Preparedness

I'm always thinking ahead. What will be my next project? When do we go on a trip next? How should be plan the garden for the upcoming summer? If I;m finishing this, then when can I start that? Well, I'd like to think this is to my advantage (although, possibly this is a disillusion :)). One way I believe it came to my advantage is when we were shopping a fun and learning store in the area. All the products the store sells are learning toys, and also they have a lot of "natural" products. Products made with wood and non-toxic paint, rather than plastic. While we were there, we spotted on display a cute kitchen set up for a child. It was completely wooden (eco-friendly rubber wood) and was on display with some wooden foods that can be cut. Although Flora is only 4.5 months old, I was thinking ahead. How awesome this would be for her to learn and grow with! If this were the right sale price, we should get it now and give it to her a few years from now. I turned the corner and there was one in a box, never opened, and about 40% off the original price! What a deal! However, it was still a bit too expensive. So, I asked if they'd be willing to sell the display item, which was in great condition and no assembly required. She would, and for over 60% off the original price. Sweet! So, we now will have a kitchen set for Flora, along with some fun food to cut with it. The extra bonus is that when we decide to give it to her, no shopping needed for that birthday or Christmas :) Call me a geek, but I love thinking ahead, and being frugal about it :)

Quiet Moments

The work week always seems difficult for me as a mommy. I am blessed that I can do my 40 hour work week from Monday - Thursday, giving me a 3 day weekend to focus on being a mommy, and of course, get stuff done around the house, errands, etc. However, because of my Monday - Thursday, I only see Flora for about 1 hour each of those days. When I leave in the morning she's still sleeping, and then she goes to bed about 1 hour after I get home in the evening. This morning I was fortunate enough to have a few extra minutes so instead of my quick checking on Flora and giving her a gentle sleeping hug, I sat next to her while she slept and I ate my breakfast quietly. It was a peaceful and loving way to start the day, and even though she probably never knew I was there, it helped me get my mommy time in. I foresee getting up a little earlier now so I can have my breakfast with Flora. :)

Our Baby!!

WE HAVE A BABY!!

Flora May Reitz

5 lbs. 15 oz.

18.5 in. long

born 09/15/09

at 7:15 AM

To everything....turn, turn, turn....

The title is appropriate lyrics by The Byrds to sing to our baby, who is still in breech position. Since she hasn't yet turned, we are now scheduled for a c-section. They simply won't deliver a breech baby naturally - too risky. So, unless this little one moves out of breech on her own, she will be welcomed into our big world on Tuesday, Sept. 15th. :) Wow! What an amazing step forward in this process! I guess I never really expected to know in advance what day would be her birthday...but it's now right around the corner! We are so excited to welcome our little one into the world and we have a lot of love waiting for her! Tim has been working on some final things at home and I have been doing as much as I can from the couch or kitchen table. Today I cored and diced about 100 tomatoes which Tim then took care of the rest of the canning. We have just about everything checked off our to-do list...it feels good! For most of Sunday we can relax. Monday, we both complete a full day of work before leaving bright and early on Tuesday morning for the birth of our baby.

Early in our pregnancy we hired a doula to help us with labor assistance. Since it doesn't appear we are going the labor route (not by choice or without trying all other means!), our Doula has given us the option of being there for the c-section and post-op, or for a post-partum trade out. We have decided to have her with us for the c-section and post-op. She will be an extremely important person in keeping us calm and collected while I'm prepped for the operating room. She will be in the O.R. with us, allowing someone to always be by my side and then she will stick around afterwards to get the bonding process going with our little one, help get breastfeeding established, and just help out in general. I am so happy to have someone with us who has supported this type of situation and knows Tim and I. I know the nurses will be simply amazing, but we are really another patient to them. Our doula knows us as people.


I had planned on having music during labor, but since the c-section was planned, I gave up on the idea. Our doula suggested that we still plan to have music and keep the mood relaxed with dimmed lights, etc. for the pre-op. I'm working now on the music compilation. I'm keeping it upbeat/relaxed to stay positive. Between Tim, myself, and our doula - we will make the c-section a positive experience, considering it's major surgery! I pray that all goes safely and well and that the recovery is quick and comfortable. Also, that our little one is healthy and happy when she arrives!

The day is almost here!

Moderate Bed Rest in the U.P.

Wow - life's plans have taken a bit of a different direction this past week. At my last Dr. appointment my blood pressure was up, so now I'm on "moderate" bed rest. This means that I'm supposed to be at home relaxing, sitting, no errands, no chores, etc. Thankfully, my employer has been so flexible with me and is allowing me to work from home full-time on my laptop. Working from home is actually going very well, feeling productive and accomplished. Also, at the last appointment, we found out that our dear daughter is still quite comfortable in her breech position. We did a lot of homeopathic attempts to have her turn prior to this revelation, and nothing worked. So, our next option was to go in for an external version to have them attempt to manually turn her. They tried with all their might for 45 minutes and she didn't want to budge. So, at this time, she's still breech. Unless she turns on her own, we will be scheduling a c-section. This has been a bit defeating to me, but I understand that we need to do what is the best route for safe delivery and that our goal outcome is a healthy baby! We have all the love in the world waiting for her when she arrives!

