Pictures

Pictures from the pregnancy and birth are available here.

Postpartum

The postpartum experience is analogous to this.

Baby Ada

Baby Ada was born 7/23, 10:43 PDT. She weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and was 20.5 inches long. I think her head circumference was 13.5 inches.

Erinne started having strong, frequent contractions at 11pm Monday night. From 11pm to 7am, her contractions were consistently 5 minutes apart, and we did not sleep Monday night. We were very disappointed when the contractions died down Tuesday morning. Erinne napped Tuesday. I slept a lot Tuesday night, though Erinne barely slept due to the contractions. On Wednesday night the contractions got even stronger, and Erinne was in significant pain. At 2am (Thursday morning) one of our midwives came to our apartment to check Erinne's progress. At 7am the same midwife picked us up and took us to the birthing center.

The labor was awful; Erinne had a hard time dealing with the pain. We spent a lot of the time in the tub. While in the tub, Ada's head started to show. It was difficult to get her past Erinne's pelvic bone. Erinne got out of the pool and started using a birthing stool. Ada shot out like a rocket. All three midwives and I screamed when it happened; we were not expecting it. There was something about the position she was in (not having her chin tucked down?) that caused her to come out all at once. At the beginning of the final push, all we could see was the hair on Ada's head, and then she came out all at once.

She has been very mellow in the first few hours of her life. She is quite active and alert, and can crawl on our tummies looking for food. She was able to latch onto Erinne within the first 10 minutes after being born, though she did not suck. The second time we tried to feed her, she latched on easily again and started sucking. We believe she was able to get some colostrum this time.

Ugh

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed the tendency for cranky old women to bother you in the grocery store, and usually in some sort of judgmental way?

Today my very pregnant wife (she is due tomorrow) was at a local grocery store with the baby that she nannies. A cranky old woman spotted her, the big belly and the baby in the stroller, and she said "Don't you know what causes that?".

Erinne is very polite to people in public. If I were there, I'd have told that woman that oxygen is wasted on her, and that she should hurry up and die so a more deserving being can have some.

Couple loses kid for being uncooperative

Here is someone's blog entry that summarizes the case:

The original article is here.

This makes us really appreciate our birthing team!

iPod Touch Bluetooth

Dear Apple,

I bought the OS 3.0 update for my iPod Touch because you advertised stereo bluetooth support. However, my first generation iPod Touch has no bluetooth support at all. I am disappointed. I hate you. You make me cry.

- Philip

Breastfeeding in third world countries, and why we boycott Nestlé

The information below comes from this Wikipedia article, this web site, and research that Erinne did (some articles reeked of stupidity).

In less economically developed countries (LEDCs), using infant formula over breast milk contributes to health problems and deaths in infants for three major reasons:

• Loss of natural benefits from breast milk.
  
• Formula mixed with contaminated water.
• Formula over-diluted in order to save money.

Nestlé makes infant formula, and campaigned heavily to promote it in LEDCs as superior to breast milk. Mothers were duped. In just one generation, many towns were converted from being fed almost exclusively by breast milk to being fed almost exclusively by formula (this is something Erinne learned when researching this problem, but I do not have a citation).

Microwave Popcorn

Those bags of microwave popcorn are gross, especially the ones with artificial butter flavor. They're also not very cost effective.

But you don't need to buy those bags of microwaveable popcorn. Just put ordinary kernels in a brown paper bag, and microwave. It works very well! I like to season with butter, sea salt, and sometimes nutritional yeast.

EDIT: The seasonings go in after microwaving, and the bag is totally reusable.