wonder(ing)land

We have something like 8 (+/- 2) weeks to go. If I can judge by the way I feel today (which comes after two restless nights, to be fair), the time of exhaustion may have started. I’m feeling weak and listless.

Our birth education class just finished so we have a good number of extra hours to our week. Unfortunately, there is much left to do:

- Finish studio/bedroom and general apartment re-arrange.
- Store studio ‘junk’ currently residing on living room floor.
- Paint two unpainted walls of bedroom (non-toxic paint, of course) and zen it up.
- Procure a certain portable laundry washer and hook it up.
- Get organic stuff for bed (yes, still haven’t done, despite the law that was passed earlier)
- Obtain “home birth” kit, including oral vitamin K for the babe.
- Continue yoga practice despite being totally pooped.
- Meet a pediatrician.
- Go to a vaccination info session at above pediatrician’s office so we can be told how vaccines do cause/do not cause/or something in between regarding autism.
- Figure some sort of baby changing station (this to please husband but surely I’ll come to love it too, right?)

Additionally, we need to step up the practice of body scan/relaxation technique for labor. We’ve been very, very slack at it. We often do it late at night when we generally just fall asleep. While falling asleep isn’t a bad outcome of relaxation, in this case, it would be better to be able to finish the process consciously and then sleep. While a person can and should do the the relaxation by herself, it’s best to have another person guiding the process. You see, your mind drifts to all kinds of places before you remember you’re supposed to be moving the imaginary orange light from your forehead to your neck. This is where your “birth partner” or, as I prefer to call him, “husband” comes in play. The secret is to use a true and tried script but make it your own so it doesn’t sound like you’re reading from a book.

We’re still searching for a good way to do it. Birthing classes helped, but we can’t remember what exactly made the teacher guided relaxation so much more successful than the stuff we’re trying at home. Any progress will be documented, I’m sure

If I were a Terry Pratchett witch, I would be cackling. As it is, I’m simply Going Granola.

Item: Detoxing the house

Got rid of the conventional cleaning products, things possibly containing bleach, ammonia and formaldehyde, etc. Parabens, phthalates and the likes in my soaps, creams and perfumes also hit the road. I’m making my own essential oil from Thai Basil (soaking in oil for now, will move on to distillation if/when I acquire a distiller, God Oilessentialis willing). I’m in a tizzy about the recently purchased (expensive) mattress and its toxicity level (they get treated with stuff, as you may imagine, for all kinds of happy and unhappy reasons). There are probably a few more corners in our house I still need to inspect.

Item: Baby Gear

Going organic and/or reusable. No PVCs (soft plastic), not to even mention anything painted. Only American/Euro made stuff unless proven safe and/or boutique/handmade in some beautiful village. Also acceptable are used baby clothes, stains and all. I just acquired my very first one, from my favorite Brooklyn ’boutique,’ Fence on 16th, where something like 10% of my own clothes comes from and it looks like a good source of baby things too.

Item: Baby ‘handling’

Dispose of the nonsense crib and stroller racket. Sleep with baby. Considering “babywearing“, constant carrying of the child a la Amazonian tribes for months (6-8 they say) of constant touch. Obviously, breastfeeding (Goddess Lactata willing).

Item: Bottled water

I don’t exactly know what is the deal with plastic water bottles, whether they do or do not leech plastic into the water. But I find them to be the most wasteful and unnecessary product on the market, at least in New York City where water tastes so good. So, for a few months now I’ve been using either the aluminum (lined with porcelain) or the stainless steel bottle filled either with regular or filtered tap water. Both of these bottles have caused me one or two problems along the way (aluminum is pain in the neck to unscrew when thirsty at night, and the stainless steel one has a little whole on top that leaks into my bag when not upright). But, in the last 5 months, I’ve bought total of 3 disposable plastic water bottles, while in the past that number would have been a lot higher, averaging at least 1 a week.

All of this. and much much more, while trying not to annoy my love who lately wonders whom is it he married.

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…”