And so it begins...

A couple months ago I purchased a cloth diaper for a friend's baby shower gift and somehow I got added to a baby mailing list. It was slowing down though until a few weeks ago when all of a sudden, the baby mailings increased with a vengeance. I'm not sure how they got my information, the only way I can think of them getting that information is my doctor but surely they couldn't give out my address, could they? I will give them the benefit of the doubt, especially since I was already getting some things but can the huge increase be just a coincidence?

Anyway, it's a bit much. Before it was just a flyer or random coupon every month or so, but not now. I came home a few days ago to this: a box with a baby feeding guide, two cans of formula and a reminder to ask for my free Similac sling pack at the hospital, complete with pre-filled bottles measured for a newborn. I don't want to use formula but even if I did, I don't really think I'm quite ready to get large cans in the mail. But I know what they want, they want to get me hooked on their product. Just like the Pampers and Huggies diapers I received last week.


I promise this isn't going to turn into an anti-formula post. I'm sure I'll talk later about my desire to breastfeed but this is more of anti-consumerism for babies post (that's an awkward phrase but it is better than anti-baby consumerism since that sounds like I'm anti-baby).

The amount of "buy this for your baby" propaganda is ridiculous. I read a couple of the mainstream baby magazines before I realized they are just 30 page advertisements for things you "need" to have. The article about how to prevent stretch marks is really just a list of the top 5 stretch mark creams (at least one of which was over $50). Ditto for the "how to deal with diaper rash" article.

The actually ads are even more confusing. Especially for baby toys because, unlike commercials for toys for the 5-7 year old crowd, these ads are actually aimed at me. My kid is not old enough to by heartbroken if they don't receive a Zhu-Zhu pet for Christmas, "forcing" parents to search high and low for a plastic hamster. No, to sell a product for anybody under 3, you have to convince the parent it is worthwhile. But none of the ads I see are remotely applealing. Look! The faster your kid scribles, the faster the music plays. That sounds awful. Why can't I just give my kid some paper and crayons and put a CD on in the background? Am I the only one who feels this way? Have the "I want to buy lots of crap for my kids" hormones just not kicked in yet?

The Joys of Pregnancy: #1 - The snoogle

In an attempt to view and portray my pregnancy in a positive way (which in reality has been much harder than I anticipated), I am going to start posting about the wonderful aspects of pregnancy. Obviously, this list will be chronological and not in order of importance. Although I do love it, I sincerely hope that my Snoogle does not turn out to be my favorite part of pregnancy.

At this point many of you may be asking what the heck a Snoogle is? It's a pillow, a gigantic curvy body pillow. But the word pillow really fails to convey how amazing the Snoogle is. I started having trouble sleeping at about week 10. I was not expecting that to start so soon but as "not expecting" really seems to sum up my whole pregnancy experience, I should just get used to that. As soon as I did, I knew I needed a body pillow. I'm a weird sleeper when it comes to pillows, I don't normally like to use pillows under my head, but I love body pillows and slept with one religiously all through high school and college. I gave it up when I got married though as I didn't think Craig would appreciate my putting a large barrier between us. But desperate times call for desperate measures and when I needed a pillow, I knew just the one I wanted. I have heard wonderful things about this pillow from preggos and non-preggos alike. I ordered mine from Target and it said it would take 9-15 days to arrive, which was very depressing as was the fact that it cost $49.99 and free shipping starts at $50.00. (Only pregnancy would cause Craig to instantaneously hand over his credit card without even asking me if I thought $50 was a little much to be spending on a pillow even though I know he already feels like our apartment overfloweth with pillows). But Target did not do me wrong, my Snoogle arrived just three or four days later and my life has not been the same since.

When you lie down in it (and yes, in really is the best preposition to describe it), you become encased and magically all the joints from your shoulder blades to ankles that have been misaligned and achy all day, are lifted, lined up perfectly and just seem to disappear. Amy Beth actually describes it as like having a man wrapped around you and that would be pretty accurate except with the Snoogle you can move it and punch it to get it situated exactly how you want it and when I try to do that with Craig he gets grumpy. (He is such an unsympathetic husband sometimes :-)

And it's so versatile. I switch back and forth during the night between the back to back and tummy tuck positions but I also love using it in a modified swirl position while watching TV on the couch.

It's big, so it is a pain to move it back and forth between the bed and the couch but it is still worth the effort. In fact, I'm driving to visit family over the Thanksgiving break and the snoogle will definitely be coming with me even though it will occupy a whole seat.

Also, in an attempt to give a fair review, I've also heard if you are really short or really tall, it isn't quite as great but it's fairly flexible so I think you'd have to be on the extreme end to have that problem. And others have complained that the pillowcase it comes with is a bit scratchy. They sell others that are softer and colorful for $20 but I am pretty picky about textures and I don't mind it. It's not 300-count Egyptian cotton but it works. You could always just stick a normal pillowcase over the top where your face touches it if you are really bothered, but I'm not.

Overall, I love my Snoogle - a lot. But from what I've heard, husbands tend to demand their removal from the bed pretty soon post-pregnancy so I'd better enjoy it while it lasts.

Awesome phone conversations of the week

I'm not a big phone talker in general. I just don't really like talking on the phone all that much. I have a few close friends and family members that I like to keep up with by actually conversing but in general I do most of my long distance correspondence via the internet and I like it that way. But even I have to admit I had a couple pretty awesome phone conversations this week.

