The video is a little lame.  I prefer Joel Stein’s article from Time that the video was a supplement to. It’s his wife’s placenta getting cooked in the video. He’s skeptical.

I’m maybe sort of a hippy, but I’d pass on the placenta pills. We don’t got a spare $275 for a placenta chef, and I’m not about to do it myself. I doubt we’d even bring the thing home to plant a tree over…I know it’s full of 9 months of nutrients, but I figure we’ll have other things on our minds.

People do all kinds of things with placentas. “Making prints of the placenta, using either the blood that covers it or ink and paint, are not uncommon,” I read on the Hip Chick Pregnancy Guide page. Not uncommon? Check back with me in 5 months to see if, postpartum, I have the urge to make conceptual art with our baby’s placenta. Maybe we can sell the baby’s placenta! I like that idea. Get this kid working before she’s even a few hours old.

We’ll be paying $995/month here, vs. $1020/month for the older place. But here we have to pay for the garbage, which we didn’t before, so I think we’re coming out even steven.

Our new house is a lot cozier. That’s code for less livable space, an odd choice considering we’re going to have more people here in 5 months or so. But we got rid of about 4 truckloads of yucky furniture we didn’t like and clothes we didn’t wear, books we won’t read. I don’t have a desk now. I use my laptop on the kitchen table and put it away when I’m done. The minimalism of this is comforting to me now.

So I was out of blogland for a bit, but now I’m back. The move was cheap. Friends and family generously helped us (easy to recruit when you’re preggers), and since we didn’t go far we just did multiple loads in our pickup–no U-Haul required.

We moved for a few reasons. Our next door neighbors were loud and trashy. This place has a better yard and better layout. And ceiling fans. And carpet in the bedrooms. A bunch of small factors that add up to a much better situation. A fresh slate for our new family to come.

In 2007, Ricki Lake and filmmaker Abby Epstein came out with a documentary about the unnatural state of childbirth in America called “The Business of Being Born.” Now they have a book, “Your Best Birth: Know All Your Options, Discover the Natural Choices, and Take Back the Birth Experience.”

I have not seen the Ricki Lake childbirth movie. I’ve never even seen “Hairspray.” But they had this book at the library, and despite my suspiscions, it’s the baby book I’ve read most carefully so far.

“Your Best Birth” has an agenda, a palpable one: get the reader to question the current system of hospital births. Why are so many babies born by C-section? How I assert more control over how my child is brought into the world? Could it be more natural, or more comfortable for everyone involved?

So “Your Best Birth” lays down all of your birthing options, and illustrates all types of birthing scenarios with that labor stories of famous people and regular people.  An savvy reader would take these things and use them to help her make informed decisoins about her birthing plan.

But this book also made me pretty angry at the whole system…the “business of being born,” if you will. Of course in America we have babies the most assbackwards (and expensive) way. I tried to keep my wits about me as I read so that I would not fall into a trance of anti-establishment rhetoric. 

Would Vic and I prefer to have a home delivery with a midwife? Hell yes, but we can’t afford it. And that’s one thing not addressed by the book. Over and over again the authors tell you to find another hospital or doctor if the one you are dealing with won’t take your requests seriously.

But I have Kaiser, and though they probably do have some options for a mother, the insurance plan does not cover midwives or doulas or at-home births. This means we’ll have to fend for ourselves in a gigantic Kaiser hospital. I’ll stick up for what we want (no epidural, limited electroic monitoring through the labor, no episiotomy, no yanking the baby away bore I get to bond and nurse), but we’ll also have to settle for what we get. 

Had I no insurance and we’d have to pay out-of-pocket, probably we would do a home delivery. I think it would be life-changing less AND expensive  than a hospital delivery. But with my fairly awesome Kaiser plan, we won’t have many out-of-pocket birthing expenses, so that’s that. We can’t afford to splurge on a dream birth when a safe, will-do-but-not-dream birth is available for more or less free. Were we a couple who runs in the well-funded circles that Ricki Lake runs in, I’m sure we could be more choosy.

My best friend is the kind of person who wants to do things by the book. Her two lovely children were born in the most status quo manner possible, which my best friend finds reassuring. That’s what she wanted in her labor, which is all well and good. If you feel the same, ”Your Best Birth” will probably piss you off and land in the trash can.

But for a person like me, this book will be very helpful–invaluable, in fact. It’s pointed me in the direction to talk to women I trust about their deliveries so that I can glean wisdom from them and decide what will be best for me. I’m not swallowing the book whole. You have to cherry-pick what you think will be helpful in your situation. And in ours, we don’t have too many choices: it more or less has to be a hospital birth, which whatever Kaiser doctor on call happens to show up. But we can still assert our desires. After all, who’s having this baby? Not the nurses or the doctor. That’s the biggest thing I got from this book: your birth is YOURS. Don’t be afraid to express what you really want. 

It’s a moment we all identify with; everyone goes through phases where they evaluate the decisions and think, “how do I manage to screw up everthing, without fail?”

