Biophilliac Mommy: Infant safety and first aid

Showing posts with label Infant safety and first aid. Show all posts

Thursday, May 10, 2012

"New" Baby

I must say, it has only been a few days since Meo started scooting around the house, but already it feels like he is a new baby. I am inclined to both mourn the passing of his very dependent stationary days, and to celebrate his excitement as a whole new world has just opened up to him. His is fast and curious and utterly adorable. I feel like I am starting to get to know him in a new way; I am now able to see what sorts of things fascinate him as he scoots over to explore them. He is learning so fast, and he is so happy and excited about everything right now. I was worried that once he started crawling around he wouldn't want to have anything to do with me anymore, but so far that's not the case. If anything, we have even more fun playing now and have all sorts of new games to master. And when he wants some mommy love, he just starts scooting in my direction and tugs at my pants, and it melts my heart. So far, the things he is most fascinated with are pulling books off his book shelf, knocking down block towers once he reaches them across the room, playing with cat toys, scooting after the cats, and wires (eek). Needless to say, we are working on some serious baby proofing this week. Here is a video of Meo and Buddy this morning:

We talked a little bit about food at our pediatrician visit yesterday, and that has also led to some pretty big changes for us. I had been putting off introducing Meo to wheat products and nut products, not really sure when it was appropriate for him to have those things. Apparently, a lot of nutrition books say that you should put off introducing those foods until there system is more mature. However, pediatricians now agree that it is best to introduce those highly allergenic foods early on. So she encouraged us to start giving him things like toast and cheerios and peanut butter and almond butter soon. She also said that since we have Meo on a vegetarian diet that it is especially important that we make sure he consumes enough iron. Up to this point, I had been making his grains on my own by grinding foods like quinoa, barley, rice, and oatmeal in a coffee grinder then cooking them on the stove top. But the whole grains that we have been consuming are not fortified, and she suggested that we start giving him grains that are fortified with iron. This makes my life a little easier because now I feel comfortable just buying some of the baby food grains at Whole Foods which don't require any cooking and are pumped up with nutrition. There is one brand of food that looks especially good to me called Happy Baby Foods. They organic, completely natural and enriched with things like iron, probiotics and DHA (for brain development). So far Meo likes the Happy Baby Foods brand sweet potato puffs; stay tuned to see how he likes the oatmeal and mixed grains. I guess feeding him Cheerios is also a good idea because they have lots of iron, are tasty, and are fun for babies to pick up and eat. Meo had some Cheerios and bananas for breakfast this morning and loved them.

Eating Cheerios for the first time (8 months)

I really do love watching Meo grow and cheering him on as he embarks on new adventures. I feel like we are both learning together, and it is a wonderful, exciting time!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

36th Week of Pregnancy Update

36th Week of Development

It's hard to believe that today is the final day of my pregnancy before I am considered full term. It seems like it went by too quickly to me, but we are feeling prepared for Mattimeo's arrival at this point. The nursery is all set (I am going to save pictures of that for the next post) and we have everything we need; I just have to pack my hospital bag and have that ready. This is all very exciting and unreal.

Lots of fun things thing report from over the last week or so. To start with, last Friday Robbie had a "dadchelor party". This was something I read about in an article online (http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/15/dadchelor-parties-first-time-fathers-party-hard-before-babies-arrive/) and shared with Robbie. Of course he thought it sounded like a great idea, and made plans right away. Basically a dadchelor party is one last time to hang out with all your guy friends, get drunk and do whatever the heck you want before you become a father (a lifetime and life-changing commitment). It as not as though he still won't be able to hang out and have fun with friends once he is a father, but it is a pretty cool way to celebrate the end of an era and the start of a new one. Our awesome friend Gib agreed to host a party at his house, and Robbie had great time hanging out, drinking, eating yummy snacks and playing video games with his best friends. He drank himself into quite a stupor, and I ended up picking him up at 2:00 in the morning because he wasn't in a state to walk home (I didn't mind because I had just got up for a snack anyways). When I talked to him in the morning though, he reported that he had an amazing time, and I am really glad he did that. I am also glad he had the party sooner rather than later, because the last thing I need is to go into labor when my husband is off somewhere too drunk to drive me to the hospital!

