#1 grandson is of course going to press once again for his favorite name – Cool Ass Mojo – and once again isn’t likely to prevail. That’s okay, he can name his own child thusly. Grandpa and I are just delighted, hoping this birth will be much easier on our sweet daughter who has proven herself to be an extremely good Mom. Her family is happily well-adjusted and for her good choices we are grateful.

Meanwhile, Grandpa’s intensive work schedule in various regional public school systems kicked into high gear when school started in August, bringing home more than ‘the usual’ season-change cold this year. Some of you may know that the new H1N1 flu is officially rampant here in the Southeast. Some wish to call it swine flu, but it’s also got elements of bird flu and Spanish flu – a regular Chimera. So I just call it the Unicorn Flu, in honor of the worldwide panic it’s engendered since its so-public appearance in Mexico City this past April.

Hubby at first thought it was an attack of allergies, though he did have a headache and some fever to go with his sneezing and coughing. But not bad enough to cause him to miss work, so he no doubt helped spread it around. A couple of days later I came down with the sneeze attacks, head and body aches, sore throat and fever. I told him it had to be the flu, since allergies aren’t contagious.

Flu instead of just the usual cold because the cold doesn’t knock you down. Or, it doesn’t knock US down. I was down for a full 24 hours with this, and the fever was high enough to signal something more than rhinovirus. Still nursing a nasty congested cough two weeks later, with enough of a leftover fever to suspect I’ve graduated to bacterial bronchitis or mild pneumonia. Haven’t gone to a doctor and so long as I’m on top of it, won’t. It’s harvest time here on the homestead, I’ve been keeping up with that and preservation, can still play 5 holes of mountainside disc golf without trouble, and have been drinking a lot of my anti-viral/antibiotic herbal tea both hot and cold, with raw honey. I think I’ll live.

Deal is, for all the super-hype for this flu, it’s not nearly as bad as some other flus we’ve managed to catch over the years. While I wasn’t inclined to eat anything, there was no nausea or vomiting like there was with the Hong Kong flu back in the ’70s. Which nearly killed us for sure, though we were healthy 20-somethings at the time. I’ve read quite a bit of alternative super-hype about the vaccines they’ve rushed into production for this flu, and that’s over the top as well.

The rampant paranoia about forced vaccination and quarantine is overblown, given that the first vaccine is still weeks away and the flu itself is rampant. Not even bad enough to close any schools, it’s making the rounds pretty much like your average cold and not causing serious absenteeism or an increase in hospitalizations on a par with the average flu season around here in January. I see no indications from CDC that they’re going to force us all to get shots now that a majority of us have already had the flu. What would be the point in that? If it ever was the plan, the vaccine is too little too late in a region where the epidemic has already taken hold (and just about over by now).

So. If you happen to live in one of the states where this flu hasn’t yet made itself rampant, you may well wish to get the vaccine. Especially if you are in the high-risk groups, which in this case includes healthy young people. I’ve advised younger daughter to get vaccinated a.s.a.p. because she’s pregnant – and pregnant women have depressed immune functions by purposeful nature so they don’t attack their own baby growing in the womb. They account for many of the deaths reported for this flu, so that’s a definite risk. We’ve got our fingers crossed that she’ll make it to when they release the vaccine, and is first in line. Prayers to that effect offered daily!

For the rest of us, don’t worry so much. It’s not that bad.

My DiL is an organic gardener like me (I’m so proud!), we often go back and forth about different cultivars, particular techniques for (trying to) beat bugs, etc. She linked me to a story from the LA Environmental Health Examiner this morning that I’m making the subject of this post.

Jon Stewart spoofs and doctors warn: avoid GMOs

Seems that on the 8th of May this year the American Academy of Environmental Medicine [AAEM] officially called on doctors to educate their patients and their local medical communities as well as the public to “avoid GM foods when possible.” Why? Well, it seems that the results of those long-term feeding studies that Monsanto, et al. were NOT required by the FDA to do before they introduced poisons disguised as staple food crops are finally coming in, and they aren’t good…

“There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation,” according to the AAEM’s resolution to its membership.
“The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.” A review of more than 600 papers in scientific journals led biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava to conclude that GMOs are a major contributor to the sharply deteriorating health of Americans. Worse, pregnant women and their babies are at the greatest risk for harm. What is known from experience with GMOs as animal feed so far:

• Female rats fed GM soy suffered a greater than 50% loss of their litters, compared with a 10% death rate for the natural soy control group.