Over labor day weekend was our last opportunity to go visit our favorite place before baby arrives, White Sky Woods. We left on Friday evening so we would have a few full days instead of traveling Saturday morning. Our trip was so well needed. Since I'm on moderate bed rest, I did nothing but relax. We read, listened to NPR, played games, napped. Tim finished one last thing on the outhouse to have it winter ready. It was a great weekend to unwind, relax physically and mentally, and slow down the pace of life before our baby arrives. Here is my favorite photo from the weekend. I took this when I woke up from an outdoor nap under the apple tree. The sun was shining so brilliantly illuminating the leaf. Oh, we also saw our friend - Paulie the Porcupine! He was chilling out up in one of the Aspen trees.

Cloth Diapering

Upon finding out we are pregnant, we made the decision to try to keep our earth-friendly practices consistent with baby. She deserves less chemicals (food and body products), more natural remedies in life and also the privilege to leave behind a smaller carbon footprint (in a literal and figurative sense!). One of the decisions we made was to choose cloth diapering. In doing research, I couldn't believe how far cloth diapering had advanced since when I was a kid. There were many options and all different styles. These new cloth diapers are no different than putting on disposable diapers, expect that you reuse them over and over again. No pins, no special folding...just put it on the baby and velcro up. The great thing about the type we chose (BumGenius 3.0) is that they are one size fits all...adjustable to your growing baby.

So, we made the purchase and now we have over 30 diapers in a variety of colors to keep us going. No running to the store because we ran out of diapers. No wasteful piling of garbage. No spending thousands on diapers. It's shown that it will cost around $2,000 to diaper a baby through their time prior to potty training. Our cloth diapers were $500, plus the cost of laundering, which is simply water and slight cost of laundry soap (since we make our own). We have drying racks to air dry the diapers which will keep them in good condition longer - so no electricy costs on that front either. We were excited when our delivery arrived via FedEx! We ordered with a special discount that was running through clothdiaperoutlet.com. The husband/wife duo had excellent service and shipping was free. They have many natural products for baby care and other earth-friendly solutions on her site. There a few more purchases we plan to make with them, including wetbags (nylon bag to put dirty diaper in on-the-go) and reusable diaper pail liners that can be washed with the diapers.

It feels good to be eco-friendly and save money :)

Passing it on...

Through the pregnancy, it's been tempting to buy cute baby clothes, but we've done a good job controlling that.  We only have a few pieces.  We figured people always like to buy cute outfits, even when what you REALLY need is practical things, so that's what we've avoided buying clothing for her.   Well, wow, generosity has taken place in a serious manner.  One of my coworkers has a daughter who was born in late August a few years ago.  That means that the sizing and season of her daughter's clothes will be similar to our needs.  She said she would bring some stuff in that she would like to get rid of.  People say these kinds of things, so I wasn't counting on it.  Monday when I came in, there were 3 BIG boxes by my desk.  All clothes!   We are officially set on clothing for our daughter  - at least for the first year and a half!    She passed on everything from newborn to 18 months!  We have lots of great things from shoes to onesies to sleepers to bibs.  My mom also had picked up some cute things to contribute to our clothing needs last time I saw her.  We are so blessed to have all this wonderful stuff without having to acquire it on our own.  Attached is a picture of just SOME the great stuff my coworker passed on....this picture is only newborn to 6 months, huge stacks!  Even though she said she didn't want any money, I plan to do something nice for her.   This was such a nice gesture and needs to be noticed :)

We have a doula!

Since we are going about the pregnancy and our life in general in a natural way, we figured that it would be helpful for us to look into hiring a doula.  Most people are familiar with midwives, but since we are seeing a medical doctor through a women's care practice, midwife wasn't much of an option.   Insurance doesn't cover midwives, and it would be very difficult to birth anywhere but home with a midwife.  We felt safest with a medical setting, but still want to be holistic.  We found out that a doula would be a great fit to what we were looking for.  For those that don't know, a doula is a labor-support professional who offers emotional, physical, and educational support during pregnancy and labor.  The support is for both mother and father.    A doula does NOT take the place of the father.  The doula will arm Tim with techniques that will be suitable for him to best comfort me, and have a greater understanding of what's taking place.   We just felt it would be wonderful to have someone in there that's aligned with our philosophies to help us, explain to us what's happening, and make us comfortable.  Years and years of studies show that women who have doula support are less likely to have c-section, have analgesia/pain meds, give birth with vacuum or forceps, and report negative feelings about the childbirth experience.  The doula we chose will give 3-4 prenatal visits for education purposes as well as be there for the entire labor/delivery, a few hours afterwards, and provide follow-up support.  We are looking forward to developing a relationship with our doula! I feel positive that this support will be one more way to make the labor and delivery an experience as pleasant as it can be. 

What's Up?!