I’m in one right now. I usually try to resist indulging in such self-pity, but backing up and considering the major choices of your life is necessary at times. 

The gist of it is that everything Vic and I have done to improve our lives in the past four years or so had backfired. We moved to New York so I could get an awesome job, and I got no job whatsoever. We then moved to Portland to get a fresh start, and found barely acceptable jobs after months of searching and interviews. We both make significantly less than we did 5 years ago, and it’s not like we left our jobs to pursue our passions. We left hoping  to get better jobs. Good intentions, ill-conceived execution.

Now I shelve books in a library, which is pretty awesome as far as a way to spend 20 hours a week, but it’s a cruddy way to get money into savings, let alone make credit card payments. Vic hates his job, talks constantly of quitting, and has substantial OCD issues that his insurance plan just informed us will not be treatable for 6 months because they were a pre-existing condition. I don’t think he’ll be happy, period, until he gets professional help…help we can’t afford, but don’t qualify to get assistance for.

So that’s on my mind. How will we afford a baby when I work less, and how will Vic’s mental state be when a baby comes if he is already unstable right now? What on earth made me think it was a good idea to have a baby anyway, or that we can ever manage to live anything resembling a comforatable, modest life? I don’t have a great career to fall back on. I’m a freelance writer with no college degree.  Perfect material for a mom. A mom on welfare.

Well, boo-hoo. Like I said, I only indugle in such sorry thoughts from time to time. I prefer to be proactive instead. You have to hope, but not assume, that your ship will come in. But usually it’s little rafts rather than one ship. You have to have faith the next raft will show up sometime in the near future. Utnil then, vent on your blog.

This baby book is not about the things you need to buy before the baby comes home, or what will happen when you visit the doctor at week 22, or how to put a cloth diaper on a baby. It’s about your state of mind as you do all of these things. Your mental approach to motherhood.

Mindful Motherhood: Practical Tools for Staying Sane During Pregnancy and Your Child’s First Year author Cassandra Vieten says that our own awareness and presence of mind will translate to the child-parent experience. Be mindful. “Mindful motherhood, simply put, is being present in your body and connected with your baby no matter what is happening,” writes Vieten. So if the baby won’t stop crying, the approach is not “what the hell should I do to make this baby stop crying,” but “the baby is crying right now because she is trying to tell me something, and if I can’t figure out what, we’ll ride it out together.”

It’s hard to be mindful all of the time. While reading this book, for instance, I was not mindful at all. It was 90-odd degrees and too hot to move, so I collapsed on the bed with the fan on and scanned chapters in between taking heat-comatose catnaps.

But we can aim to be mindful more, especially as mothers, and especially as mothers with financial woes pressing on us. Because even if you are broke, you still have a child, and though fiscal stability can soothe one’s nerves, taking the time to be fully present when you are with your child runs up no bills.

As me about all of this in six and a half months and we’ll see what I think of mindful motherhood then. But I do belive that staying collected, even at the cost of a clean bathroom or a weeded lawn or Ween playing in Bend in August, keeps us from losing our shit as often.

…but I only get 7 weeks. The county I work for offers a Summer Wellness Program of very affordable fitness classes to its employees, probably with the hopes that active, healthy workers cost them less than lazy, depressed ones. My second class is tomorrow and I am very excited.

You can take two classes a week (that’s not our class above, by the way), but only the Thursday ones worked with my schedule. I love yoga and have not been able to afford classes for three years or so. Actually, the only time I’ve participated regularly in yoga has been when it was free through work. The idea of practicing at home sounds great, but I tend to forget poses and appreciate the pacing and feedback an instructor provides.

Yoga is great for you, but especially being pregnant (and, currently, much less inclined to be physically active in the way I was pre-pregnancy), now is a perfect time for to do this. I’m very grateful to be working for the county and hope they offer Fall and Winter Wellness Programs, too. Oh, library. My life would suck without you.

In a few of the pregnancy books I’ve checked out of the library, they mention how great squatting positions are for expectant mothers. And I was shelving books at work today when I realized that squatting while putting books away on low shelves is beneficial for both me and the library. Nice. It’s the one extra-cirricular yoga practice I adhere to.

I need to see if there are any free fitness classes offered anywhere for expectant mothers. There may be income criteria that we won’t meet, but making too much money to be truly poor is something I can’t complain about without being a total asshole.

One of the best parts of working at a library is the convenience with which you may browse and check out books. Probably not a workday goes by where I don’t run across a pregnancy book. And now that I’ve told my supervisor that I’m in the family way, I don’t have to be sneaky about checking them out.

Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective is the first pregnancy book I’ve felt solid about reading. It’s not preachy, sentimental or sensationalistic. If you have a question, look it up and find an answer (or several informed options, as the case may be).

I must admit, I scanned most of this book. Books like this were made for scanning. But it laid to rest some uncertainties about what I should be eating/drinking (they say caffeine is probably okay, but don’t go nuts), doing (tone your exercise routine down a bit, but still do it) and feeling (the need to sleep more than I normally do, which is fine).

