Archive for June, 2007
Thursday, June 28th, 2007
Death on the Highway
There is an absurd amount of death on the road. You see it all up close and seemingly in slow motion, even at 20 mphs. The bloated corpse of deer on Joshua road. The headless stray cat at 52nd and chesnut. The furry remains of a squirrel on Lansdowne ave by Cobbs Creek Golf course, sticky puddles decorated with crushed feathers on Umbria. The stench of skunk near Conshe*…all under circling, watchful eyes of black vultures…
Just this week, I saw a tiny baby sized racoon, and a dead blue jay, both a stones throw from the safe woodland refuge of the northwest end of Fairmont park. Both seemed especially gruesome, the former, given the general cuteness of all racoons and the later due to the brilliance of even the most plain of blue jays.
Anyway, 2 weeks ago, my brother and I were riding up Route 9 in South jersey. I saw a turtle( a terrapin to be exact…but whatever.) There he was. Stuck in the middle of the road. SUVs lumbered over him. I watched him look out of his shell, and then retreat right away as yet another motorist ran right over top of him. I rode out into traffic, my brother went up the road and made folks stop, while I picked up the little guy and moved him to the ocean side of the road.
As soon as I put him down, he was off like a shot. Before I could even think to get out my phone to take a picture he was gone. He had a beautiful green shell with orange markings. You’ll have to take my word for it.
Anyway, 1 less dead animal.
For now.
*I am willing to acknowledge that that smell may have been…well…conshe…
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
How boring, my blog
Things that are good in no particular order:
Coffee with cinnamon.
Watching the Woog basically do sit ups, trying to make himself sit up right.
Things that are not good:
Not riding since Sunday. I’ve been a little under the weather and looking to get an extra half to an hour of sleep for the last couple days. This is in the hope that whatever is going on in my throat, head, etc needs rest to heal. Actually riding feels fine(did 52 miles on Sunday without any trouble.)
To Do:
More baby media(pix, slideshows, videos)
LOLIMHO
Clean up this blog.
This is another one of those throwaway posts.
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007
Hey asshole, yeah You…in the GIANT GAS GUZZLING SUV.
The Pope says that you are sinning.
IE:
The document’s Fifth Commandment reads: “Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin”.
You know something? If this pope keeps this kind of stuff up, I may have to reconsider my whole lapsed catholic thing.
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
More Nicknames for the Boy
Woogie.
The Woogie.
Woogs.
The Woogs.
Mr. Woogie.
Mr. Woogs.
Woogtowski.
Mr. Woogtowski.
Mr. Arthur Woogtowski
Artie Woog.
And so on and so forth…
Today Father’s day was a holiday in which I was celebrated for the first time. Awesome for me. I got presents and everything.
Sunday, June 10th, 2007
Some notes on the Miracle of Birth, Part I
The boy is now 2 months old. Here are some things I’ve been meaning to tell you:
We went ‘natural’. That means a doula. That means a midwife. That means no pain medication. That’s probably the best place to start. From that decision, all kinds of other decisions kind of made themselves. Sort of. But lets take a step back.
Things didn’t start out on the path to a natural birth. Things started out ‘normal’. Mrs. H found an OB/GYN that was affiliated with the hospital that we thought we wanted. We visited them maybe 3 times, with the total doctor face time totaling something around 15 minutes, in aggregate.
We felt like a number. Mrs. H. decided she wanted a doula. I was fine with that. We met one. We met another. This one had been present for the birth of a child of a certain local cycling legend. So um…she was totally hired on the spot as far as I was concerned.
So then we had a doula. Then we started talking about 86ing the OB/GYNs all together and getting a midwife.
The thing that Mrs. H then needed to get over was the whole having a midwife and not being able to have an epidural thing.
funny thing that: You can have a midwife and get the epidural.
So we got a midwife, one affiliated with the Maternal Wellness center who Mrs. H immediately loved. I liked her fine too.
So how did things progress from here? Well, there were three things Mrs H wanted out of this pregnancy: a healthy baby, not to be stuck on her back like Kafka’s bug, and not a c-section. But she still wanted the option of an epidural.
We did research. We went to a birthing class. One of the things that became clear to us was that the more involved doctors became (sorry my M.D. readers, it’s totally not anything personal. You know I love you guys.), the more likely that Mrs. H would have an epidural. The more likely an epidural came into the picture, the more difficult it would be to focus, and push that baby out…and thusly she would need a C-section.
Once we got to seeing things that way, a natural birth seemed like the smart choice, especially if we wanted to avoid a c-section.
A few side notes on the c-section in general:
Do you know what percentage of women have c-sections now when birthing their babies in the U.S.? 23.8%…Think about that for a second: that means that slightly more than 1 in 5 women who give birth have major abdominal surgery with all the attendant risks for a process that is totally natural. How jacked is that?
Now now, I know. I know. you’re all ‘But a lot fewer women die in childbirth now than back in the day…’ Perhaps.
But that hardly means that 23.8% of all women in this country need to be cut open and their children extracted…or that that number is in any way acceptable.
Another thing: Pushing a baby definitely looked incredibly painful. I watched my wife suffer terribly. It sucked. I sat quietly for most of the night. I held her up while she was in the pool, gave her sips of sports drink, whispered compliments to her and tried to be there.
But it seemed to me that I was more tossing rocks down a well with no bottom for most of the night. She might hear an echo or two as they bounced off the walls, but they weren’t going to hit the bottom or make a splash. Not while she was going thru that.
But on the other hand, that was just one night (10 hours of suffering.) Recovering from a c-section can take weeks…weeks of searing, agonizing pain every time you sit or stand.
With that in mind, I encouraged her to take the 10 hour pain package, as opposed to the multi week tour de agony. She wanted the option, but in the end she may have wanted the pain to go away, but didn’t want the epidural.
And she totally came thru, and it was the most hardcore thing I have ever seen a person do.
Epilogue: Mrs. H has already written about the whole experience on her blog, so I’ll skip the particulars of the tub, how and when she had to push and the like. Her account is gonna be better then anything I could write.
We would find out later that part of the reason Mrs. H’s labor was difficult was due to the shape of her pelvis. The midwife claimed that had she done the epidural, she almost definitely would have not been able to push hard enough…and then had to have a c-section.