• Surviving females in those rat litters experienced problems becoming pregnant when they matured.

• Male rates fed GM soy had their testicles change color. Their sperm was altered to produce fewer offspring and those offspring were smaller than normal.

• Indian buffalos that grazed on GM cotton plants after harvest had reproductive problems or became infertile. Pigs fed GM corn also became sterile.

• In the US, the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility and infant mortality are all rising dramatically since the introduction of GM foods in the human foodstream.

Serious food allergies are rising epidemically, immune dysfunction is also becoming endemic in the US population. Multiple animal studies of GMO diets indicate that these too are attributable to the new staple foods. The various Bt crops – engineered to produce bacterial toxins in every cell of the plants – have been implicated in the mass deaths of buffalo, cows, horses and chickens.

Bottom line is that no matter how convenient these genetically modified crops are for farmers, seed purveyors and agricultural chemical conglomerates, they are not good for what we humans use them for at our end of the production chain – food. AAEM’s resolution contains advice to doctors to inform their patients to avoid GM foods. This means staying away from anything with soy or corn derivatives, cottonseed and canola oil, and sugar from genetically modified beets.

Those products are okay if they are labeled “organic” or “non-GMO,” so read those labels carefully. Growing season is upon us, so local farmers will be selling produce at farmer’s markets in bulk, and are usually on hand (or a family member is) to tell you whether or not the produce came from GM seeds. Eat as fresh and close to local as possible, avoid highly processed foods – most contain GM soy, high fructose corn syrup from GM corn, and possibly other GMO ingredients.

Your family’s health is on the line, so do what you must. And don’t let Monsanto’s strong-arm tactics get in your way, don’t believe a word of the pro-GMO advertisements they’re paying a fortune to brainwash you with. I’ve found that the best thing is to not buy any food you see advertised on TV. But then again, we quit paying to be brainwashed by TV way back in the mid-1970s, so that hasn’t been difficult!

Please go to the above link and read the article. It’s highly informative, and should help make up a lot of people’s minds about this issue. There is plenty of information about GMOs out on the wide web, easily accessed through OCA or a Google search on “GMO.” Educate yourself, save your family from the health effects of industrial foods.

With my younger daughter expecting to deliver in March and living far enough away that we can’t see her very often, I have been quite concerned about whether she’s got friends enough up there in Yankee-land to throw her the proper showers and make sure she’s got everything she needs in the way of ‘stuff’ and sage mom advice about things that only moms can know. I’ve been stressing about how I was going to get up there both for at least one shower as well as for when the baby comes, so I can help out and get them started on the least stressful (I know, that’s a relative assessment) schedule for all baby all the time…

Her best friend lives here, where she went to high school. I’ve spoken with her about the whole shower thing and how this is to be managed with everybody living so far apart. Then, this past week my daughter’s best friend surprised and delighted me with the most wonderful idea!

I got an invitation in my email to join my daughter’s “Virtual Baby Shower!” You, like me, may be wondering what the heck a virtual baby shower is, but the moment you get it, it makes tremendous sense for this modern world and the distance between people. It’s a nice, pink-themed (daughter loves pink and the baby’s a girl) site with links to the gift registry she’s signed up for, a guestbook, a whole ‘Names’ section (including one for names she’ll reject, such as CoolAssMojo and GuitarGreg), some puzzles, a page with a list of gifts already bought or given (and who from), and a message board with topics like “Mom Advice” and greetings, and ongoing conversation and even several cool games all us participants get to play while we’re at the Shower!

And the best thing of all is that it isn’t a party with a specific time and place, we all have to provide our own food, drinks and favors, and we can keep it going for weeks or months – follow the whole pregnancy and keep in touch every day. Now, why didn’t I think of this? If you can input the data to get a basic web page going you too can host a Virtual Baby Shower. This one’s on Freewebs.com, though I’m sure such a site could be hosted by any of a number of online web-hosting sites.

So if you have a friend or relative who is having a baby and lives far away from all the people who should definitely get in on the shower action, this seems the perfect way of doing it, and coordinating the gifts at the same time so she doesn’t end up with 4 strollers, 3 car seats, 2 play pens and no high chair!