Each section offers viewpoints from several perspectives, so you can read about expanctant moms who love being pregnant, and those who feel gross and slothlike. The overall tone is more “here’s how to make good choices for your own particular pregnancy” as opposed to “here is a bunch of old wives tales to make you feel paranoid and nervous!”

And there are no profiles of celebrity moms. Thank god. I won’t buy this book, but I probably will check it out again once I get into my third trimester.

Some people want to be good so badly that it hobbles them…that is, they want to do the right thing, but they are also spineless nincompoops. Here’s a great example from Slate’s Dear Prudence column (which I try to ignore but do read sometimes, if just to feel smug and superior in my own life, which is a mess itself at times.)

The lady in question is unsure if she and her husband should wait to conceive because her sister-in-law just had a miscarriage.  Well, you can guess my opinion: um, no. Prudie usually gives good advice, and I think she’s spot-on this time.

In cheerier news, I found some old dress patterns that I should be able to adapt to maternity wear. This is why I stockpile fabric: you never know when the sewing itch will strike. My hope is to buy as few actual maternity clothes as possible, since I hardly buy new clothes to begin with. Probably once I get too big to pull of unbuttoned jeans I’ll just wear the same 5 outfits over and over.

1. Cutting my own hair. I’ve done my own “hairstyling” (term used very loosely) for ten years, off and on. It’s sort of a mess, but whenever I got to a salon, I don’t think they do much better than I do. My hair is short and curly and I can get away with this easier than most other people.

2. Rarely buying Ziplock bags. I re-use plastic bread bags, plus the zip-top bags that nuts and dried berries are sold in at Trader Joe’s. A grand savings of $20 a year, tops?

3. Cancelling our newspaper subscription. I love reading the paper, but it was an obvious place to trim expenses. The only magazine I plan on renewing this year is The New Yorker, which is my solace. I’ll read “Talk of the Town” tidbits to our young child, when she/he arrives. 

4. No more pledging to NPR. We’ve had lean times and flush times, and when it’s flush I enjoy making generous (for me) pledges. So if we’re ever flush again, I’ll pledge then.

5. No more rock and roll shows, unless they are free. This means no Sonic Youth this summer. That bites, but we’ll survive.

6. No first run movies, unless they are about Harry Potter.

7. Using my free county buss pass as much as possible. Ah, the perks of a county job! A two-way bus trip costs $4, so if I take the bus three days a week, that’s about $1,500 a year in savings. Vic rides the bus more than I do, but my bus pass only works for me.

8.  Skipping the follow-up appointments for our dog’s knee surgery (unless there’s a bone sticking out or something). We went for one follow-up, which was not too bad at $60, but the vet wants us to come in two more times in the next six months.

9. Taking my shoes to the cobbler instead of buying new ones. I’ve always done this. You need to buy good shoes in the first place to make it worthwhile. I recently had the zipper fixed and the heels replaced on my favorite pair of boots. Repair: $50. The boots cost about $120 new. They should last another few years with some luck.

10. We didn’t mulch the front yard this year. I also didn’t buy any set-outs, except for some tomatoes. A garden store is a very dangerous place to go.  The front yard could look better, but I do try to weed when I can.

This does not add up to much, as far as savings go. But we need to make every effort we can.

Why is Kaiser called Kaiser? Well, here’s what their website says: “Kaiser Permanente evolved from industrial health care programs for construction, shipyard, and steel mill workers for the Kaiser industrial companies during the late 1930s and 1940s. It was opened to public enrollment in October 1945.” 

So it has nothing to do with kaiser buns or Prussian kings.

Yesterday I had my first prenatal visit at the gigantic Kaiser facility closest to us.  Vic had to work, otherwise I would have encouraged his attendance, in part to help get him accustomed to the concept of being a dad.

People dirt on Kaiser, but I don’t mind it. It’s like going to an airport, or flying in general: you have to surrender yourself to the situation and be along for the ride, realizing that you are dealing with a vast bureaucracy. Be nice to people and they will be nice back, even if all they do all day long is check in lines of people and collect co-pays.

I also have an odd fondness for clinical procedures–not for performing them, but for experiencing them. They are interesting, and since I have a high pain threshold, it does not bother me too much.

Yesterday’s list included a urine sample, a blood sample, and a pelvic exam and two ultrasounds. The ultrasounds were amazing. Our baby was squirming around, fishlike, in its watery cave. At 11 weeks and four days, the fetus has fingers and legs and toes. It’s odd to think that, as I sit here, that tiny thing is inside me, squirming still.

The due date is January 22. It’s nice to know how far along we are, and generally when to expect this fishbaby to emerge into the world.

I’m glad my plan is not the one where I have to cough up a $10 co-pay for every test, because the collected seven vials of blood. Plus the pee, that would be at least $80 in lab co-pays. I love my library job, and I suppose I should thank the union for these awesome benefits.

We put the ultrasound printouts on our bulletin board. How odd that we can watch our unborn babies on a TV screen like it’s a YouTube video, and then just go on with our lives.