Come on baby, let's do the flip

In the past week and a half, I've held frozen peas to my belly, shined a flashlight on my pelvis, laid on the bed with three pillows under my butt and watched TV perched on a stability ball. I visited a chiropractor. I closed my eyes and visualized a tiny backflipping baby diving down toward my pelvis. I've drunk glass after glass after glass of water.

And every few hours I touch my belly, hoping not to feel the telltale bump that is baby's head. It moves from the left side to the right side, and sometimes it's just over my belly button. But it's never where I want it: head down. It sounds crazy, but I just want a kick in the ribs... instead of a push to the bladder.

Yup, my baby's breech. At 31 weeks. Intellectually, I know I still have time. But because my first kid never turned vertex, I'm freaking out a little bit. With Z, I tried everything to get her to turn. Handstands in warm water. Hypnosis. A touch of moxibustion (which we quit doing because it made the house reek of pot). I even signed up for an external version at 37 weeks, and trust me when I tell you that was no picnic!

Because she was breech, Z was delivered via a scheduled c-section at 39 weeks. I never experienced labor. I was rolled into an overly bright, freezing OR at Northwestern Memorial Hospital at 3:20pm and I heard my daughter cry out at 3:44. I didn't have the natural birth I'd hoped for, but I got a healthy, beautiful baby who's been the light of my life. My recovery was quicker than expected, and aside from some side effects form the anesthesia, it wasn't a bad experience altogether.

But I figured I'd paid my dues. I did the ultimate-intervention birth and now it was my turn to have a minimal-intervention birth. For a variety of reasons, location being a big one, I switched to West Suburban Midwives in Oak Park and planned a delivery at West Suburban Medical Center's Alternative Birthing Center (aka the ABC). I found a doula-in-training to give me confidence. I've been taking a prenatal yoga class and I even remember to do kegels once in a while.

I want a VBAC so badly, but I feel selfish and whiny for caring so much about how my second daughter enters the world. My sister just gave birth on Mother's Day, making her the first woman in two generations to deliver the old-fashioned way. I want what she had, and what so many of my friends have experienced. I want to nod along knowingly when women talk about labor and pain and childbirth.

Hell, I want this baby to flip over before I flip out. Because obsessing is not productive. And frankly, it's not my style.

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Cross-posted at Chicago Moms Blog, where you can read the rants of raves of plenty of other mothers.

The break up

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager

This great video for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions showcases how little advertisers are listening to their consumers. I'd like to think the below-the-line work my agency does is less about shouting at consumers and more about fostering a meaningful dialogue, but we've done our share of couponing too.

Awwwww....huh?

Last night, as I gave Z her bedtime snuggles in the rocking chair, she gave my belly a hug and a kiss and asked, "When the baby comes out, can we all cuddle together?"

"Yes," I said.

"And is she gonna come out your belly button, Mama?"

Fickle, fickle Z

This weekend we'd purchased an adorable tent-like canopy for Z's toddler bed. Josh hung it up today while I was at work and Z at daycare, and it looked absolutely lovely. The white mesh matched her bed and the sage green leaves coordinated with her walls.

Z was over the moon with excitement over her little "fairy princess house where no one can come in!" That is, until lights-out time. Then she decided she was "too scared" and asked me to take it down.

C'est la vie. We should have known better than to try to change anything.

Speaking of fairy princesses, we watched the first half of Pan's Labyrinth tonight. Dividing movies in two drives my film buff of a husband nuts, but since I'm only able to keep my eyes open until 10pm, it's the only way we're going to see anything. The last two nights were dedicated to Little Children, which was very faithful to the book.

A second moms blog

The Second City is now home to the Chicago Moms Blog, the Silicon Valley Moms Blog's very first sister site. Beating NYC to the punch? That's good news for Chicago. Getting invited to contribute my own thoughts on raising a kid in my favorite city? That's good news for me!

