More Eden

Eden is nursing, peeing, and pooping like a champ--every hour and a half like clockwork, all night, as a matter of fact. Despite that, this morning she was the most alert we've seen her so far, and so we thought we'd lay down a little video, in addition to posting a few pictures we took late yesterday.

Welcome to Eden Leah Sullenbrand!

10 lbs 2 oz
Born at home, in the water
at 4:57 am on June 29, 2009
after 2.5 hours of HARD labor!

Mom, dad, and baby are all doing well and resting comfortably!

Doobies!

Last night Matt and I were lucky enough to be able to see the Doobie Brothers in concert at Wolf Trap--very likely our last such outing for a very long time! While it was a hot day, it had cooled down to probably mid-70s by the time the show started at 8, which was very pleasant. The Doobies sounded amazing and played a ton of favorites like Old Black Water, Jesus is Just Alright, Long Train Runnin' (Without Love), China Grove, and Listen to the Music. While there was more bad dancing and slightly off-beat clapping than we like to accompany our live music, we still had an awesome time. Here are a couple of brief videos from the experience:

Fantastic deal on organic lemonade

I don't know how widely applicable this will be--for all I know, our Reston Whole Foods may be the only place it applies. But it's such an awesome deal that it's worth sharing anyway!

A little while back, Moneysaving Mom highlighted this $0.75 off of any 1 Santa Cruz Organic juice product coupon (which I don't think expires until something like December of this year). She reports that these are often on sale at Wal-Mart for $1.25, making them $0.50 a bottle after the coupon. That's an awesome deal in itself--but these past two weeks, our Whole Foods has had the plain lemonade variety (which is our favorite anyway) on sale for $0.99 a bottle--making them $0.24 with the coupon! Each bottle containis 32 oz (4 servings), making them $0.06 per serving! As Crystal from MSM points out, there's no way you could make completely organic lemonade for anywhere near that price. We love this lemonade and have bought probably 15 bottles of it so far (for less than $4!). We keep a pitcher of it going in the fridge, which is great in this hot weather, and have a number of bottles on hand that I'm sure it will be great for rehydrating during and after labor and birth. I think the sale supposedly ends on Tuesday, so we'll probably be stocking up on another 10 bottles or so this weekend.

Note: one of the most helpful things I've learned from Crystal at MSM is that when a coupon says "one per purchase," it's generally understood to mean one per product. Meaning, if you have two products, you can use two coupons. You just can't use more than one per item. I think this is a really common misconception about coupons and, as her site proves, the secret to really saving money when grocery shopping is often to lay in an insanely large stock of things when they're a really good deal--like this lemonade! I've been discouraged by how little couponing and savings are available when shopping for whole organic products out here (coupons tend to be for items like organic macaroni and cheese, nutrition bars, and other things we don't buy, as opposed to fruits, vegetables, and bulk grains), so while lemonade isn't exactly an essential, I'm still stoked to see such a good deal on it.

Good post on the safety of homebirth

photo by Aldo Risolvo

Here.

Being privy to the high-intervention atmosphere that pervades the hospital, I feel better and better all the time about our decision to bring our baby into the world in a safe, gentle, loving atmosphere--at home. This post (and the study it's citing) gives some of the statistics supporting that choice.

First-trimester working conditions affect birthweight

From Nursing Birth (an incredible blog by an L&D nurse, and one which I highly recommend): apparently the American Journal of Public Health is publishing a study which indicates that high levels of job strain in the first trimester can contribute to lower-birthweight babies.

It makes me wonder how big this baby would be if I HADN't been running my butt off last fall!

But kidding aside, it makes me thankful to have a flexible enough job that I was able to take a day off here and there when I felt like I needed to. And as I'm sitting with my puffy feet up on my first Monday off of work at 37 weeks, that feels very right to me, too. And I feel very lucky.

Cesarean rates at Virginia hospitals

I've noticed a lot of traffic to the blog looking for the C-section rates at Virginia hospitals, Reston Hospital in particular. You can find that information for 2006 here.

In honor of father's day...

we wanted to say how thankful we are for the absolutely wonderful fathers in our family, who have taught us so much and always been there for us.

And I also want to say how grateful I am for one particular, amazing father-to-be. Matt, I don't think you could have been more involved and active in this pregnancy if you'd carried the baby yourself. Thanks for attending to every single detail and my every need these past nine months. The love, care, and self-sacrifice you have shown me leave no doubt in my mind as to what a kind and loving father you'll be. I can't wait!

Feeding frenzy

It's been awhile since we've had a real "eating" weekend, but this past one was. Saturday we attended a farm day up in Amish country, and ate until we were ready to pop. Sunday was our baby shower with Matt's work, which shaped up to have a Mexican theme. (The baby shower, that is, not the workplace.) We brought Puerco Pibil over rice, along with Matt's salsa. Others brought fajita fixings, and things like chips and guacamole. As if that weren't going to be enough of a gut buster, I woke up that morning with a hankering for baked blueberry French toast. I don't know that I've ever actually had such a dish, but it had crystallized in my mind that that was just what I wanted: French toast, but baked (I don't especially like making regular French toast because of the time and inherent inconsistency involved); blueberries; and maybe some cream cheese. I was fairly disappointed in my search for a recipe on the internet, and so I improvised and came up with my own.

