Geek in Heels - Page 115

Oct 26, 2010 • In Baby, Claire, Personal, Pregnancy

The Birth Story, Part 2

Read Part 1…

We finally made it through the torrential rain and rush-hour traffic to the hospital. During our hospital tour, we had been instructed to go through the Emergency Room entrance — no matter the time of day — so that is what we had done the night before and it is where we headed for this time around too. However, this time J stopped the car at the door so that I wouldn’t have to walk through the rain and instructed me to go ahead while he parked the car.

Just as the night before, all I had to do at the ER registration desk was give my name and date of birth.

(This is the beauty of pre-registering at the hospital and I wholeheartedly recommend that all expecting mothers do the same!)

As soon as I finished stating my year of birth, I felt another contraction kicking in. The kind lady behind the registration desk immediately took notice and ran to grab me a wheelchair. She asked if I was alone — “No, my husband is parking the car…” — and she wheeled me to the waiting area and sat with me, holding my hand and trying to distract me through the pain until J arrived. (Did I mention I love this hospital?)

J soon appeared by my side, dripping wet and looking disheveled. “Where’s the overnight bag?” I asked.

“I’ll get it later. We don’t know if we’re staying yet, right?”

I wanted to kill him for saying that. But there was no time to argue, because right then, a nurse from Labor & Delivery arrived to escort us upstairs. Coincidentally, we got assigned the same exact room as the night before.

I was instructed to change into a gown and was prepared for another non-stress test (NST), where two monitors are attached to my stomach: one to measure the baby’s heartrate; and the other to measure the intensity, duration, and frequency of my contractions. (NSTs may also be performed regularly during the third trimester in the case of high-risk pregnancies.)

What an NST looks like (image source)

The worst part of an NST is the waiting, because they need some time to get an accurate measure of your contractions. In my case, they waited about 20 minutes before sending a nurse to check the results. She confirmed that my contractions were, indeed, about a minute long and 2-3 minutes apart. She also noted, “Hmm, they seem pretty strong for this stage…”

No sh*t, Sherlock. I could’ve told you that.

She then slapped on a glove to perform a cervix check. ‘Please let me be more than 1cm dilated…’ I thought to myself as I pleaded with my body.

“You’re 4cm dilated. Wow, you progressed fast from last night! Congratulations — you’re having a baby!”

She then went off to officially check me into Labor & Delivery. She also informed me that she will be contacting my doctor’s office to let them know that I was in labor. The time was now 10:00am.

To be continued…

Guest Post: The Dangers of Singling out the Senses

Today we have another fantastic post by Nick. Here he talks about a topic I briefly spoke of in the past: new technology at the movies.

While I am a self-proclaimed geek, I remain a traditionalist when it comes to certain topics (ie, opting for books over e-readers) and the moviegoing experience is one that I prefer old-fashioned as well. Nick does an excellent job of defending his stance against new technology at the movies, and I wholeheartedly agree with every word.

That being said, I must confess that I am guilty of forking over $15 to watch Resident Evil: Afterlife in 3D…but only because it was only available in 3D and I have such a vested interest in the franchise since having had the crap scared out of me by the first Resident Evil video game back in high school. And you know what? The first thing that came out of J’s mouth as we walked out of the theater was, “Well that was a complete waste of $30.”

Enjoy!

Apparently there is a new technology being pushed in Hollywood that will allow moviegoers to experience a full range of lifelike smells while in the theatres. Seriously. They will be outfitting the seats with a new olfactory emitter that draws from reservoirs of “base scents;” they combine to form more complex smells that match the scenes in the movie.

Obviously this new technology comes with significant costs, so movies featuring smell enhancements will cost roughly $3 more per ticket to cover them. But think of the enhanced immersion that smell will make! New movies will strive to fill the screen with fields of flowers, dumpsters, bakeries, farms, restaurants, anything that will be able to utilize the features that — up until now — had never been available. Story, cinematography, and character development will have to take a back seat to making the most audacious scent scenes.

By now you should have realized that none of this is true. There were a few failed attempts at this kind of thing (see Smell-O-Vision and iSmell (Really? Someone thought that was a good name for a product?)), but the technology was a flop.

