Tag Archives: pregnancy

Mama-to-be’s reading list

It was over a year ago that I made this reading list, and a few of the books were on the, “I want to read eventually, but not relevant right now,” list.  Well, times have changed 😉

Your Best Birth, by Rikki Lake and Abby Epstein, was the first book I read post finding out that I was pregnant, and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.  Even if you are not pregnant, have no plans to become pregnant, and can’t see any way this subject applies to you, I encourage you to read it, because current maternity practice in our country does affect us all in some way, and you may know someone who will be making choices about childbirth and could directly benefit from the information in this book.

I just finished reading The Diaper-Free Baby by Christine Gross-Loh, and I’m totally intrigued by the idea of Elimination Communication (EC).  Loh’s book makes the concept very accessible and straightforward.  Whether you’re using cloth or disposable diapers, using fewer diapers will be greener!

I also enjoyed Labor of Love: A Midwife’s Memoir, by Cara Muhlhahn, and I’m currently reading HypnoBirthing — The Mongan Method.

So, what’s still on my list?

  • The Happiest Baby on the Block, by Harvey Karp
  • Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskin
  • Diaper Free!: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene, by Ingrid Bauer
  • The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, La Leche League

I think this represents a decent balance between total information overload and being completely unprepared, although I’m sure there will be many moments for which I feel completely unprepared.  Now, if someone could just tell us what you do with that little flap on the corner of receiving blankets  — we’re split among it being a spot for baby’s head, baby’s feet, or neither (just decorative) 😉



Pregnancy thoughts for the week

This week, at least one person, possibly more, found this site through the search engine term “preggo booty.”  I’m not exactly sure who searches for that phrase, but I have some ideas, and I imagine he left this site disappointed.  So sorry!

I have my second prenatal visit next week, and given the condition of our streets after Tuesday’s ice storm, I don’t think I’ll be biking there 😦  However, I don’t plan to resort to the car — walking and public transit should do the trick, it will just require a bit more planning.

I read about Six Items or Less a few months ago — though their focus is not sustainability or the environment, the experiment shows that we probably need far less clothing than we own — and buying/owning less is green!  Now, I am not officially participating in the experiment, but between my [slowly] expanding belly and my winter itchies, my wardrobe is greatly diminished.

I have two pair of “work” pants that still fit, which I pair with my two or three sweaters that are not tight (tight =  itchy) or my two employer-branded polo shirts, so I’m unintentionally pretty close to “Six Items or Less” with my work wardrobe.  It really simplifies things in the mornings, and I plan to go through my clothes and really pare things down, though I will probably wait until after the baby, to see where my shape and weight settle, before getting rid of too much.

Depending on who you consult, my developing baby is the size of a turnip, an onion, or a hockey puck.  The food comparisons are odd, because every individual fruit or vegetable varies so much in size . . . or maybe that’s the point.

The three of us went sledding last night (4th time this season).  Given the current conditions, we renamed Art Hill.  Ice Hill was much more fitting.  The upside was an awesome sled run that took us over a foot bridge at the bottom of the hill — and drew a good bit of admiration from other sledders.  The downside?  Walking back up the icy slope!

Moving my preggo booty

With the exception of Christmas weekend and my sick day last week, I’ve achieved my goal of getting to the Y three times a week since I rejoined in mid-December.  Part of my workout is getting to the gym.  It’s 3/4 of a mile from our apartment, which is a distance that I absolutely refuse to drive.  If the weather is so bad that I cannot walk there (which is very rare), I just don’t go that day.

Most days, I alternate walking and running on the trip there.  Other than the walk/run to and from the Y, my workouts mostly consist of weight lifting, though I’ve thrown a couple of Zumba classes into the mix.  The first class was a disaster, with my uncoordinated limbs all over the place, rarely in-sync with the instructor.  I went to my second class last night, and it went much better.

I’m not a complete Zumba newbie.  In fact, I bought the video tapes back in college, when Zumba was relatively new.  After my embarrassing debut at the Y class, I searched for the tapes so I could work on my moves in private, but they’re nowhere to be found.  Fortunately, Zumba is a great cardio workout, and it’s FUN — like one big dance party — so I’ll just keep going to the classes and work on my skills there.

Tiny Choices just posted on the environmental impact of gym exercise:

. . . there’s not much of a contest that exercising at the gym is probably not the greenest way you can exercise. . . . in general [a gym] is a large open space that is kept brightly lit and heated/ventilated at all times. That is a huge energy sink!

Fortunately, they did not conclude that gyms are a bad thing to be avoided at all costs, and they give some helpful suggestions for making your gym-going as green as possible.  For me, the fact that I am paying for a gym membership is definitely a motivating factor — I want to get my money’s worth!

Anyway, after the decidedly sedentary start to the beginning of my pregnancy, I’m very happy to be getting some regular physical activity.  I’m looking forward to continuing to use my bike for transportation on the weekends, but that’s a bit limited due to weather and road conditions this time of year, so for now, the Y is a great option.

Already increasing my carbon footprint

I mean that in a very loving and motherly way, of course 🙂

The big changes won’t come for another six months or so, but for two to three weeks in November, my diet consisted almost entirely of the items pictured above.  Items with packaging.

Prior to November, we made it through several months without buying breakfast cereal (we made our own granola instead), and we very rarely buy packaged items like pretzels or anything other than basic crackers to have on hand.  And then the nausea hit, and I just wanted to feel better.

The most atrocious item is not pictured above — a plastic bag of individually plastic-wrapped hard ginger candies.  For better or worse, they weren’t all that helpful, so I won’t be buying more.

On the up side, I’ll be getting prenatal care at a place that’s less than two miles from us — a nice, easy bike ride.  All last week I was anxiously watching the roads, hoping the icy snow pack would melt in time for my first prenatal appointment on Saturday.  Melt it did, which is good, because I was very determined not to drive there!

Anyway, the first trimester nausea came with a general apathy toward many things, including blogging, which explains my scanty posting in November and December.  At this point, I’m pretty much back to posting regularly (if you disregard the last seven days), feeling semi-normal, and eating a healthy, non-packaged foods diet, though I still have a winter squash aversion, which is unfortunate, because we kind of have a lot of squash in the basement (see header photo).