I'm proud to be sharing space with a talented pool of mommy bloggers, a diverse group of working, work-at-home and stay-at-home moms. Moms who wear fabulous shoes and moms who wear their babies. Moms who write for a living. And moms who live to write.

Death by Popsicle

Is there anything more torturous than watching a toddler eat a Popsicle? The mercury hit 90 degrees in Oak Park this afternoon, so I gave Z a Popsicle Scribbler (basically a smallish Popsicle "made with fruit juice") for dessert for dinner. We headed out to the back steps to enjoy our frozen novelties in the fresh air, but the torture of watching Z slooowly take a little lick of the top of her pop, scoot down all 10 of our steps, scoot back up, and take another tiny lick sapped all of the fun out of it for me.

How old does a kid need to be to understand that enjoying ice cream on a stick means battling against the forces of time and temperature? The Popsicle was glistening in the heat, and Z would grab it by the frozen center to get a better hold on the stick. Did I mention she was wearing a really cute skirt? Well, I pulled it off after the first drip landed.

I was cajoling her to take a little bite...lick the sides...anything to get the show on the road, but she blithely ignored me, happy instead to spy on the neighbors as Popsicle juice ran down her chin and cascaded over her fingers. Her remedy? Once again, she grasped the Popsicle around the middle so she could lick the sticky runoff from her fingers and inner arm. Kind of defeats the point, doesn't it?

Finally, after 10 minutes of this torture, she handed me the remainder of her Popsicle with an "I'm done." I tried to figure out what was more urgent: throwing away the melting mess or getting my messy kid under some running water.

Weekend highlights

On Friday, five mothers, three of us in our third trimester, hit Emilio's Tapas in Hillside for plate after small plate of delicious Spanish cuisine. The other two got to wash their bacon-wrapped dates, grilled calamari and garlic potato salad down with a pitcher of sangria.

Saturday morning was kind of a bust (all of us were in bad moods and feeding off each other's negative energy), but the evening was spent with our Chavurah. Nothing like a bunch of Jewish families cooking up an Asian-themed potluck!



That night I curled up with National Geographic's In the Womb, only to be surprised three-quarters of the way through the movie with the news that my sister had just given birth (it was already Mother's Day Sunday in Australia).

I had modest hopes for Mother's Day, having only requested breakfast out. We eschewed the brunch crowds and returned to The Depot American Diner, where we dug into fresh, made-to-order doughnut holes with chocolate dipping sauce as well as more traditional fare (pancakes, apple pancakes and an eggs-potatoes-bacon platter). Josh and Z surprised me with not one but two generous Mother's Day presents: a lime green TOKYObay watch and a gift certificate for a prenatal massage at Urban Oasis! And the day got better yet. We headed to out to IKEA, where I scored a summer-weight duvet and wooden folding chairs for our backyard for $14.99 a piece, and Z was so well behaved we rewarded her with a 50¢ hot dog. She ate the whole thing, bun and all, "like a big girl."

After naptime, Z and I headed over to my friend Stacie's house, where our girls gave us a break, entertaining each other for almost two hours. I can barely believe our 2 1/2-year-olds are big enough to play pretend and (a very primitive version) of hide-and-seek.

Happy Mother's Day

To all the moms in my life, but particularly to my little sister Eleanor, who became a mother to a little girl for the first time today.

Book review: Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box

If you've ever grumbled that you wish your kid came with an instruction manual, mosey over to the Parenting & Family shelf in any bookstore. There, you'll find a six foot tall shelf of pastel paperbacks promising to show you the way. Advice from parenting book authors is a lot like advice from family members, friends and neighbors. It can be colored by an combination of religion, science, personal experience and wishful thinking. And whether you've picked up a general parenting guide or a sleep/toilet training/sibling-rivalry bible, what you won't hear much of is reassurance that you're probably doing just fine already. Heck, you're probably worrying, obsessing and simpling doing way too much. And your kids aren't likely to benefit.