Good thing too, I say, since it would have led to the degradation of movies aesthetics the way that this stupid 3D craze is doing now.

Stop. Do not start bellowing on about Avatar. That was some crazy new 3D that — while better than most —still failed to create any more immersion than someone spritzing bottles of Na’vi-scented mist on me every time Neytiri showed up. The movie relied so heavily on cliché and archetypes that it needed fancy technology to save it from the absolute mediocrity that it really was (see my previous post about that here).

But, as with all bandwagons, 3D has a throng of producers clamoring to pull themselves up and into the piles of money loaded in the back. Pixar slaps a pair of polarized goggles on anything that it releases these days; Up is the single best movie I have ever seen and it gained nothing by being in more than the requisite two dimensions. There was some kid’s movie about hamsters as well, but I doubt that anyone not on Ritalin remembers or cares about that one. Horror films are all following suit too. I’ve heard that Piranha 3D is supposed to be a joyous celebration of over-the-top gore and gratuitous nudity, but does the addition of uncomfortable glasses really make it any more memorable than all the other monster movies?

The worst offender, however, has to be the most recent addition to the already unnecessarily expanded Resident Evil franchise. I have not seen Resident Evil: Afterlife, nor is it likely that I will be going to the theatre to drop $14 for the privilege of being bludgeoned by what will likely be several clubs worth of stupid, but I can gather just about all I need from the trailer:

This movie appears to be doing exactly what I feared that the stupid 3D revolution would right from the start: instead of relying on solid, aesthetically pleasing cinematography suited for any kind of movie (2D, 3D, or otherwise), each new 3D feature will build their idiot creation around making things fly at the screen and, consequently, at their slack-jawed, brain-dead audience. Screw stories. Screw writing. Let’s just make some $%&# spin, zip, rocket, and smash into the camera.

Again, stop. Do not point out that The Matrix utilized revolutionary technology and action-oriented, non-standard filming to create a completely fresh take on action movies. Bullet time was used to improve the storytelling and to build the feeling of a virtual world. It did not take over the movie, and the franchise benefited from its existence, rather than suffered for it.

Going back to Smell-O-Vision, new technology is like perfume. Use it sparingly and properly and it can transform a good movie into a great movie. It can bring monsters to life, drop us in a warzone, or carry us into space. But, like perfume, when you dump it all over everything without discretion, you give everyone a headache and make them want to puke.

And no one wants to spend an extra $4 a ticket for that.

About the Author:

Nicholas Stirling is descended from alcoholic Finns and pig-rearing Scotsmen. He has tried his hand at more than a few things: custom woodworking, bookstore management, and teaching (his current occupation) to name a few of them. He is happily married to his high school sweetheart, and lives in Ontario (that’s a province in Canada). He is currently promoting his first real stab at a readable novel, entitled Emily Rose, and his short story “Pretty Flowers” will be published in an upcoming edition of Morpheus Tales. He has also been a featured contributor on Cracked.com, with his “Elves” topic page picking up over 210,000 reads. He blogs regularly on Exercising Monsters.

Things Organized Neatly

Things Organized Neatly is a Tumblr blog that showcases, well, things organized neatly.

I don’t know about you, but looking through these images makes me very happy and satisfied. The OCD in me jumps for joy.

Via Boing Boing.

Guest Post: Baby Budgeting — Diapering (And a Giveaway!)

Today Donna returns with the second post in her three-part series on baby budgeting: diapering!

After briefly delving into the three types of diapering options available to parents today in America, Donna describes myriads of ways to save on disposable diapers. I, for one, will be bookmarking this post for future (and current!) reference. And read on to the end of the post for a great giveaway. Enjoy!

Diapering 101

The big debate: cloth diapers vs. disposable diapers

When we first found out that we were pregnant, we wanted to do the green thing and go with cloth diapering. It sounded like a good idea and my mom had done cloth diapers (mostly because back in 1981, it was just the more affordable thing to do) with me.

