7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 14)

1. Thank you to everyone who weighed in about the hospital vs. birth center question.  After reading the advice which overwhelmingly supported the hospital, that's still where I'm leaning.  I met with one of the midwives on Wednesday, and asked her to lay out for me just what the birth center might offer that I could not get at the hospital.

It seems to me that the experience of labor and delivery wouldn't be too different at either place.  It's mostly the post-natal care and attention that differs.  The hospital keeps you for a couple days and you and the baby get regular visits from the nurses and a lactation consultant (which is good).  At the birth center, they mostly just leave you alone afterwards, and you go home in 4-12 hours.

However, at the birth center, you are encouraged to just hold baby on your chest for a long time right after birth, and start breast-feeding right away (which is good).  At the hospital, they give you about a minute with baby before taking him/her away (still in the same room) to check weight, Apgar stuff, etc.  They do bring baby back to the mother afterwards, but if I recall, they want the baby to be brought to the nursery for a more throrough pediatrician examination fairly soon after birth. 

But you know what?  I think I'm just one of those women who do like the pampering and attention (which many people might think is "over"attention) they give you in the hospital.  I'd prefer to have more immediate bonding time with baby, but it doesn't really take too long to check those things, and I mean...there's still the placenta and the potential stitching up that I need to be dealing with in that time anyways.


2. My best friend got married last weekend.  It was a beautiful wedding, and a memorable one.  We've been to so many weddings these past few years, and a lot of them have started to blend together in my mind.  This one will always stand out, though.  I'm not sure if it's just because I was the matron of honor, or because she's my best friend, or whether there was something especially unique about it.  It was the only time I've ever cried at a wedding.  I was very very happy for her.

Isn't she beautiful?

And here's us at the wedding. Tom is looking too serious.  The bridesmaid dress, which I complained about here ended up fitting a lot better after the (outrageously expensive!!) alterations.  But I still contend that it made me look more "large" than "pregnant"

3. Since I showed it to her already, I can finally reveal the wedding gift I've been working on for her for the past 18 months (yikes!).  It's a wedding cross-stitch.  And I will grumpily report that it's STILL not finished.  I need to fill in that entire center section with all the "wedding info" (names, date, place, etc.).

It's about 17"x15".  And yes, I know it has huge folds in it right now...

This is only the second cross-stitch project I've ever done.  If anyone is considering beginning this as a hobby, let me warn you that it takes FOREVER.  I have probably poured hundreds of hours into that thing already.  I fully understand why cross-stitch was historically a pasttime assigned to young ladies to teach them patience and dilligence.

close-up of a section

*If anyone's interested, the flowered border pattern comes from the book Cross Stitch Antique Style Samplers. 

4.  I recently used some gift money I had saved up to purchase myself this cute pair of Crocs flats (Tom wouldn't let me use our common money on a product he so abhors).

The upper parts are actually more clear than they appear in this picture [stolen from the Crocs website]

Tom HATES them and complains about having to be out in public with me when I'm wearing them.  They remind me of the jelly slippers I wore as a kid.  They're very comfortable.  I was looking for a flat I could wear in the summer (i.e. without pantyhose) which wouldn't make my feet sweat like crazy (sorry if this is an over-share).  These do the job quite well.  Not exactly church-appropriate, but great for everyday wear.


5. The mini-mart in our neighborhood (pretty much the only surviving business along the total wasteland of what was once the main street) sells Slush Puppies!  This was a very exciting discovery, being that it's really hot, I'm really pregnant, and it's good motivation to make me actually go for a walk sometimes.

Slush Puppies are actually one of the most poorly-designed in the "iced drinks" category.  Their competitors, Slurpees and Icees, use much more finely-shaved ice, so you get a decent ratio of flavored syrup to ice in each sip.  When you drink a Slush Puppy, no matter how careful you are, you invariably end up with more than half a cup of flavor-drained ice.

But this is what I grew up drinking every summer at our cottage, so it has a major nostalgia factor for me, which beats everything else.  I can't wait to introduce Sly to them!


6. There's a spray park really close to our house.  I hadn't even heard of these until I became a mom.  It's basically a park with a bunch of enormous sprinklers and water-spraying structures that kids can run through on a hot day. 

Picture taken from the community website.  I've never actually seen it this packed, though

I thought it was a such great asset to have in a neighborhood, until I realized...they only put these in when they want to get rid of a pre-existing swimming pool!  Spray parks are just cheaper to maintain.  I get that, I do.  But I still think a pool is better for a neighborhood.  They talk up spray parks as being "more accessible" than a pool for those who are handicapped.  Maybe so.  But while there are no official age-limits on spray park use, I guarantee you will never see anyone over the age of twelve running through there.  It's sort of understood that it's just meant for kids.  And so it cuts off MOST of the people in the community from a good way to stay cool in the summer.

Still...as long as the pool is gone anyways, I guess it's nice to have this so near to us.


7. Our gardening attempts this year - as always - have been mostly a failure.  We sacrificed having a yard when we moved to our new place last autumn.  We don't even have the tiniest patch of grass or dirt.  But we were determined to try some container gardening along the sidewalk nonetheless.

I started a bunch of seeds (flowers, herbs, and some tomatoes) in various pots and seed-starting cells.  As soon as anything sprouts, though, something has been eating them.  I could have avoided this if I started everything indoors, but that would have interfered with our "keep all the curtains drawn during the day to keep out the heat" method of cooling our un-air-conditioned house (see #3).  With the exception of a few flowers we bought and re-potted in hanging planters (and thus kept away from hungry mouths), the only thing that has survived are my morning glories.  I guess they taste bad or something.

Just about ready to be transferred

My hope is that I can get them to vine up the trellis-y stuff all along the bottom of the porch, and just kinda totally engulf the whole thing.  Morning glories are spectacular when they've taken over a fence, and they're all opened up at once.

eww - and maybe the vines will disguise that gross mold at the bottom that I never noticed until I took this picture

Quick Takes is hosted at Conversion Diary