wonder(ing)land

After our bed was delivered and after weeks of sleepless nights, Alisa suggested that our new bed deserved more room - the kind of room that comes from a sunny, airy, recording studio perched high in a fourth floor pied a tierre. It would be no easy feat. 10 years of stuff had accumulated under the platform. Two years ago we bought some clear plastic storage bins for our junk. Four of them fit under the bed. Space Heaters in summer time, box fans in winter. Luggage year round. Cat carriers. Our Red Cross safety kit. Dust bunnies. Cat hair balls. Elastic hair bands. Eye masks. Bobby pins. 10 years of stuff.

The first task was to remove all of this stuff. Here it is in it’s new home, our living room.

The next task was to swap the futon in the studio with the bed in the bedroom.

This is Sarah Lentz listening to mixes of her album ‘Begin Again’, while sitting on the futon in the studio.

That was one comfy room!

This is Alisa, folding clothes in our new ’studio’ room.

The bed / futon swap was relatively painless. Irena has been living in Bosnia for over a month now, and she was not inconvenienced in any way. The real pain is going to be when I have to move all of the studio equipment into the new studio room. For now, the bed is comfortably accessible from 3 of the four sides, albeit surrounded with electronic gear on all 3 of those sides.

Historically, Alisa has some pretty strong opinions about what a bedroom IS. There must be the bare minimum of electronics and items that emit electro-radiation, including television monitors and computer screens. Any led’s or illuminations of little colored lights are verboten - they remind her of the cockpit of a commercial airliner, and she is terrified of flying. Also, the wall hangings must be innocuous. There must not be an heavy-fonted writing anywhere, lest she end up reading the titles of museum exhibitions during bouts of sleeplessness. Also of note, there shouldn’t be any large pictures of human likenesses - they tend to just stare at her and make her uncomfortable while she’s trying to relax.

Here are some pictures of our new studio / bedroom.

There’s Tupac, watching over Alisa and making sure no thugs get her during the night.

There are the boys from KISS, making sure she hasn’t forgotten the name of the band.

There’s the computer at the foot of the bed, just in case Alisa needs to write a blog entry at 3 in the morning.

Oh, and there are all of the leds from the instrument landing system of the cockpit, ensuring that Alisa will have a safe and sound journey into dreamland.

It started with a trip to Sleepy’s. In reality, it started many years ago when Alisa told me that her ideal bed would be one that we built ourselves. After a trip to home depot, some 4×8 sheets of plywood and some 4×4 fence posts for legs, we had our bed. Alisa’s mom made a custom-sized mattress for us, and our dream of a home-made bed was realized.

I’ve always teased Alisa about her being the Princess in the Princess and the Pea story, but by our third month of pregnancy, we were living that story every night. The home made bed just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Alisa demanded a new mattress. A mattress fit for a queen. A trip to Sleepy’s was planned.

The thing about Sleepy’s is that you are encouraged to ‘try out’ the mattresses in the store - if by trying out, you mean lying on a mattress in broad daylight, in your clothes and shoes, with strangers watching you, while making judgment calls on firmness, responsiveness, and plushness - things that perhaps you’ve never even considered before. But you better start considering them, because you’re going to be spending a lot of money on a purchase that you’re going to have in your home for a LONG time. First we were encouraged to try the $6000.00 mattress with the lifetime warranty. 6 Grand. It was…nice. What else could I say? I had no vocabulary at my disposal for anything other than ‘It’s nice’. Alisa liked it too. But maybe they had something more in my size, and by my size I mean cheaper. The $5000.00 model. With pillowtop. Hand sewn. Maybe a little cheaper? The $4000.00 model. All natural fibers and a twenty year warranty on uneven wear. The $3000.00 model? Natural and man-made blend - equal degrees plush and firm, Alisa needs plush. I need my 4×8 sheet of plywood. $2000.00 model. Twenty year warranty with natural and man made fibers - a little more firm, yet a slightly higher ’sink’ factor. The $1000.00 model, no box spring. We dragged the mattress off of it’s box spring to better test it out in real world conditions, ie, what it would be like on our 4×8 sheet of plywood bed. More firm than plush, ten year warranty, queen size, natural and man made fibers, sewn by the hands of immigrant workers in North Carolina. Sold and financed. Oh, the warranty time period is cut in half if you don’t buy the box spring? So be it. The sweat stain guarantee is void if you don’t buy the $100 mattress protector? You got me. Alisa’s mom was in town that night with her truck - can we just have her swing by and pick this baby up? Mattresses are only shipped from the warehouse in Long Island and are delivered for a fee of $80.00 - plus and additional $10.00 per floor, per item delivered. Can we at least walk out of here with the mattress cover? No. Nothing is ’sold’ from Sleepy’s - the mattress cover will be an additional item delivered from the Long Island warehouse and carried up the 4 flights of stairs. Done deal.

