! Last night for example, we got to go to a private session and a catered dinner with Louise Arbour, the (Canadian) former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights! In fact, this entire conference is made up of super-human women who make terms like "inspirational" and "courageous" sound hollow and overused. Many of them are championing the unthinkable against incredible odds, which makes the progress they have acheived even more astounding. Tonight we watched a private viewing of the film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. It has not yet been released, and only a couple of months ago it won the top Tribeca Film Festival award. Please, please see it if you can! It is about the women's peace movement that effectively moved Liberia from a state of civil war to peace, and then on to elect Africa's first woman head of state. The leader of the movement is at the conference, and discussions with her in person demonstrated how she could be such an incredible force for change in the Liberian situation.

Unfortunately with so much going on it can also be challenging... Brent has been working very very hard as IRC struggles with a huge influx of last minute arrivals before the end of the fiscal year at the end of the month. He has also been faced with some difficult individual cases of refugees arriving in the US suffering from acute and at times, emergent medical conditions which have required nearly 24-hr care. His case managers are doing amazing work, but they are really overstretched. Hopefully things will calm down for him a bit in October, though with the upcoming US elections and a change in funding policy, he doesn't know yet if things will actually slow down or not.

Then I had the huge disappointment of having my laptop (my Christmas/graduation present last year from my folks, Brent's folks and Brent) stolen from work out of our LOCKED office! In addition to the monetary and functional worth of my computer, I was most hurt by the loss of all of my photos and documents that I will not be able to get back. All of our photos from the last 9 months were on that computer, so I am afraid it will be a while before I post any. Anyway, there is nothing I can do about it now. The IPJ has been incredibly supportive (even if the University of San Diego's attitude was "oh this happens all the time", and so they are doing nothing to retrieve it or to try to prevent these apparently rampant thefts from occuring) and are working hard to get me a stipend to replace my laptop asap.

Though we do have some good news to end with... today I got notice of my immigration interview! YAY! So, please everyone cross your fingers for Brent and I on November 6 at 10am west coast time. The interview itself will likely be quite rigerous, but once it is finished I will know one way or another whether or not I can stay!

I'll try to write again more frequently than I have been for the last month!

Hope everyone is doing well, wherever you may be.

Jen

Dave

2008-08-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

Last week a coworker mentioned she was going to a Dave Matthews Band (DMB) concert next Friday. I gasped, Dave? Here? Next week? Oh, well it must be looong sold out by now, and we don't have the money to blow on tickets. Au contraire! Tickets, she informed me, were still available by the plenty on Craigslist and strangely, even cheaper than their original cost. So, in typically shady fashion, we met a guy on a street corner that night and the deal was done.

Then came the concert. The stadium was hidden in a desert valley with suburbia ringing us on the hills above. We had invested in the cheapo lawn seats of course, so you can imagine our surprise when an official came up and asked us if we'd like to exchange our tickets for seats below! We agreed, and found our new seats, about 5 feet in front of the lawn from whence we'd come! A little disappointed, we spotted 3-4 rows of empty seats in the middle of the arena and made our way there. The opening act played, and then there was the customary 45min of twiddling thumbs waiting for the main act to get out of their dressing rooms. Suddenly the seats around us began to fill up - quickly! Before long the only seats free in our section were the three beside ours. Then as I sat crossing my fingers and toes that no one else would approach, a couple started making their way down our isle. And since there were no seats to the right of us, we had a suspicion that they were eyeing ours! As they stooped down to count the seats approaching ours, I starting picking up my things, sure that we were headed back to our original seats (now long taken by others)... then as they looked up at us and the guy began to mouth the words "I think we have those..." the lights miraculously shut off and Dave's guitar rang out in a long loud riff causing the crowd to erupt in cheers, and our dethroners to abandon their claim to our seats and take the ones beside ours. There was not a free seat around. The rest of the concert proceeded in Dave's usual fabulous style, complete with guest guitarist Tim Reynolds.

(sorry, I have no photos for this post as cameras, drinks, food and other necessities were banned from the arena in the hopes that you would fork over the millions of dollars that the stadium wanted you to pay to purchase them inside)

The secret to SoCal seclusion

2008-08-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

Another hectic week gone by as Brent and I tackle our various workloads at IRC.

Mine is particularly hectic at the moment as I'm down to my last week at the organisation and only finished my last focus group today! I'm 70% done my data analysis for the interviews I conducted, I haven't even started the data analysis of the focus groups and haven't written so much as an outline for the final report I'd like to write (did I mention I only have 7 days left?)! Nevertheless, my efforts seem to be getting noticed as my supervisor talks with increasing frequency of getting me back at IRC when I'm done at IPJ. The most promising of these plans is to have me head up a domestic violence prevention program at IRC, which would be fantastic (provided of course, that we could get funding... I sense more volunteer grant writing as a precursor!). And since there are no guarantees about my dream job at IPJ materialising soon after I finish my Peace Writer position, IRC could be a good place to work in the interim.

