Laundry Situation

So for years (years!) I’ve always wanted to have a washer/dryer NOT in the basement. Every time we moved (which is often: 3 times in 5 years) I would search for months for a place that would have the following:
-Clean (preferably newer) bathroom/kitchen
-Allows cats
-Washer Dryer NOT in the basement
(not to mention location, rent etc.)

This was near impossible and became a fantasy rental when I added the following two stipulations in our most recent search:
-Allows dogs
-Fenced in backyard.

Well I came as close as I could with our current duplex. Clean bath/kitchen, allows pets, fenced backyard and washer dryer hook-ups (but no washer dryer) in the basement. I really wanted to be able to do laundry but my spider phobia just won’t let me down there. I tried one time but literally a huge spider dropped from the ceiling in front of me. No lie. So, Josh washes the clothes, and until I got pregnant, I cleaned the bathrooms and managed the pets. I think it is a good deal that worked out well.

Well nearly a year later, we still don’t have a w/d. Josh decided that he’d rather drive to the laundry mat and wash 6 loads at a time and be done in 90 minutes twice a month. I have no argument there. But since getting pregnant I have been campaigning for a w/d because everyone gets this incredulous look on their face mixed with pity or horror when I tell them we don’t have one. Oh, and that we must be brain damaged to think we won’t be doing laundry every day with a baby.

It was back in October that I witnessed the destructive nature of babies and clean clothes. My nephew luke in just a few hours, not only pooped out his own clothes, but got poop on his mom’s pants while she was holding him. He then proceeded to spit up milk on me and then his father. That’s half a load of laundry right there!

I begged josh. I sent him w/d ads on sale then used w/d ads from craigslist. There was even a set a man would sell us and then deliver it! I told him horror stories, and tried reasoning with him. I even tried guilting him that all that time at the laundry mat was time away from his son! I tried asking him the tough questions: Are we just going to have poopy sheets sitting in the house for a week?!!

His response is either a version of “I’ll take care of it” or “It’ll be fine”
Because in the end, he does the laundry not me, so he ultimately decides.

Plagued with visions of stained and thus ruined clothes piling up in the hamper all week, I’ve come up with a plan to salvage them. I decided to fandangle a bucket system in the basement. Poopy, spit-up items will be rinsed in the sink and then soaked in a large bucket of water and oxyclean in the basement until laundry day. Josh promises to go once a week to the laundry mat. I suppose his task will also be emptying the bucket of water.

This is the best I can do to make the situation better? A bucket?!

Aches and Pains

25 days until the due date, and on Sunday I will be full term. I don’t know what to think of this. On the day of the birth, two huge changes are going to happen:
One: I will have a baby and
Two: I won’t be pregnant anymore.
It’s amazing how quickly I’ve gotten used to the status quo.

It officially hurts to walk, I have bad joint pain in my hips and pelvis. I am so very tired at work and my feet/ankles balloon at the end of the day. I am getting by the best I can. It’s just that anything physical is an (often painful) effort. The days I work at 1pm, I go to bed around 11:30 and stay in bed until 11:30. And I could stay there all day. I know this is a finite time in my life, so I’m just taking it day by day. I’m also scared that next week will be much worse. And if I can’t cope now, I’m screwed.

Still, I’m not ready for him to be here yet. I know the names of the streets in the hell that I am in at least.

On the plus side, Bot is doing well. He’s probably pretty cramped himself. He keeps trying to stretch me out. I feel pressure low and his big butt keeps pressing into my lungs. My favorite thing to do is to trace the outline of his feet when they poke out of me. The food that gets him moving is cream of wheat, because I put loads and loads of sugar on it!

And now a message to Bot:
Dear Bot: Sorry about the Wendy’s today. I know there was nothing of nutritional value there. But how delicious was that premium fish fillet with added cheese and no tartar sauce? I smothered it in ketchup. Soooo yummy!

Completed nursery!