I used Smitten Kitchen as a reference point for the bread-eggs-milk ratio and baking temperature, and mixed up a filling made of thawed frozen blueberries, cream cheese, and a little maple syrup to go in the middle. It wound up a little stiff, and if I'd been thinking I would have added in maybe half a cup of blueberry juice (which we actually have in our fridge), but I wasn't. Here's how we did it:

Baked Blueberry French Toast

Butter (a few tablespoons)
3 eggs
3 cups of milk
Splash of vanilla
2-3 T sugar
1 loaf of bakery bread, sliced or cubed
6-12 oz frozen or fresh blueberries
1 brick cream cheese (I think I probably could have gotten away with less)
1 T sugar or maple syrup
Optional: 1/4-1/2 cup blueberry juice

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in the bottom of a 13x9" pan. Combine eggs, milk, vanilla, and sugar and pour enough in to cover the bottom of the 13x9 pan. Arrange slices or cubes to form a layer on the bottom of the pan. Pour over enough egg and milk mixture to cover. Combine blueberries, cream cheese, sugar or maple syrup, and blueberry juice, if using; pour or spread over bottom layer of bread. Arrange remaining bread to cover and pour on remaining egg and milk. Bake 30-45 minutes until golden. Serve with maple, blueberry, or any other kind of syrup.

Personally, I thought it was even better the next day. Most recipes for baked French toast call for letting it sit overnight, which I think has the effect of keeping the egg/milk mixture ensconced within each slice of bread as opposed to forming custard around the bread, but there are certainly worse things in life (like waiting till the next day for something you really want now). It's not a perfect recipe, but I'd definitely make it again.

New apartment

We haven't shared much of our new apartment yet, so in honor of our 1-month anniversary here, I give you a video Matt made taking you on a quick tour:

Also, here are some of our favorite highlights:

the office/spare bedroom, complete with hanging plants from Freecycle

the newborn crib (an heirloom in my family), set up in our bedroom,
with a towel covering up the crib sheet--
looking at this picture, can you guess why?

small Ikea dresser (had for less than half price off Craigslist) which will function as a changing table--along with our stash of fitted cloth diapers (some from our baby shower, others from Freecycle)

handy diaper/wipe shelf Matt installed above the changing table-- with our supply of prefold diapers and
homemade wipes (which are also compliments of Matt)

My Gund bear awaiting a change on our changing pad,
rocking a prefold (not visible) and a Bummi's Whisper Wrap diaper cover

While there are a few things we miss about the old apartment (for starters, quieter neighbors...), we're loving having more space to call our own, and it's started to really feel like home to us. I imagine once our baby is born here, that will be even more the case.

Bon voyage...

We had a wonderful time with Matt's mom, who was a great sport about my incredibly low threshold for physical activity these days, our variety of strange living habits, cats who beg from the table, and the fact that her flight was canceled shortly after she got to the airport last night, necessitating a return to Reston and a second try at the whole thing around 5:00 this morning! We enjoyed some nice meals, good conversations, and pleasant drives together, and are so happy she was able to come visit before the baby is born! We look forward to seeing her again soon when we're a family of three!

On the way...

Matt's mom! She's coming to visit today and will stay through the end of the weekend. We're really looking forward to a laid-back weekend of visiting and enjoying her company!

Birth links

In honor of the people who have already started asking me OMG WHAT WILL YOU DO IF YOU GO OVERDUE SINCE YOU'RE PLANNING A HOMEBIRTH (even though I am only 35 weeks, already 1cm dilated, and having maddeningly regular Braxton-Hicks contractions--thank you, coworkers), I give you an excellent post by Adventures in (Crunchy) Parenthood called "Overdue is not an emergency." She does a nice job of synthesizing the evidence that exists surrounding post-dates pregnancies. Here's a shocker: the way obstetrics is currently practiced is WAY out of line with what the research suggests.

On a related note, Keyboard Revolutionary notes that what enables the maternity care system to be such a broken-down and dangerous yet multi-billion-dollar business is the same thing that drives the rest of our consumerist, commercialized society: making people feel like crap about themselves. I love her tone and her observations, since it echoes what I see everyday and what rings true to us about American society in general.

And the Citizens for Midwifery blog explores the difference between health care and medical care.

Happy anniversary, baby.

Two years ago today, Matt and I got to stand by a picturesque beach in front of our family and close friends in a beautiful ceremony that had us both gushing tears the entire time.

Today, our alarm went off at 5am, and we got ready to head off to another day of work. I'm a good forty pounds heavier than I was when I slid into my little white dress, and words probably can't quantify just how much less glamorous I feel today than I did then.

But I feel no less blessed or fortunate. Only more so. The emotions that marked that day--gratitude, joy, a certain amazed disbelief at my own happy fortune--have only grown stronger over the past two years, when I've learned more ways to give to and receive from and be with someone than I ever would have thought possible in such a short time.

As we celebrate the bittersweet ending and beginning that is our last anniversary as just the two of us, I can look back and see the many ways we've fulfilled the promises we made to each other that day. Decked out in our finery on June 2nd, 2007, we didn't anticipate how quickly we'd be called on to stick together through better and for worse. We also didn't realize how much better things could continue to get. I didn't know how much harder--but ultimately more meaningful--it would be to present myself to someone in stretch marks and water weight than it would be in pearls and heels. And I couldn't have imagined all the ways I would be loved--by someone who holds my hair back when I throw up, helps me heave myself out of bed for the tenth time each night, who finds my lost keys every morning, and who constantly looks for more and better ways to give of himself and to love me.

To the man who is continually amazing me with what a wonderful husband, partner, and friend you are, and who I know will do the same, in just a few short weeks, with what an amazing father you'll be--

thank you, for everything.