Brent on the other hand is well into the refugee assistance agencies' busiest time of year! To top off a ridiculous work load his case managers have been falling sick, requesting time off (especially our Muslim coworkers who would all like to be off for some or most of Ramadan next month), volunteers are leaving to go back to school, and there's some staff shifting, which has had him interviewing internal candidates- always a hard job. He also has a speech to prepare for a statewide resettlement conference in LA on the relatively obscure Bhutanese refugees, a group that his IRC office doesn't even serve! A task that he is understandably nervous about undertaking.

So, this past weekend we decided to give ourselves a mini-break before we can escape this mayhem for the tranquility of Vermont next week. We decided on a 5 mile hike in Torrey Pines state park. What we hadn't factored in was the bane of San Diego's scenic outings- people. And where there are people in SoCal, there are cars. Lots and lots of cars! The parking lots were full. The overflow parking lots were full. The sides of the road were blocked off as no-parking. After circling full lots, getting stuck in the gridlock of everyone else looking for parking spots, and turning back and forth looking for parking lots/roads/or a free ditch on divided highways, we said to heck with it and started heading back. Then we saw a little turnoff that said "glider port" and a huge, almost empty PARKING LOT! We made the turn and found ourselves on a 300ft cliff over the Pacific ocean. At first we were distracted by the paragliders suspended a few meters from us, but at the bottom of the cliffs lay the real treasure - a beautifully secluded, relatively unpopulated, pristine, sandy beach!

The next obstacle was how to scale the cliffs down to the grail below. After nearly venturing down the horizontal cliff, we asked some paragliders and were directed to the slightly less treacherous (but nevertheless cordoned off) eroding, switchback path. We made our way down the 300 ft decent, thinking this must be the key to keeping a beach semi-private in San Diego. As we finally reached the sand, however, we realised there was another factor drawing people away from or to, Black's beach: a relatively prevalent disregard for clothing.

From 2yrs to 82yrs, frolickers sunbathed, swam, surfed or strolled; a few in suits but most in their birthday suits (nothing in between it seemed). Unfortunately, while the beach had a few hundred beach bums (excuse the pun - it was Brent's), we only saw 4 women. There might have been more down the more populated "gay" end of the beach, but where we plunked our towel it was mainly us and a lot of 40-80yr old men. I have to say though, spending an afternoon around nudity makes you remember that the human body is a very natural thing, and it was nice to see so many people comfortable in their skin.

I tried to snap some photos, but it took 4 hours for me to get a shot that didn't catch any bare bottoms (or any other bits), so as to not give the subjects of my photo the wrong idea.

Hope you're all well. Brent and I are really looking forward to seeing many of you in Vermont next week, though I'm still sad that I'm not able to see all my friends who are home in Victoria at the moment. At least Lindsay (and maybe mom?) will be coming to see us when we get back! In the meantime, we've got a Dave Matthews concert on Friday night, and our 4 year anniversary together tomorrow to celebrate.

Thinking of you all,

Jen and Brent

Close encounters of the shark kind

2008-08-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

A few days before we left for San Diego there was a shark attack reported off the SoCal coast (there are more great white attacks off the Cali coast than anywhere else on earth - 70+ over the last 5 decades, compared to around 40 off Australia and South Africa - however, the majority of these occur in a triangle from just north of San Fransisco to Monterrey and are not deadly- the sharks are just "curious" apparently... [most] humans don't have enough fat to be worth eating. Unfortunately, this attack was fatal). As soon as my parents heard they immediately banned us from swimming, surfing, or walking within 20ft of the ocean in our new home. Luckily, by the time they came to visit and saw that the ocean here is as beautiful and rejuvenating as anywhere else, their staunch opposition faded to a more reasonable level of general parental warning.

So, I hope they will read this post till the end before phoning us in a panic asking if we're in one piece, or booking the next emergency flight south.

Yesterday Brent and I got to swim with Leopard sharks. We had bought some snorkeling gear Friday night as our attempt at snorkeling last weekend had been thwarted by a lack of available rentals in La Jolla. La Jolla cove (pictured right) is a tiny cove in San Diego's swankiest neighbourhood, and part of a protected marine park, making it a prime snorkeling destination - hopefully now a regular pastime of ours.

We set off early yesterday morning to make it there in time to snag the most valuable resource of all - a parking spot. As soon as we got into the crowded cove, we could see why it was so popular. At shin-deep there were already schools of tropical fish - iridescent striped, fluorescent orange and silver-blue with bright aquamarine "eyes" on their tales. We swam out to get away from the crowd, but the visibility got worse and the fish disappeared. We kept swimming deeper, along the steep cliffs where pelicans seem to spend the day, hoping to find a more remote cove to explore. However, when we saw a group of young seals on the shore a few meters away I decided we should give them some room, remembering the aggressive warnings of the massive sea-lions off Trial Island when our kayaks would venture too close to the moms and pups. I was not in the mood to encounter a 500lb over-protective papa seal ramming us in the water!