Enter Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box. At 300 pages, it's a bit padded with the kind of self-help quizzes and summary pages I hate (I'm so not the self-help type), but the premise is sound: be a good-enough mom. Don't overschedule your children and overextend yourself. Don't make your life so child-centric and self-sacrificing that you end up running on empty. There are no gold medals in the Mommy Olympics, so you might as well walk the marathon and enjoy the scenery. Remember that if mama is happy, everybody is happy. And that means you need to take care of your needs too.

It's a message I already believed in, so perhaps this books wasn't written for me. I worry a little about the big issues (instilling values like respect and manners and, I'll admit it, potty training), but I'm too cheap to buy fancy baby shoes and too lazy to prepare and freeze my own organic baby food cubes. With work, friends and everything else on my plate, I don't have the time and energy to "do it all," and it's never occurred to me to engage in the kind of playground oneupmanship that author Ann Dunnewold says pushes mothers into the Extreme Parenting trap.

Dunnewold suggests cultivating a circle of like-minded parents as an antidote to the mommy madness, and once again I'm a step ahead of her. I've got a wonderful group of mom friends, and they've never judged me or made me feel inadequate when I ask for advice or blow off a little steam. With my girlfriends, I can safely confess my sins of motherhood, be it skipping a bath, using a video to grab a moment of peace or serving cold cereal for dinner.

If Dunnewold's to be believed, I'm one of the lucky ones. Apparently this Extreme Parenting thing--whether an invasion of the Baby Genius Edutainment Complex, the uber-boobers or the sanctimommies--is reaching crisis levels in some communities.

No wonder some folks are flocking to the cocktail playdate.

Blog Blast: What Makes a Mother

In honor of Mother's Day, Parent Bloggers Network and Light Iris are sponsoring a blog blast, an invitation to moms across the blogosphere to answer the question, "What Makes You a Mother?"



What makes me a mother? Not pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding, although all of those things made me feel motherly. Not sacrifice, sleeplessness or worry, hardships common to moms but not our exclusive domain.

What truly makes me a mother is my daughter. My name is the first thing she says in the morning, and it is me she wants for goodnight stories. At least for now, Mommy is best at just about everything: making snacks, pouring drinks, pushing the stroller and driving the car. Her face lights up when she sees me, and I am comforted knowing my embrace can soothe away boo-boos, worries and tears.

The day she was born, my identity changed forever. I was no longer just Alma; I was Z's mommy. I was no longer a wage-earner; I was a provider. I was no longer my parents' child. I was my child's parent.

Z has deepened my commitment to leading a certain kind of life. My neighborhood, my friends, even my religion are elevated in importance because I want the best for her. Being her mother makes me want to be a better person because I want to set a good example for her. As her mother, I have a vested interest in the environment and politics. I vote because I want a just world for her. I make green choices because I want a livable world for her. I nurture friendships with other families because I want her to grow up with life-long friends.

My daughter, only 2 1/2 years old, has made me a mother. And I couldn't be more proud.

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What makes you a mother? Join the blog blast before the end of the day Friday, and you could win a SpaFinder gift certificate.
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Cross posted to Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Restaurant review: Kitsch'n

It is absolutely gorgeous today in Chicago. The sun is shining, the air is clear and the temperature is about 72 degrees. The perfect day for lunch alfresco with Josh. We picked Kitsch'n for the outdoor seating and cheap validated parking.

The service was friendly, if a little absent-minded, but the food...not so great. My macaroni and cheese was a Velveeta-eque gloppy orange goo with cold cheddar shredded on top. A little too retro, if you ask me. Josh was unimpressed with his hamburger, but he did clean his plate.

But one thing blew me away (literally). The hand dryers in the bathrooms are too cool. They are Dyson Airblades, and look like this.


Dried my hands in seconds without hot air and with no shake-shake-wipe-on-pants finale.

