Food, more tv, houses

One of the delightful things I've discovered while we've been living this crazy back-and-forth, morning-sickness-run life has been the bags of mixed/washed/cut frozen fruit. These are the big bag mixes that don't have any sugar or anything - the current mix is strawberries, grapes, pineapple, peach (mostly peach in fact), and melon balls. We get them at the local grocery store but I think the first place I ever saw them was at Costco, one of the times we've actually been there.

Given that it's winter and we are in Ottawa, pound-per-pound the frozen fruit doesn't actually cost a whole lot more than even apples - certainly less than peaches. It's not quite as yummy, and definitely not portable (if you stick it in a bag it becomes mush, I have found), but it's sooo fast and easy. I pour a bowl full, microwave it for a minute (this means no planning to defrost it) and then eat it up with a fork. If I want it hot and yummy I sprinkle it with cinnamon and nuke it for longer. Topped with ice cream or frozen yoghurt is optional.

If I had a blender I would make smoothies too, but I don't have one up here.

I foresee having a bag of fruit in the freezer for the next oh 10 years at least. I may in the spring, summer, and fall, try freezing my own, especially at the right seasons - see if non-flash freezing works. But it is so amazing to have snacks, desserts, cereal toppings, and smoothie fixings just sitting there in a bag. Woo hoo.

I've craved fruit in both pregnancies, and in between my fruit consumption stayed high.

~~

I found myself really angry at the television this week. I was watching one of the baby story shows - I admit I'm now hovering on addiction to them, although I still cry when other people's babies cry after delivery. In this episode a woman pregnant with twins was talking to her doctor about how she did. not. want. a c-section. And he was kindly explaining to her that her twins were in very bad positions for a vaginal delivery, and that they might well rotate down, but given their position and all the cords involved and that it was just about showtime to deliver, that he was guessing that she would have to have a c-section.

She'd brought in about 4 articles from the internet about how he could rotate the twins in utero and she was just adamant that she needed to deliver vaginally to feel like a real mom.

And he kept saying (nicely) things like, "You do understand that the risk I am talking about is a lack of oxygen, to the brain, which means permanent brain damage." And she wailed "but there are more risks to a c-section!" And he said "there are some risks to you, but not to the babies, not as much as I believe you will face in a vaginal delivery."

And she sat there and pouted.

I wanted to reach through the tv screen and time and shake her and make her go look at my baby's grave, I really did. I realize some of this is misplaced anger on my part. And it's also anger at the whole political baby-having scene, which gave Carl and I easily 1 hour on the dangers of pain medication, a half hour on the risks of an epidural, and at least 4 hours on breastfeeding (including a lot about delivering to the stomach and latching on right after birth), but never once, not one time ever mentioned, say, cerebral palsy. (Which, by the way, is most often caused by a lack of oxygen to the baby at birth.)

And I realize that information may not have changed our minds, but it might have caused us to throw a bigger fit about a c-section, and then we would be laughing about the near-miss and watching Emily learn to walk today.

And this woman sort of epitomized that political movement to me. There is a huge backlash against c-sections. Yes, some doctors order a lot of them (often doctors who have watched babies like mine die). And some people get them because they don't want to push, and perhaps that is a little silly. But there is a lot of pressure on women to be "real women" and go ahead and have a natural birth, and although that may be fine a lot of the time, there are reasons that infant mortality eventually fell. Intially when people started having babies in hospitals, it went up, because hospitals didn't manage germs very well. But then, it went down. A lot.

There are in fact reasons for that. And the idea that women everywhere in every historical time period have had babies fine, therefore you need to worry more about intervention than you do about risks is - baloney.

I will be a real fun person to have in whoever's pre-natal class.

(This is not a rant against midwives, by the way. A good midwife would probably have done better with Emily's distress than the nurse did. But if we'd been at home somewhere and had to get to a hospital, it might well have been too late (although maybe not, if I'd stopped pushing). I know that she wouldn't have been able to be revived by a midwife, but I don't know how I feel about that - those days were very precious time with her to us, but they were awful suffering as well for her and us. So I just don't know.)

~~

I still keep an eye on both real estate markets and did see a bungalow here, three bedroom, with a potential in-law suite, and what looked like a beautifully done indoor pool (with wood stove in the pool room), in a decent neighbourhood 10 minutes from downtown, for the same price as a tiny semi in the Beaches in Toronto. Carl saw it over my shoulder and we were oohing and aahing and then I said "but it's not in Toronto." And he said "right." And a little later I tentatively asked if he had thought of going to see it and he said "why would we if we're moving back to Toronto?"

And I admit that despite house and pool lust and knowing that some disappointing of people lies ahead, I was utterly happy to hear that.

Shandra