Financing. That’s right, I’m writing this entry while lying in a bed I don’t even own. Quite a concept for me. Why should I not own the bed I sleep in? Apparently it fits in somehow with how Sleepy’s stays in business. LIfe is short. Perhaps after agreeing to spend thousands of dollars on a mattress, most consumers accept the bet that they’ll be dead in a year, and will have made no payments or interest charges, and have ended up getting the better of Sleepy’s by sleeping and eventually dying in a bed that they’ve never even paid for. Somehow, this must not be what happens in reality. After a year, serious interest charges ensue, and I’m sure folks are paying off their mattress purchases long after the sweat stains and uneven wear have customized their beds into the most comfortable mattress in the world. “For the rest of your life…”

This Tuesday, our midwife and her assistant came over to our house for my first checkup. Chris and I scrambled to make at least one room comfortable for us to meet. (Incidentally, we’ve been trying to make our apartment liveable: The Accumulation of Stuff had reached a tipping point sometime last month. Plus we’d been re-shuffling the rooms. More on all of that later — maybe from Chris.)

Had I (and I hadn’t) even the slightest doubt that I should have a home birth, this meeting would have completely obliterated it. As it were, my buckets of faith have just gotten bigger to accommodate how much I believe in this.

So, get this: they were late for our 11am. While waiting for hours or even minutes for the doctor in her office can take all the steam out of you (not to mention traveling there or the fact that you’ll only see her for 15 minutes at best), imagine waiting in your own home. You’re straightening the cover on the bed, catching up on email, eating left-over ratatouille, gathering up any data you can think of to share while your husband is maybe vacuuming the hallway or cleaning the latest cat damage in the box. We loved the extra half hour of anticipation.

When the buzzer rang, we both ran downstairs and hugged our midwife. We climbed up to our apartment and settled in our cute little railroad room. Then we started talking: birth in general, home birth specifics, her methods of handing difficult baby presentations (oh, do I love her), protein needs (80 -100 grams per day!), mercury in fish (eat small ones), sugar (don’t eat: makes big babies), labor positions, shape of pelvic bones… We went over my medical history and looked at the stack of fertility charts I’ve been keeping for 30 months. She answered my questions and in general made me feel warm and fuzzy. The assistant chimed in about her experiences working elsewhere as a nurse-midwife and assured me I’ll be getting the best care possible.

For the actual exam, I laid on our bed in our awesome sunny bedroom and the midwife took my blood pressure, measured my belly and, the best part of all, gave me her stethoscope so I can listen to the baby’s heart beat (with my eyes closed… it went tic.tic.tic.tic.tic.tic.tic for every tic of my own)! It was lovely.

I think I’m in love. To celebrate, I went to Prospect Park and took lots of pictures.

We hit a small milestone last night: Chris was able feel the baby move! It’s still pretty weak but even since last night, the kicks have gotten stronger and I can see the belly moving. Of course, it is completely, well, insane that there is another living being underneath my own skin, but I guess that’s what’s being pregnant is all about.

I’m now 20 weeks pregnant. This means the baby should be coming along around Thanksgiving (give or take a week or few, I suppose). This also means that I have renewed and stepped up my birthing research.

When I originally met with my midwife, I asked her about birthing classes: should we take them? Do we really need them? Her answer was yes, we should take Bradley method classes, particularly because Bradley engages the father in a very active and important way.

I’d vaguely remembered reading about Bradley and Lamaze methods in Tina Cassidy’s book “Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born” but couldn’t remember any details. Naturally, my curiosity was peaked and I started researching the subject. A very precursory internet research didn’t show much: Lamaze uses a pattern of breathing and distraction from pain of labor while Bradley uses complete relaxation of all muscles with the help of the coach, usually the father. In this (precursory)research there wasn’t any favoritism: either should work.

But, being that my midwife recommended Bradley, I got myself a book, “Natural Childbirth the Bradley(R) Way” by Susan McCutcheon and I am now convinced it is the better way.

Here, I learned that Lamaze’s distraction techniques may fail women when it becomes truly impossible to ignore the pain. Also, the breathing pattern can cause mother and baby to hyperventilate. Mother’s problem can be easily fixed with a paper bag, but that won’t work for the baby. This newborn may need to be supervised for the signs of sleep apnea.

On the other hand, I’m very interested in relaxation. I remember hearing that in car accidents a lot of the pain and injury actually comes from the victim’s own body. We tend to tense up during distress so we tear our own bodies apart. I once met a horse-back rider, a beautiful woman, who told me that as a rider, she had to learn to let go while falling of the horse. We were rafting on a river upstate and we both turned over. She emerged from water as if she were a mermaid, in complete ease, while I panicky tried to get get hold of my raft, coughing up water, forgetting that I’m a decent swimmer. I tensed up and got confused and experienced pain while she was able to let her body fall and give in to the event that she couldn’t control.

So, no surprise that once I started reading about the Bradley method, I knew it was the right way for me even if the complete relaxation, even a partial one, would be hard to master. The craziest part of this is that Chris has to be the one making sure I do. Should we manage to get our act together and should everything go by the book, it will be Chris who will have to be observant, alert, firm yet kind and loving, noticing the smallest tensing of my body and telling me about it and massaging my back, which, apparently, will hurt me a whole lot and exhaust him. At the same time, my job will be to listen to him and RELAX while concentrating on the body doing its thing during labor. Impossible? I’m eager to find out….