Links:

Strollerderby Playdate: The Virtual Baby Shower Edition

Web Baby Shower

Long Distance Baby Shower

Back in the olden days when I was having babies breast feeding was frowned upon as something only poor people did. I don’t really know why, since my mother breast fed all five of us siblings and we turned out healthy enough. Of course, when I was having babies pediatricians also advised Moms to start feeding their infants solid food (cereals, fruit) at the ripe old age of 6 weeks, too.

In the years since then medical science has actually investigated how nature designed babies to be fed, and discovered that human breast milk in most circumstances is the very best thing a baby human could be getting in the way of nutrition. Almost as if they finally figured out that cow’s milk is for baby cows! What’ll they think of next?

In addition to being the most easily digested animal protein infants can get, breast milk also comes with antibodies that protect babies against diseases and allergies, and breast feeding generally doesn’t cause the baby to swallow air which leads to vomiting, upset stomach, and unhappy babies.

There’s an additional plus to breast feeding your baby – you won’t have to spend a lot of time boiling bottles and nipples and rings and caps, mixing formula and heating it while the baby’s screaming to be fed. Breast feeding promotes healthy mother-infant bonding, stimulates infant sensory development and helps to prevent mastitis (infection of the mammary glands in the mother, which may help protect her from breast cancer later in life.

Moreover, people are starting to get over their strange belief that seeing a mother breast feeding an infant is something akin to pornography. Where that came from heaven only knows, but I do have some sneaking (and decidedly feminist) suspicions about that.

Now, there are of course issues that argue against breast feeding your baby and these should be considered. If you have HIV or active tuberculosis you shouldn’t breast feed. Duh! There are also certain medicines, drugs and alcohol that will pass through the milk and harm the baby.

All of these things are fairly self-evident for contraindications most people could have figured out for themselves. But then there are modern poisons in our environment and daily food supply that can harm the baby too, and these are not so well known. A concerned mother should think about having herself tested for accumulations of certain pesticides, mercury and other heavy metals if she thinks she may be at risk.

Another consideration for Moms that can outweigh the home and traveling convenience of breast feeding is her career. If she works outside the home breast feeding can be difficult. Sure, there are some workplaces that will allow Mom to bring her infant and breast feed on demand, but a lot more that won’t. And while Mom could extract milk with a pump for the caregiver to feed from a bottle, that doesn’t do much for her engorgement while at work during normal feeding time. Some mothers pump in the bathroom and throw the milk away (or save it in the work fridge to take home), but that’s inconvenient as well.

This one’s got to be up to Mom. She can stay home for the first two months and breast feed, then stop breast feeding when she goes back to work. Or do the pump thing. Or find a job that allows her to work from home or bring the baby.

At any rate, there’s a wealth of great information out there from the National Institutes of Health and breast feeding support organizations. Click on some of the links below and follow their article links to find answers to any questions you’ve got. The decision to breast feed is one a young mother should make as early in her pregnancy as possible. If for no other reason than to allow her the time to toughen up those nipples before the baby comes along. They’ll get some abuse, and you don’t really want to be feeding that baby blood, do you?

Links:

La Leche League International

Medline: Breast Feeding

Breastfeeding Support and Attitude

US HHS: Breastfeeding – Best for Baby. Best for Mom.

American Academy of Pediatrics: Breastfeeding

Crone, noun
A wizened elderly woman. Feminine version of sage.

It’s Halloween, and since I happen to be a certifiable crone, I’ll begin this last chapter of the series on birthing options with some tales of witchcraft and bloody deeds of persecution that at one time threatened to eradicate the very existence of the ‘Medicine Women’ who traditionally attended the birth of new generations. The wise crones and grandmothers who tended the health, love lives and fertility of mothers, daughters and sisters back when the patriarchs of shamanism believed women to be chattel property like horses or goats, untouchable in their fertile ‘curse’ and dutifully banished from the household entirely for the duration of their menses.

It’s not a pretty history. From Witches, Midwives, and Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English:

“Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.”

Medicine women – primarily midwives – were persecuted mercilessly by the Medieval church that controlled medical education and practice on behalf of the ruling classes. This persecution lasted well into the so-called “Age of Reason” [14th through 17th centuries] and swept Europe before it again reared its ugly head in the American colonies with the famous witch-trials of Massachusetts.

The extent of the persecution is breathtaking. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there were tens of thousands of executions – usually live burning at the stake – and some historians claim millions were eventually killed. 85-90 percent of those killed were women.