On Sunday, Robbie and I went to one last class at the Birthplace- Safe starts: Infant safety and CPR. The class was about four hours long and covered a ton of material. First we went over home safety. We watched a video about all kinds of safety issues in the home, then had to fill out a form to rate how safe our homes are for babies.The teacher gave us some great handouts that outline all the things we saw in the video which will be a great reference when we need to childproof our apartment. The second part of class focused on CPR and foreign body airway obstruction techniques. We all had our own dummies to practice giving CPR to babies and small children, as well as to assist with choking babies and children. They have really simplified things since the last time I took a first aid class which makes the thought of having to rescue someone a bit less daunting. Now, no matter if you are giving CPR to a baby, child or adult, you are supposed to give 30 compressions, check their airway, and give 2 breathes. We practiced lots of different scenarios, which if nothing else, helped us to remember those numbers to start to make it second nature as to what needs to be done in an emergency. Finally, we discussed car seat safety. A lot of the stuff about car seat safety was review for Robbie and I since we already went to a car-seat safety check a couple of weeks ago, but it was still nice to go over. There is so much information about infant safety, it's almost overwhelming. For the most part though a little common sense will take us a long way. I think that class was really great and gave us important information that we wouldn't necessarily have thought of on our own...I am glad we went.

Thursday I had another appointment at Back Cove Midwives. This time Robbie decided to work from home for the day so he could go in with me, which I was really happy about. Part of this visit was to have a Group B Strep Test. This just involved me going into the bathroom and taking a sample with a sterile swab of inside my vagina and along my perineum. Group B Strep is a bacteria found in some people's digestive systems, but because of the relative closeness of the anus and vagina, sometimes this bacteria can pass to the vagina. This bacteria is harmful to infants, so if pregnant women test positive, they are usually set up with an IV the pumps antibiotics into them while they are in labor to prevent the baby from getting sick (For more information: http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/groupbstrepinfection.html). Only about 25% of women test positive for the bacteria (and it seems to be random who has or doesn't have it), so hopefully I test negative. I would really rather not go through labor with an IV hooked up to me, as I hate needles and it freaks me out to have things stuck in my arm. I will find out next week what my results were. The rest of the appointment went well. Robbie and I have written a birth plan, which outlines how we want different situations to be treated through labor, childbirth and beyond while we are in the birthing center. It's main advantage is that any new person who comes into my room knows that we are planning on having a relaxed, natural birth and prevents people from asking me millions of questions while I am focusing on birthing a baby.We went over our birth plan with the mid-wife and she helped us to cross out things that are unnecessary to write down because they are done automatically at Mercy, as well as offer any suggestions she had. Now I will make a final draft, and I will give copies of that to the midwives next week to keep in my file as well as bring copies to the hospital. The normal part of the appointment went well. Both the baby and I are healthy. The height of my fundus this week was 35 inches, and the babies heart rate was normal. She noticed that he had dropped down quite a bit. She said he is not fully engaged yet, but definitely low and flirting with the idea. She told me to try to keep him in there until at least 38-39 weeks because even though 37 weeks is full term, there can still be complications.

I believe this is what you would call "nesting"

The rest of the week was great. I got to see my good friend Josh on Friday, who I haven't seen since I became pregnant since he was working on finishing up his Master's degree in Florida and spent a little over a month visiting Zambia (where he had traveled to during the peace corps a couple years ago). We went for a nice, long walk to catch up and it was really great to see him again. Its nice when seeing an old friend feels so natural as though no time has passed at all. Friday night was the first Friday art walk in Portland. Our friend Gib recently acquired some studio space and was on display in a gallery. So Robbie and I went to go check it out and ended up hanging out there most of the night. While we were there we met up with another old friend that we hadn't seen since college, which was really great.

The state of our balcony garden as of now

The state of our balcony garden as of now: angel's trumpet

The state of our balcony garden as of now

The state of our balcony garden as of now: basil and rosemary

The seeds I planted at the beginning of the season are coming up

The state of our balcony garden as of now: begonias

Some of Gib's art up at the Dooryard

Finally, on Saturday Robbie and I made a trip to Waterboro to go strawberry picking at Doles Orchard. This is the farm I used to work at off an on: once for a summer, and then again in autumn a couple years later. The owners, Nancy and Earl, are really great people and it was nice to see them again and be back on the farm. They are having a really great year for strawberries fortunately, and we picked a flat of berries in about 1/2 hour. Robbie's mom and dad came with us, which made the experience even more enjoyable. After picking berries we went to his parents house to visit and do some laundry. The cloth diapers we got need to be washed a couple of times before use, so we wanted to do that in order to get ready for the baby's arrival. Robbie also helped his parents move wood down into their basement, then played Borderlands with his Dad while I finished up laundry and took a walk with his mom to the lake to dip our feet in the water and get some exercise. After visiting his parents, we went to see my Dad and Sue for a little bit, then went to see my brother and his family on our way home. My brother's in-laws are having a big campout at their house for the holiday, so we got to see lots of people and cute dogs. Our nephew Bryce is 8 months old now and is growing into a really handsome and happy little boy, it was good to see him as well as Brian and Nicole.