No excuses, but I haven't posted since APRIL!! That's simply too long. So, what have we been up to? We went up to the property two weekends ago, we simply didn't want to wait too long to go up again so we decided that we would do another quick weekend. It was great. We rode our bikes with dogs in tow (on leashes running next to us) down to Lake Superior. The ride there was good, but the ride back was too much for me. My body said "I'm too tired - you stop now." :) I pushed the bike back the last 1/8 mile. We built a fire and enjoyed nature that night. We chilled out on Sunday morning because we were simply too exhausted. In one day we cleared a path on the front 10 acres. It was a lot of work for Tim because he had to use the machette to clear some areas. We are happy how it turned out and plan to continue making some trails. Our next trip up is a long weekend, so we have more time to do things and more time to relax!!! Ahhhh......relax. We haven't had a day off of work since 2009. It will be nice to have an extended weekend. I may want more after that :)

The next weekend we celebrated Mother's Day at our house. My Mom and Dad and Tim's Mom came over. We had a burrito bar and then showed them the video of our 20 week ultrasound. Oh yea! I forget to mention that. We had the 20 week ultrasound. We found out if baby is a boy or girl. Well, we showed the 4 minute video to our parents and they all guessed boy. Well, SURPRISE - it's a girl!! We were surprised too, Tim and I both felt boy. The ultrasound was great, but she was being a little stinker...turning away and moving all over the place. The Dr. was able to get most of the measurements he needed to be sure she was all on track, but he didn't get a good enough look at her heart. We have another Ultrasound in early July that he will take a better look at her heart.....and hopefully she cooperates! There were no worries, so we are very happy about that. Since she was moving all over the place, from what he could get a look at he felt that baby is a girl! I guess we will for sure know by next ultrasound :) Exciting times! We also showed our parents some video we've shot of the land.

My birthday came and went on Monday, 5/11. I'm 30 now - wow! Shocking, but acceptable. This weekend we have errands to run and will also be going to the Green Bay Botanical Gardens. I recently started working with a gal that works there, she was in my media class. Since Tim and I love gardens, we thought it would be nice to support this local group. This will be our first visit with membership. We haven't been there for about 3 years, I'm looking forward to it!

Hope all is well with our family and friends!

Clothing Give In

After we found out about being pregnant, suddenly baby clothing was looking pretty cute!  We've avoided buying any at this point, since we're sure we'll find lot of nice used stuff and have many essentials from gifting.  Well, today I gave in.  There is a store by my office called "A Better Footprint" and she has all fair trade stuff.  Since it was Earth Day today, she had 22% off of everything in store.  I decided to check it out and found the cutest shirt and onesie (with hat!).  I couldn't resist.  I got the onesie in size 6mo-12mo, and the shirt 12-18mo.  The Onesie says "Future World Explorer" and the shirt says "Peace, baby".  So cute! They are on a unbleached 100% cotton and the sale proceeds go to a group in Honduras (where Tim and I honeymooned) for treatment of women with HIV/AIDS.   Here's a photo!

Cloth Diapering

We've been doing some research on cloth diapering to decide which cloth diaper to get for when baby arrives.  We found a great Pocket Diaper called Bum Genius 3.0.  They are affordable, fit all sizes from infant to toddler (with out having to buy a different size for each weight group), and are environmentally friendly because they are washable and reusable.  I was reading a local blog that shares a lot of great information about "natural" parenting.  She also owns a local shop/cafe: momandpopplace.com

On the blog I found this great information advocating cloth diapering:

Reason Number 1: The Environment

            Disposable diapers are the third most common consumer product filling up our landfills today.  One baby will contribute at least a ton of waste the local landfill!  Not only do disposable diapers take over 500 years to decompose, they require toxic chemicals and vital resources to manufacture.

Reason Number 2:  Your Family’s Money

Disposable diapers cost about $1500-$2000 per child.  Yikes.  You can cloth diaper all your babies for under $500.  And you can use the same diapers for more than one child.  Even with the cost of water and detergent, you WILL save a ton of money.

Reason Number 3:  Your Baby’s Health

Disposable diapers contain polypropylene and other synthetics and chemicals, and dioxins from bleaching.   Their super-absorbency encourages caregivers to go longer between changings.  Many parents find that their babies suffer less diaper rash and irritation when diapered in cloth.  Soft cottons mean healthier bottoms!

We're Having a Baby!

I suppose the title of this post told what we have to share, but I'll say it again - We're having a baby! We are as excited as any first parents could be, and we are so blessed to have this baby on the way. The picture below was taken at 12 weeks and 1 day. The heart was beating, the baby was moving all over the place, and hands with fingers and feet with toes could be seen. It was simply amazing! I've been feeling really good, and I hope that that stays the case for the next 6 months :) The due date is September 22nd, which seems like a long time off, but I have a feeling it will just breeze by! In just 7-8 weeks we should be able to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl.  There is a poll on the page here where you can vote if you think baby will be a boy or a girl (to the left).  I won't tell you which once I think it is :)  What an exciting time of our life!

Baby!  Head on left.  Legs on Right.  

Picture doesn't show, but I saw feet and hands with fingers!