As the feudal and religious war against women healers waned in the 18th century, the rise of male-dominated allopathic medicine took place and the battle against midwives was taken over by the medical profession and its control of regulatory law. Beginning in 1896, the U.S. medical community embarked on well-documented, well-coordinated and well-financed campaign to eliminate the midwife from the practice of her own profession.

To pull this off doctors had to re-define pregnancy and childbirth as disease rather than normal reproduction not fundamentally dangerous to mother or child if properly managed. By the 1920s a shift from home birth to hospital births had taken place, and the death rates for both mothers and babies soared as a result of routine medical and surgical interventions in the birth process. To this day the United States ranks at the bottom of all industrialized nations in infant and maternal mortality rates.

Yet there is good news, even though the war against midwives continued unabated medically and legislatively through the last part of the 20th century. States are again licensing midwives to attend uncomplicated births at birthing centers and in homes, as the statistics have demonstrated that healthier mothers and babies result from treating the birthing process as a normal organic function rather than a dread disease.

Homebirth 101 offers a sobering look at those statistics, and how they compare with hospital outcomes of overly medicated, overly managed birth. The American Pregnancy Association offers a fine list of questions and answers relating to the decision to give birth at home, what conditions would indicate that hospital birth would be safer, and what to expect if one chooses to give birth at home.

The first home birth I attended was when my little sister gave birth to my niece in Florida in 1984. I couldn’t imagine how she’d get through it without painkillers, as it was her first baby and she had a history of ER visits once a month just for menstrual cramps ever since she was a teenager. Yet the OB who had partnered with the only licensed midwife in the northern part of the state was forced to pull out of his partnership by peer pressure, and it was too late for the pregnant women who had already paid for the service to get other doctors. They had no choice – it was ER births or home with the overworked midwife who no longer had a clinic.

Surprisingly to me, the labor and birth went without a hitch even though the midwife (who had attended three other births that day) didn’t show up until it was pretty much over. We’d done our Bradley classes and were well prepared to manage the entire process if we had to. My second home birth experience was when my elder daughter gave birth to #1 grandson in my baby sister’s guest bedroom. Different midwife, and baby sister is an R.N., there was a last minute complication (cord strangulation) that I am quite sure would have resulted in a dead baby if we’d been at a hospital. Our midwife handled it quickly and ably, and that grandson starts college next fall.

My pregnant younger daughter hasn’t informed me of her birthing decision yet, probably hasn’t entirely made up her mind. But if she wants to have Sunshine at home, I’ll certainly be there to help. And I won’t be too scared to know what to do. I can help with cleaning and food, I can help distract her from hard labor, I can keep the water boiling and can even catch that baby if Daddy passes out. I’ve attended 6 other home births since, they all worked out fine.

After all, I am a certifiable crone.

Links:

Is Homebirth for You?

Home Birth

The Fall of Midwives

The war on midwives (part 3)

Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-Witch

I talked a little bit about hospital birth in the last installment, so now it’s time to discuss another option – giving birth at an efficient, home-style “Birthing Center” attended by licensed midwives and with a physician or two as partners on call.

Again, it’s vitally important for a mother-to-be to receive frequent and committed prenatal care from a doctor or midwife trained to spot potential problems before they get too far along. It’s also important for expectant parents to commit themselves to a proven birth educational program, and I have recommended the one I am most familiar with – The Bradley System.

If the pregnancy is developing normally and the mother is healthy and fit and confident of what she wants for herself and her baby as far as a birthing experience goes, it’s time to do some research on birthing centers near home and make some appointments to tour facilities and question staff.

If the parents have already chosen a midwife or midwifery group to provide prenatal care, they no doubt already have a list of birthing centers where those midwives are associated. Maybe even met a doctor who partners with the center. If not, there are resources on the web to help with the search.

The Online Birth Center offers a large collection of articles related to all things of concern to expectant and new parents. There is educational information about midwifery so you can better evaluate those you meet, a careful evaluation of common herbs your midwife might suggest you take and how those may affect you and your baby, even some newsgroups and forums where you can connect with other expectant mothers and couples for friendship, advice and some sympathetic eyes.

The American Pregnancy Association offers a fine list of questions to ask when you’re visiting birthing centers in your area. This is very valuable information, such as what you should expect from any birthing center to even consider it for your own experience:

• A relaxed and warm setting.
• Liberty to return home shortly after birth if you wish.
• Health care providers that include nurse-midwives, direct-entry midwives and/or nurses working with a listed, board certified obstetrician.