I had a blast doing this nursery. Thank you to my mom, sister and josh for letting me pepper you with emails on opinions. I feel like I got a lot of great deals, and with it being Ikea heavy, you know it was on a budget :)

Enjoy!

Bird Mobile off Etsy.com (there is a bird theme going)

Dresser and curtains from Ikea

Eventually there will be a chair there instead of a stool (maybe).

I impulsively got these alphabet cards off etsy.com because it was such a great deal!! And it took up a lot of wall space not to mention being educational :)

Wall decal of birds and branches off etsy.com (can you tell I am addicted to this site?)

Josh purchased installed these shelves!

Bot's cage...err.. I mean crib.

Close-up of the scary owl faces blanket and sheet I got off of etsy.com. I needed a touch of spooky to make this nursery juuuuust right!

Nursery Progress Pics

Putting together the crib

Futurama playing in the background (of course!)

Only one missing screw! (barely wobbles)


Upacking the new lamps from Ikea

Painting the nursery "smoke screen" gray blue

Ikea dresser parts (enjoying our affordable Swedish crap)

Those Swedes know how to put in almost everything you need!

Undecorated room, but painted and furnished!

35 weeks

The front

The flip side

The bump side

Hmm, I guess you can see my belly button from the front. I guess any denial that it has gone from an innie to an outie is over. ..

Awesome

This is Josh: Stefanie, you are awesome. I could not imagine having a roller coaster going on for 9 months. Thank you for carrying our baby and being there with him at all times. I know your voice and your rubs comfort him when he's wondering why he's still in his oceanic environment. He'll be with us on land soon! - Josh

Hypnobirthing - part 2

So, 3-4 weeks in, what’s it like so far? First of all it is a freakin’ struggle to stay awake for the 30 minute hypnosis sessions (there are 12). You take some calming deep breaths, you relax your muscles and just when you think you are completely relaxed… “you go deeper…much deeper”(the lady’s soothing words, not mine).

Then the lady tells me that I am so relaxed I can’t move my arm (true!) and then she tells me that my skin feels so good (yup). Then she tells me to come up with a special safe place (For me: I am lying on a hammock on the beach in a orange bikini and I am smokin’ hot too!--- hey it’s my special place, my rules!). In my special place I hold my baby cause we are in this together (check!). Next thing you know she is telling me that she is going to count to five and each number will take me 10 times deeper into relaxation and hypnosis. You feel like you are drifting, floating and your mind is completely empty. And each time she says a number it intensifies like a wave going through you. And I am literally on the beach so RELAXED! And right before she gets to some instructions….I’m out like a light.

Last night I finally got through the “Creating Self-Anesthesia” track. I did really well with the finger drop technique (a cue where you raise your finger and lower it and are instantly relaxed and in your special place) and turning my light switch (that controls my muscles) completely off. Now I am working on centering my light swtich so that I can move/talk/interact while the area between my chest and my thighs (birthing muscles) is still completely relaxed. It is a warm buzzing feeling. Like I can’t describe it.

I had a major setback a few days ago. I woke up screaming due to a calf muscle spasm. Usually it works itself out, but this one was a mutant spasm because as soon as it ended it would spasm harder again and again. I thought for a second “ Oooh I should use hypnobabies!” But all I could think was that word “hypnobabies” and couldn’t think any further. I was completely focused only on the pain that kept coming and coming. So I thrashed in bed, yelled, and had josh rub my leg. After it was over, I thought holy hell I can’t even manage a calf muscle spasm. Granted it was the mother of calf spasms that turned into four in a row. But actually josh said I did a good job. And I asked him embarrassedly “But what about how I thrashed and yelled?… I mean that wasn’t really me in a hammock/ on the beach/orange bikini moment.” He said that’s okay and he’s going to be there with me like he was that morning too. (swoons) And it is true that my labor isn’t going to go from 0 to 60 and wake me up discombobulated in the middle of the night. Anyway, to be fair, I am only practicing anesthesia in my torso not my left leg.

Still.

We will see how this goes.