Little night owls

I just returned from a late evening run to Target, and I was surprised how many toddlers I saw up and about, running errands with their parents at 9pm. I would understand if the kids were with a single parent since it probably doesn't seem worth the money or hassle to pay a babysitter for chance to buy laundry detergent in peace, but all of the kids were with both of their parents.

Do these children sleep in? Do their parents have jobs that make sleeping in late a possibility? Do they make up for their late nights with long afternoon naps? I know that children's bedtimes are dictated by culture, and many folks have told me that in Italy and Spain, kids are out at restaurants with their parents at 10pm. But given how many jobs, preschools and daycare centers open for business between 8 and 9am in this country, I wonder if burning the midnight oil is such a smart move for such small children.

I can see clearly now

We had our windows professionally cleaned yesterday and I am kicking myself for not doing it earlier. We've owned the place for almost four years and it only occurred to me last month that I could pay people to climb ladders, pull apart our vintage storm windows and squeegee everything to a sparkling shine. Our glassed-in front porch is completely transformed, and I feel like I could put my hand through the handful of windows that don't have screens.

My next Angie's List project: find a carpet cleaner to restore my stairs, which are still bearing witness to the great mother-in-law candle wax incident of 2006.

Judd Apatow's knocked up

I liked The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Undeclared and I loved Freaks and Geeks, so I'm more than a little excited to see director Judd Apatow and so many familiar faces in a new summer movie, Knocked Up, about a couple who conceive a baby during a one-night stand. Click here to see the preview.

One more reason not to diet

The NY Times has a fascinating article about weight-loss research that is sure to surprise a lot of folks and piss off those companies who make money pushing diets and diet foods.

Researcher Dr. Jules Hirsch has devoted his life's work to studying the differences between obese and normal-sized individuals, and what he had discovered is that all of us have a natural normal weight range of about 10-20 pounds. It can be heavy or light, depending on our genetics, but it can't be permanently altered. Which means that the rare obese person who is able to keep the weight off is in a constant state of semi-starvation, a state that takes iron will to maintain.

The researcher came to his conclusions by forcing fat people to diet and normal-sized prisoners to become obese. As soon as his subjects were released from his studies, their body mass reverted to its previous state. He also compared the body mass indexes of adoptees and twins to determine that nature, not nurture is responsible for our size.

My personal experience supports Dr. Hirsch's conclusions. Both of my parents maintained normal weights without much trouble and--pregnancy excepted--I've never strayed far from 134-140 pounds, no matter how much or little I'm exercising.

But we don't get to pick out parents, and some people won't win the genetic lottery. For that reason, Dr. Hirsch suggests that our anti-obesity efforts might best be directed at those whose overweight parents put them at an elevated risk of obesity.

I say bring back recess and daily P.E. and use taxation and incentives to decrease our reliance of cars and encourage walking, biking and mass transit. No matter what our size, we'll be in better health. And so will our planet.

DVD review: Go Potty Go!

If you've got small children, I know what you're thinking. You want to skip to the bottom of this review and find out if the video really worked--if my just-barely 2 1/2-year-old daughter has magically been transformed into a potty champ. Well, I'll save you the agony. She's not.

Yes, she talks the potty talk like nobody's business, but she's all talk, no plop (IYKWIM). So, following my midwife's sage advice, we've put all potty paraphernalia away for the time being. And that includes potty movies.

Fortunately for you, I endured a full month of Go Potty Go! before we decided to take our little bathroom break. Okay, endure might sound a little harsh; I put up with four weeks of insidiously catchy songs about going to the potty and marching in the "big big kids parade!" I suffered the embarrassment of humming these ditties to myself as I hauled my pregnant butt across the office and down the hall to the ladies' room, oh, six to eight times a day.