And to this add the proximity to a hospital, either attached or affiliated, just in case. The site also offers links to educational material and articles about planning and preparing for birth, fetal development, multiples, labor and birth, health and safety issues, prenatal testing, complications and birth control options. A very good source of information and useful methodology for choosing just the right birthing center.

Finally, the American Association of Birth Centers offers a mission statement, a list of frequently asked questions, tips on finding an association center near you, a well-stocked library and bookstore, and lots of educational material.

Unless something goes wrong – and potential problems are not always apparent before labor begins – birthing centers have a good record of helping to improve the mortality statistics in this country over what they were when most births occurred in hospitals or at home unattended. The welcome presence and encouraged participation of family members in a home-like atmosphere makes the experience more pleasant for everyone involved, and one of the best things a mother can do to help ensure a healthy birth is to avoid drugs either to rush her labor or those to treat her pain that go straight into the baby’s system and depress normal responses at birth.

Birthing centers aren’t cheap, thus will not be an option for everyone. They are worth investigating as an option, and couples will feel much better all around about their choices if they’ve done the homework!

Links:

American Association of Birth Centers

Online Birth Center

American Pregnancy Association

In this and my next few posts I’ll be taking a look at some of the birthing options open to parents these days, along with statistical analysis of pros and cons for both mothers and infants. The first option is hospital birth.

To grandmothers (like me), it might seem odd to talk about hospital birth as an ‘option’, since back in ancient history when we were having our children, hospital births were the norm. Unless something strange happened – like giving birth in a taxi stuck in traffic, or in an elevator stuck between floors – almost everyone was born in a hospital.

It was the end result of decades’ worth of efforts by the medical profession to both ease the pain of childbirth for mothers with strong drugs and ‘save’ the greatest number of babies from the detrimental effects of those drugs. Women in labor were isolated and strapped to gurneys on their backs with labor-enhancing drugs flowing into their bloodstream from IV tubes to counter the labor-retarding effects of painkillers. When the time came Mom was wheeled into a sterile OR called the ‘Delivery Room’, where her peritoneum was sliced open and the baby pulled out with giant metal tongs called forceps. Which often left serious bruises on the baby’s head or cheeks.

The baby was promptly whisked away to a separate ward by nurses who cleaned it up, administered various tests, and immediately instigated formula feeding. If Mom did well, she could see the baby once every 4 or 6 hours for 15 minutes, so long as she didn’t have any visitors at the time. Dads could see their babies through thick glass for an hour or two a day, but were not allowed anywhere near enough to ‘contaminate’ the child until 3 or 4 days later, when he got to take Mom and baby home.

It wasn’t much fun, and for some strange reason doctors and others directly involved in the process didn’t warn first time parents about this dehumanizing situation. Perhaps because if they had, more women would have gone looking for something better. Still, it was the normal cultural means of birthing, the country enjoyed steadily decreasing maternal and infant mortality statistics, and most people accepted the doctor-inspired diagnosis that pregnancy and childbirth are disease, to be treated as disease.

However, infant and maternal mortality rates have not declined since 1982, and dangers associated with caesarian sections mandated for the convenience of the physician and hospital-contracted infections threaten progress that has been made. The US still ranks 37th in the world in infant mortality, and maternal deaths among minority women are at the level of many third world countries.

Hospital births are also the most expensive option, effectively out of the question for the tens of millions of uninsured in this country who aren’t poor enough to qualify for Medicaid and not rich enough to pay out of pocket.

That said, the expectant couple should keep in mind that even if they make alternative choices – a birthing center with nurse-midwives in attendance or a home birth with a licensed lay midwife – it is always possible that they may end up at the hospital for their birthing experience. Complications in labor, delivery and post-delivery may arise, so good pre-natal care is essential to spot problems as early as possible.

Still, many hospitals these days do accommodate couples’ choices as much as possible. Birthing wings are often kept quite separate from areas of hospitals where the danger of transmitted infections is minimal. Some offer ample “birthing suites” where couples and their families can manage their own labors and delivery with the ready help of on-staff nurse-midwives. If something does go wrong, there’s no need for a frantic trip to the hospital, as doctors are in-house and the OR is right down the hall. For many first-time parents this can take a load of worry off their minds.