Let’s break down some costs:

Cloth diapers — The cost of cloth diapering can vary considerably, from as low as $300 for a basic set-up of prefolds and covers, to $1000 or more for organic cotton fitted diapers and wool covers. Despite this large price range, it should be possible to buy a generous mix of prefolds and diaper covers for about $300, most of which will probably last for two children. This means the cost of cloth diapering is about one tenth the cost of disposables.

Diaper Services — Subscribing to a diaper services costs between $13 and $17 each week depending on how many diapers a family decides to order. Let’s assume the family spends roughly $15 a week for 60 diapers a week. This equals $780 annually and averages to $65 a month. Over the course of two years, the family will spend about $1500 per baby, roughly the same cost as disposables, depending on what type of covers are purchased and what type of wipes are used. If one adds in the cost of disposable wipes for either diapering system, the costs increase.

Disposable diapers — For these calculations, let’s assume that a family needs about 60 diapers a week. On average, disposable diapers cost roughly 23¢ per store-brand diaper and 28¢ for name-brand. This averages to 25.5¢ per diaper. Thus the average child will cost about $800 annually and $1,600 to diaper for two years in disposable diapers, or about $66 a month.

What did we do?

We were going to go with a cloth diapering service. However, at our baby shower, someone made us a huge diaper cake and our nurse snuck in a bunch of newborn diapers in our bag. So, with ALL of that, we didn’t need any more diapers for the first 2.5 months of our son’s life! Since we started with disposable, we ended up continuing with disposables. However, there are other ways to save on disposables!

And don’t forget about wipes! To be honest, we just buy whatever generic wipe is on sale — it doesn’t matter to us.

But for diapers, I suggest that you subscribe to Huggies and/or Pampers and get coupons from them. Also, the Sunday paper almost always has more coupons, too. I like using websites such as www.diapers.com or www.amazon.com to buy my diapers. For www.diapers.com, there are usually promos so you can get a discount, no tax and free shipping over a certain dollar amount. Also, you can mail your manufactor’s coupons into them and use them online!

And with Amazon, you definitely get some good deals. My latest deal was through them: August Parenting magazine code (20% off) + September Parents code (20% off) + possible coupon at Amazon coupons page + 30% Off Subscribe and Save discount = Awesome! Side note — sign up for Amazon Mom membership so your shipping is free along with other good deals.

How else do I describe it — check out this picture:

However, if I need to go to a store to buy diapers, I go to Target or Costco. Target is because of the stackable coupons from both Target coupons and Manufacturers coupons. For Target, I can get a Huggies Size 3 box (168) for roughly $38.99 — with the coupons in the mail ($2 off the Target brochure and $2 off the manufacturers coupon that comes in the Sunday newspaper) — that ends up being 21 cents per diaper. Plus, sometimes, Target will do a deal that if you buy two boxes, you’ll get a free $5 Target gift card.

Costco has the same diapers for $49.99 for 224 quantity which comes out to be 22 cents per diaper. BUT they don’t take manufacturers coupons so shopping at Costco is only good for diapers when there is a Costco coupon for the diapers.

Or do what I did and potty trained my son at 18 months to save even more money!

Donna has graciously offered to give one reader a 20% off coupon from Amazon! All you need to do is to comment on this post and you will be entered in this drawing.

You will have until Wednesday, 10/27/10 at 12pm EST to enter, and the winner will be emailed the coupon code. Don’t forget to include your email address so that we can contact you if you win! Good luck!

Unevolved Brands

Unevolved Brands is a Tumblr blog featuring popular logos that are simplified to circles. It just goes to show that the strongest, most memorable brands can be easily recognized even through basic shapes. However, I was disappointed in myself to realize that I was only able to identify 2/3 of the brands below.

How many can you recognize?

Via Gizmodo.

The Birth Story, Part 1

If you recall, we had gone to the hospital on the evening of September 29, only to be sent back home because I was only 1cm dilated and showed no signs of progress. And while I had been getting regular contractions, they tapered off by about 4am on the morning on September 30, leading me to believe that I had, in fact, experienced false labor.

Disappointed, I closed my eyes once more, determined to get some sleep. That, it turns out, was a great idea because I would require as much rest as possible for the approaching day…

(image source)

At around 8am, I awoke to contractions once more…except this time, they were about three times more painful than the night before and I definitely could not talk or walk through them.

