My mom was fortunate enough to go to a taping of the Oprah Show recently. Aya was extremely jealous by the way. Apparently it’s on her bucket list to be at an Oprah taping. But my mom and her friend had quite the adventure as it took place during the Storm of the Century! I’ve invited my mom as a guest writer to share her story. Enjoy… Continue reading “SNOPRAH = NOPRAH… ALMOST”
YEAR ONE: THE PARTY
When it came to celebrating Ellie’s birthday, we really didn’t want to do anything big. We just wanted to have my folks and my brother and sister-in-law over for dinner. It’s pretty rare that just the six of us get together, so we thought it’d be nice to do for Ellie’s birthday. We decided to have tacos, and cupcakes. And since it was here first birthday, I wanted to make the cupcakes from scratch. Not like she would know the difference, but I still wanted to. Continue reading “YEAR ONE: THE PARTY”
BIRTH: PART ONE (Her Side of the Story)
*DISCLAIMER: The irony of this is that despite of both Matt and I wanting an intimate birth experience with just the two of us, we are putting our birth story on the world wide web. Well, it’s so other ‘moms and dads to be’ who are in the dark can hear a real story. Something we hadn’t heard much before we had Ellie. The stuff “The Baby Story” didn’t show. Not the “so and so went into labor” followed by a “baby was born”. Well, what happened in between?! So I thought about holding back some details, but decided not to. Because labor was painful, uncomfortable, frustrating, annoying, and definitely not pretty, but also loving, validating, beautiful, peaceful, at times even funny, and most of all, EMPOWERING and REAL. It’s not all trauma freak-show, and there’s nothing hush-hush about it either.
I started off being terrified of labor. Absolutely fascinated, but terrified. Maybe I watched too much “The Baby Story” on TLC in college, or all those movies featuring screaming and cussing women in labor in war-zone like chaos. I had this preconceived notion that labor was going to be traumatic, chaotic, pain like you’ve never felt pain before, and having absolutely no control. Why do you always hear the traumatic stories? Why does no one talk about the positive ones? I even remember a particular episode of “The Baby Story” where the woman was literally about to push the baby out, screaming in pain and the OB shushed her and told her “no screaming”. WHAT?! And her idiot poor husband was totally disengaged, just repeating to her what the OB was saying. You better believe I’m going to scream if I want to when I’m in labor, and my husband BETTER be feeling the pain that I am in too! Is what I remember thinking. I’m squeezing a miniature human being out of a hole. IT’S A BIG DEAL. Continue reading “BIRTH: PART ONE (Her Side of the Story)”
BIRTH: PART ONE (My Side of the Story)
*Aya and I each wrote our own version of Ellie’s birth story. “My Side of the Story” and “Her Side of the Story.” I figured if you only you heard my side of the story it might be a little slanted, a little one-sided. We both experienced the same big event, but from very difference perspectives, in more ways than one. So read my story, or hers. Or read them both, and compare and contrast. Laugh, cry, smile, or say “ouch!” Either way, I hope you enjoy the series. This is my version, to read Her Side of the Story, click here.
The most I knew about child birth before we got pregnant was what I learned from watching The Cosby Show. You know, hearing Dr. Huxtable say things like, “How far apart are they,” or “PUSH!” So when we started reading and researching about birth and where Aya was going to give birth, I was really starting as a total ignoramus. Aya really wanted to do a natural child birth and have a midwife or a doula. A what? I had no idea what these were and the thought of it really freaked me out. And on top of that she mentioned water birth. Are you serious? We literally live down the street from a hospital so that’s where I always thought she’d give birth. Plus, I was born at that hospital, too! But we decided to have a water birth at the Greenhouse Birth Center… an hour and a half away… in the middle of winter. Continue reading “BIRTH: PART ONE (My Side of the Story)”
A DAY OF THREE P’s
PASSPORT:
We are planning our trip to Japan this spring to visit Aya’s folks.  So it was time to get Ellie a passport. I had done all the research on what we needed and how we had to do it. I had my dad take the passport photos and we printed them out. We double checked the measurements, and made sure we had a plain background. We even printed out options because we didn’t know if she should be smiling in the photo or not. Another requirement for a baby passport is that both parent’s need to be present. To avoid Aya having to take a half-day of work off, Ellie and I were going to drive up to where Aya works (which is about an hour away) and do it on her lunch break. So I strapped Ellie in the car, and we were off to the post office. Continue reading “A DAY OF THREE P’s”