No matter what choices are made for birthing, the expectant couple should definitely be as educated as possible about all aspects of pregnancy and childbirth. I’ve been designated birthing partner for my sister, my elder daughter and two friends in the last couple of decades, and the best recommendation I could give to any expectant couple is to join a local Bradley Class. Honestly, by the time you’re done with the 12 week course, you’ll know enough to deliver that baby yourselves if you have to (or just want to), and you’ll feel very empowered by the knowledge.

Sunshine’s Mom (my daughter) is already enrolled, she and her husband began classes this week. While I do plan to be there when the baby is born, I’m practicing up on staying out of the way. That way I’ll be there if needed, can fill in if Daddy needs a break for awhile, and can remind Mom that she’s Queen of the Universe when she’s feeling most exhausted and frightened.

Next we’ll take a look at some of those birthing centers, and some of the more ‘spiritual’ methods of birthing that have become increasingly popular in the last decade or so. We’ve months and months to go, so there’s plenty of time!

Links:

Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way

Midwifery Today: Is Hospital Birth Better>

WebMD Childbirth Options: What’s Best?

American College of Domiciliary Midwives: Analysis

As my younger daughter goes forward in her pregnancy, she’s soon going to grow right out of her wardrobe. It’s inevitable, of course. In this age of anorexia, how can a woman look beautiful or capable or womanly while sporting a watermelon-size belly?

She has always been fashion conscious, won’t enjoy muu-muus or tent dresses, or any of those ridiculously ‘cutesy’ outfits with the lace or Peter Pan collars, big belly-pointing arrows, or such. And since she and her hubby are young and not rich (the way of things, I think), they don’t have much money to purchase $100 outfits that serve for three months or so and then are never worn again.

So I’m going to go shopping here with my elder daughter the Professionally Creative Thrifter and Fashion Icon, ship her a maternity “Care Package.”

She’s already gaining weight that probably won’t go away when the baby’s born – not “baby-weight.” I can’t help her with bras or underwear, as those are things she’ll want to purchase new and well-fitted. What I can find are well-tailored, sensibly fashionable, comfortable maternity clothes at a bargain price.

There are entire consignment shops that specialize in maternity wear, because women do tend to get rid of their maternity wear once they’re not pregnant anymore. The usual thrifting outlets (Catholic Charities, Goodwill, Salvation Army) also have entire maternity sections. Since designers have been producing really nice looking pantsuits, dresses and work suits, it’s not difficult to put together a very serviceable wardrobe that should get my daughter through the watermelon stages.

For work I think the tunic styles are nice. Particularly if fairly plain, and with nice open jackets over slacks or skirt. Regular fashion sense should prevail here, though I’ll bear in mind my daughter’s usual color and pattern preferences. I figure that 3 or 4 basic tunic tops, 2 mix-and-match jackets and 3 neutral skirts and pairs of slacks will serve her for such occasions through the few months.

Around the house and out and about the choices should be more casual. She’ll want some denim pants with the front stretch panels, maybe some cords and khakis as well. There are plenty of nice T-shirts with full-cut bodies that should be about a buck-fifty at Goodwill or CC. She can of course use any bulky sweaters and sweatshirts all the way through her pregnancy as casual wear. And sweat pants can fit over a pretty good belly, so I’ll be looking for some of those matched sweatsuits with matching jackets. She’ll be going through the big-belly stage from December to March, so she won’t need swimwear, tank tops or brief shorts to keep cool.

I figure we should be able to put a suitable wardrobe together for less than a hundred bucks, and it’ll make her feel much prettier than she would if she just had to make do with moo-moos, ugly stretch pants and X-large men’s T-shirts. While looking around for maternity fashions, I did notice that there are some spectacular dressy-dresses that not only look beautiful on the woman, but enable reverent belly-worship from all onlookers.

If she doesn’t have to buy the daily wear, she can splurge on one of these and make hubby take her someplace nice for a date and dancing. I highly encourage not becoming a self-conscious hermit while pregnant. Of course, that’s because I think most all pregnant women are shiningly beautiful, all the way through.

Oh, and yes, I will be sending a muu-muu or two. Just because it’ll make her smile in remembrance of our many “Muu-Muu” parties when we’d all dress in those many my Mom and sisters kept giving me every Christmas for years (I never did figure out why). Even made Grandpa wear one, he looked really silly but wore it with pride anyway.