The first came a couple mornings ago at a little after 7am. It woke me up and when I looked to see who it was from, I saw my older brother's name. Now Rick is not much of a morning person at all and being a grad student, he can still pretty much get away with that so I immediately though that he was calling to tell me either 1) he was engaged ( a little birdie told me it might be happening soonish) or 2) someone was in the hospital. Now since the title of this post is about awesome phone conversations and not devastating phone conversations, you all can probably guess how this story is going to turn out. Yes, he is engaged!

(Photo stolen from my mom's facebook page)

It's very exciting and not just because none of my family members were dead. I can't wait until next week when I get to see them again and get to know her better since the last time we went to visit him and meet her, I spent most of the weekend napping or in the bathroom. Plus, I love me wedding planning news and most of my friends are married now so I don't get a chance to hear about it much. Fun times are coming!

The second awesome phone conversations happened yesterday when I got a call during the middle of the day from an unknown number. Turns out the driving study I did a few months ago had trouble getting enough people to participate so they raised the financial incentive. But to make things fair, they had to go back and paying everyone else the extra money too. Basically, she called and asked if I wanted to swing by her office and pick up $100. Why yes, yes I did. I don't know about you, but I don't often receive phone calls asking me to go pick up large amounts of cash, especially not just several weeks before Christmas, so that was way up there on awesome phone conversations.

So those were my awesome phone conversations of the week. I realize the title of this post makes it sound like it is going to be an recurring feature but I don't think it is, unless of course people just want to keep calling and offering me money!

Sucked In

This article is fascinating because it describes almost exactly what happened to MacKenzie. It turns out that plenty of other women thought they were to mature and sophisticated for "Twilight," only to succumb to the dark side:

"Twilight" came for the tweens, then for the moms of tweens, then for the co-workers who started wearing those ridiculous Team Jacob shirts, and the resisters said nothing, because they thought "Twilight" could not come for them. They were too literary. They didn't do vampires. They were feminists.

Then something happened: the release of the "Twilight" movie, which last year introduced $384 million worth of audience members to Kristen Stewart as mortal Bella and Pattinson as lust incarnate.

I know MacKenzie didn't oppose the books for the feminist reasons of some people quoted in the article. I don't know if the book caused her to "notice in that first week of reading that I was feeling things I hadn't been able to feel in a long time." But it's interesting to know that this sequence of events happened to enough people to warrant a Washington Post article.

Uhm, I'm not sure what the post should be called but it does mention vomiting.

Well, I don't have anything great to say so I'll just talk about me. That's really what a blog is all about anyway right?

I'm doing better. But it's a two steps forward, one step back kinda deal. Two weeks ago I started feeling better, we made it to church, I was able to eat dinner, but then bam, Tues-Friday were yucky again. Friday night I finally made Craig go get my nausea medicine and we found out that it doesn't really help me. If I'm really feeling bad, I can take it and within 10 minutes it will completely knock me out and I won't be awake again for at least three hours. Which technically means I go three hours without being sick but as soon as I wake up, I feel bad again. Except now I am sick and disoriented. Which is really bad if you eat a popsicle before you go to sleep then wake up and start throwing up red liquid. Within a minute or two you will remember that it is just popsicle juice and you are not actually throwing up internal organs but those first few seconds will really get your heart going. I realize that story is a bit gross, but I think it is funny too and what is the point of all this vomiting if I don't even get to tell a few funny stories...besides the baby and all.

But since we got the medicine, I've only used it twice and have still managed to go from throwing up 1-2X/day to 1-2X/week. It's been a few good days then a few bad days. You can probably tell because there are a few days when I post, and then nothing. But the periods of bad days are getting shorter with the good days getting longer so I just need to be patient. I would probably be doing better if I would just give up the idea that I can do anything remotely fun. It's not that I'm fighting a super-preggo philosophy anymore. I'm not going to lie, I did at the beginning and was genuinely frustrated that I could no longer keep the house even remotely clean or put something on the table but with time I have learned to let things go and Craig has done a great job of learning what I think "needs" to be done (i.e. the things that I start to get panicky over) and doing them.

Now I'm just bored and feeling the effects of being social withdrawn. Saturday morning I didn't feel great but I was determine not to miss my scheduled hang out time with Fallon so I drank a lot of water, ate a good snack and took some Tylenol. And once I was out, I did feel pretty good. But I think I overdid it since I spent the next 48 hours feeling awful. When I say I "overdid it", we spent time at a new baby boutique in town, picked up a book from Barnes and Noble and sat at chick-fil-a talking and drinking lemonade. She's pregnant too so it's not like we were running a marathon. But even that was too much. Is it too much to ask to have a few hours to spend catching up with a friend, or having enough energy to play a board game in the evening with Craig! Apparently so.

I know that I will probably be feeling back to my old self, or as close as I'm going to get, within another week or two but it's getting hard. I did find an encouraging site. Conversion Diary linked to Philosopher Mom's post about being Open to life and when I found there, it was actually about her hyperemesis gravidarum pregnancy. At first it was a bit depressing because when I'm sick, all I can write are long rambling whiney posts like this one while she writes insightful articles on the value of life, but I got over myself and found some information on her site useful. I had always though HG was only prolonged intense morning sickness so it didn't apply to me, at least not yet, but that is not entirely accurate. The "HelpHer" site she linked to had really good information and while I seem to be borderline between extreme morning sickness and mild HG, I found their articles, especially the ones on coping and emotional issue very encouraging. I just wish I had found this site a month or two ago.