Andrea’s Weblog

I’m relieved that we’ve finally decided who is going to help deliver the baby. I had an appointment with the midwife group at the Medical College of Georgia which went pretty well. Our main goal is to have natural childbirth without unnecessary interventions. This would happen in a homebirth situation, but we’re not quite ready [...]

OK, I have to take another belly shot because it seems like overnight I have taken on the pregnant chick persona–the difficulty bending down, using the arms of chairs to pull myself out of them, difficulty getting out of bed. . . Let’s compare to last week: Well, not much of a difference in appearance [...]

Week 18, 148 pounds (baby’s weight approximately .5 pounds) Today Elizabeth and I went in for my first ultrasound. After waiting around for 45 mins I went up to the desk and asked if I could “give my sample” because I really had to go. They ushered me back to a bathroom and handed me [...]

Last week Elizabeth had a 102 degree fever off and on for 3 days. Aside from that, she was her usual self. Then a few days later she started acting like grump-zilla and a rash appeared on her face and down her belly. For three days, the Elizabeth that we know was replaced by a [...]

On a lighter note… let the belly shots begin! Here I am at 17 weeks.

Now that you’ve read our birth experience, I’ll share what we learned from it. After planning for a natural labor, what we got was not what we prepared for, nor what we outlined in our birth plan.  Through a series of uninformed decisions and not asserting ourselves, we went from being in total control of [...]

I suppose it’s about time I told Elizabeth’s birth story. . . We’d heard that eating eggplant parmesan sent some women into labor, so when Elizabeth was 7 days overdue, we headed out for Italian. Only a few hours after eating, contractions began! We were scheduled to be at the hospital at 6:00 am the [...]

I feel I need to backtrack in order for people to understand why we are considering a homebirth with our next baby. We learned a lot from Elizabeth’s delivery that opened our eyes to the how the medical community functions, particularly those involved with labor and delivery. Many of the decisions the L&D folks put [...]

It amazes me that some people can be horrified by the site of a mom nursing a baby yet not blink an eye at all the cleavage and bootie shaking seen on TV these days. Babytalk magazine’s cover this month shows a profile of a boob with a baby attached. Apparently it has evoked quite [...]

Elizabeth will come up with some surprising words, here are a few: After telling her she can’t eat her birthday cake until the following day, Elizabeth tried to trick me into putting her up on the counter next to the cake so she could stick her fingers in the frosting. She said “I want to [...]

This quote about fig trees pretty much sums up my week. “The plant starts off really cute and petite and producing just enough figs for the family to enjoy. As the years pass so does the ability of the family to consume the abundance of figs produced.” This means canning and jamming a couple pounds [...]

Elizabeth is going to be a big sister!  I’m 3 months pregnant, due January 29th–when Elizabeth is exactly 2.5 years old. It’s hard to tell how much she understands, but she loves telling people that the “new baby is right in there” and pats my tummy. After watching an episode of one of those birth [...]

Saturday was Elizabeth’s 2nd birthday. We celebrated by having a few friends over for cake, ice cream and presents. I had Elizabeth open some of the presents before company arrived to prevent her getting side-tracked from the present opening. I was afraid that if she opened her big girl underwear she would want to model [...]

We’ve had a crazy summer being gone almost every weekend for the last two months. We were in Charleston, Jacksonville, Maryland and Polo and Chicago Illinois. During the week Elizabeth used the potty while we were in the house–she’s actually been using the potty since spring. On the weekends she would go back to strictly [...]