We were crossing the large bay in I-don't-want-to-imagine-how-deep water, and were just about to turn back when an old man swimming towards us stopped to ask if we were strong swimmers. Um, generally speaking, sure...? He recommended we keep swimming the remaining 3/4 of a mile across the bay to the shallow shores in front of a swanky restaurant where a once a year phenomenon had arrived early - hundreds of Leopard sharks had arrived in the bay for who-knows-what. They are 4-5 ft long and harmless to humans, so a real diving/snorkeling treat. So, we hunkered down and started a looong front crawl through big swells trying to keep our heads up to watch for big seaweed beds and the throngs of inexperienced recreational kayakers transversing the bay.
As we finally approached the opposite shore, it struck us that at some point soon we would have to put our heads back in the water, and that we would likely come face to face with a shark. This of course was a bad time to realise we were terrified of what we had come all this way to see. So, we tried to calm ourselves, stay steady in the now crashing waves and look down into the shallow water. The visibility was still poor, but as the water was only about 6ft deep we could see the bottom clearly. It only took us a second before a large brown-black mottled shape snaked underneath us. Then another...and another. Coming three or four at a time, the 4-5ft long sharks would swim deftly along the bottom, only occasionally rolling over to reveal their silver-white bellies. They took no notice of us as long as we stayed still. However, this meant going with the rise and fall of the huge swells above, which brought us from our birds-eye view of the Leopard sharks, to descend rapidly to within a foot of rubbing our bellies on their dorsal fins!

After we'd had our voyeur's fill, the chilly water and proximity to noon convinced us to get out and walk the mile back to the cove rather than turn around and repeat the swim. Walking in a bikini (me), swim trunks (B), barefoot and carrying snorkeling gear, alongside La Jolla's exclusive, multi-million dollar real estate and highways turned out to be a bit of a sight for the locals. Though they were often more interested in from where we'd appeared than how we were attired.

Well that's all for me. Another weekend has flown by with too-little rest, and the Sunday night bustle of getting lunches and gym bags ready for 5:45am is already upon us.

Hope you're all well, and for those of you (Erika, Aiden, Tim? and Cat) who are heading to Victoria for a bit this month, I wish I was there to see you.

Buenos noches,

Jen

p.s. this photo shows you the bay we swam across. The cove is out of the frame in the lower right side of the photo, and the sharks were along the shore by the buildings in the upper left part of the photo.

A Burmese wedding and Jen's Spanish aquisition

2008-07-30T16:43:00.000-07:00

Mañana es nuestra final clase de español, y estoy triste. Aprendí mucho pero la clase ha pasado demasiado rápido!

I have learned a lot over the last 3.5 weeks, considering I could barely say more than "Hola! dos cervezas por favor" on day one, I can now make my opinion known (albeit with a smattering of French thrown in) on topics such as: do you believe that there is life on other planets? do you think we will find a cure for cancer, and why? and: in your opinion, who was the best president of the United States (the fact that I'm not American didn't offer any respite from the latter question)? I can also count to a 999,999,999 (theoretically at least), name parts of the body, parts of the house, get through customs, and describe landmarks in Mexico city! Oh, and order some food to go with my two beers...

It was an eclectic class (two sixteen year olds, one whose fingers were glued to her cell phone texting the whole class; two women my age including another Canadian; and an older piano teacher who was so enthusiastic that she would often yell out other people's answers before they could), but I think it was well worth the money, and has hopefully launched me towards a future fluency (or at least proficiency) in Spanish.

Now if I could just get my French up to fluent...
In other news, last weekend we had the opportunity to attend a Burmese wedding. A coworker of ours was getting married to a fellow resettled refugee who he had started dating back in the camps in Thailand. While it may not have been punctual (which I am not one to criticise), or that organised, it was a wonderful celebration with a large portion of the IRC office, and the IRC Burmese community present. There was, of course, some excellent food there too!

I can't believe that it is almost August! Brent and I have been in San Diego for nearly 3 months. We are still waiting for the date of our immigration interview, which we are hoping may be scheduled for September. August will go quickly as Brent and I will both be working full-time at IRC until our trip to Vermont at the end of the month. Even though it is for only 4 days, we're really looking forward to the trip, and the chance to see Brent's extended family and celebrate his Grandpa's 90th birthday.

The day after our return to SD I'll be starting my job at the Peace Institute, and we just learned of another surprise - my sister Lindsay will also be arriving that day for a visit! Yay!