But my toddler loved watching and re-watching Paige and Parker Panda put on their "big kid underwear" and "go potty, go potty, go potty go!" She learned all the words to the songs and narration, mouthing along through the whole 20 minute DVD. She even brought the movie to daycare, where all the other two and three year olds gave it their own tiny thumbs-up. But best of all, Go Potty Go! is motivational: nearly every time it ended, Z would pull her pants down, unfasten her diaper, and bolt upstairs to get a pair of underpants.

What's most interesting about Go Potty Go!, is that unlike the toilet training classic Once Upon a Potty, it doesn't really delve into the physical mechanics of toileting. There are no money shots of pee and poop, like we get to see both inside and outside (oops!) of Prudence's potty. The focus isn't on recognizing that "feeling in your tummy...like poo-poo is ready to come out" -- rather, Go Potty Go! is chock-full of Up with People-positive peer pressure, musical numbers that reinforce how wonderful it is to be a big kid and "say good-bye to diapers."

At least for now, Z isn't buying it; she'll sleep in a big girl bed and drink out of a big girl glass, but she'll take diapers over big kid underwear, thank you very much. It's one part of babyhood she wants to hold onto a little bit longer. Might have something to do with the upcoming arrival of her baby sister.

See what other parents are saying and enter to win a copy of the DVD at Parent Bloggers Network.

From the west coast to Chicago

The Chicago Moms Blog, a sister site to the uber-successful Silicon Valley Moms Blog is coming to Chicago, and I'm going to be one of the first six contributors! Until our local site gets up and running, I'll posting periodically to the original. Check out my virgin contribution here.

Want to see who else is representing our fair city? Click on the lovely and talented mamas behind Self Made Mom, Foodmomiac, Adventures in Babywearing, Want Sugar and Sassafras.

Wedding dresses from Target

Target locked up my loyalty long ago, but I have to admit I'm a little miffed that Isaac Mizrahi wasn't creating dirt-cheap wedding dresses for the discounter when I got hitched back in 1999. According to this press release, the masstige designer will debut a line of wedding gowns priced from $9.99 to $159.99 (I'm guessing the $9.99 is for a veil).

Now I know only the best will do for some brides, but I've always been of the opinion that this is one dress with a really limited shelf life. Off the rack is fine. Polyester is perfectly acceptable. After all, it only has to hold up for about 6 hours.

If you're interested, I wore a $300 ivory Jessica McClintock dress with an embroidered, fitted bodice and a frothy tulle skirt. Anyone willing to share what they wore and what they paid to play princess for a day? Would you have shopped Target for your bridal wear?

Helzberg gives one mom a month off

In honor of Mother's Day, Helzberg Diamonds wants to pamper one mom with a $10,000 prize package that includes a month's worth of maid service, laundry and dry cleaning service, spa treatments, a personal chef and limo service. Plus diamonds, naturally.

I nominated my mom. Now who's going to nominate me?

Consumer-generated content: marketing flavor of the week

Consumer-generated content is the buzzword of year at my agency. Now that other brands have embraced the promotion of the moment--the consumer-generated TV ad--our clients are trying to decide if they should climb aboard the bandwagon.

And it's already a crowded space. The word-of-mouth gurus behind the Church of the Customer blog have assembled a great recap of some of most recent (post-Super Bowl and Oscars) make-your-own-commercial promotions. The bar for participation is set pretty high, so it's not surprising that most of these contests attract a mere 200 entries, peanuts in the land of consumer promotions.

My gut tells me this is a fad on its way out, which makes me happy, because the last thing a good creative wants to do is retread someone else's work. But there's been some positive fallout from this consumer-centric approach to marketing: brand marketers are learning to cultivate a dialog with their consumers. And trust me when I say there are much more compelling, customer-service oriented ways to reach your target audience than a contest that invites the most computer-savvy, driven ones to throw together an amateur commercial. Yes, there are a few diamonds in the rough, but they tend to be budding ad creatives themselves (like the Doritos' winner).

What do you think? Do you see yourself filming and editing a commercial for one of your favorite products in the hopes of winning a fame and a fabulous prize?