Side note: several of my friends have asked what contractions feel like. To me, it felt like the worst menstrual cramps combined with horrible diarrhea cramps…times ten. The pain was not confined to my abdomen, but rather radiated through my entire midsection (including my back and sides).

That being said, while the intensity of the pain was pretty bad, it still wasn’t as bad as the horrible round ligament pain I experienced that one night in my second trimester.

I woke up J and we started timing the contractions once more. One minute long, 3 minutes apart. J wanted to head to the hospital, but I was scared that we would be sent home again. I remembered that I should follow the 5-1-1 rule — 5 (or less) minutes apart, lasting at least a minute each for an hour — and tried to wait it out for a full hour.

However, after only about 15 minutes, I yelled at J to call the doctor.

“Hi, I think my wife is in labor…yes, one minute long, three minutes apart…”

Then he handed the phone over to me. “The doctor wants to talk to you,” he said.

I grew increasingly frustrated and shot him — the messenger — a dirty look. “Do I LOOK like I’m in any condition to talk?!!” I hissed at him. However, I grudgingly took the phone and spoke.

“Hello? Yes…I’m pretty sure…I AM…IN LABOR…WE WERE AT THE HOSPITAL…LAST NIGHT…ONLY 1CM DILATED THEN…OKAY WE’LL COME IN NOW!”

Meanwhile, J was running around the house gathering all of our things again. The night before, we had calmly collected our hospital bag and other paraphernalia between my contractions. This time, we haphazardly grabbed what we could remember and bolted out the door.

Actually, I take that back. We hurried out the door, but it took quite some time to get from our apartment, down the hallway, into the elevator, to the parking garage, and into the car, because I really couldn’t walk through the contractions. Every time I felt the waves of pain starting again, I had to lean against a wall for support and try my best not to curl up into a ball.

We finally made it to the car and started for the hospital. The time was now 8:45am — rush hour! Additionally, it was raining cats and dogs. (Remember how I said that whenever something big happens in my life, it always seems to be accompanied by bad weather? Well, this was no exception.) The 15-minute drive to the hospital took almost double the time…

To be continued…

Guest Post: Sung & James

Jane is an up-and-coming photographer who recently documented her friend Sung’s pre-wedding photo shoot. I hope you enjoy the photos and the accompanying story as much as I did!

A couple weekends ago, my friend Julie and I went to give moral support to our friend Sung and James as they took their pre-wedding photos in our nation’s capital (more like the E-Jung Wedding Total Bridal Shop located in northern Virginia). If you can get some wedding photos taken before the wedding, I highly recommend it! It’s less stressful on the official wedding day because you get those bride and groom shots out of the way. We were really there to make sure Sung’s hair, make-up and everything else was in place. Luckily I brought my camera, along with my f/1/4-50 mm lens in case their photographer either loses their photos, accidentally deletes them or his camera ends up malfunctioning (eeek). Trust me; I’ve heard worst case stories from my photographer friends.

(They were calling each other names and poking fun at each other when they were posing for this shot)

(James messing with the owner of E-Jung)

(I caught him off guard in order to achieve this photo. He was obviously looking at his wife to be.)

(This was taken right near the Capitol. Their photographer told them to splash their feet in the fountain. Awkward. Let’s hope the photos turned out well for this shot.)

Sung is obviously the hotter one of the couple but when you get to know both her and James, you can understand why those two really gel together. These two goofballs keep each other and those around them laughing all the time. They had us laughing at the comebacks they threw at each other, at their charismatic photographer who taught Sung how to pose like a lady and James’ best man who was supposed to record their moment but couldn’t get the LCD screen to turn on (nice Eric). You can’t tell with James who looks kind of stiff in these photos because he’s just like Chandler from Friends — he just tightens when posing in front of the camera or as Sung would say, “He’s soo bad at pictures!” So I made sure to capture some candid photos of him and Sung. It’s only when he’s getting her to laugh is when he’s truly himself. Congrats to you two lovebirds, I’ll see you two at your wedding!