Check out some of the advice and styles in the following, excellent resource links for how to save money on good clothes, and how to look spectacular when you most feel like a cow. Pregnant women ARE beautiful. But the wardrobe is, for most, temporary. Pass them along when you’re done, someone else will thank you kindly for it when their months of watermelon-belly loom!

Links

Inexpensive Maternity Clothing (check the internal links for great styles)

How to Find Inexpensive Maternity Clothes

How to Buy Maternity Wear

RainbowHawaii: Muu-Muus

For all you guys out there who liked the name GuitarGreg, and for those who really, really loved CoolAssMojo, tough luck. It’s a girl, per the ultrasound, which isn’t 100% but is more reliable than dowsing or casting lots.

Our younger daughter seemed pretty convinced it would be a girl when she was here and the boys were only thinking up boy names. I thought she looked like she was pregnant with a girl too, so we’re happy with the confirmation. Another friend anxiously expecting their first baby wanted to know how you can guess the sex of a baby before having that semi-definitive ultrasound. Fact is, I don’t really know. Women’s intuition? I guessed correctly with both of mine, and now with both daughters. Maybe I’m just a good guesser.

There was no ultrasound when I was having babies. You juggled your lacy pink desires with the tons of boring blue stuff other people always buy for baby showers, then when they hand you the baby and tell you whether it’s a boy or girl, you start planning who you’re going to give away all the no longer apropos stuff to at their baby showers. It generally works out in the end for both parents and baby stuff manufacturers – while slightly more boy babies are born than girl babies, things even out in the first year or two by attrition. Just statistics, nothing against boys.

Since there haven’t always been ultrasounds that tell you a baby’s sex months before they’re born – and not everyone trusts the technology to be as harmless as it’s claimed to be – I thought I’d go looking to see what’s out there as folklore or old wives’ tales about knowing the sex of your baby well before he or she is born.

For those fond of ‘Oriental Wisdom’, there’s Chinese Gender Chart, which purports to tell you if it’s a boy or girl based on the age of the mother at the time of conception and the month during which Mom conceived. I’ve seen no statistical analysis of whether or not it works, but if you’re wondering and won’t get the ultrasound for a few more weeks, do let us know!

I also found a rundown of your basic folk wisdom based on indicators such as morning sickness, weight gain and general appearance, which I know to be unreliable because none of it applies to me or other Moms I’ve known. Still, here it is:

It’s a girl if…

• You had morning sickness early in pregnancy [Ha! I was sick all nine months with both a girl and a boy]

• Your baby’s heart rate is at least 140 beats per minute [This is standard for both girls and boys]

• You are “carrying high” [This one does apply, at least it did for me]

• You are carrying the weight in your hips and rear [How does that jive with "carrying high?"]

• Your left breast is larger than your right breast [Before or after?]

• Your hair develops red highlights [Um... I'm a redhead...]

• Your belly looks like a watermelon [ALL pregnant bellies look like watermelons before it's over!]

• You crave fruit and sweets [Does the ice cream that goes with the pickles count?]

• You don’t look quite as good as normal during pregnancy [Try losing 30 pounds before ever gaining an ounce and see how good you look]

• Your face breaks out [Duh]

• You are moodier than usual [Double Duh]

• You refuse to eat the heel of a loaf of bread [Those are edible?]

• Your breasts have really blossomed [On the left?]

• Your pillow faces south when you sleep [Hahahaha!]

• Your urine is yellow [Whose isn't?]

• You hang your wedding ring over your belly and it moves side to side[Dowsing?]

• You add your age at the time of conception and the number of the month you conceived, and the sum is an odd number [Is that how the Chinese worked it out?]

Well, you can guess how the indications go opposite of this if you’re going to have a boy baby. To which I’d supply the same sarcastic remarks. To tell you the truth, I knew my younger daughter was pregnant before she did, just by looking at her when they visited in mid-June. I kept my own counsel about that, but I sure as heck wasn’t surprised when we got the news officially. I didn’t have any inkling at that time whether it was a boy or a girl, but at that stage, who cares?

When they were here weekend before last and we got to play such fun name games, I knew from her reaction that she’d already intuited it’s a girl. She rolled her eyes at Elvis, Guitar Greg and Cool Ass Mojo, but gave us just the one girl’s name – Sunshine. She had that smug little self-smile on her face when her eyes were downcast (communing within herself, I guess you could call that), and I knew it’s a girl because she knew it.