Hypnobirthing

I’ve been getting harassed by josh to post another entry. So let’s talk hypnosis. It is really hilarious to me that so many things I am doing in preparation for this birth is just so off the wall. And I know it too. And I already know you know it. But stay with me here.

I decided to go with hypnobirthing as my pain management technique. Lamaze and the Bradley method are so yesterday.com! Even though hypnobirthing isn’t new, it has recently been updated so you can be hypnotized with your eyes open and talk and move. They call it “eyes open” hypnosis. Pretty fancy hey?

When you think hypnosis, you think parlor tricks. But really it is more a form of meditation and the power of the mind. It’s very peaceful and actually pretty awesome.

I decided to go with the Hypnobabies brand. A 5 week home study course, with 8 CDs (purchased from ebay!). And it accomplishes and addresses three major areas:
1. Childbirth is natural and normal, and people who have a positive expectations of childbirth can deliver without pain and fear. The first step is internalizing this through positive affirmations. For example: “labor” is now referred to my birthing time! That “contraction” is just a pressure wave!

2. Freedom from fear can make a significant difference. Fear in labor can create tension, which creates pain, then more fear, and the cycle continues. I will use self-hypnosis to clear that fear.

3. People have been using self-hypnosis as a method of natural anesthesia for years. It has even been an effective anesthesia in surgeries.

And you can read more about it here: http://www.hypnobabies.com/mylink.php?id=4570

Being a Kid

This is Josh: As snow falls in Columbus, and much more falls elsewhere, I’m delighted that schools are closed. A snow day for a kid is just about the best thing in the world. It’s not like Christmas, where you look forward to it forever. A snow day is somewhat random, and just unleashes freedom like no other event. Not to mention the snow – snowmen, snowball fights, sledding – these are things that are only possible when the weather randomly makes them possible. And it’s that much greater when you can play in the snow all day on a Tuesday rather than on a Saturday.

It got me thinking about what it’ll be like for our son growing up. Stef and I grew up in the eighties, and we experienced being teenagers in the nineties. I remember a typewriter in the house. Sometime in high school we got the internet. It required that you get a magazine because it literally took ten minutes to load every page. It was revolutionary when I got to college and websites popped up right as you clicked.

All of this is the same as saying “Back in my day, blah blah blah”. I can’t recall this to my kid without sounding old and boring.

These days, kids grow up with keyboards and texting and the internet and it’s changed the way they interact with the world. I imagine it must also change their perspectives on life. This isn’t to say it’s a bad thing. In fact, I think the world is constantly improving, progress is being made, and these technological changes make life better.

From a parenting standpoint, though, I think it might create new challenges. I imagine we have to be a little more proactive about what our 9-year-old is doing for an hour on the internet than we’d have to be if he was watching TV for an hour. So maybe parenting is harder today than it was back in the day? (That question totally acknowledges that I have no idea what it’s like to be a parent, today or back in the day).

On the other hand, it seems that snow days now are the same as snow days in the eighties. So maybe some things don’t change too much. - Josh

Why I Write

This is Josh: Often I write something about my experience as a soon-to-be-dad, and I soon realize that my thoughts are generic. I do not provide great insight into the human condition, or enlighten the world with ideas unlike any other.

I do not think this is a problem.

Over the weekend Stefanie and I discovered some old photos of us from college. The photos are now several years old, and they create a special feeling when viewed years later. At the time they were just photos, the kind you push yourself to take because you know it’s worth it, even though it’s always sort of a hassle to take the photo right then. Only after sitting dormant for some time do they begin to take on an exceptional quality. And these aren’t the graduation-type photos, where everyone’s posing. The best ones are the ones where someone just grabs the camera in the middle of a party, or while someone’s reading a book, and captures the random moment.

In the same way, I hope the writings here will prove to be interesting over time. Ten or thirty years from now, I can imagine getting great joy from the thoughts in this blog. They would be interesting to an alien who came down and wanted to read what an average American in 2010 has to say about having a child. It seems like there’s value in recording them, and I look forward to revisiting these posts when my child is in high school, and beyond. - Josh