Me posing some K-pop moves

About the Author:

Jane from JaneKChun.wordpress.com resides 20 minutes from our nation’s capital. Besides working for the government, she’s also a freelance photographer and a Sunday school teacher at the church she attends. Her blog entails photos and stories that capture her ongoing journey as an up and coming adult!

Guest Post: Women in Tech, Where for Art Thou?

Susan is another reader whom, upon first glance at her own blog, I immediately added to my Google Reader. A fellow girl geek and a fantastic writer to boot, I truly feel honored to be able to share three of her posts in the upcoming weeks.

This particular post talks about a topic I often struggle with myself, and I remember bookmarking the exact same piece from TechCrunch with the intent to blog about it. Lucky for me, Susan has done the job herself in a succinct and well-written post that is worthy of much praise. Enjoy!

I work in a technology field, though sometimes my technical skills leave much to be desired; the copier at work ate one of my documents recently, leaving me staring helplessly in horror. So you might think I’d be offended by this post/rant from a while back at TechCrunch, a site I read daily, saying that everyone (ahem, women) needs to stop whining about the lack of women represented in the tech industry. They fully support women in tech, despite accusations to the contrary. They support the women they can find, that is. The reason they don’t have more women speaking at their events is that the women they ask to participate are already booked.

I don’t disagree. Sometimes it seems there are not a whole lot of us. There are even less women out there with their own start ups, though I am pleased to say I know one. But it’s not for lack of encouragement, which I think is the claim some people register. In fact, TechCrunch says that press and other outlets are falling all over themselves to shine a positive light on women entrepreneurs. An example of this is the recently failed search engine Cuil, which received extensive coverage on TechCrunch.

Women traditionally have been caretakers, and for someone who likes that role, it can be difficult to go from towing the company line to writing it. Not to mention the financial instability of starting your own company from scratch. If you are a Mom, I can see where that might make you uncomfortable. Kids are always needing expensive stuff like food and clothing. If you don’t know how well your business might do from month to month, it’s hard to figure out how to take care of your family. Read some of Penelope Trunk‘s blog posts and you’ll get the idea.

It doesn’t mean we lack ideas or even motivation. But I think it can make us more careful about carrying them out, which is not always ideal in the world of the fast and loose start up. So what will it take to get more women in tech? I don’t have the answer, and neither does TechCrunch. But I am going to keep my eyes open, and see if anyone is still complaining about it five or ten years from now. I have a feeling we won’t.

Image by Mike Licht.

About the Author:

Susan Cruickshank is a feminist, blogger and owner of too many pairs of trousers. She investigates women’s career and other work-related issues on her blog Wearing the Trousers. When not blogging, Susan enjoys the local Boston music scene as fan and sometimes performer and spending time with her husband Rob. Her other favorite activity is posting ridiculous pictures of her cats on Facebook.!

Guest Post: Impending Motherhood

While I may not have many friends in real life with babies, I have many online friends to whom I can turn for support, commiseration, and questions. Creature Gorgeous is just one of these friends, and we have developed quite a bond entering motherhood for the first time with our pregnancies just 8 weeks apart.

Not only is she drop-dead gorgeous (even at 8 months pregnant!) with one of those “basketball bump” bellies that all pregnant women long for, she is kind, oozes intelligence and charm, stylish, and a great blogger to boot. Here, she writes about her thoughts on her pregnancy and impending motherhood. Enjoy!

Note: This post was written three weeks ago so the dates are a bit off. Creature Gorgeous is now 33 weeks pregnant with her little one. Be sure to stop by her blog to congratulate her!

Hi there! You may know me as Miss Perfume on Weddingbee or the author of Creature Gorgeous blog! Here I am volunteering to guest blog for Jenny while she is away! We all cannot wait to meet her little one!

Speaking of which, I too am expecting in less than 10 weeks. Ten weeks! I can’t believe it. Literally. As a wise friend told me once, It takes all kinds. I decided to write this post after receiving a comment from a reader who suggested that the way I was writing about (and perhaps thinking about?) the baby made it seem like I was inconvenienced. I’m here to say, that, yes! baby will be burdensome…in a good way.