I’m completely delighted, of course. There’s too many boys among the grandchildren in my family, not nearly enough girls. When I got the ultrasounds in my email I wrote back to ask how “girlie” we’re going to let Sunshine be. My daughter was Miss Prissy all-girl, all-pink, all the time when she was little, turned out to be quite the womanly woman too.

Just want to know what to make for the occasion when I go up there to help when the baby’s born. I was the world’s worst tree-climbing, ditch-digging Tomboy when I was growing up with my four sisters. Hated the color pink and those silly pink girlie dresses Dad always made us dress in for dinner – with the big sashes he’d tie for us as we lined up, making perfect bows (as if I cared one bit for how perfect the derned bow was!). Yet for my own daughters I went hog wild on lace and frilly girlie stuff, in every shade of pink imaginable. Go figure.

I think a nice soft-weave baby basket with lace and ribbons and soft pink satin lining, a pretty flowery pad and a pink-pink-pink quilt with pink buttons and a pink satin binding…

This is going to be so much fun!

My younger daughter and her husband visited this past weekend from Indianapolis. She’s into her 4th month of pregnancy (her first), just getting over the serious morning sickness phase, needed some Mom-time. Which I was of course delighted to lavish on her, sympathizing with her queazy stomach and re-arranging innards, happy to whip up some colorful stir-fry, hummus, falafel and tabouli for pita sandwiches, anything that sounded good, that she thought she might be able to keep down.

She’s never been a happy morning person, so when her hubby mentioned how hard the last few months have been – a strain on their relationship as well as their income since they work together out of home – I wasn’t very sympathetic. Grandpa could take care of that chore. And he did.

My hubby and I just celebrated our 38th anniversary earlier this month, but didn’t get to go to the lake house like we have ever since it got built because elder daughter blew the engine in her car, my car’s back end is about to walk out from underneath it, and that puts us down to a single pick’em up truck we’ve got to share. Ah, well. We’ve had worse anniversaries…

Anyway, I mention this because my husband – “Uncle Grandpa” to dozens and just plain “Grandpa” to a rising tide of others – is amazingly well trained. I was pregnant for 18 months out of our first 3 years of marriage, and was deathly ill for every minute of it. What my Son-in-Law was complaining about seems trivial compared to that, as well as compared to all the years since I decided to stop doing the pregnant thing. His marital philosophy is one that should be preserved and taught as classical wisdom, which seems to be in very short supply in these days of “for better and screw you if it gets worse” serial monogamy.

She Is Always Right, You Are Always Wrong.

Short, simple yet profound, endearing in the extreme. Growing, having and raising a baby isn’t an easy job, and the vast majority of the physical investment in that endeavor comes exclusively from the woman. That’s just how nature and/or God set things up, we should presume life and/or love set it up that way on purpose: it works, better than possible alternatives. For couples to get through the year it takes to grow, produce and nurture an infant to a good healthy start in life, it’s just best for the Dad to live this philosophy as much as possible, put aside his own juvenile tendencies and ‘all about me’ delusions.

I admit to being somewhat flummoxed by the underlying ‘wrong-ness’ of pair bonding these days, when half of marriages end in divorce before even five short years, kids grow up in multiple homes with multiple Moms and Dads and Temporaries (or none at all), and nobody seems willing to build relationships rather than simply toss inconvenient ones out with last year’s clothes. A year in the course of a lifetime is nothing, relatively speaking. To a mere temporary arrangement, it’s forever.

That’s a shame, but it’s what is real in the world my children are trying to negotiate, and the one my grandchildren will soon be trying to live with. At any rate, I got to baby my baby for a couple of days, Grandpa got to lend sage advice and an understanding ear to her choice of mate. That’s really about all we’re good for at this point.

Though we did spend hours and hours around the campfire, playing dice at the kitchen bar, sitting idly about the living room thinking up baby names. THAT is a fun pastime! I think we went all the way through the alphabet from Adam to Zelda and everything in between – including, of course, Elvis.

But it seems they’ve already settled on a girl name – Sunshine – that I’m hoping may reflect a happier morning person personality than her Mom ever managed. By the time they departed for home on Sunday afternoon, the guys had settled on two boy names I’m hoping will be overruled firmly when the baby is born (if it’s a he)…

GuitarGreg and CoolAssMojo (both as single first names). I voted for Elvis, so this is NOT my fault!

Links:

Baby Names, Name Origin and Meaning

Unique Baby Names, Meanings