Well I think that's all for now. Hope you're all well, and we look forward to hearing whether any one else might have plans to head to So(uthern)Cal(ifornia) in the future.

Hasta luego!

El Desfile de los Homosexuales

2008-07-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

In some ways it was like any other American parade...

And then in others it was not...

As you can likely guess, this weekend marked San Diego's Pride Parade/Festival weekend, and being in Hillcrest, we had front seats for the whole rainbow extravaganza. It was a roaring good time, with much love, laughter and fun to be had by all.

Brent and I joined the 225,000 strong crowd to watch the parade (the 5th largest in the US). And while there were both scantily and decadently clad men, women, and a range of combinations thereof,

the best part for us was the widespread support given to California's new same-sex marriage law, and an emotional opposition to a proposed ban which will be on the November ballot in California. More than 100 couples walked through the parade carrying signs inscribed with the years of their monogamy - 8 years together, 12 years together, 27 years together, 35 years together, 42 years together... etc. The majority were over two decades, and gave a clear message that same-sex couples were living in marriage-like unions, and had been doing so for decades. Those that had been able to marry proudly inscribed the dates of their marriage on their shirts or placards.

People of all sexual orientations, races, backgrounds, and ages seemed caught up in the supportive, affirming atmosphere. It was definitely one of the most entertaining and fun parades I've ever seen!

However, when my Spanish teacher asked me what I was doing on the weekend I tried to say, yo voy a la... Pride Parade? Always eager to have us say everything in Spanish, she searched for the correct translation for my weekend activity, and finally concocted: "yo voy a el Desfile de los Homosexuales."

I don't think that's exactly right, but it had the class in stitches.

Otherwise, things here are good. Busy with lots of work, from which we try to recuperate on the weekends by heading to the beach!

Wishing you all a good week,

Jen & Brent

My dream job

2008-07-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

I don't have my dream job yet... but I am now one step closer!

Last week I went to an interview at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice (IPJ) to be considered for a Peace Writer position, for their 2008 Women PeaceMakers program... and last night, (now last week since this post is taking so long to complete), I found out I got the job! The Woman PeaceMakers program selects 4 women from conflict zones around the world who are doing exceptional work in the area of peace and/or justice in their communities (at a local, national or international level). The women are invited to the Kroc Institute for an 8-week residency of lectures, workshops and an international conference, in which the women all participate. One of the primary goals of the program is to document the stories of these women, and their struggles for peace. To achieve this, the program pairs each of the 4 women with a Peace Writer - someone who interviews them extensively, helps them prepare their presentations, coaches them on public speaking elements of their residency, as well as accompanies them for the duration of their time in San Diego. Most importantly, the Peace Writer is tasked with writing her partner's story in an article which will be published at the end of the program.

While it is only a 10-week position, it will be a great opportunity, and I am hoping that it could lead to further work with the institute. The minute we arrived on the campus for the interview I felt like a kid entering Disneyland; by the time I left I was so enamoured I was ready to trim shrubs just to call USD my place of work! However, I think the IPJ would be a better fit (I have yet to develop my green thumb). The staff's resumes include work on national peace negotiations, election monitoring and working with civil and political groups in conflict and post-conflict societies. A key area of interest for the IPJ also seems to be on women's rights as necessary components to peaceful and just societies. I am hoping the Peace Writer position will be an opportunity for me to learn more about the areas of peace building and peace making as a possible career. Sorry for going on about what may sound boring to many people, but this is what does it for me!

In other news, yesterday was a sad day as my parents finally left San Diego after an extended 2-week stay. We threw in a lot to their first trip because we wanted to ensure that they would come back! So from pro baseball games, vineyards, camping, beaches, and lots of shopping to symphony concerts and fireworks, we kept them busy! However, despite our best efforts, I think their highlights were buying and working on our car (Dad), and our local Market's wine specials (delicious $10 wine on for $2.99/bottle plus a 10% discount when you buy 6 bottles, for Mom)!

As you can see from the photos, we had a lot of fun (yes, Mom and I are riding Segways)! However, all good things must also end, so the folks are now on their drive back north to get back to Victoria, and especially Barclay! (For those who were worried, we continue to check their routes and they should be able to avoid the California wildfires). Which means Brent and I finally have to go back to work! I took time off while they were here, but on Tuesday my intensive Spanish class began, and I have now returned to work in the afternoon at IRC. It makes for exhausting days (including a full 2 hrs on, or waiting for buses!), but it allows Brent and I to meet for lunch every day and ride the bus home together, and I am very pleased to finally be learning Spanish!

Well, this post has taken me nearly a week to write, so while there is (always?) more to say, I think I'll sign off here.

Missing you all!

Adios!

Jen and Brent

Our baby (to be named soon)

2008-07-03T17:41:00.000-07:00