Paul & Jenn's Adventures

Today Micah and I went on a spontaneous trip to visit a friend from church at St. Mary's hospital. We also stopped by the Childbirth Center there to say hi to the nurses and deliver a birth announcement card. I guess the announcement part was totally unnecessary since they were the first ones to find out, but I think they appreciate getting the card anyway. The nurses who helped us give birth were not there when we visited, but the other folks were delighted to see the now grown up (5 months!) Micah and will pass the card on. The visit led me to remember our birth experience and how lucky we were to have found such supportive hospital staff who were sensitive to our needs.  Everyday, there are thousands of babies and moms who are not treated with evidence based care in this country. (Check out the movie section of this blog for a trailer of The Business of Being Born.) One way to make your wishes known is by writing a birth plan such as the one below. It's not so much a ...

Debra is a fantastic physical therapist specializing in pregnancy and postpartum fitness in the Capital Region. I had the pleasure of taking her prenatal exercise class when I was pregnant with Micah. Besides learning great exercises and feeling relaxed after each class, I also made great connections with other women in the class. I started to get sciatica in one hip starting at about 20 weeks pregnant, and after one private session with Debra, the pain nearly disappeared instantly. I've been recommending her class to all my pregnant friends ever since. In this interview Debra shares a bit about her own motherhood experience and offers practical tips for all expecting and postpartum moms. Enjoy! How did you get interested in physical therapy and decide to pursue it as a career? Growing up I was a dancer, so I was always interested in exercise and how the body worked.  Originally, when I went to PT school, my goal was to work with professional dancers.  After graduation, ...

This is the last part of my birth story, but really it's the beginning of the story of our life with our baby. It took me a while to finish this post because I feel like is not coming to an end yet and it has already been almost 5 months after Micah was born! It's still hard to believe that we have a baby on our hands now, although it seems like we've had him forever. Becoming a mom has been an incredibly transforming experience. Although I never felt I was missing anything, after Micah was born, I feel a new completeness and contentment that I never knew I could have. Holding him in my arms, even though he's heavy at times, truly makes me feel that it was all worth it, and excited at the same time at what the future holds. Now let me flashback to the Saturday night in March right after Micah's birth. Having Milk When Micah was born, he was slippery and wet, warm and cuddly, and vivacious! The first night he slept a lot which allowed us to get rested too. We bre...

Jenn: My water broke early with no contractions at 6am on Thursday March 3rd. I woke up and found the bed under me was wet, and felt like I was peeing, but couldn't control it. It wasn't a big gush or anything dramatic, just a slow trickle. The first thing we did was to call our doula, who was getting ready to attend an all-day seminar on breastfeeding. She had told us earlier that this was the only week that she would not be available during the day time. She wanted to stop by with her amniotic fluid test kit to confirm if it's in fact my water that had broken, but as she got on her way, she quickly realized that there's no way she would be able to make it to our house, and then to Albany with rush hour traffic and get to her class on time. She did mention that amniotic fluid should be basic, so we applied our chemistry skills. I had these big pads under me in bed by now, and once in a while, there would be a bit of fluid leaking out making a little puddle. We used ou...

Jenn: Our birth story really started with our pregnancy story. Like most of my girlfriends as I was growing up, I was terrified of giving birth. The thought of having a baby was almost subconsciously taboo from all the abstinence education from school, then soon I was married and it seemed like everyone around us was suddenly having babies. It seemed unreal that it was now "OK" to be pregnant, and even somewhat enviable. I found out I was pregnant 3 days before I was leaving for a business trip to China in July of 2010. Paul: We had just gotten our brand new Simmons World Class king size mattress from mattress.com on June 16, and I am pretty sure it was the sperms from those first few nights that did the trick.  By July 17 (week 4), Jenn started to have regular night time wakings to pee.  Another week passed and Jenn started to have an extremely heightened sense of smell.  I used to smell things before she does, but now she can detect smells that even I didn't notice. ...

Our baby boy was born on March 5th, 2011 at St. Mary's hospital in Troy, NY. He was 6 lbs. 6 oz. at birth, and 18.5 inches long. See link below for pictures from his first month. He is 2 months old now, and almost 14 lbs.! So far he has been gaining about 1 lb per week, which is faster than average (they say 1/2 oz. to 1 oz. per day is average). His weight is between 75 and 90th percentile for his age now. Tomorrow we will go to his 2 month pediatrician check up, and we will get some more official numbers. He is also getting his 2 months vaccines, which are DTap and Hep B, the Doc says he might need infant Tylenol, so we are a bit nervous about that. The book my Mom is reading says that he will have reaction after 12 hours, and it will last about 24 hours. We will see how he does.