The first time someone asked me if I wanted a seat on the subway.

The first time I stepped my foot into something called Motherhood Maternity.

The first time I bought this pant-like item with a stretchy band instead of a button and zipper.

The first time I can say I have a midwife to call my own.

It’s a good day

I spent the week worrying whether come Monday I will have my midwife of choice. I get a call yesterday from her office: they can’t make a decision until Wednesday, and it’s really looking like my chances are slim. A big part of this was completely my fault. I had delayed a little (again) although she knew about it and assured me she can wait a week. Well, it didn’t exactly work out. So right now, we don’t have a midwife. Chris pointed out (again) that in New York, you don’t just show at the theater for an opening night and hope to get the birth you want. “Fool me once” he said “shame on you. Fool me twice … you can’t get fooled again.” I told him we’d just have to get a book on birth and try it ourselves. Here’s his scenario:

CKAB do Birth

Chris, reading Do It Yourself: Birth. Points at parts of Alisa’s body.
- Ok, we have two breasts, one belly, two legs. Right. Here are the pelvic bones, right. I think if I peek with this flashlight, I can see the cervix… which looks like… oh, eek….. ok, hope I don’t have to do that again… So, yes, I think we have all the parts.
Alisa, breathing through contraction.
- Hmmmmm, haah, hah. haaaah, Ok. What’s next.
- Ok, says here, we need boiling water (I’ll go put that on), scissors, bath towels…darn didn’t get those. I’ll run out to Bargain Land. I’ll bring my cellphone. Call me if you can think of anything else.
She’s doubled over in pain. He’s walking out the door. As contraction is ending, she yells out
- Don’t forget the shower curtain.

I want to plan better for road trips. On the way to Pittsburgh, we stopped at Pizza Hut. I was truly desperate for food, so, yes, buffet.

I loaded my plate with breadsticks, slivers of deep dish pizza, tomato sauce, iceberg lettuce and random vegetables (picked and non-pickled) and prefab italian dressing. Then gulped it all down.

Meantime, in the belly, workers are complaining to the foreman.

- I thought we’d been getting good raw materials. What I am supposed to do with this? I have to dig to find protein. — Looks at a slab of dressing rolling past. — Is this  corn syrup??? I thought we would be getting no more of that stuff. How am I supposed to work with that?
- I know, I was just getting a message from upstairs, we’re on the road, there aren’t many choices on PA Turnpike.
- I don’t give a damn, I’m stuck with all this sugar now and we were supposed to put some more work on bones today.  Eyes team is also complaining since the hemoglobin team is delayed.
- Listen, at least there a couple of vitamins coming down. In the meantime, convert that sugar to energy, I think the kiddo will want to spread his arms a bit today. It’s time we start making our presence known anyways. Any leftovers, let’s just do the standard procedure: convert to fat and stick it anywhere on her. We don’t have a choice, do we?

I’ve been cursed by one Michael Pollan (’people’ who pushed him on me are now in hiding — wait ’till I get to you, sir). With my ‘blessed’ new condition, the curse is turning me upside down, figuratively. You see, Mr. Pollan showed me that I’m basically corn-fed, but not in good, wholesome, mid-western way. I’ve been eating genetically engineered processed processed (not a typo) industrial corn. This is not good for many reasons. Here, read this http://www.ecoliteracy.org/publications/rsl/michael-pollan.html

The thing is, once you start paying attention and not eating foodlike things that contain corn syrup and such, you’ll more and more often find yourself at specialty food markets or, if shopping at a ‘normal’ grocery store, shunning anything packaged containing more than 4-5 recognizable ingredients. This is not necessarily upsetting (if you don’t consider the increased amounts of money you’re suddenly spending on food). What this does is make you a little one-dimensional (kind of the way pregnancy does). For example, should anyone ask me what I think about, oh say, politics, I would go like this

- Someone needs to do something about the Farm Bill [mind you, I know next to 0 about this]. It’s inhumane that farmers have to plant corn then soy year after year. It’s not good for their land and I think it makes them go nuts, I mean, I would go nuts. Speaking of which, I found an amazing ice cream on the corner on Prince and Green. It’s all organic, no corn whatsoever — they use cane sugar and real milk. It’s not ultra sweet but full of flavor. Today I had pistachio, beautiful off-white color, nutty, creamy.

You see? I can only talk about food. Or, well, my belly, it’s button, the twitter inside, stretchability of woman’s body, midwives, births, growing babies…. [SCENE FADES as I keep on enumerating]

Should anyone be interested in home birth, don’t delay. As soon as you home pregnancy test comes out positive, quickly gather the phone numbers of midwives (you’ll find that there are 3 or 4 superstars you’ll want at your side) and make appointments. Then pick one and don’t let go. Heck, do it as soon as you miss your period. Then jump right in and find a preschool for your fertilized egg…