Our lives will change tremendously. Hopefully as things unfold, it will be more apparent that we’re just a couple trying to figure it all out as we go along, feeling at once happy, perplexed, and yes, at times, inconvenienced. It’s a reality that we won’t be able to do some of the things we used to do or at least they’ll be more difficult to accomplish. But it doesn’t make us love the baby any less. We’re reconciling our DINK lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed while doing the best we can for our baby-to-be. That is the balance we seek and here is a small peek into our journey of figuring it out.

So as some of you may know, our baby was not at all planned. Having just married in May 2009, my husband and I were *just* settling into married life, enjoying getting to know each other as a married couple, wearing our new identities of Mr. and Mrs. very proudly. We were not even sure that children would be a part of our future. And then ten months into our newly-wedded bliss I found out that I was pregnant! What? How is it possible that two older people like us (I am almost 38 and my husband is 42) could have done this without intending to? For months, we were somewhere between denial—well, denial isn’t the right word; it’s more like disbelief—excitement, and ignorance. It had not really set in that we were going to be parents.

In fact, we had been quite lazy and slow about doing anything related to preparing, save for being really diligent about prenatal care. It’s been a somewhat passive experience for us, and the reality of the baby had not hit us…until now…nearly 8 MONTHS into the pregnancy. All this time, we’ve been determined not to accumulate unnecessary baby stuff and clutter our home with baby paraphernalia (we’ll see how that works out).

I have not purchased but a few pieces of maternity clothing—$66-worth to be exact (having been given or lent much of it). I’ve done some cursory reading and have apps and weekly email updates online and on my phone, though I have been given several books (which I haven’t really read until now). I have not really purchased anything for the baby (we have been given a lot of hand-me-downs). We won’t have a nursery (because we’re selling our home). We only visited a baby store once and just looked at strollers.

Perhaps this apprehension to *not* change our lives too much is a function of having been single and child-free for so long, because we’re old and stuck in our ways. Amanda at Doubly-Happy sent me this great article on older couples who try to maintain their lifestyle while introducing a child into it. It resonated with me big time.

But finally, last night as I was preparing for bed, in the quiet and still of the night I had a (to me) profound thought: I will have a new relationship in less than 10 weeks. A new person in our lives who will live in our house and with whom we’ll spend a lot of time. Nights will no longer be leisurely and unstructured. That PERSON will be my responsibility…all mine. I felt a twinge of excitement and incredulousness. A cold sweat came over me, the kind that comes when you realize some truth. Sure, I’ve been marveling at (and baffled by) obvious bodily changes, the large belly, the doctor’s visits. But those things are pregnancy-related.

Pregnancy, to me has been a medical condition, a thing that’s happening to my body, like a cold (but not in a negative way—my pregnancy has been so easy and wonderful). For me, it is separate from parenthood. Impending parenthood: I hadn’t thought about it. I have the charge of caring for a helpless human being, to ensure his/her proper development, well-being both emotional and physical, for making sure s/he is brought up to be a good person and citizen. I’m not sure I fully understand this or how to go about it. I’m neither nervous nor blasé, just waiting. Waiting for something to hit me (like the first sight of baby) to get me moving and motivated. I’ve only focused on taking care of my body and the making sure things are developing well for the baby. Oh yeah, The Baby. S/he is still very conceptual to me. But things are changing.

It takes all kinds, they say. But now, after some midnight epiphany, I feel like I’m actually going to be a mom. I have started reading the books, looking more longingly at baby outfits online, and am really getting into it. And with every day that I’m feeling more and more pregnant, with every inch that my belly grows, with every kick the baby makes, and with the ever-increasing discomfort, I start to become more attached to the vision and dream of baby. The only difference between me and the woman who has dreamt all her life of having children is that it just took me a little more time to process. And I now share in the same excitement and anticipation that other moms-to-be feel. Baby is more real now and I can’t wait to meet him (or her). Whether or not our home stays a museum still remains to be seen. 😉

To follow my on the last leg of my journey (or the new chapter in my life, whichever way you want to look at it), please stop by at Creature Gorgeous.